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13tinysocks · 3 years

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I wanna see some anti fanfic rec plspls

You asked for it. May I present, a creepypasta x reader anti-reading list.

Quick Disclaimer: No author names will be dropped nor fic links or sites they’re on. I dislike these works but I don’t want anybody to be harassed. Don’t go after people, holy shit. These works are only here because of some heavily disturbing content. One of them just makes me super mad because of a few circumstances. These are purely my opinions. I am not writing Jesus nor do I write the cleanest stories out there. Dark topics should be explored in fiction. However, some things just shouldn’t fucking be romanticized. Fanfic is practice, I’m not taking points off for wonky writing.

You’re allowed to like whatever the fuck you want. I’m not shaming you or the authors. I’m talking about media I dislike, which I am completely allowed to do. If your friend or favorite author’s work is in here, maybe don’t send this to them. I get it’s tempting but still, it could be upsetting. Again, don’t fucking harass anybody.

This list is in order of - Pisses me off to FBI open up to whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.

Content warning for: Rape, miscarriages, abortion, necrophilia, sexism, child grooming, multiple types of abuse, ablism, and meanie head criticism of popular fics. Seriously, this gets exceptionally bad at the final one.

First up in our lineup a pretty popular. It’s the least upsetting and problematic. It’s a various creepypasta x reader mansion fic. This is more of an honorable mention because it’s frustrating to read over being super bad.

Recruited.

Summary: (Y/n) killed an attempted rapist and covered it up years ago. She is recruited into the cpp’s to be considered as a proxy along with two others. Follow her through a journey of no character development into becoming a proxy.

What’s wrong with it?

-Brian literally is a misogynist. He literally hates women.

-(Y/n) is an asshole. Not in an entertaining bad bitch way. No, in an unaware bland way. Points off for being a business major, girl you have no soul and it shows.

-She is treated like the voice of reason who is always morally correct. Thing is, if anyone is neurodivergent or mentally ill and ya’know shows symptoms of it, they’re cRaZy, evil, and an annoyance.

-Yes, people creeping on or getting clingy can be shitty/annoying but sometimes the way (Y/n) acts is completely unjust. It left a bad taste in my mouth because the character felt okay to be shitty to people who weren’t like her.

-The endings are disheartening and make no fucking sense. Cody, who is clingy at worst, gets rejected Jack, who TRIES TO BREAK (Y/N)’S FUCKING LEG, gets with her. Can I get a HELLO??????

-(Y/n) also doesn’t get with Jeff who suddenly turned into her brother character after hundreds of pages of romantic tension. Again, Recruited is not inherently bad but it may be really disappointing to people who are here for 1-2 specific characters.

-Queer bait-y author’s notes and inconstant love interests. Author’s notes would read like “Teehee, maybe I’ll make (Y/n) have Jane and/or Natalie endings……” But that never happens after it’s teased multiple times. I get not wanting to add more to your plate but don’t suggest it if you don’t want to do it or only want to please heterosexual readers.

-They put Tim outside like a dog for being a bad boy.

-Author’s notes and percentages fill in details for the reader that aren’t in the fic. I’m not going to read all of that. Put important information in the fic.

-Lot’s of excessive jealousy. Painfully heteronormative.

What about the good?

Readable. Dramatic like Big Brother. Can be an entertaining read if it’s your thing.

Conclusion

Left a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like the author literally hated half the cast and was annoyed while writing them. When you don’t enjoy writing something it shows. Also, her other work (pandemic! Reader X X-Virus) is super tone-deaf and I don’t recommend that either. Don’t recommend joining this fic’s Discord server either. Won’t get into details but in my and my friend's experience: it’s not a good environment with a lot of playing favorites.

Next up on our list is a grossly popular Eyeless Jack X Reader fic.

My Imaginary Monster

Summary: Immoral monster, Eyeless Jack, sneaking into a 5-year-old girl's room. He gets attached, sticks around through her childhood. Thing is, he gets real creepy. Starts to catch feelings for a 16-year-old he’s watched grow up. He kisses a minor who reciprocates his feelings which is textbook child grooming. Nasty fucker runs away, there’s some drama from that. (Y/n) grows up, comes back to town, and Jack’s a’creepin’.

What’s wrong with it?

-Jack is a literal child groomer.

-Do I need to say more??? Immortal adult kisses a 16 y/o. Gross.

-People in the comments are going gaga for grooming. Are you kidding me, he’s a pedophile.

-The OC’s take up more than half of the ~200 page run time. I couldn’t get attached to any of them even after the supposed significance. Which is fine but they took up so much of the fic that it got boring and annoying incredibly quickly.

What’s good about it?

I enjoyed Ben. He did the right thing and I can respect that. Trans and poluyamourus reprrensentation.

Conclusion:

No child grooming in my fucking lobby. I think the author was trying to paint it in a bad light. But the thing is, you can write a creepy stalker fic without making them a groomer. A lot of people are trying to escape their troubles through fanfic, including those who’ve dealt with sexual abuse. Don’t bring that into x reader spaces. Don’t put readers through that again.

Last and absolutely least we got a Tim X Reader.

BIG TW. FUCKING HUGE TW. MOST OF THE TW’S FROM EARLIER ARE FROM THIS ONE FIC.

Pure Forgiveness.

Summary: (Y/n) is abused by her mom. Her dad killed himself and she’s all (Y/n)’s got in this world. Until Tim comes along and “saves” her. He takes her to the mansion and keeps her as a pet to torture.

I’m going to get into all the nitty-gritty to satisfy your morbid curiosities so you don’t read it.

What’s wrong with it?

-Chapter 1 opens with (Y/n)’s miserable life. Her mom hates her so much she has a fucking torture table for (Y/n).

-There’s an attempted rape in chapter 2.

- She’s taken to the mansion by Tim in chapter 3 because he’s “off his medication” and “acting nicer than normal”. Hi, mentally ill person here, that’s not how it fucking works you ding dong.

-Mental illness is made out to we wholly evil.

-Also tic’s are made out to be scary. As a person with tics, don’t write tics as scary or super weird. Thanks.

-(Y/n) not being able to escape, fight back rapists, and other horrible shit is labeled as weak.

-At one point (Y/n) is dragged through the mansion, beer bottles and used condoms are thrown at her. Girl has to shower off cum.

-(Y/n) is tortured in various ways. Mostly beaten, berated, burned, cut, starved, etc.

-She is drugged and repeatedly raped by Brian and Toby. These rapes are recorded and shown to (Y/n).

-Brian has black hair. Why?

-Toby and Brian give (Y/n) a forced abortion.

-(Y/n) gets raped almost every fucking chapter.

-At one point Jack orally rapes (Y/n) to abort a baby.

-Toby and Brian are necrophiles. They skull fuck a corpse at some point. It is graphically described how they like to have sex with dead bodies.

-Slenderman forcefully impregnates (Y/n) to “keep the (Tim’s) baby safe” whatever the fuck that means.

Why does this happen?

Because Tim wants a kid because his dad raped his mom and his mom was a prostitute. He’s soooo sad guys :(((

Feeling hungry? Here’s some things that are eaten by various characters.

-Hair

-Cum (forced)

-Toby

-Piss

-A miscarried baby

What’s good about it?

Nothing. Fucking nothing. Don’t read it.

Conclusion

If you like this fic you need therapy, I’m not joking. It’s like a car crash and Rob Zombie movie horribly mish-mashed together. It sucks. The comments praise literal abuse and berate (Y/n) for being afraid. Fuck this fic and everything it stands for. It’s shock horror and torture for the sake of it. It makes no fucking sense and it’s harmful. People think this is okay. It’s not.

Thank you to my pals in the server for helping out and finishing some of these where I could not. Especially you Connie, everyone say thank you Connie she got through Pure Forgiveness. Absolute trooper legend. Again, don’t go out of your way to harass these people. I made this list so you can avoid these works because they have the potential to be upsetting. I’m not the police, I can’t force anyone to stop nor do I want to. Author’s are allowed to explore dark topics but some should be done respectfully or not at-fucking-all. I hope these people grow as writers and understand treating some things a certain way isn’t cool. You can enjoy dark fics, I do too, fuck I write them too, but Jesus God, some things are a no from me chief.

#creepypasta x reader #rea talks #anon #reply #tw rape #tw abuse #read what you want #im not demanding the cancelationof these people thats dumb i just hope they grow and change #i read and write dark fic but you have to be aware of some shit dude lol #also jealousy and yandere fics r typically bad #like not every fic i reccomend or write is going to be problem free but theyre tolerable and interresting i think #im deadass when i say dont read the last one it is awful.

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gaawachan · 3 years

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Critical Role 126 Discord Convo

Here, my sibling and I talked a bit about Veth, Caleb, the Cerberus Assembly, and Astrid/Wulf in particular (it starts out a bit goofy at first but gets serious): Sibling: Did you see that animatic I sent you, speaking of that scene?

Me: Yes

Sibling: Like, it'd be great to update it with Astrid and Wulf in a mound just behind the 9

Me: Lol, they would have seen the polymorphed worm, too... And the yeti friends... "They... built snowmen in balenpost?"

Sibling: And had to camp out while they disappeared into the wizard tower... the Beau-shaped hole in Balenpost lol

Me: There was a jester one too

Sibling: LOL. Like, a snowman... a snowman with 2 heads

Me: and sad faces

Sibling: One kicked over snowman and two human-shaped holes in the snowbanks. But seriously, there's no way someone isn't aware that Vess is dead. Her window was open, letting the snow come in

Me: Oh, the assembly knows. At the very least, Ludinus, Trent, and the scourgers definitely know. Astrid "thanked" Caleb because she's assuming he killed her, or she wants that to be the case, at least.

Sibling: Veth is totally missing the point. The writing is on the wall, Astrid is using the shit out of Caleb and I think, at the very least it might be an interesting DQ6 moment where when they come back from saving the world, Astrid's already taken Trent's place and they have to deal with it that way.

Me: Yeah, it's very obvious, especially when you consider how Astrid and Caleb have similarities. Like... Astrid's panic attack in the alley reminded me of Caleb's breakdown in Shady Creek Run. Right after the manipulation is over and they're out of sight, they have a breakdown. Tbh... If Caleb were to replace anyone on the assembly, it shouldn't be Trent. It should be Ludinus. Ludinus is the root of the problems in the empire, pretty much everyone is certain at this point that that is the case. The king is evil but seems incompetent/useless.

Sibling: I wonder, honestly, if that'll be the conclusion to the M9? If Caleb's arc will conclude it?

Me: But at the same time I don't want him to be in the assembly; I don't think he WANTS to be.

Sibling: Rewatching the table scene *Veth: (to Wulf) "When the war was a bit more hot... Were you much more busy?" Wulf: "Not any more than yourselves." Veth: "No I mean, were you out on the lines like a soldier?" Wulf: "I'm not much of a frontliner... More of a scout, if you would."* Wulf is totally tailing them. Wulf is absolutely the person they sent after them, I'm certain of it.

Me: Yeah, I figured. There's going to be a confrontation in Eiselcross when they're traveling with Essek, I'm sure of it. That's gonna be rough.

Sibling: No, I know that, but it stuck out to me. I feel like Matt's dropping major hint bombs... ex vs current bf?

Me: I wonder if Essek has MET Wulf before.Sibling: I like Wulf more than Astrid.

Me: Me, too.

Sibling: I think I'll be sad if he gets gravity crushed, but he better not lay a finger... on my butterfinger.

Me: I mean, I feel bad for them both, but the problem is that they can't be trusted with power, and if the Assembly falls, they may try to seize power. Tbh I just don't see them surviving to the end and that's pretty sad.

Sibling: I could see Wulf being turned if the party spent more time on things, seeing as he seems to be more of a piece to be manipulated than a major player himself... but their focus is entirely on Trent and Astrid, which makes me think that he'll be canned.

Me: Actually, I'm not so sure about that Wulf thing. I think he may be harder to reach in some ways. See the thing is... Astrid wants power. That's understandable. But it's not clear if she wants power for necessarily nefarious purposes or if it's just that the life of poverty she led before coupled with how much she's lost drives her to reach for it, and it's not clear what would satisfy her or whether or not she'd be interested in taking her life in a different direction, so that's complicated.

Me: But with Wulf... Wulf's issues are simpler, which I think arguably makes him harder to reach. Wulf and Astrid have both basically shrugged off their parents' deaths at this point, they've both indicated as much in different ways, but Wulf's a servant of the Raven Queen. He can rationalize the death of anything and anyone under her banner. Unlike Astrid, who is motivated by power/ambition, Wulf is the holy soldier... of the death god. That's uh... zealotry.

Me: Worse still, he has religious motivations for going against those who use Dunamancy, which is likely an anathema to the Raven Queen. He was already following her when he was a teenager, because Caleb was looking to see if he had any symbols of her on him when they first reunited. Honestly I really don't think either of them can truly be reached unless Caleb DOES take over the assembly and even then they might do scummy stuff behind his back out of perceived necessity.

Sibling: If his motivations have been so tied up in his religion, it would make it very difficult to reach him, true. But Astrid seems to have invested so much into her ambitions that I wonder if she might try to quiet those talking her out of it. She seems very aware of her actions' consequences, unlike someone like Essek who had ambitions without understanding where his studies would take him. If they're left alive, which I don't think they will be, Caleb's best scenario would be to avoid the assembly as much as possible.

Me: Honestly at this point I feel like the entire government of the Empire needs to be cleared out and replaced, ideally by the Cobalt Soul. Though that would be very controversial, I don't think any other organization can be trusted with filling that vacuum. The Soul is ultimately an international religious organization, but considering they have shown willingness to weed out corruption within their own ranks, it would be interesting if they pooled their resources and had the Empire taken over by a circle of vetted monks instead of corrupt mages, and then have them transition to a democracy eventually.

Sibling: Considering that Matt has reinforced that the Cobalt Soul is attempting to weed out its own corruption, but can't seem to do so for other organizations... I wonder how long it would last. At least they wouldn't have to operate in secret anymore. Maybe that would lift their final restriction?

Me: Well, the thing that really chafes at me with respect to Caleb potentially joining the assembly is that he just DOESN'T FIT THERE. I've thought this before but Caleb would be more at home working for the Cobalt Soul than the Assembly. He's been talking about burning out the rot in the Empire for ages now, and that's basically the goals of the expositors. I wouldn't object to him being involved in the Empire's government... as long as that government did not consist of anything resembling the assembly. A complete restructuring.

Sibling: I mean, you can't really rework the gov unless you're already in a position like Ludinus, but even then, Caleb I still feel like is not the person for that.

Me: But let's be real, ideally he would be the head of the Soltryce Academy... and that's the thing... One of the problems with Wulf and Astrid is that you get the feel that they could rationalize doing anything. And you have to wonder under all that rationalization and manipulation if there is any malice/sadism... there probably is, which sucks because Astrid is actually far better positioned to be an effective politician than Caleb; she's had experience around it for over a decade, she probably knows politics very well. Caleb is earnest and an excellent negotiator but he is not a politician. He would be best off as an ambassador, if I had to pick a political position for him to take.

Sibling: The government does still need to be overthrown for Essek to come hang out with Caleb though, so it must be done.

Me: It must be done. Looping back to Veth/Astrid... Here are some of the posts on Veth's behavior that I've seen. *posts a bunch of links* It's interesting... the Astrid thing. I haven't seen anyone else point this out, but... Veth probably sees Astrid as being Caleb's Yeza. And if Caleb can go back to Astrid and be happy, it's like a test run for her going back to Yeza. Which is pretty messed up. He keeps telling her "Yes, I care for her, but we've both changed" and that's not something Veth wants to think about because it applies to her as well, except that... well, Yeza really hasn't changed. Just her.

Sibling: 1) Ah, skirting her trauma by attempting to address what she sees as Caleb's? Addressing her issues by proxy? Overbearing mom living vicariously through her son...? ... That kind of makes my stomach churn, but I get it. 2) Another revenge perspective. Considering her knee-jerk reaction to kill people who've wronged her family or the party, I think revenge is totally an aspect that has gone unexplored for her. 3) Eugh, the romance still squicks me out, but I understand. Nott was a different person to Veth, she probably had a hope out for returning to her form and going back to Yeza... But I wonder if she thought he wouldn't accept her, and she had Caleb as like... (ew) a backup?

Me: I mean, it's pretty well-established that she has a thing for Caleb. And yeah, her feelings for him are pretty fucked up because of their dynamic up to the point where they went to Felderwin. The CA did wrong her family, and so did Essek, and Veth is very much a vengeance-minded person in a far more straightforward way than Caleb. Most of the others have told Caleb that if he goes after the Assembly, it should be for the right reasons. Interestingly, Veth, Fjord, and Jester don't seem to agree exactly. Jester sees it as a sort of "why not both?" thing. Fjord seems to have no qualms with vengeance at all (unsurprising considering which parts of his past have not yet been resolved, and yet Fjord has never gotten shit for that like Caleb has, and Sabian has done far less harm/damage than Trent). But Veth? Veth sees vengeance as clearcut, something that ought to be pursued and then when it's done, it's done and she's satisfied. It's interesting that the person who Caleb was most attached to at the start of the campaign is also by far the most unhealthy influence on him in the group at this point.

Sibling: I think it's because Fjord hasn't been molded by Sabian. Sabian wronged him, but the more Fjord found out about himself, the less important that seemed. And the more they found out, the more you begin to call into question whether what he did was to get rid of Vandran, an unsavory figure or... something else? Not to mention, Sabian is insignificant, whereas Caleb's abuser is still abusing people to this day. I can see there are major differences between the consequences of either of their revenge quests.

Me: Yes, but that's precisely my point. Sabian is not hugely harmful in comparison to Trent, so it's interesting that people give Caleb shit for being motivated partially by revenge, while Fjord doesn't get any when that's basically his ONLY motivation for tracking down Sabian.

Sibling: Probably because Fjord might get a reason without killing Sabian. Caleb might be walking into a trap, laid out by his peers. I still am of the opinion that killing Trent is a net positive. Just the act of getting rid of him is necessary to stop the cycle. But what comes next is the most important part. Because if Trent is dead when they come back, and Astrid sits in his place... The perpetuation of this cycle won't come to a close.

Me: Yes. I mean, personally? His entire section of the Empire's government should be outright dissolved. It's absolutely revolting. The thing is that it's not just Trent that needs to go; it's his POSITION. That needs to not exist, and I don't see that ever happening so long as Ludinus exists as well. Edit: Well, you basically said what I meant in a different way, lol.

#critical role #critrole #critrole spoilers #critical role spoilers #episode 126 #caleb widogast #astrid beck #eadwulf #veth brenatto #nott the brave #trent ikithon #ludinus da'leth #essek thelyss #cerberus assembly #meta #fjord stone #thisconversationwasallovertheplacehowdoitagthis

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paleorecipecookbook · 6 years

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RHR: How to Fight Practitioner Burnout with Dr. Akil Palanisamy

In this episode, we discuss:

Burnout among healthcare practitioners

How common the problem is

The results of widespread physician burnout

The difference between burnout and moral injury

How technology is contributing to the problem, not alleviating it

How to fight physician burnout

Show notes:

The Paleovedic Diet by Dr. Akil Palanisamy

The Sutter Health Institute for Health & Healing in San Francisco

Unconventional Medicine by Chris Kresser

1440 Multiversity retreat for healthcare professionals

Akil Palanisamy’s website, DoctorAkil.com

youtube

[smart_track_player url="https://ift.tt/2MsScI1" title="RHR - How to Fight Practitioner Burnout with Dr. Akil Palanisamy " artist="Chris Kresser" ]

Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. This week we’re going to be talking to Dr. Akil Palanisamy, who is a friend and colleague in the Functional Medicine space. And I’ve known him for several years. He is the author of The Paleovedic Diet, a really interesting book combining Paleo and Ayurveda, a traditional Indian medicine which is an interest of his. And he also runs the Paleo Symposium that’s put on by the Institute for Health & Healing at UCSF every year, that I’ve been a featured speaker at since it started.

But today actually, we’re going to be talking about something different, which is burnout amongst healthcare practitioners. It’s a really important topic that has pretty significant implications not only in terms of the effect on individual clinicians, but on patients and their access to care, things like medical errors and just the healthcare system overall.

So if you’re not familiar with Akil, he’s an integrative medicine physician who blends his medical training with Functional Medicine in Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India. He studied biochemistry at Harvard and received his medical degree from UCSF and completed his residency at Stanford. Dr. Akil also completed a fellowship in integrative medicine with Dr. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona. He sees patients at the Sutter Health Institute for Health & Healing in San Francisco, where he also serves as physician director for community education. He’s been a consultant with the medical board of California for many years and as I mentioned, he’s the author of The Paleovedic Diet: A Complete Program to Burn Fat, Increase Energy, and Reverse Disease.

So I’m really excited to dive into this conversation with Akil. I think you’ll find it interesting, even if you’re not a healthcare practitioner that’s experiencing burnout, because we talk about a lot of issues that are relevant to anybody doing any kind of work, really. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. Let’s dive in. Akil, thank you so much for joining us. I’m so glad to have you here.

Akil Palanisamy: Thank you, Chris. Pleasure to be here.

Burnout among healthcare practitioners

Chris Kresser: So today we’re going to talk about a really important topic that I don't think gets enough attention, and this is physician burnout. So, and I would extend it to burnout for any healthcare practitioners. We might be focusing a little bit on physicians because this is where most of the statistics are available, but it’s certainly a problem across the entire healthcare world whether we’re talking about:

Nurses

Nurse practitioners

Occupational therapists

Chiropractors

Acupuncturists

Anybody working in the care profession

In my book Unconventional Medicine, I talked a lot about how this is one of the major challenges within medicine in general, not just conventional medicine, but also integrative medicine and Functional Medicine. And it's something that we need to develop a sensible approach to if we’re going to meet our goals in terms of preventing and reversing disease. So this is something that Akil has thought deeply about and has been involved in a number of different initiatives from his work at Sutter to working with medical students and other physicians to address this problem. So I'm really looking forward to having this conversation. So why don’t we start a little bit with the stats on burnout, Akil?

Ask yourself: Does medicine still feel like your calling? If daily stress and exhaustion are turning you away from the profession, you might be headed toward physician burnout. Find out what causes burnout and learn how to rediscover your sense of purpose.

How common the problem is

Akil Palanisamy: Sure, yeah, I think it's really rampant, and most studies report around 50 percent or higher of physicians report some significant burnout. And that's up from about 40 percent just five years ago. So, I think the numbers are really scary and also this is a global problem. So this is across the board. Many countries throughout the world and also regardless of the stage of training. So medical students, residents, physicians, even the number of years of practice has no impact.

Chris Kresser: Wow.

Akil Palanisamy: I will check on this number, so, I mean, I know because I did my medical training 20 years ago, and it was like, I would say, a soul-crushing and exhausting process.

Chris Kresser: Right, right.

Akil Palanisamy: So I started early in this topic, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, yeah. That’s really revealing in some ways. If medical students are as burned out as people who've been in the profession for 10 or 20 years, that's an indication that something’s already going wrong, even at that very early stage.

Akil Palanisamy: Right. I came across a really fascinating study. They interviewed almost 3,000 medical students about burnout and 53 percent of them reported feeling burnt out. About 15 percent were depressed, about 5 percent had seriously considered suicide. But the interesting thing was 100 percent of the students, every single one reported feeling humiliated at some point, demeaned, disrespected as part of their training. And that had huge effects on their performance and judgment, and that was my experience too. It’s part of the culture of training doctors.

Chris Kresser: It really is, isn’t it? It’s almost like fraternity hazing or something. I've heard for residents that it's … and it seems to be perpetuated for some of the same reasons, like this, “I went through this, so you have to go through it,” type of mentality. And I've even read the studies that support that.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, right. When I started my residency, I was super thrilled because they had just passed a law limiting the work hours, continuous work hours to 24 hours in a row. That was like a huge drop.

Chris Kresser: That’s a big development.

Akil Palanisamy: And I was like, “Wow, this is fantastic. I only have to work 24 hours in a row, like, every week.” And people thought that would solve the problem of burnout. But it hasn’t because that’s just one of many factors.

The results of widespread physician burnout

Chris Kresser: Right, and so we know that there’s a huge problem with the shortage of primary care physicians. I don't remember the exact number from the study I shared in my book, but it's something like, predicted to be a shortage of around 50,000 primary care providers by the year 2025, which is not very far off in the future. And yet one of the costs of burnout, as you said, is that two-thirds of physicians know a doctor who is likely to stop practicing medicine or at least to reduce their access to patients, switch to concierge model, or something like that within the next five years as a result of burnout. So this is a real problem that's really kind of having an outsize effect on our healthcare system.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it is genuinely a public health crisis. And I think that that word is increasingly being used in the literature because this really does impact not just individual physicians but patients, healthcare organizations, the entire healthcare system in our country and other countries around the world. So I think the scope of the effects and the impact of burnout is being recognized now and it's huge in terms of not just the individual level, but medical errors as well. So, recent studies have shown that there’s a strong relationship between physician burnout and medical errors. And already medical errors are one of the major leading causes of death in the United States. And so I think as we get more burned out physicians and higher rates of medical errors, I think that's one of the big issues in terms of the costs of this problem.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, this is critical, and I highlighted this in my book. But if you go to a site like CDC or a general website and you search for the top 10 causes of death, let’s see what happens if we do that right now. Cardiovascular disease is still holding at number one, and then you’ve got lung cancer or you’ve got other diseases that come shortly after that. The data is often changing. Cancer continues to go up the list. But you’re not going to see medical errors on these lists, right?

Akil Palanisamy: Right.

Chris Kresser: There was a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2016, just a couple of years ago, and then another one by Barbara Starfield, who’s since passed away, back in 2000 in JAMA. And both of those found the same thing, that medical errors are actually the third-leading cause of death. And since only 5 to 15 percent of the atherogenic events are even reported, Dr. Starfield actually speculated that medical errors could be the number one cause of death if all of the atherogenic events were reported. So this is something you don't see on the typical list, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Akil Palanisamy: Right, exactly. Yeah, because when you experience burnout, the impaired judgment, lack of attention to detail, communication breakdown, all the things, the depression, that just greatly increases the risk of medical errors.

Chris Kresser: Right. So this is a, it's a common problem, it's a problem that has not only effects on individual practitioners and their health and their lifespan, their feelings about their work, but also to patients and their safety and their ability to get the care that they need, and then to society as a whole. The healthcare crisis continues to deepen, and we need more doctors, rather than fewer. The fact that 50 … that two-thirds of physicians know a doctor who’s likely to stop practicing medicine in five years is exactly the opposite direction that we need to be going in here.

The difference between burnout and moral injury

So let's talk … so, we’ve been throwing this term “burnout” around, and I'm sure that means different things to different people. But you actually emailed me before the show with a really interesting distinction that I want to highlight—the difference between burnout and moral injury. So can you talk about that a little bit?

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, absolutely. So traditionally, burnout is defined as a work-related syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, a cynical feeling, and feeling like you're ineffective on the job. But this concept of burnout really doesn't resonate with doctors. I can tell you from talking to many of them that they really don't connect with this concept of burnout because the problem is you're pointing the finger at doctors. And you’re saying, “You’re burned out, you need to start doing yoga and eat granola, and just like change your lifestyle.” But you know, these are some of the most resilient people out there.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely.

Akil Palanisamy: Medicine, I mean we’ve survived decades of intense training, sleep deprivation, the training process itself is incredibly stressful, the work demands. So these are some of the most resilient and resourceful people out there. And so I think the problem is really, a big part of it is the system. But the distinction that you mentioned between moral injury and burnout, the concept of moral injury actually was first used to describe how soldiers responded to what they did during war and when they came back, having to do things that went against their morals.

In healthcare, it refers to physicians being unable to provide the high-quality care that they would really like to, essentially, not being able to be true to themselves. So I think the problem is not that physicians are burned out and so we don't care. The problem is that we care very deeply.

Chris Kresser: Care too much.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Not too much, but it’s the care that’s causing the problem, yeah.

Akil Palanisamy: Right and then as a result, in our current healthcare system, it's so hard to consistently meet patients’ needs and provide the kind of care that we envisioned we would going into medicine. Because most doctors think of medicine as a calling, and so that failure and inability to meet needs of patients in the way that we really envision, that is hugely damaging, and I think that has a huge effect on physician well-being. And so that's the concept of moral injury. So I think that it's really much broader than just pointing the finger at doctors.

Chris Kresser: I think that’s really, really important to understand, and I've always made it clear that when I'm criticizing conventional medicine and its shortcomings, I'm not criticizing individual doctors. Of course, I might be criticizing some individual doctors, but not as a group because the vast majority of doctors that I have met are people that genuinely want to help their patients. They went into medicine for all the right reasons and they do recognize that they're not having the impact that they would like to have, and it's painful for them. But there's, they feel like their hands are tied because of the way that the system is set up. And they’re just as much victims of the system as the average patient is.

And I think this is a good example of how that plays out where we all want to have meaningful and rewarding work. We all want to get to the end of the day and feel like we really made a difference. And doctors, I think, especially. That's the path they chose. They didn't go into private equity. They didn't choose to go into a career that was really not about helping people, but more about making money or enriching their own lives. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. They willingly chose to go through a very arduous path that involves many, many years of schooling and as you said, rigorous training with residency, working 24 hours straight, often graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I mean, it’s an enormous risk to take, an enormous amount of investment of money and time and energy to become a physician.

So you don't make it through that generally, unless you really have a guiding moral compass that is pushing you through it. And so it's really, I think, even more important and critical that we figure out a way to, where we create a path forward for doctors and other healthcare practitioners that really do want to have that feeling at the end of the day. Because that's the antidote to burnout, where when you really do feel like you're transforming the lives of the people that you're working with, and you're having a huge impact. Because in that situation it doesn't mean you won't get tired and it doesn't mean you won't occasionally feel, “Geez, I need a vacation.” But you're not going to have that moral injury, and that’s what makes all the difference in the world.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, I know, exactly. And I think that the rates of suicide among physicians is a real wake-up call because it’s twice that of I think active duty military, and then there was a report from the UK that there was a young junior doctor who, she took her own life by walking into the sea.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s not, yeah.

Akil Palanisamy: Statistically, women physicians are a significantly higher risk of completed suicide than matched females in other professions. So it’s not uncommon, unfortunately, and I think that, yeah, exactly what you said about that moral compass that physicians have, I think being able to feel like you're true to yourself. That's a basic need that all of us have, and I think especially those who go into medicine, we feel that pretty intensely.

How technology is contributing to the problem, not alleviating it

Chris Kresser: Right. And there may be lots of choices every day that they have to make that are, don't feel true to themselves because of the way that the system is set up. And I know from my own research and I know you and I have talked about this, one of the influences in terms of burnout has been the rise of electronic medical records or electronic health records, EMRs and EHRs. Initially these were hailed as, that this is going to dramatically reduce the amount of paperwork that doctors would have to do and they were going to be great time-saving and productivity devices, and they were going to be doctors’ best friends. But the reality has not quite lived up to that, has it?

Akil Palanisamy: No, no. Yeah, I would, I think that studies show that about like half of the average physician’s workday is spent entering data or doing other clerical work in the EHR. So the amount of time actually spent with patients is less than a third, and for me I think it's a bit of a double-edged sword. Because it does make it easier to respond to patient messages rather than playing phone tag with patients. But on a typical day, I might get 50 to 60 electronic messages in addition to charting visit notes for each patient, and each of these questions or patient calls, etc., requires some thought.

And increasingly we’re being measured on how quickly we can respond to these messages because the priority is patient satisfaction, and that's eventually going to be tied to financial compensation and that kind of thing. So I think this EHR, it takes up so much time, and it really hasn’t translated to the reduced workload and that sort of thing. And when we deal with insurance in my practice, I think that's a huge benefit for patients because it improves access, and for Functional Medicine and integrative medicine, I think we need to move in that direction where insurance covers services. And so we offer that, but then it creates a whole universe of responsibilities in terms of the paperwork, the criteria for each progress note when we’re billing insurance, the forms, the prior authorizations, the other kind of paperwork. So it just adds another layer of paperwork to everything else that we’re dealing with in terms of the EHR every day.

Chris Kresser: Yes. And then there’s another issue of when you're actually in the room with the patient, that connection that you're trying to make with the patient is now being mediated by a computer screen and having to type into the computer. And we’ve all seen, I've heard many stories of people going to doctors and complaining that their doctor was hardly even looking at them because they were working on the computer the entire time, and this is especially true with younger doctors from what I've heard, who never operated without an EHR.

So they never had the experience of being in a visit with the patient without the computer being part of that. And I think with all the data that we now have in terms of how important the physician-patient relationship is to the outcomes in care and the research on the placebo effect, and just the, in Carl Rogers's words, the unconditional positive regard and the type of connection that is made just is therapeutic in its own right. And I think the EHR can compromise that in some ways.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm always torn because I want to maintain good eye contact and really be present with each patient, but then if I don’t touch the EHR at all, then at the end of the day I’m like, this one’s like …

Chris Kresser: You’ve got eight more hours of work.

Akil Palanisamy: Exactly.

Chris Kresser: It’s really challenging, and, I mean, my solution to that, which is not possible for everybody because of the model I work independently, so I’m able to just kind of set things up how I want. But I have a nurse practitioner that's by my side at every appointment, and she takes the notes. So I'm able to just maintain eye contact with my patient and not really look at the computer. And I recognize that's not a viable solution for most practitioners, but it's something that I felt compelled to do because I, like you, didn't want to get home and do four hours of data entry into the EHR after a full day of seeing patients. And but I didn't also want to sacrifice the connection with the patient.

So I think the other thing that's also not always in an individual physician’s control is the quality of the EHR or the EMR system. So many of them are just completely bloated and full of functions that they'll never use, and just really difficult to navigate, and they’re a nightmare in terms of software development. They’ve been just sort of cobbled together and put on top of each other, and it’s, for anyone who likes software and technology, EMR software is not going to be particularly inspiring for the most part.

Akil Palanisamy: Yes, yeah. No, I think you’re right on that. And the point about having additional support for progress notes, I think, is a good one because studies show that having some type of help with the charting actually reduces burnout, and it's obvious, right? And I think at Sutter Health where I work, they really take burnout quite seriously. And so they’ve supported having scribes, which is the same thing. They take notes and they kind of do everything, and you just have to sign the note.

So I think it’s really, it’s a shared issue with burnout between individuals and healthcare systems and organizations. So I think it’s very important that all of these systems realize they have an important role to play, and I think Sutter Health is a really great example of that. They've supported a lot of these changes, and like this example of scribes and with our EHR, which is Epic, just helping us to use it in the most efficient way possible. So I think systemic changes are really a huge part of the solution as well.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely, and this is a recurring theme in this conversation. It's that individual physicians can only do so much when they're employed in a larger organization, and they’re not free to just do whatever they want. And so we have to continue to work to raise awareness institutionally about these issues so that the institutions themselves can make the changes, and then individual physicians will benefit from those.

Akil Palanisamy: Right.

How to fight physician burnout

Chris Kresser: So let's talk a little bit about some of the work you've done in the past with medical students and other doctors at Sutter on burnout. What kind of things have you done to approach this?

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, I think for me during medical school, it was really a survival mechanism. Because I was pretty burned out and the training, yes, I absolutely had that being belittled and demeaned when I was on the wards in my rotations. And so I really got interested in the certain classes that were offered on finding meaning in medicine and really connecting with your purpose or actually reconnecting with why you went into medicine, and keeping that front and center. And also developing tools for maintaining well-being like mindfulness.

So mindfulness is one thing that has been studied. There’s actually been about 14 studies looking at physician burnout and mindfulness, and nine of them have shown positive outcome in terms of:

Reducing burnout

Improving well-being

Improving mood

Improving resiliency

So I think, I don't think that's the entire solution, but the more tools you have in your toolkit, the better. And we don't really get any training in general in terms of how to deal with stress and how to manage emotions during our healthcare training. And so I think I got into mindfulness very early, studied MBSR, developed a daily meditation practice, became involved in educational programs teaching people about mindfulness. And then since … then during residency and now practice, after that I've been very interested in workshops and events that kind of focus on that aspect of meaning and really reconnecting with a sense of purpose, a sense of direction. Kind of helping people be true to themselves.

And so I think small group exercises and workshops where people are getting out of their left brain and reconnecting with their right brain, using art and things like that, have been really effective. So for me, I've benefited as much as I’ve helped anybody in this work, and it's been just partly for my own gains, but I think you teach what you have to learn. And for me, being involved in burnout and teaching people about it has been a lifesaver.

Chris Kresser: That’s so great. I think all of those are fantastic tools for kind of exploring the causes of burnout on an individual level and helping people respond in a way that will reduce the risk of moral injury, if we will. And I know for me, one of the ways that I've approached this personally and also with people that I've worked with and that I’ve trained is just to make sure that I feel like the work I'm doing is having a big impact on my patient’s lives. Because that’s one of the reasons I really love that distinction that you make between burnout and moral injury. Because if I look at it that way, I think, “Okay, well, that's the biggest risk is just getting to the end of the day and feeling like I'm not making a difference. Feeling like all of my efforts are for naught really. Or they’re not really having the impact that I would like them to have.” And to me, that's the greatest risk in terms of burning out. When I know that my work is making a difference, my endurance and stamina are considerable.

Akil Palanisamy: Right.

Use Functional Medicine to prevent it

Chris Kresser: But when I don't feel that way, it doesn't take much to make me feel tired and like what I'm doing is not worth it. So this is, I think, where a Functional Medicine approach has a lot to offer, not just as a treatment modality, but as a means of really actually making a difference in the patients’ lives. Like getting to the root cause of the problem and actually addressing the problem and helping the patient to recover and feel better without the use of unnecessary drugs and surgery. For me that was one of the most appealing things about Functional Medicine, and I think it's one of the less talked about but most important gifts that it has to offer to individual physicians who shift their practice in that direction.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, I think that's what motivated me to go into Functional Medicine as well, just to get that sense of fulfillment and satisfaction when you help someone really get a permanent solution to something and by uncovering the root causes and taking that holistic approach. So I think that's what drew me to Functional Medicine as well.

Schedule a retreat

Chris Kresser: Absolutely. So another area where I know, or a kind of antidote to burnout that I know that you and I are both passionate about is a retreat. So I've been a big believer in retreat. I’ve done annual retreats myself for many years. I’ve done meditation retreats for about 25 years and I just can't really imagine my life without that opportunity to step away from my day-to-day life and experience and to get a different perspective, to slow down, to have more spacious existence for a few days were the busyness of life is not overtaking me and where I can just hear myself think and feel my body, and just look at things from a fresh perspective. It's just crucial for me. And I've always felt like my wish has been that others can experience this. That we can, because I really believe in its transformative power.

Connect with colleagues

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, absolutely. I do as well, and I’ve had a number of retreats over the years in terms of individual retreats and also group retreats. And especially in the professional setting, I find that ability to connect with other colleagues and professionals in that informal, nonwork setting is so powerful because in healthcare there's so much isolation. There are so many individual silos.

Everybody's just doing their thing trying to get through the day, and you rarely have a chance to step back and step out of that situation to just really deeply connect with people who are in the same boat and really understand what they're going through, share their story, listen to their stories, and really deepen your connection and solve problems together.

So I think that sort of deep connection is so important because that's like a huge need for all human beings, and especially in such an isolating profession like in healthcare. I think it's essential.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely, yeah. So many clinicians can just spend, we spend most of our time in a room with patients and we’re interacting with patients, but we’re not, we’re interacting with them in a certain way. We’re playing a certain role. We’re the clinician, they’re the patient, and those can be rich and rewarding interactions. But it's not the same as connecting with other colleagues and being able to talk about the issues that we face professionally and share together. So yeah I think that group experience is really powerful. And I’ve been writing about this recently.

I’ve been sharing some book recommendations, and Akil and I have actually teamed up to offer a retreat for healthcare practitioners at 1440 Multiversity in October. It’s from October 5th to 7th this year. And so it starts on Friday afternoon, Friday evening, and it goes through Sunday midday. And the retreat’s called “From Burnout to Brilliance: Rediscover Your Passion and Purpose, Reclaim Your Health, and Create a Practice You Love.” So the intention of this retreat is to address the issues that we've been talking about in the show and to help healthcare professionals explore their own situation, help them rediscover their passion for medicine and healthcare, and reconnect with a sense of meaning and purpose in their work to take some practical steps. Break those down into really doable actionable steps that they can take to reclaim their health and well-being. Rediscover parts of themselves that are not typically expressed in the course of their day-to-day work and just kind of cultivate a sense of energy and vitality that they may have been missing for many years.

And I'm really excited about doing this. I’m excited about doing this with Akil, who I've known for several years now and I really respect, and I'm excited about doing it at 1440. It's an incredible new retreat center, which I think you did a retreat there with Michelle Tam with Nom Nom Paleo last year, Akil?

Akil Palanisamy: Yes, yes beautiful, beautiful place. Yeah.

Chris Kresser: So this is, and for those of you who are not familiar, it's in Santa Cruz Mountains, right?

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, it’s surrounded by redwood trees and there's all these amazing hiking trails. And yeah, a beautiful place.

Chris Kresser: Yeah. I haven't actually been there yet, but I know several people who’ve taught there and who’ve been there. And if you go to 1440.org, click on the stay button and check out some of the pictures. It's an absolutely beautiful campus. Really nice accommodations, gorgeous dining hall with lots of different food options. They've got daily yoga classes and massage, and a spa and other health offerings there. And they’ve got, of course, gorgeous hiking trails because it's in the redwood forest there. It just looks to me like they're really doing it right. I've been to a lot of retreat centers. I actually lived at a retreat center in Big Sur called the Esalen Institute …

Akil Palanisamy: Oh. sure.

Chris Kresser: … and many people may be familiar with. When I was still really sick and dealing with my health issues, I got to a point where I just decided, I kind of reached the end of the line of supplements and diets, and medications, and I decided that I would explore the psychological, emotional, psycho-spiritual aspects of what was going on for me. So I moved to Esalen and lived there for a couple of years. So I'm very familiar with retreat centers. I've been to many others around the country, both for Buddhist meditation retreats and other retreats, and I have, they're all great in many ways. But they’re, I can see that 1440 is bringing it to a different level.

So I'm excited to be a part of that. I'm excited to get together with a group of professionals that are all wanting to cultivate more meaning in their work and to find that work/life balance that can be so elusive. And I just can't wait to get together and support each other and share because that's, I mean, we all have so much to offer, and I think when we come together with a similar purpose, it's really powerful.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah. I am also really excited about the upcoming event, and I think for anyone who feels like they're not being true to themselves in their work or as to themselves as they would want to be, I think this is a great opportunity to really reflect. And I think our vision for that weekend is that it's going to be a very introspective weekend and really focused in small groups and interactive elements. So it’s not going to be just mostly didactic.

Chris Kresser: Yeah. It’s not going to be Akil and I standing in front of the room talking at you the whole time. Definitely going to be the opposite of that.

Akil Palanisamy: Right, exactly, yeah. Because I think that this work is really about looking within and then sharing and connecting with other people. And so that's the focus of the weekend, is really building that sense of community with whoever comes and really learning to deepen your own sense of meaning and purpose in work, and look within to reconnect with that vision for what drew you to this work initially. Because I think that's the ultimate goal is having that feeling like you're really being true to yourself at the end of the day and having the kind of practice that you envision.

Don’t be afraid to make changes

Chris Kresser: Absolutely. I shared the story of Sheri in my book Unconventional Medicine, who is a clinician that was working in the VA. And she's a doctor and was mostly seeing patients with diabetes. That's the most common health challenge for veterans. And it was, she was counting the days until retirement. It was just really a factory-medicine type of situation. She often didn’t even have time to go to the bathroom during the day because she was just that busy from appointment to appointment. And as we've discussed, there was a real risk of moral injury because she didn't feel like she was making a difference. She was just handing out medications to these people and she wasn't, she knew as an athlete herself who tried to pay attention to her diet, she knew that wasn’t the best way to go about it. But what else could she do in the amount of time that she had?

And she moved into kind of a more, started incorporating more of a functional approach in her work, and then eventually left and started her own Functional Medicine practice. But for her, it was just a total game changer. She went from counting the days to retirement, to not ever being able to imagine retiring. And that's the kind of shift that’s possible, I think, when you really address the root causes of burnout and take the opportunity to step out of your current system, your current day-to-day, and really give yourself the chance to discover something new. And even if that’s maybe moving in a different direction entirely, or maybe staying in your current situation but just making a series of small changes that collectively can have a big impact.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, I think for me, my whole approach has been in terms of incremental change because I know that for many people, they have gone out of the insurance model and set up their own Functional Medicine practice, and that can be fantastic. But my work is really just building change within the system. Because if the people within the system leave and do their own thing, then the system itself is going to not be changed. And so I think that a big part of this is also figuring out solutions within systems and incremental steps we can take, and I think that'll hopefully be part of what we talk about as well. Just if you do belong to a system, how you can take a leadership role and effect change within that system as well.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely. That's why Akil and I are a good team, because I’m outside the system and he’s inside of the system, and we have different perspectives. So that's another reason I'm happy to team up with him. I mentioned this in the beginning, but I'll throw it out there again. You need not be an MD to participate in this workshop. It's really for all healthcare practitioners and providers who are experiencing burnout. And so this could be anyone from a health coach to a nutritionist to a dietitian to an occupational therapist to a chiropractor, a naturopath in addition to MDs, and DOs, and MPs, and PAs, and all of the other abbreviations and acronyms. Anyone working in healthcare really would be welcome. And we’re not even limiting it to people working in healthcare. We don't want to exclude people here, so if you're not working in healthcare and the things we've been talking about resonate with you, maybe you work in emergency services or something else, you are absolutely welcome to come.

Akil Palanisamy: Yeah, and I would add that even if you're not feeling burned out, I think that prevention is really the best medicine.

Chris Kresser: That’s true.

Akil Palanisamy: So I think learning about the research and the science, because we know how to prevent it, and it's much better to prevent burnout than treat it once it happens.

Chris Kresser: That is a very good point. Yeah, and I guess if the statistics are any indication, we know that even if you’re not feeling burnout now, chances are statistically you will at some point.

Akil Palanisamy: Right.

Chris Kresser: Especially without any intervention. It’s kind of like the diabetes example I used before. If you’ve got high normal blood sugar, now’s the time to get it under control rather than waiting until it turns into diabetes.

Akil Palanisamy: Right.

Chris Kresser: Great, well, thank you so much, Akil, for being with us. It’s a fascinating and important topic, and I’m really looking forward to leading this workshop with you. Again, in the retreat, you can go to 1440, it’s 1-4-4-0 dot o-r-g, and when you get there on the website, you just hover over Learn, and then under programs click on Professional Development. And if you scroll down there, you’ll see our program, which, again, is on the first weekend of October, October 5th to 7th, it’s a Friday through a Sunday.

And there’s a tuition for the program, and then there’s several different accommodation options available there. It’s really neat. I like what they've done with that. Everything from a private room to a suite to a really cool bunk style, kind of modern bunk-style accommodation that's much more affordable. I don’t know if you saw those last time.

Akil Palanisamy: I did, yeah.

Chris Kresser: Check the pictures out, they look pretty cool. They call them pods.

Akil Palanisamy: Right, yeah, yeah. They’re pretty comfy. I’ve seen them.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, yeah, it looks great. So lots of different accommodation options. If you’ve never been to this part of the world, the Santa Cruz Mountains are a beautiful, beautiful area, gorgeous redwood forests. You can head down to the beach before or after in Santa Cruz there. It’s a funky, cool little town. Great, great part of the world. So I hope you can make it. Those of you who have been listening to this and resonating with it, we’d love to meet you in person and have a chance to explore these topics with you.

And then Akil, is also, we haven’t talked much about his other work, but he’s also an author in addition to being a clinician. And he organizes the Paleo Symposium every year that I've been fortunate enough to be a speaker at. So why don’t you tell everyone a little bit more about your work and where they can find out more about your work.

Akil Palanisamy: Oh sure, yeah. So I practice integrative medicine and I combine Functional Medicine with the Paleo approach and Ayurveda, which is the traditional medicine of India. And still that has led to my book which is called The Paleovedic Diet, combining Paleo and Ayurvedic medicine. And the best way to connect with me would be through my website, which is DoctorAkil.com. Just doctor spelled out, A-k-i-l dot com. And yeah, I wanted to thank you, as well, Chris, for having me on the podcast. I’m very excited to be working on this event with you, and it was really a pleasure to talk today.

Chris Kresser: Pleasure is mine, Akil. And I'm sure we’ll be in touch before October, but I look forward to seeing you then and anyone else who's listening, who wants to join us. So 1440.org, and thanks for listening, everybody. Keep sending your questions in. I know I haven’t answered many of them recently. We’ve been doing a lot more interviews lately. But I do see that I have a few Q&A episodes coming up, and we do read all of your questions, and we also consider them for writing articles or emails.

So even if we’re not able to answer them on the show, it helps me to understand what you're thinking about and what you want me to write about and talk about. So please do keep sending them in. That’s ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion. And thanks, everyone, for listening. And thank you, Akil, and we’ll see you next time.

Akil Palanisamy: Thank you, Chris.

The post RHR: How to Fight Practitioner Burnout with Dr. Akil Palanisamy appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com August 23, 2018 at 02:07AM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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brynwrites · 7 years

Text

Writing Romantic Relationships

(Even when you have little experience to go off of.)

@dominiquefourie asked:

So I'm writing a story (as I'm sure most of us are) and while it's not a romance story there is a strong relationship thread that's needed to pull the story forward, only thing is, I've never strictly been in a relationship - tv/books have shown me what relationships looks like, but how can I write about one without knowing what it feels like?? Thanks

Hey, Dominique! I have to admit upfront, I’ve never ‘strictly’ been in a relationship either. But neither have I fought in a war, or raised a kid, or held clandestine negotiations with rebels, or built a brace for a paralyzed merperson, or ridden a dragon, or experienced the death of a best friend.

Lucky for us, the same techniques which help us understand and write a variety of things we’ve never experienced before will generally work for romance as well:

Research. A good old internet search can be a great substitute for experience, especially if you’re dedicated to finding good sources.

Relate. Think of similar actions, emotions, and situations which you have experienced, and draw from those. Even if it’s not the exact circumstance you’re writing, there is always overlap.

Pseudo-Experience. Your imagination, combined with the human capacity for empathy, can give a lot more insight then you might think. It’s still not the real thing, but after you’ve done the research, the final step is to put yourself in the person’s shoes, at least in your mind.

You should certainly do your own digging into romance and relationships, but here are a few pointers to start with...

Five tips on writing romantic couples:

** All tips are written from the perspective of two people in a relationship, but they can certainly apply to poly relationships as well.

1. The foundation of friendship.

Couples who are friends as well as romantic partners tend to have far more stable relationships then couples who are only interested in each other for the romantic buzz or the sexual attraction, and readers tend to ship characters who click well and care about each other. Building your romantic relationships off a foundation of friendship can make them both more realistic and more shipable.

Some questions that might jump start the friendship aspect of your ship:

What little things do they know about each other, especially things which no one else has figured out?

What do they not know about each other which they’re surprised to find out?

How do they deal with their partner when that person is at their lowest point? How do they turn this reaction into one that’s as healthy as possible, and what steps do they take getting there?

How much do they know about each other’s life goals and plans for the future? How do these goals fit together? If they want different things, how do they approach a compromise?

What beliefs do they share?

What do they do when they find they have conflicting beliefs, and how do they work through it to maintain a strong relationship in the long run?

What hobbies, activities, and likes do they shares? (If these aren’t relevant to the story, the characters shouldn’t need to be seen participating in them together, but it’s nice to forcefully hint that they both like the same thing, so that readers can extrapolate from there.)

2. Talk to people with experience in relationships.

There are probably quite a few people in your life who can tell you what the relationships they’ve been in were/are like. Ask your friends, your family, or random people online. Find people who blog or write honestly about their relationships. Read books on how to be a better spouse.

Good things to look for as you talk and research:

Differences in the way relationships are perceived externally, verses the way the couple perceives their own relationship.

Differences between budding love, a couple who’ve been living together for a year, and a couple who’ve raised a family together.

Differences in the relationships of couples in the same statistical brackets; differences due strictly to their own personalities and the effort they’re putting into their relationships.

This leads neatly into the next point...

3. Every relationship is different.

No one can tell you that the romantic relationship you’re writing is unrealistic because every relationship is different. Each of my close friends have had varying experiences with romance, love, sex, and relationships, and none of them match mine. Individuals are unique, and each relationship will look different depending on who’s involved.

As long as everything is healthy and consensual, there is no wrong way to go about a relationship.

4. Keep things healthy.

There’s a surplus of unhealthy relationships in media, especially YA romance books. It’s far better to show a slightly unrealistic relationship then to romanticize an unhealthy one.

Here’s an entire post of unhealthy things to watch for in your ships.

5. Show realistic growth and non-physical intimacy.

Don’t rush things. Love at first site is almost always actually lust at first sight. Good relationships are build off, or alongside a genuine friendship and a gradually increasing understanding of the other person.

Give little signs the characters know and feel comfortable will each other. Don’t be afraid to go a little cliche here, but also try to include things outside the norm as well. Some examples:

Borrowing clothing or blankets.

Noticing quirks.

Remembering things for the other person.

Cracking inside jokes.

Worrying about the things the other person would worry about.

Tweaking their partner’s clothing/room/food/etc to the other person's preferences, without being asked or mentioning they did so afterward.

Picking out little gifts for the other person without making a show of it.

Recognizing when the other person wants to be left alone, and then leaving them alone.

If you need a quick boost in your couple’s relationship and trust in each other, instead of glazing over it and skipping to them suddenly being close, try throwing them into a stressful or life-threatening situation, and make them work together to get through it!

At the end of the day, there is no perfect relationship and no perfect way to write one. No matter how much effort you put into writing a relationship or how much experience you have in your own relationships, there will always be some people who won’t ship your couple.

But if you focus on writing a couple who undergoes trials together, learns to interact in a healthy way, and has the knowledge and desire to make each other happy, then the characters will feel like they’re in a realistic, healthy romantic relationship, and the majority of your readers will ship them.

#writeblr #writing romance #writing advice #writing tips #writing resources #writing help #writing reference #amwriting #romance #writing tag: characters #character tag: relationships

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nelliievance · 3 years

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What I Eat and Why

I’m about to kick off a new series of posts about nutrition, I’ve learned a lot in the two years since my previous series in this area. I’ll give the same caveat I gave the last time: I’m an amateur in the subject of nutrition, though I like to think I’m well read on this subject.

I thought I’d start things off by explaining what I personally eat and my reasoning. I recounted my eating history up till early 2019 here.

I now eat a diet that is close to whole food plant-based (WFPB), at least as I interpret it. I’ll explain that in more detail in the next post, but here it is in a nutshell: I eat a lot of unprocessed plant foods, like fruits, veggies, legumes, whole grains, and a minimal amount of animal products, processed foods like cooking oils, and overly processed packaged foods. As I’ve discussed previously, I don’t interpret “processed” vs, whole foods as strictly as some do. Processed foods for me brings up images of things like donuts, cookies, potato chips, not canned beans or frozen vegetables, which to me are whole foods. There is concern expressed about sodium content of some canned foods, but you can always choose lower sodium versions.

Finally, I eat, but in moderation, healthy unprocessed foods like avocados and nuts that are higher in fat (these Chef AJ’s “purple foods). Most WFPB authors, like Dr. Michael Greger and Joel Fuhrman, emphasize that these are highly nutritious foods, but for those with some health conditions (which includes me), it is better to choose foods with a lower fat content. Dr. Greger discussed in detail how the WPFB diet addresses all the top chronic diseases plaguing modern civilization, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in his book How Not to Die.

I choose to be stricter about fat content, including oil, and animal products, because I have two “pre-existing conditions” (to use insurance parlance): heart-valve disease and coronary artery disease. I’ll get to these and how diet affects them below.

A Note On Strictness vs. Moderation

I found that the stricter I am at following WFPB, the healthier I am (for example blood test results. I am also able to eat as much as I want without being physically hungry. I am also less subjected to psychological food cravings. For me it is absolutely critical to hold the line about overly processed foods, what I’ve referred to in the past as my “no junk rules“. The little gremlin that whispers sweet nothings in my ear, like “what could it hurt just this once, if you had one little piece of…”? It never does that for oatmeal or kale. It’s for cookies, candy, and other junky food. These are all foods to the right of Chef AJ’s red line, discussed previously. I can get away with moderation on “purple foods” (nutritious foods to the right of the line like avocados and nuts). But junk is much more dangerous.

About the only time I allow it is at special occasions, like a birthday party where I’ll have a small piece of cake. But I have to be on my guard and not be tempted into seconds. And say “no thank you” when someone says “Richie, there’s one piece left, it’s got your name on it”.

I’ve been at this WFPB approach for a bit over four years now, and I’ve found stricter works better for me. When I first tried it, in early 2017, in my newfound enthusiasm I was pretty strict, and it worked great. I had the classic “last ten pounds” to lose, and I had just gotten high triglycerides and mediocre cholesterol numbers from my Doc. I recounted that story here. Over the ensuing few months, I effortlessly lost the weight, during a time when my aortic stenois was severe and I was having exercise-induced AFIB, so I couldn’t exercise much. This also led to vastly improved bloodwork and a very pleased Doc. Best of all, the little gremlin voice was gone. No psychological cravings.

But after recovering from my heart valve surgery, I loosened up a bit, thinking it was ok to follow the 80/20 rule, where you eat “on plan” 80% of the time and stray from it, in moderation, the other 20%. This worked out OK but not great for me. I gained some weight back and the little gremlin came back, not as strong in the past but still a nuisance. My weight did not get too bad because I could now exercise all I wanted and I enjoy exercise. Every once in awhile I’d think “why not just go back to what worked in early 2017?” I finally got back to that point this spring, and the psychological cravings are gone again, and my weight is where I want it.

So I’d have to say that for me, stricter is better. Being too strict about diet raises the alarm bell of “orthorexia” (being obsessed about healthy eating), but for me that is not a problem. The rules are quite simple. Stick to a wide variety of delicious and nutritious foods, and eat till full. Avoid junk.

Medical Conditions and Diet

I tend to read the literature quite a bit about my heart valve and CAD conditions, because with my technical background it interests me, But I don’t worry about it, I just think it prudent to do what is under my control to deal with them. What I eat is one of those things.

I have a replacement heart valve which I’d like to last as long as possible. These valves can last from as little as 8 to 20+ years, and obviously I’d prefer the higher end. They do not usually fail by “wearing out”, they tend to calcify. Not enough is known about how diet affects that, but it appears that a “heart healthy” diet is also a “heart valve healthy” diet. Specifically, it appears that low ldl-cholesterol helps [1]. Interestingly, driving ldl lower with statins does not help with heart-valve health [2], so diet becomes more important. I do also take a vitamin K2 supplement because there is evidence that it makes calcium go the right places, like your bones, and stay away from where it shouldn’t be, like your heart valves.

Calcified Aortic Valve. The calcium (white spots) make the leaflets of the valve too stiff so they don’t open enough (https://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/heart-surgery-blog/2016/09/15/calcification/)

Secondly, I am formally diagnosed with coronary artery disease. I flunked the calcium score test badly, which indicates calcification in my coronary arteries, which is usually associated with plaque. A score of less than 100 means small amounts of plaque, while greater than 400 means large amounts. My score was 1800! This was the highest my cardiologist had ever seen in his practice. This test is very reliable with few false positives. The only mitigating factor is that there is some evidence that flunking the test may be less harmful for endurance athletes. Still, this was a major alarm bell. I had further testing which indicates it’s not too severe yet, but I also had an angiogram which indicated mild to moderate plaque. My cardiologist feels I’m borderline at this point, my current ldl of 101 is ok but he’d prefer to see it lower since I’ve already shown at least signs of CAD (the ideal amount for CAD patients is considered 70).

The only way I’ve been able to get my ldl in the range below 100 is by being stricter about low fat, We could also do it by increasing my currently low dose of statin, but as we saw above, that does not help with my heart valve. Also, ideally, I’d like to reverse what coronary plaque build up is already there. While much is made about the heart-healthy aspects of the Mediterranean diet, that diet has been shown to slow the progress of CAD, but not reverse it [3]. The only diet which has been clinically shown to reverse CAD is a low fat version of WFPB [4,5]. I’ve mentioned in the past that I went through cardiac rehab after my valve surgery. The nutritionist at the hospital also recommended WFPB.

Normal vs. Calcified Coronary Artery. Flunking the Calcium test puts me at risk for being in the middle (“calcified plaque”, hopefully not “vulnerable”): https://thoracickey.com/coronary-artery-calcification-pathogenesis-imaging-and-risk-stratification/

Finally, I’m 68, and interested in healthy aging in general. The populations around the world that have less incidence of our modern chronic diseases and live longer and healthier all eat a diet is closer to WFPB [6,7]. Only one is completely vegan, but while the others eat some animal products, it is much less than typically eaten in modern diets.

That is why I eat a WFPB diet, In the next post I’ll go into more details about WFPB, and show that there is nothing extreme about it. It is similar to mainstream guidelines (such as those from the Harvard School of Nutrition), but lower in fat and animal products.

References

Nalini R,, “Low-density lipoprotein and aortic stenosis”, Heart. 2008 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951852/)

Rosebo, A, et all, “Intensive Lipid Lowering with Simvastatin and Ezetimibe in Aortic Stenosis”, N Engl J Med, 2008 (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0804602).

Kris-Etherton, P, et al, “Benefits of a Mediterranean-Style, National Cholesterol Education Program/American Heart Association Step I Dietary Pattern on Cardiovascular Disease”, Circulation. 2001 (https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.103.13.1823)

Ornish, D, “Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease?: The Lifestyle Heart Trial”, The Lancet,, 1990.

Esselstyn C, “A way to reverse CAD?”, J Fam Pract., 2014.

Buettner, D, “The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest”, National Geographic, 2012.

Day, J, Day, A, and LaPlante, M, The Longevity Plan: Seven Life-Transforming Lessons from Ancient China, Harper, 2017.

Evidence-based Nutrition Information: Dr Michael Greger

More Evidence on “Too Much of a Good Thing”: High Calcium Score OK for Endurance Athletes?

What I Eat and Why published first on https://steroidsca.tumblr.com/

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jewrocker · 3 years

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Biden’s “Impossible Dream”

Along with the other eighty-million Americans with an IQ over five, I too am doing backflips at the prospect we’re just weeks away from flushing this unprecedentedly corrupt and incomprehensibly cruel administration into the cesspool of infamy where they belong. However, as ecstatic as I am at the thought of an actual human being once again occupying the Oval Office, one must still be realistic as to what to expect going forward. Sadly, it seems, to the contrary of our president-elect.

President Biden’s statement that he intends to be a president ‘...to all Americans’, while admirable and more than a welcome change from the incoherent ramblings of the Mad King, seems to be more than a bit out of touch with what’s actually going on in this country in 2020, and beyond. While he may indeed devote every ounce of energy to this seemingly insurmountable task, unity is still a two-way street. Last we checked, there’s a massive concrete divider in the middle of this one. A concept that the president-elect inexplicably doesn’t seem to fully have grasped. Especially, considering, as a former vice-president, he lived through eight years of Senate Republicans sticking it to his boss every chance they got. I mean, “Hello, McFly?” Do you really believe Congressional Republicans are just going to snap out of their near twenty-year trance because you’re friends with them?

Exhibit One: Leader McConnell.

If you’re old enough to remember the Obama years, you’ll have no trouble recalling the now-infamous line uttered by that bastion of Honor and Ethics, Mitch McConnell. That being, “My only goal for the next four years is to make Obama a one-term president.” Aside from being borderline treason for a Senator to openly admit he’s going to spend every waking moment betraying his oath in order to achieve his despicably anti-American goal, “Moscow Mitch,” as he’s now affectionately known, hasn’t changed a bit. In fact, he’s gotten worse, and, thanks to his miraculous re-election in a state that had him at just an 18% approval rating, more emboldened.

After shamelessly defending our Russian-asset POTUS at every opportunity, including predicting the outcome of an impeachment hearing before it actually took place, the worst leader in the history of the United States Senate spent the past four years doing NOTHING, but filling an unprecedented number of conservative judgeships; including, surprise, the Supreme Court, where the louse seemed to actually revel in reneging on his own call to wait until after the election to choose a replacement for Justice Ginsberg. No policy. No compromise. No nothing. Nothing, that is, but increasing the deficit by trillions and making sure his corporate cronies are exempt from responsibility due to their shameful response to the pandemic. I guess that’s something.

Thus, unless our incoming president is suffering from severe amnesia, he should have no illusions that, following the Georgia runoffs (should Republicans maintain the stranglehold they currently enjoy), there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell McConnell, the demonic amphibian he is, will allow any dissenters to side with the president, on anything. Not a bill to curtail the amount of robocalls one gets on a daily basis, nor a motion to change the ketchup dispenser in the congressional cafeteria.

Exhibit Two: Trump’s Minions

If, after witnessing 126 House Republicans sign onto what is nothing short of a statement supporting the overthrowing of our Democracy, as well as several Republican Senators coming out in support of objecting to the States’ already-certified electors, anyone who thinks president Biden will somehow get these cockroaches to join hands singing Kumbaya, is living on another planet. In fact, from what we’ve seen in the last six weeks, alone, it’s fair to say Congressional Republicans are now more of a threat to our nation than ISIS. Yes, that ISIS. At least, the Islamic State have the decency to tell you to your face exactly what their objective is: The total destruction of American Democracy. Period. Modern day Republicans have proven they have the same exact goal; they just do it from within, disguised as “patriots.”

Exhibit Three: Seventy-Million Idiots

In spite of the Deplorables on The Hill, the biggest hurdle the president, and vice-president, have in front of them may very well be the American People, themselves. While there’s got to be a few million in the human Chernobyl’s base of seventy-million-plus who aren’t full-blown, racist psychopaths, there are still way too many who’ve shown they’re fully committed to the cult of Trump. Even now. Even though their government led them into a year-long nightmare of misery and misinformation: even as their apathetic leaders choose to bail out their billionaire buddies, while sending them a $600 slap in the face, they continue to support them. Unmoved.

Even though Benedict Donald has spent the past two months proving he has zero interest in/reverence for this Democracy and in a peaceful transference of power, truth is, outside of maybe a handful of ‘awoke’ individuals who’ve finally seen enough, he’s most likely not lost a single one of his hardcore supporters. In fact, many of them have doubled down in their support of the village idiot - going as far as to organize a “parallel inauguration” on Universe Two - the fantasy world where Trump will still be president (Most pundits refer to Trump supporters as living on ‘Earth 2,’ but their thinking is so alien to facts/common sense, IMO, they deserve their own universe.). These sad, sorry fools fell hook, line and sinker for the president’s claims of “fraud”, to the tune of stocking his post-election war chest with a cool quarter-billion dollars. Translation: you’re looking at an entire sect of people who have no basis in reality. So, who’s worse? The Trump supporter? Or the one who tries to reason with the Trump supporter?

These Trump-described “suckers,” who, in spite of everything they’ve seen, in spite of the fact we have a president who’s golfing while millions can’t even put food on their table during the holidays (those still alive that is) are still so consumed with hate for the other side, they’d rather see their nation brought to the brink of civil war than be governed by a Democrat. They’d rather elect a corrupt, bottom-dwelling QAnon conspirator to Congress, than an honest, sane liberal whose major crime is refusing to believe Tom Hanks and Bill Gates are partners in a global kiddie porn empire. Case in point, the more than dozen House seats that flipped red this past November, and, with them, some who actually believe the above. This kind of unhinged, spiteful, masochistic thinking suggests the hate modern day Republicans have towards liberals is greater than the love they have for their own children. Good luck overcoming that type of home-grown martyr, Mr. President.

Exhibit Four: Biden, Himself:

The welcome, sorely needed public comments seeking to reunite a hopelessly divided nation, notwithstanding, by stating what the New York Times calls “no interest” in pursuing any type of retribution/Justice, re: the myriad of crimes committed by this horrific administration, IMO, the president-elect has already stepped in it. Especially after the Georgia phone call.

It’s never a good idea to address your supporters, many of whom feel they’re owed some form of payback after being forced to watch helplessly as their Constitution was consistently used as toilet paper by a mob boss POTUS for four, long years, and, right out of the gate, say you’re just going to forget the whole thing. After all, this isn’t Nixon we’re talking about here. This is a thousand Nixons... on steroids. This is treason in all its forms. The attempt to “find” 11,780 votes, just one more than Biden, is the most egregious crime ever committed by a U.S. President. Yet, the president-elect continues to spew this type of disappointing, non-confrontational rhetoric. While hopefully just said for the cameras, it definitely gives many of the incoming president’s supporters, including Yours Truly, night sweats.

In fact, IMO, SDNY aside, letting these, spineless, racist, anti-American miscreants sail off into the sunset, with free health care for life and full pensions, on us, would be worse than all their crimes put together. As it will not only show the next corrupt bunch of lawless idiots to come down the pike they can do whatever they want and they’re guaranteed a free pass from the next guy, it will end our experiment in Democracy as we know it; as it will have all-but-proved the president is, in fact, above the law. I really hope I’m wrong. Fingers crossed Biden is just doing his job and saying all the right things, while privately working to nominate Sally Yates for A.G. IMO, should Ms. Yates get the nod, she will see to it Justice is served on all fronts. If not, you can bet there’s a damn good reason.

Mueller made the fatal mistake of playing fair with Trump and Barr, and their legion of sycophantic sheep in Congress, and wound up looking like a timid, outmatched eunuch. After living through the Obama years, after living through The Trump years, after seeing the literal definition of treason on a daily basis, it appears Biden is choosing to ignore these screaming red sirens and walk down that path, as well, at least with his words.

How much more proof does the president-elect need to know these individuals on the other side of the aisle are only interested in one thing? Total Dominance, by any means necessary. Even if it’s a flagrant violation of their oaths to defend The Constitution. Every single low-life choosing to join a wanna-be fascist in his reprehensible attempt to overturn our national election are only Americans by birth. That’s where it ends.

In Alan Parker’s classic film, Mississippi Burning, there’s a great line in the scene where the two FBI agents, played by Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman, realize playing by the rules with these racist bastards will never get them the Justice they seek. Straight-laced Dafoe says, “Don’t drag me into your gutter, Mr. Anderson.” To which, no-nonsense Hackman replies, “These people crawled out of a sewer, Mr. Ward! Maybe the gutter’s where we outta be!” Here’s hoping there’s more of Anderson than Ward in our next president.

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years

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What Is a Landing Page? All Your Questions, Answered

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/what-is-a-landing-page-all-your-questions-answered/

What Is a Landing Page? All Your Questions, Answered

If you could do one thing to dramatically improve your marketing ROI today, would it be to use landing pages on your website?

If you’re trying to generate leads for your business, and you don’t have at least a few landing pages on your website, you’re missing out on a key opportunity to turn website visitors into something more.

Here, we’ll explore what a landing page is, the myriad of landing page benefits and how you might use a landing page to reach your business goals, and how to make your landing pages as powerful as possible.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a page on your website where you can offer a resource from your business in exchange for a visitor’s contact information. Marketers can capture this contact information using a lead-capture form, where visitors can enter details like their name, email address, and job title.

A good landing page is focused on a particular stream of traffic — say, from an email campaign that’s promoting an ebook. Because the landing page is targeting just people who are (presumably) interested in this ebook, and because this ebook has exclusive information that elaborates on a topic your audience cares about, you can convert a higher percentage of your website visitors into leads whom you can then follow up with.

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How to Create a Landing Page

To create a landing page, you’ll want to start by exploring various landing page builders — unless, of course, you’re using a content management system that already provides landing page templates, like HubSpot.

Once you’ve determined the right tool for you, explore pre-built templates or consider whether it’s better to build your own. You might also use this as an opportunity to A/B test two different designs to explore which design elements result in the highest conversions.

Additionally, it’s critical any landing page you design effectively communicates the value you’re providing visitors in exchange for contact information. And, of course, you’ll want to include a form you’re asking visitors to fill out in exchange for whatever offer you’ve provided on your landing page.

To learn more about how to create a landing page in detail, take a look at How to Create a Landing Page: The Simple Step-by-Step Guide.

What is a landing page used for?

Landing pages can be used to capture information on website visitors in exchange for branded content or experiences. These include ebooks, email newsletters, online courses, industry events, free product trials, community memberships, and company mobile apps.

Landing pages have one chief purpose: to generate leads for your business. However, you can define those leads in a number of ways and offer more than one type of content or experience through this landing page.

Here are some of the ways you can use a landing page to start a relationship with your future customers:

1. Ebooks and Whitepapers

If you wrote a blog post that introduces a topic relevant to your audience, you can satisfy deeper interests in that topic by elaborating on the subject in an ebook or whitepaper. Using a landing page, you can “gate” this resource behind a lead-capture form for people to download.

2. Email Newsletter Subscription

Let’s say you write a lot of blog content on a similar topic. Sure, you can develop an ebook or whitepaper that elaborates on specific details, but you can also offer your readers an email newsletter they can subscribe to for the latest content around your industry. On various blog posts, use a call-to-action (CTA) to invite readers to subscribe to your blog. This CTA can link to a separate landing page where they enter their contact information for addition to your email list.

3. Online Course Enrollment

Whether you’re in the education industry or you offer various skill-based certifications to your audience, online courses should have their own landing pages, too. Using these pages, you can invite new students to sign up for a class you offer and capture information on them that can lead to a customer relationship that goes beyond the courses they take with you.

4. Event Registration

Similar to online courses, industry events require you to collect information on your audience so they can receive updates prior to the event. An event, as well as its various sessions and keynotes, can have their own individual landing pages to turn event goers into event attendees and business leads.

5. Free Trial of a Product

Offering people a free demo of your product? Your demo offering could use its own landing page. Bring users to a page where they can sign up for a free trial of your software using their name, email address, job title, and any other information you deem necessary to give them the best customer experience.

6. Community Membership

If your business thrives on conversation among your audience — perhaps you have a website dedicated to dialogue between users — there’s no harm in making it invitation-only. In fact, it’s a great way to generate leads through the people who want to become members of your community. Create a landing page that lets website visitors sign up to become a bigger part of your business.

7. App Download

Developing a mobile app for your product doesn’t just improve your customer experience — it also gives you another avenue to capture leads from your audience. A lead-optimized landing page that invites users to download an app is quite common in the app-maker community.

Landing Page Benefits

1. Landing pages can lead to increased conversions.

Having a targeted page that directly ties into a certain offer or next step is critical for providing value upfront, and can encourage new site visitors to provide their information in exchange for an immediate, tangible reward.

For instance, let’s say you’ve landed on a business’ website and you’re immediately greeted with a pop-up form asking for your name and email. A bit jarring before you even know what the company is about, isn’t it?

Alternatively, imagine you’ve found a business’ free e-book on social media, which outlines ten immediate solutions to your problem. I’m willing to bet you’re more likely to provide your email and name for that valuable content, right?

Ultimately, a landing page can help increase conversions while providing a better user experience. Plus, a landing page can help you determine which types of content to serve certain visitors for faster, more effective lead generation.

Too many companies send their advertising, email, or social media traffic to their homepage. This is a huge missed opportunity. When you know a stream of targeted traffic will be coming to your website, you can increase the likelihood of converting that traffic into leads by using a targeted landing page.

For instance, those users who convert on your social media e-book landing page are clearly interested in social media. To further nurture those leads, you might follow-up with a personalized email, detailing additional content you can provide related to social media.

2. Landing pages can provide additional insights into your target audience.

By creating various landing pages with segmented offers, you can track which topics convert at the highest rate. This can give you valuable insights into your audience’s interests.

You might use the data you collect from your landing pages to create a more targeted, personalized marketing strategy. Plus, landing pages don’t just tell you which content your audience likes best — they also tell you which channels your leads prefer. This can enable your marketing team to refine your strategy further, promoting content and engaging with your audience on the channel(s) they’re already using.

For example, let’s say you notice your landing pages related to e-commerce perform exceptionally well, and most of those users find your landing page from your paid ads on Facebook and LinkedIn. This information can help you target future campaigns primarily towards your social audience, and consider how you might incorporate additional e-commerce content into your marketing strategy as a whole.

3. Landing pages can grow your email subscriber list.

In exchange for the content offered on your landing page, you’ll typically ask users to provide their email and name. This can help you quickly grow your email subscriber list, and segment that list to provide more personalized follow-up emails.

People who’ve filled out a form in exchange for content, or information on your product or service, have shown an interest in what you have to offer — which ensures your subscriber list is filled with potentially high-quality leads.

Consider how you might further nurture them by sending a kick-back “Thank you” email after they download your landing page offer, with additional resources related to the content in which they’ve shown interest.

4. Landing pages are testable.

A landing page is oftentimes a fantastic opportunity to get creative and test out various designs to determine which visuals and text perform best with your target audience. Additionally, it’s often lower risk to test out a new landing page, rather than making major design changes to your entire blog or website infrastructure.

For instance, AJ Beltis, HubSpot’s Content & Acquisition Manager, told me, “If you’re using a content management system with a built-in A/B testing tool (like HubSpot), you can easily set up and run a test to see which copy, design featured, imagery, and page elements yield a stronger conversion rate. This means you can quickly uncover new ways to drive more leads and contacts for your business.”

5. Landing pages allow you to measure metrics directly tied to business goals.

If you’ve created a specific landing page to market your new product or service, you can then use that landing page to measure metrics directly tied to your business goals.

For instance, let’s say your marketing team is tasked with increasing sales for your new email tool. To accomplish this, your team creates a campaign with a landing page offering a free demo of your tool.

You might measure conversion metrics on that landing page to determine how well your campaign is performing, or whether you need to make tweaks to communicate the true value of your new product. Additionally, you can measure which sites drive the highest conversions to your landing page, and put more resources into marketing your email tool on those sites — or social media apps — in particular.

6. Landing pages add context to your offer.

AJ Beltis told me one of the biggest benefits of a landing page is the opportunity to add context to your marketing offer. “Marketers feel motivated to bypass the landing page process and skip right to the conversion by encouraging form fills in other methods, such as through a chatbot,” Beltis told me.

Beltis adds, “However, this process eliminates the opportunity to add more context to what it is you’re offering. Imagery and essential information that can only be shared with a landing page provide content to those who need it before deciding to convert.”

7. Landing pages increase brand value and help make a good first impression.

Ultimately, a sleek, well-designed landing page can impress new visitors and turn them into leads by demonstrating the valuable content your company can deliver. A landing page is space you can use to tell your visitors what you’re offering, and how it can positively impact them. Even if a viewer doesn’t immediately convert, a well-designed landing page can increase brand recognition and help nurture leads for future sales.

For instance, take a look at this impressive landing page created by Talisker, a whisky brand. Using Ceros’ landing page product to design an immersive experience, Talisker is demonstrating brand value and, ideally, making a fantastic first impression on new visitors.

This is proof a landing page doesn’t have to be boring — in fact, it shouldn’t be. Take the time to create an engaging, interactive, interesting landing page that convinces visitors in the value of your brand.

What makes a landing page most effective?

Ready to create your first landing page, or improve on a landing page you already have? Here are some of the most important elements to make sure your landing page is working hard for you:

1. Limit Navigation

You’ve brought your targeted traffic to a page where they can take your desired action. Don’t distract them! Limit the number of exits from your landing page so that your visitors are focused on filling out your form. A key part of this is to remove the website navigation elements on landing pages. This helps put the focus back on the content you’re offering.

See how the landing page below does this — aside from the HubSpot logo, there are no navigation buttons to confuse or distract visitors.

2. Enable Sharing

Tap into a huge community of your best (and free) marketers: your audience. Add share links to your landing page to encourage your website visitors to share your content with their audiences.

3. Deliver Value

First and foremost, if you have a valuable offer, your visitors will give up their contact information in exchange for your offer. Ask yourself if your offer is compelling to your audience and make sure your landing page demonstrates that value. One way to ensure your landing page adds value is to show your audience the content they’re going to receive — directly on the page. See how this can look in the example landing page below.

4. Keep it Short

The longer your landing page and form, the more friction you add to the lead-generation process. Keeping your lead form short and straightforward will increase your conversion rate.

Here’s a tip: Put as many contact fields as you can on the same line. Shortening the height of your lead-capture form helps you limit the more trivial fields you might be tempted to include, and prevents your landing page visitors from getting spooked by a form that’s asking too much of them. As shown below, sometimes all you need is a first and last name, followed by an email address.

5. Test, Test, Test

As many best practices as you may read about online, your landing page can always use more testing and improvement. Make sure you have a landing page creation tool that allows you to create and test many different landing pages to see what works best for your business. Additionally, if you’re a HubSpot customer, consider some of the landing page tool integrations, such as briX.

Are you a landing page guru? Check out some of our advanced tips and data around landing page best practices on effective calls to action and the best/worst button text (hint: don’t use “Submit”). Do you need to make any of these 10 Quick Fixes to Build Killer Landing Pages?

If you’re working hard to drive traffic to your website, don’t make the mistake of not capturing that traffic as leads.

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clarencenicholsonata · 4 years

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5 Real-Life Examples of Facebook Retargeting Strategies That Work

Facebook is the biggest social network -- and not just by a little. With 2.41 billion monthly active users, it’s the third most visited website in the universe, only outranked by Google and YouTube. A whopping 71% of users log in every single day, with more than half logging in several times a day. Plus, it’s always growing and evolving.

For this reason, it’s not surprising that 87.1% of marketers will use Facebook marketing in 2020. It’s a big win, particularly if you bolster your chances of reaching interested consumers with retargeting.

Facebook retargeting has grown in popularity because it’s even more effective than your standard Facebook advertising.

Sure, at some point you’re going to need to pitch new customers in order to grow your business, but it’s cheaper and more rewarding to market to existing customers or people who are already familiar with your brand and like-minded brands, too.

What Is Retargeting?

Facebook retargeting is particularly effective because the platform uses very specific targeting and tracking data.

Companies tend to use this a few ways: you can cross-sell new items to people who made past purchases, show targeted ads to people who bounced, reach out to people who share similarities with existing customers (i.e. a lookalike audience), or simply raise additional brand awareness among users who have already shown a little interest.

The concept of retargeting works like this: users visit your webpage or social media page, a cookie or “retargeting pixel” is added to their browser, and that allows you to follow them around the internet, serving up content based on the cookie.

For example, a friend purchased macarons from Ma-Ka-Rohn a month before receiving this retargeting ad. Was it effective? Yes. Their strategy was all about timing -- they served her this ad after she’d surely eaten the first batch that was ordered.

In short: Facebook retargeting works because you’re dangling the carrot in front of customers who initially left your sales funnel. Some research has shown that visitors who see retargeting ads are 70% more likely to convert than those who don’t. Still, the key to retargeting success is a pointed, planned strategy. These five Facebook retargeting strategies can get you started.

Strategy 1: Flip Shopping Cart Abandonment On Its Head

By the year 2040, Nasdaq estimates that 95% of all purchases will be made through eCommerce, but eCommerce has one big problem -- shopping cart abandonment.

The sad truth is that most customers -- about 70%, according to the Baymard Institute -- abandon their cart before making a purchase. This rate has only grown from 60% in the late 2000s to more than 80% in some cases. So, why do customers do it?

Well, it’s a mix of things. Sometimes the purchase process is too complicated, especially if a website isn’t optimized for mobile browsing.

Other times, a customer was on the fence about a product or decided to not bother and find their credit card. In all of these cases, a Facebook retargeting strategy that targets cart abandoners can entice buyers by showcasing the product they were thinking about purchasing.

The average cart abandonment campaign looks like this: a customer leaves something in their cart and bounces from their page, then an ad is created to recommend that product and similar products.

Sometimes this comes with a special offer to entice the buyer or additional information that serves as a value-add.

For example, this Garmin cart abandonment campaign was shown to me on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook and uses the same ad platform) after I left this particular bicycle GPS in my shopping cart.

This ad forced me to see the GPS in a different light by promoting built-in automatic incident detection, a feature I wasn’t previously aware of that served as a huge value-add.

You can create a similar ad through Facebook’s ad manager by adding a tracking pixel and setting it to track:

Visits to your add-to-cart page

Add-to-cart button clicks

Visits to your purchase/thank you pages.

This last bit is because you need to exclude the latter group. You don’t want to send a cart abandonment ad to people who’ve completed a purchase.

Strategy 2: Dynamic Product Recommendations

Facebook’s retargeting system doesn’t just allow you to target users who’ve abandoned their shopping carts or previously made a purchase.

You can also target users who visited specific product pages but never ended up putting anything in their cart. This is a great strategy because the potential customer already had a proven interest.

Here’s how it works: Your retargeting pixel will track their movement across your product pages -- or similar product pages on third party sites -- and aggregate that user’s web history into a string of products. The best part is that this strategy edges out the competition.

You can market to a so-called “lookalike audience” by presenting products from your inventory that are similar to products they’ve clicked on in someone else’s inventory.

For example, I clicked on a sponsored ad from Firmoo, an ecommerce eyeglass retailer. I browsed around their website for a bit, mostly looking at product pages for pink-framed glasses.

After that, I started receiving Facebook ads for pink-framed glasses from their competitor EyeBuyDirect. Anytime you can beat out a competitor is a major win.

You can create a lookalike audience campaign in Facebook’s ad manager by clicking “Create Audience” and selecting a “Lookalike Audience.”

Need help with your next Facebook ad campaign?

Book a free call to learn how our team of marketing experts can help you create high converting social media ad campaigns today.

Strategy 3: Target Repeat Customers

Existing customers are a huge asset. Repeat purchasers generally spend up to five times more than first-time shoppers, so you need to think of ways to re-entice them.

You can do this through a Facebook retargeting strategy that announces new product lines, offers discounts and sales, or cross-promotes products that are similar to what that customer has already purchased.

For example, a Bang & Olufsen ad promoting the brand’s new collaboration with Formula 1 racing champion Fernando Alonso popped up on a friend’s Instagram feed a few weeks after they made their last purchase. This encouraged them to search for new products at a brand they already love.

Like a cart abandonment campaign, you can create this sort of campaign in the Facebook Ad Manager by using a tracking pixel that targets those who’ve visited your website in the past. Particularly, you may want to target those who’ve visited purchase/thank you pages more than once because they’re already repeat customers.

Strategy 4: Target Certain Online Behaviors Through Custom Audiences

Facebook is a treasure trove of consumer data. This includes targeting behaviors like what types of pages a user visit, their general interests, and how far down a page they scroll. This can be used to your advantage in a Facebook retargeting campaign through the ad platform’s Custom Audiences. You can create a custom audience based on data like:

*Existing customers and sales prospects *Web traffic *Mobile app actions

These each have their various benefits, but app behavior is actually a really interesting -- and rewarding -- strategy.

We see this in the way marketers have a knack for mysteriously serving us ads for breathable athletic shorts just after we happen to complain on Facebook Messenger about working out on a 90-degree day in August.

The truth is that Facebook is constantly tracking user behavior within their apps like Whatsapp and Instagram -- and this is valuable.

For example, a friend messaged me on Whatsapp about a craving for mochi ice cream. Almost immediately after, they were served ads from Mochidoki, an NYC-based, high-end mochi retailer.

Yes, they reported that the mochi was delicious, but what’s even more interesting is how closely targeted the ad was. With all their Instagram location tags, the data already proved they were local. This is the kind Custom Audience usage that actually works.

In addition to Facebook’s apps, the platform can track customer behavior in your custom iOS or Android app as long as you register the app with Facebook and pick which actions or events will trigger your ads. This can be particularly useful to trigger certain ads when people drop out at specific points of the conversion process.

For example, I opened my GrubHub app and searched around for restaurants for about a half an hour before I abandoned it and decided I’d just make dinner at home.

I later received this ad from GrubHub.This works because I was, first, already an app user and existing customer, and second, bound to get hungry once again. As exposure is key, in this scenario.

Strategy 5: Sequence Your Ads

You know the old phrase third time’s a charm? There’s some truth to this. Most of the time, a single ad isn’t enough to make a conversion.

Consumers need to see multiple ads, that make them more comfortable with your brand and what you plan to offer This is where sequencing comes in.

With this type of retargeting strategy, you can set a time window for each ad within a series of ads. This helps you ensure that your target audience sees ads in the specific order you’ve designed them. The only other caveat is designing the perfect sales funnel that ramps up the FOMO (or fear of missing out) as each ad goes on.

Remember, exclusion is your friend here. If you’re presenting a certain ad to people who’ve visited your website within eight days, you can exclude those who visited in the last four days and present a more high-value advertisement solely to those who are drifting further from your sales funnel. Give a more low-key ad to those who’ve only just visited.

Final Retargeting Takeaways

All things considered, there are numerous approaches you can take to Facebook retargeting. Retargeting has the ability to be an incredibly successful marketing tactic when implemented correctly.

It is critical to choose a retargeting strategy that works for you and your business in order to drive measurable results. We recommend uncovering the biggest issue your business faces, whether that be shopping cart abandonment or lack of repeat customers, and then choosing your customized approach based upon that information.

Remember, it may take several tries to find a retargeting approach that is effective for you. Start small and test out your campaigns until you find one that produces the results your business is looking for.

About the Author

Meet Ryan Gould, the Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services of Elevation B2B. From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organizations.

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#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801

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lupinepariah · 4 years

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Why I Dislike Thundercats Roar

There’s likely going to be a kneejerk reaction to this that has something to do with its goofiness or the “CalArts” style. It has nothing to do with either of those reasons. In fact, the reason why is right there in the image I chose.

First of all, I’ve never objected to modern animation styles and I understand why they’re the way they are (animation is expensive, having more homogeneous factors that can be utilised across shows on a network or networks reduces costs). I loved Gravity Falls and I was a huge fan of Steven Universe, so that criticism can’t be levelled at me. In regards to goofy cartoons? I mean, come at me, I loved Darkwing Duck and you don’t get goofier than that.

No, there’s another reason.

The ‘90s was my favourite era of animation. I feel the early ‘00s is where things started turning sour for me. It’s interesting because the same souring happened with video games too but due to the long development periods involved there the effect of that was delayed until around ‘04-’05, with some truly great games still struggling to come out under the new triple-A regime even then.

I’m not a ‘90s kid, that’s not why. It’s due to the progressiveness of the ‘90s. There was an inclusive air that modern cartoons lack and I miss it. If you were to look at anything from the Extreme Ghostbusters to Kim Possible or the Proud Family, there was always a sense of everyone being important. Race, gender, or even quirkiness, identity, or what have you didn’t come into it. A character was never good or evil due to any of those factors, it wasn’t so reductivist.

Where the paradigm shift of what I’m about to cover is most clear is in the jump from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go.

I can hear you grousing at the back, there. No, this isn’t a bait and switch. No, this isn’t about “CalArts” style. I think I know the real reason that some audiences disliked these cartoons but they couldn’t articulate it, so they just blamed the animation style or goofiness instead. I mean, that’s really foolish, disingenuous even. We had some pretty bad animation styles back in the ‘90s, I loved the Dreamstone but I wouldn’t call it an animation powerhouse. We had really goofy stuff too (stuff that literally included Goofy), so to claim it’s due to either is ridiculous.

No, what ruined cartoons for me is the characters and the lack of inclusiveness.

In modern cartoons there are characters singled out. These are often intelligent, quirky, unusual characters who’re lacking in outward emotiveness. Nice. I mean, you just made autism the butt of your jokes in every modern cartoon. Thanks for that. That is why I don’t like Teen Titans Go, Thundercats Roar, or any cartoon that fits that mould. Autistic children watch cartoons too.

What do you think it’s going to do for young autistic children when the character that represents them is always the butt of the joke? How do you think it will affect them when the rest of the cast is comprised purely of narcissistic, sociopathic, unempathetic himbos and bimbos who’re always portrayed as “in the right” for being that way? Any good parent should know that Teen Titans Go is riddled with toxic messages that are bad for any growing mind to absorb, they champion selfishness, greed, avarice, egotism, narcissism, and sociopathy all the time.

So the only character who might care—who might be intelligent enough to want to do something kind or decent—is made fun of and shot down. It’s not okay. I’m not okay with it. In Teen Titans Go that’s Robin. In Thundercats Roar that’s Tigra. I’m not okay with how these cartoons treat these characters.

No other version of the Thundercats would see Tigra treated that way.

“It’s a parody” isn’t an excuse, either. There’s nothing in Thundercats or Teen Titans that would provide a basis for treating these characters this way. So what you’re doing is you’re encouraging extraverted children to behave in sociopathic ways, you’re encouraging them to single out and bully autistic kids, you’re undoing everything the ‘90s tried to undo. Thanks for that.

It’s irresponsible. It’s reckless. And most of all? It’s unkind. There are groups of people in this world who’re just sick of being othered in this way. You can’t really tell me I’m wrong either because the proof’s right there in the image at the very beginning of this... well, I mean. Call it what you will. As an autistic person, I’ve been accused of essaying and writing tirades so I’m honestly quite jaded at this point. Cartoons like this are doing nothing to bridge the gap between autistic people and neurotypicals. They’re only alienating us more.

It’s similar to the cowardice shown by superhero movies and the eradication of redheads. Now, some will balk because they aren’t very clever. I don’t get why but I feel that people fall over themselves to be patsies for corporate suits all the time. It’s sad. No, I’m not against bringing more black people into films. I can’t understand why I’d think that when Into the Spider-Verse was my favourite superhero movie of all bloody time but you do you.

See, my issue with redhead erasure is that you don’t need to remove redheads to introduce black people. No, I’m not saying introduce new characters because I know some of you are thinking that and if we were having a conversation you’d interrupt me to tell me why that’s a bad idea. Sigh. You don’t need to remove redheads because there are plenty of other characters whose hair colour doesn’t result in so much hatred and prejudice.

If you aren’t familiar with the prejudice and hatred that redheads receive? I don’t believe you. I’m sorry, I don’t. It’s really pervasive. I won’t explain all the many kinds of grossness they endure here as it’s really triggering but you could look it up if you don’t understand. Gingerism is a thing. It’s a horrible thing.

So instead of replacing redheads, why don’t we replace others instead? There are plenty of characters we could replace with minorities without removing redheads. What about Tony Stark? Carol Danvers? Bruce Wayne? Arthur Cur—oh, DC did that. Good job DC. You get the point.

DC did good with Crazy Jane in Doom Patrol, too. Proud of you, DC. You’re not quite as terrible as Disney/Marvel. Though you still remove redheads occasionally too DC and it’s not okay.

The point is? In modern media there’s a lot of singling out of one kind of person. In superhero films that’s redheads. In superhero cartoons that’s autistic people. It’s not great. It needs to stop. The thing is? It can’t stop. The entire genre of show revolves around air-headed narcissists and sociopaths are so great, empathetic autistic people are so duuumb. I really don’t appreciate that. I’m an autistic person myself and I really don’t appreciate that.

If you don’t think you can make a compelling cartoon that’s inclusive then you haven’t seen Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, or the vast, vast, vast majority of cartoons from the ‘90s. I mean, I loved Goof Troop because it was completely okay that Peej (Pete Juniour) was overweight at a time when fat phobia was still at its height. It wasn’t even considered an issue. The same was true for Wade in Kim Possible. The brains of Darkwing Duck was a young, redheaded girl. Cartoons were so inclusive back then. I miss it.

So yes. I don’t like Thundercats Roar.

I don’t like Teen Titans Go.

I have valid reasons.

Footnote: I’m using black as an identifier as the last metastudy I read said that black people hate the PoC identifier for themselves and prefer to just be called ‘blacks.’ If that isn’t the case, I apologise. I do try to stay on top of these things. I’m not invested in not offending anyone because everyone will be offended by something, you can’t not offend, but I do care about hurting people who’ve endured real emotional pain. That’s not okay, so I do my best.

#thundercats roar #teen titans go #ableism #actually autistic #rant #trigger warning

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spankingtheatre · 7 years

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How Posts Spread in Social Networks

This is a post for new writers, creators of original content, and all those who’ve ever wondered about how ideas spread. I might even be able to teach you a bit about the science of social networks.

Recently, I’ve been playing with Reblog Graphs - a feature you can enable through Tumblr Labs. These graphs show how posts spread, starting with the original post (shown in orange). Each line is a reblog, so each blue dot is a Tumblr that has reblogged the original post.

The image above shows two very different shapes of network, despite having a roughly similar number of shares. One is an image post (a spanking illustration), and one is a text post (a spanking story).

Can you tell which of the two networks is the story?

Try having a guess now.

In network A, the original post doesn’t spread far, the vast majority of sharing is done directly from the original poster. The longest sharing chain is 3 deep, (visible at the 6 o’clock position) where Alice shares the original post, Bob reblogs Alice’s post, and then Carol shares Bob’s post.

In network B, we can see a quite different propagation taking place. This time the original post is the orange node at the top. What’s interesting here is even though fewer people share directly from the original poster, a chain of sharing develops, introducing the post to small numbers of new individuals at each hop. Eventually, the chain reaches 10 shares deep,

So, can you tell which network depicts the spread of the story?

The answer is... network A is the story, network B is the image.

It might surprise you, but network A is actually the reblog graph for my most popular story, Punishment Panties. It hasn’t been shared widely at all, but does seem to have a host of dedicated fans (thanks folks!)

Whereas network B, which has been shared more widely, is a vintage spanking illustration, which I didn’t create, but shared from my blog.

To use the social network analysis terminology, network B has a low structural cohesion, as the removal of a few key members would disconnect the group. Network A has a much higher cohesion, as the majority of individuals share a central connection in common (in this case, me). But because the individuals of Network B are less likely to know each other, the image post will tend to spread further afield.

Why We Share

Whilst researching this post I actually looked at the reblog graphs for all my stories, and it was intriguing to discover they all looked like network A. Which got me thinking: what explains this particular pattern of propagation?

One theory of mine is that whenever a reader sees a post, they tend to spend a moment or two appreciating it, and then decide whether they’ll share it or not. When the post in question is an image, they can come to a conclusion quickly, hitting the reblog button before moving on to look at something else. But if the post is several thousand words long, and may take over 10 minutes to read, the reader has no idea if this new post is any good. Instead, they might “like” it, or bookmark it, so they can return to it later.

Even when they do eventually read it, readers seem less inclined to share stories. This might be because the written word elicits a much more personal response than an image. Even if we’ve enjoyed it, we might think others won’t necessarily appreciate it. So we keep our new discovery to ourselves. Fundamentally, we share posts we think others might like, because that reflects well on us. After all, we like to consider ourselves as discerning consumers, with impeccable taste.

Why You Should Write Anyway

I’ve written this post as I think the graphs reveal an important lesson for new writers: stories don’t go viral.

Despite all the weeks you spent lovingly crafting that story, it is very unlikely to spread contagiously across the net. But the lack of interest you see is not a reflection on the quality of your work, rather it’s a reflection of the deeply personal nature of reading. Especially when it comes to subjects as sensitive as kink and sexuality.

So, if you’re a writer - keep writing. Do not be discouraged. Write because you have stories to tell. Don’t rate the worth of what you create by the number of times it is read, but by the pride you feel when you read back your own words. No matter how good your story is, it is reliant on the mysterious forces of serendipity to spread by itself.

Or course, it helps if you can find someone with a big audience to promote your work. But such individuals tend to have big audiences precisely because they’re very selective about who they endorse. Their influence comes from being very discerning curators, who only recommend content of the very highest quality.

In time, you will accumulate your own audience - but be aware, it is a slow process. If you do want an audience, you’ll need to reach out and talk to others, show gratitude to those who champion you, and be prepared to put your work forward in competitions and showcases. However uncomfortable that might feel.

You might also consider spreading your work on multiple channels. I’ve put some of my writing on a Wordpress blog, and posted several on Medium. And I tweet about sexual, erotic and political matters on Twitter too. It never hurts to give your readers more opportunities to stumble across you.

But fundamentally, you should write because you need to write. Because you feel that almost primal urge to transcribe the imagery floating in your imagination into written words. Write because you’re desperate to make what you’ve seen permanent before it fades forever.

Write because you enjoy giving gifts - visions that will enter the lexicons of your readers’ imaginations, and thrill them...

#reblog graphs #going viral #sharing #social networking #writing tips #audience building

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neioo · 7 years

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Here it is! The second edition to Are We Humans? no one ever asked for!!

As a kind of thank you—I’m currently giving away some FREE COPIES. Message me if you’re interested, and we can work out the details. I can afford to give about 5 away (all gone! if you want to pay cheaper than the $11 listing price, just message me and maybe we can work something out)

Pictured above: me holding the book awkwardly and hoping my roommate won’t ask what the hell I’m doing, my hand, the book up against my dorm window so everyone can see the dumpsters right outside of it, and my shameful bookshelf (where the rest of my hetalia DVDs are hidden *coughs*)

THE BOOK is available for purchase (HERE), and it can be read for free on AO3 (HERE)

SUMMARY: Nation Avatars. They’re immortal beings who represent a country. They look human, feel human, but are they really? That’s the question they strive to answer after faced with extreme cases of dehumanization during the Second World War. Just when they think the worst is over, the Cold War strikes, and they’re challenged with new obstacles. It’s these obstacles that lead them on their own paths of self-discovery. Are they their own person or their country? Most would say their country. Others would disagree…

RATING: Mature

SHIPS: rochu, ameripan, frying pangle, fruk, hints of spamano

TAGS: Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Dehumanization, Torture, Warfare, Gore, Mafia, Cold War, World War II, Slow Build, Eventual Romance, Platonic Relationships, Historical Hetalia, Asexual Characters

Thanks so much for everyone’s continued support o//

UPDATES AND MORE RAMBLING UNDER THE CUT

What prompted this? Well…Don’t Forget Us is going to be in a different format from the first printed version of AWH, and I just couldn’t stomach the thought of having the two next to each other

(Like…you know when you get a book series and suddenly the fucking cover design just. changes and then the spines don't line up??? I couldn't have that.)

Also, there are some other minor changes:

I deleted over 200 uses of the word ‘fuck.’ I wish I were kidding. There’s still profanity, but now it’s…better limited

I deleted two cringey conversations that have been haunting me for a while now (one in the beginning, one towards the end).

Minor, minor plot adjustments to some scenes to better sync up with Don’t Forget Us

Also! I added some goodies at the end. I included some of my OC works and a bit of commentary :o

And any edits I did to AWH are always reflected on AO3

But basically, I’m giving away the free copies because I won a $50 Amazon gift card for a contest I didn’t enter, and I didn’t know what to spend the money on.

It was my brother who came down and gave me the brilliant idea with:

So yeah…

MORE STUFF

Don’t Forget Us

I have finished the first read-through, which involved heavy formatting and adding relevant plot points. (Also deleting excess profanity) All the changes are reflected on AO3

Plot points include: fragrant kimchi stuff, Robert and Kazimir tweaks, more fleshed out relationship between Juhaina and Dalia

(so nothing major, but the changes I did make do improve flow A LOT)

I’m currently on the second read through, which involves heavy grammar editing. I first print out a chapter and do paper edits, then transfer those digitally. I also listen to the entire chapter

(But I’m also doing small plot points as well)

It…still looks like it’s going to take 6 months for me to finish. I would like it to be quicker, but this semester I’m taking one more class than I did the last, so…

But there’s a preliminary cover design!

(Prussia, South Korea, Kazimir, Robert, and Juhaina)

*jazz hands*

What Do We Want?

Whelp, this is going to be a thing

After deliberation, I have a solid plan on how to tackle the entire story. A main feature will be a lot of time jumps, and also POV switches. I’m 90% certain it’s going to be Prussia, England, Japan, and Russia now

Though Romano and Hong Kong’s POV were fun to play around with, I really want to explore Russia and Japan’s characters by themselves without the context of America and China’s relationship with them. Also, I just…don’t know enough history about Italy for Romano’s POV to really work.

What I currently have on AO3 will probably be deleted when I’m ready to write and post chapters of this

…Which won’t happen until Don’t Forget Us is finished, meaning a minimum of 6 months. I’m also going to China this summer for a study abroad program, so that could severely hinder my ability to write during the summer.

Which means, look for it next school year if you still like hetalia

But at this point, who knows what’ll happen in the future. In the meantime, I’ll just keep daydreaming about it

Things to look forward to that’ll be in it: D-Day, France being broken out, the Allies’ month in London, the situation in Asia, Russia pining after China (heavily)

Yeah so in terms of ships, there’s going to be basically no ameripan content. Rochu, however—if you like fics where someone’s developing a massive crush on the other person, that’s what you’ll get here. There’s…going to be hints to usuk in order to keep the plot consistent, but there’ll also be hints of fruk. In terms of frying pangle, pruaus is going to be more of a thing, but there’ll be little pruhun and aushun (for obvious reasons). Fragrant kimchi and hongtai are obviously a no. And spamano…

I…don’t ship spamano as much as I once did (which is another reason why I’m scrapping the Romano POV) so I’m kind of going to glaze over it…

Other things.

OC’s will not be a big part like in Don’t Forget Us. It’s going to be like AWH again—they’ll play small but important roles. Frank, Kazimir, and Aida will make appearances—Aida especially

Also, I’m not gonna try to do a commentary on racism in this like I was trying to with the first attempt, but I’ll still include important elements of it

In addition, I’ll try to dial down…Scotland, but still keep him an asshole. (There’ll also be redeeming scenes with him, especially in D-Day, but also…some not great scenes with him.)

Hong Kong’s ‘story’ or what I was trying to originally write will be shown in flashback scenes.

The whole fic is gong to be very spliced up like that—no two POV will really coincide at the same time (but fret not, every chapter will be marked with a date)

So yeah. That’s p much it

Here’s the song that will play in the final scene

I’m thankful for all those who’ve offered to help with this stupid thing when I ranted about it in the beginning of Don’t Forget Us. My biggest issue was that I didn’t know enough historical wise, so basically I’m fixing that by just…not writing about those historical things *finger guns*

I know a fair amount on Japan and Prussia as countries. My knowledge on the UK and Russia is…more iffy. WW2 and up? Yeah, I know the basic details. Things before that? Lmao. No. My interest area is East Asia, not Europe…But I’ll try my best

#back to me trying to figure out how to tag shit like this #hetalia #hetalia fanfiction #historical hetalia #ameripan #rochu #fruk #frying pangle #aph #um #this is long i apologize #Miscellaneous

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mst3kproject · 7 years

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907: Hobgoblins

I have to begin with a confession: I've never been able to watch this episode all the way through. I've tried. I can't do it. Hobgoblins is too awful. Too stupid. Too tedious. Watching the movie for this review was actually the first time I've seen how it ends.

Ha ha ha. Like I give a shit how this movie ends.

So there's this old film studio lot with an eldery security guard who is trying to train a successor, but his new hires keep dying on him. The latest model is called 'Kevin'. Kevin is dull in both looks and personality, and hangs out with a bunch of annoying stereotypes: there's Daphne the Slut, her boyfriend Nick the Rambo-Wannabe, Kyle the Dorky Pervert, and Amy the Repressed Ice Bitch. Unfortunately for us in the audience, these idiots are not the expendable meat. They do not get amusingly killed off one by one. These are the characters we're supposed to like and they all survive. Fuck, I hate this movie.

Anyway, the reason the apprentice security guards keep dying is because the film vault is home to four hobgoblins, ugly little puppets from outer space who have the power to bring people's fantasies to life and then kill them. The movie tries to make some kind of point out of this, with the old security guard explaining that what people want isn't always what's good for them. This is often true: think of the people in the real world who've achieved their own dreams of fame and fortune only to end up broke, addicted, in jail, or all three. That, however, is hard to depict in less than a hundred minutes with a budget of less than a hundred dollars and an IQ of less than a hundred points, so the movie is a little less subtle and realistic about it.

The previous apprentice security guard, Dennis, got a few seconds of being a rock star before tripping over nothing, falling off the stage, and I guess breaking his neck. Kyle's dream is a physical date with his favourite phone sex girl, who tries to push his car off a cliff. Nick wants to be a war hero: he jumps on a grenade. Amy wants to open herself up to sexuality, so she becomes a stripper and... you know, I don't want to know how her backstage quickie with the hairy bouncer would have destroyed her. Same for Daphne's 'truck full of soldiers' fantasy. We can take it for granted that it would have been fucking stupid.

Supposedly the fantasies only disappear when the Hobgoblins get killed, but even though I counted at least four dead hobgoblins there are somehow still a couple of them left when they get chased back into the vault at the end. The old security guy then blows up the whole building with dynamite that he's apparently had on hand the entire time and never used. Why the hell didn't he do that years ago? The characters loudly let us know that they have learned nothing from any of this, and then, thank god, it's over.

Hobgoblins is so incredibly bad it almost defies description. It is painful even to look at this fucking movie. This is in large measure because there's nothing in it to look at. Movies should really have things like mood lighting, direction, and set dressing, but Hobgoblins has none of that. The set dressing thing is actually particularly noticeable. There are three major 'sets' in the 'movie', if I can use those words: the warehouse, Kevin's place (I think it's Kevin's place, at least), and Club Scum. All of them suck furry hobgoblin wang.

The 'warehouse' is some kind of office building. It's nowhere near shabby enough to be actually abandoned – the floors look like Kalgan was only just through there on his linoleum zamboni – and possesses about as much personality as a jar of Cheez Wiz. It's not creepy. It looks like someplace where those old high school friends Facebook wants you to re-connect with probably ended up working. The movie could have done something with this, juxtaposing a workaday exterior with the horrors hidden within, but doesn't bother.

Kevin's house looks like they got permission to film there by promising to buy it from the realtor who's been trying to sell the place for six months. They probably got all their shooting done in an afternoon and then absconded before anybody could demand a down-payment. Like the warehouse, it's completely bland. Both the exterior siding and interior walls are beige. There's not much by the way of décor, and almost no furniture. I think we're supposed to believe that only Kevin and Amy actually live there, though it seems a bit odd that they'd be living together when their relationship is emphatically not sexual. Based on what we see of the others, however, it looks for all the world like Kyle camps out on the living room sofa every night, and Daphne apparently lives with Nick in his van in the driveway.

I probably shouldn't judge. I've seen weirder living arrangements among twenty-somethings.

Then there's Club Scum, which is supposed to be a strip bar where tough types hang out. I think it was filmed in an elementary school auditorium. All the 'set dressing' is stuff that can be quickly taken down because the PTA needs the space for their Holiday Bake Sale on Saturday. And despite the place's supposed reputation, the movie balks at showing anything questionable actually happening there: some extras drink fake beer, and Amy 'strips' by taking her gloves off. That’s about it.

Some band that was willing to work for ‘exposure’ puts in an appearance here. Their song is bad but it does its job, which is to make the movie three minutes longer.

Costumes are as minimal as sets. It's a funny thing about costumes and sets – when they're done well, you don't notice them. They become nothing but the clothes people are wearing and the places they are in. If you're looking at them as costumes and sets, it means that somebody has fucked up. The people on the Club Scum set are wearing costumes, dressed up as tough types but in no way actually inhabiting those characters. They look like they're at a Hallowe'en party. So does 'Fantazia' the phone sex girl, in her leopard-print top and tight gold pants. The clothes worn by the main characters look like they're a product of the actors being told “dress like a _____.” Dress like a soldier. Dress like a prude. I dunno, just show up with clothes on. The only costumes in the whole movie that really work are those worn by the security guards, and that's mostly because security guards in real life don't look like they particularly inhabit their uniforms, either.

As well as nothing to look at, there's nothing to listen to. The characters have nothing interesting to say, because like the sets, they're boring and flavourless. Each has a single note that they never deviate from. We have no idea why any of these people hang out with each other. Why are Amy and Daphne friends, when their only personality characteristics are the diametrically opposed 'prude' and 'slut'? Why do Kevin and Kyle hang out, when they barely interact? Why are Kevin and Amy dating when they don't even seem to like each other? The only relationship in the film that is given any kind of basis is that of Daphne and Nick, who seem to be together entirely for the sex.

I want to say that writer and director Rick Sloane clearly has one hell of a madonna/whore complex, but considering that the men in this movie also seem to define themselves in terms of the sex they are or are not having... I guess he's actually just a creepy weirdo.

If this movie has any defenders (which I doubt – even Sloane knew it sucked corn-filled, coiled-up shit, because he submitted it to MST3K himself), they might now be saying that none of this matters, because the movie is a comedy. One-note characters are part of the joke! That argument may hold water for some movies – Zoolander, for example, derives much of its humour from the title character's stupidity and narcissism. It doesn't work for Hobgoblins, though. In order for something to be part of a joke, the movie has to have at least one joke. Hobgoblins does not. It has premises that could be used for jokes, but no jokes are ever made with them.

The most obvious example is probably Daphne. Daphne is a slut. The movie tells us this over and over: Daphne is the sluttiest slut ever to need an improbable amount of semen pumped from her stomach, and... that's it. That's as far as it ever goes.

That's not a joke. Daphne is a slut is not a joke, it's merely a statement. Your mama's so fat, she went to a restaurant and got a group discount is a joke. It takes a premise (your mama is fat) and does something with it, taking it too far and drawing an absurd conclusion (the restaurant staff thought she counted as several people). You can't just say your mama's so fat and end there, because that's not funny to anyone over the age of six. Neither is Daphne's sluttiness, Kyle's phone sex addiction, Amy's repression, or Nick's assholetude. The movie acts as if these things are funny all by themselves, but they're not, not even on the puerile and insulting level of a 'your mama' joke.

The closest Hobgoblins ever comes to having a joke is when the characters agree that one person should hold all the wallets while they're in Club Scum – they elect Kyle, who is promptly robbed at knifepoint by a thug who was listening to the whole conversation. This is obviously supposed to be funny, but again, nothing is done with it. It's just a thing that happens and is then immediately forgotten about. It's shit, just like everything else. Fuck this movie.

Seeing as I've already said I consider The Starfighters to be possibly the worst movie ever shown on MST3K, I'm sure somebody reading this is wondering which I would rather watch – Starfighters or Hobgoblins. And to that person, whoever they may be, I answer thusly:

#mst3k #reviews #hobgoblins #fuck this movie #80s

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