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blackradandmad · 3 years

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why blippi is rotting yr children's brains

preface: i literally expect no one to read this. it is an essay length, strong opinion piece critiquing a niche youtube-based children's show that i don't expect most of y'all to even have knowledge of lol. but like, i promise that even if you know nothing about what i'm talking about, in my incredibly, super humble opinion, it's a good piece of writing and interesting nonetheless. anyway if you read this whole thing for some reason yr really hot and we should kiss.

i thoroughly vet everything my child watches before he watches it, episode by episode. and we rarely watch youtube for entertainment; we usually just look up educational videos when he has a question about something and wants more detail than i can provide him. and that's mainly because children's content on youtube is so fucking troubling and distressing. i don't judge parents who give their children a tablet at a restaurant at all bc i've been there and sometimes it's easier on everyone to just put on a video and avoid a giant scene, but i do judge parents who just leave their children alone with youtube kids on autoplay.

take stevin john, a literal millionaire who got famous from dressing up as a silly character called blippi and going on tours of places like aquariums, zoos, construction sites, etc and posting it on youtube. this has branched into a whole empire of blippi videos, hulu shows and specials, live shows and tours (that he outsources to another character actor), merchandise and so on. this 30-something year old man cites his main influence as being mr. rogers, but i question if he's ever even seen an episode of that program.

mr. rogers had no background in early childhood development or media production, but he revolutionized the world of children's media, because he respected his audience and didn't shy away from real world situations, all while creating a show with an enormous heart. mr. rogers begins his episodes by inviting the viewer in, literally changing his attire to be more comfortable, and talking about/doing things he genuinely cares about. whereas mr. rogers calmly and maturely addresses the viewer, blippi puts on a high pitched, contrived voice, interjecting every other sentence with a forced exclamation such as, "teehee! we're having so much fun!"

i don't find it a coincidence that john (blippi) is a veteran, either. his videos are completely devoid of the absurd, abstract, childlike thinking that makes children's media fun, creative, and entertaining. his thinking and process is methodical, devoid of emotion, and very superficial. this line of thinking clearly shows the kind of creative sterilization and emphasis on sameness and conformity instilled in the military. blippi simply observes things and interacts with them in a stale, matter-of-fact way. "this ball is purple! this ball is pink! anyway... what's over there? teehee! a car! vroom, vroom!" objects are colors, toy cars don't do anything but drive, curiosity is simply not encouraged.

he uses the "it's educational!" excuse to hide the fact that his show lacks everything that makes media a valuable resource for children to consume in the first place. further than identifying colors, numbers, and the occasional letter or shape, there is just this total lack of children's need for social and emotional development. when mr. rogers breaks the fourth wall to address the viewer and let them know they're special, it feels authentic and natural, because we've spent the last half hour building whole worlds with diverse characters and unique stories in a pretend neighborhood, learning about and enjoying different musical instruments, being exposed to and making friends with (even if parasocially, it is still a real bond to children when done properly) children who are similar to us in character regardless of physical or environmental differences, feeding the fish, making art together, and so on. when blippi tells the viewer, "you are very special, and i enjoy spending time with you!" it falls completely flat and feels unearned, because the last half hour was spent running around a soft play center pointing at bright, colorful objects, visiting interesting locations like farms or fruit production factories while failing to acknowledge the humanity of the humans actually working there (everything is machine or product focused; the human workers are simply an extension of the machine), learning "fun facts" about elephants that just list attributes of elephants, not taking the opportunity to inform the viewers of elephants' intelligence, or diet, or matriarchal society. it is a loud, sensory overwhelming display of a man so disconnected from the social and emotional needs and desires of children that he assumes they're stupid, easily entertained idiots who only need some silly dances and fast-moving cartoon graphics to give their attention (meaning time and desire to purchase products meaning $$$). john clearly views his audience as a means to gaming the algorithm and ultimately a paycheck by the hollow way he addresses them.

the show is so narcissistic, so focused on all the fun blippi is supposedly having, but he lacks any of the character traits that make individual children's show hosts memorable, so much so that he was able to have someone else who doesn't even vaguely resemble him dress as blippi and impersonate him and host the show or appear at live shows, and it went unnoticed by most of his toddler and child audience. the show is so formulaic and the character of blippi is so unmemorable that instead of taking the blue's clues route of developing a story of the host leaving for college and his brother now stepping in, or making some sort of believable excuse for the change in actors, they can simply swap him out with some random guy and not acknowledge it at all. although a comedy show for older children, the amanda show in no way could or would try to replicate the show with the same name but swapping out amanda bynes with a random teenage girl who is clearly not amanda bynes. it's weird and nonsensical and shows that his character is so much of a farce put on for a paycheck that not even his dedicated audience is affected or even cares when he is replaced by a random, unknown person.

this is completely garbage content made by an opportunist with no experience with children who saw his nephew watching children's youtube content, took it at complete surface level and still hasn't realized that while children's content only looks and feels so easy, entertaining, and enriching because it is so hard to do well. even with outsourcing his music, that aspect of the show still sucks. famous and successful children's musician, raffi, is known for his song describing the life of a little white whale, called "baby beluga." it opens with a calm strumming of his guitar, followed by the lyrics, "baby beluga in the deep blue sea/swim so wild and you swim so free/heaven above/sea below/and a little white whale on the go." is it silly and kind of pointless? yes, but the point is that he is captivating children and showing them the fun of listening to music, dancing, singing, and appreciating art. the "excavator song" featured in an episode of blippi about construction vehicles opens with what sounds like a default garageband loop and the flatly sung lyrics, "i'm an excavator/i'm an excavator/hey dirt, see you later/i'm an excavator." i don't feel i have to meticulously analyze the aforementioned lyrics; the stark contrast should speak for itself.

i have a million more criticisms about both blippi specifically and youtube children's content as a whole, but this is already so long and i doubt many people will get this far anyway. it's an issue i was completely apathetic towards until i had my own child and had to wean him off these kinds of junk food shows because i realized the fast-paced visuals and bright colors and repetitive songs/lyrics were putting him in this spaced-out, fugue state, and he thought he could demand this show or that show whenever he wanted. the moment he started regularly yelling things like, "watch! cars!" or "no! click it!" i knew i had to be a lot more invested in the things he watched even if just for entertainment or as a soothing message. i showed him an episode of mr. rogers yesterday and feared it would be too slow to hold his attention, but he was mesmerized, greeting and interacting with mr. rogers verbally, asking me, "what's that?" to different objects on the screen. since purging this low-brow children's entertainment, he has had a noticeable increase in attention span and concentration, can focus on a task for longer amounts of times, is more likely to "read"/look through books without me initiating it, and doesn't throw a fit when the tv/my laptop is off.

i just know that for me, growing up with so much unsupervised internet access definitely led me to real-world pain and consequences, and it seems like now children are born with an iphone as an extension of their arm. if my child is going to be consuming videos, i'm definitely supervising every second and am going to be highly critical of the videos and the credentials (or lack thereof) of the creators and team behind it. but i also know, from pure observation admittedly, that parents letting youtube kids autoplay parent their children for hours at a time is not an uncommon occurrence. and it worries me that a generation of children are being raised on videos that rely on being as loud and bright and superficially enjoyable as possible. what's the use of a child knowing their colors and alphabet if they don't know how to treat people with kindness and empathy and respect? there is something wrong for a children's show host to plug the spelling of his name at the end of his videos ("well, that's the end of this video. but if you wanna watch more of my videos, just type in my name! can you spell my name with me? b-l-i-p-p-i!") after essentially rotting his audiences' brains for a half hour. there's something so insidious about the prioritization of naming different parts of construction vehicles over honest depictions of and conversations about dealing with feelings, or why someone with autism may act differently than you, or what to do when you feel lonely, or ways to make art and express yrself creatively. also, not to mention the blatant police propaganda and outright worship is seriously jarring; as a black mother to a visibly non-white child, i cannot sit there and watch blippi show kids how to be a bootlicker for the shittiest profession on earth, but that could be a whole essay in and of itself.

anyway, thanks for reading, if yr looking for quality children's content, i recommend, in no specific order: mr. rogers, sesame street, the electric company, molly of denali, daniel tiger, bluey!, blue's clues, the odd squad, word party, trash truck, puffin rock, uhh... that's definitely not an extensive list but that's just off the dome!!! ok bye y'all <333

#lil rambles #long post t #idk why it's formatted like this ig cos i copy pasted from my fb?#whatever anyway idk why i waste my writing skills on shit literally nobody else but me cares abt #blippi #children's television

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innuendostudios · 5 years

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Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie, a video essay on how the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers recruit. Clocking in at 41 minutes, 6756 words, 633 individual drawings, and 27 sources (including three full books), it is by far the longest and most heavily-researched video in The Alt-Right Playbook. I am very tired.

It took so long to put this behemoth together that my Patreon started to dip. So, maybe a little more than usual, if you want to keep seeing videos like these, please consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, your friend Gabe is starting to worry you.

Gabe’s always been just, you know, a regular guy. Not very political. He likes video games, sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, and anime. White guy shit. The only offbeat thing about him is you suspect there’s like a 20% chance he’s a furry. For all intents and purposes, Gabe is a normie.

But recently Gabe’s been spending a lot of time on some radically conservative forums, and listening to radically conservative podcasts, and picking some radically conservative arguments with you and your friends. You never would have expected this, not from Gabe, and, given the speed it’s happened, it’s worrying to think where it might be headed.

How have the Alt-Right gotten their hooks into your friend?

If you’ve ever known a Gabe, this video is for you. Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie.

Step 1: Identify the Audience

What you need to know before we begin is: around 2013, the Nazis went online.

Hate groups in the US, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had been growing in number since the noughts, but, between 2012 and 2014, they dropped by almost a quarter. Patriot groups dropped by over a third. However, hate crimes stayed about the same. Radical conservatism was not shrinking, but decentralizing. Still radical, still often violent, but now full of white nationalist nomads unlikely to join a formal organization.

This didn’t make them harmless. What it did was protect their asses from the typical hate group cycle: getting the public’s attention, making allies in conservative media, swelling their numbers, and then eventually disgracing themselves with failures, infighting, and, often enough, members committing horrific acts of violence, which come with social and sometimes legal consequences for all the other members.

So the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers these days don’t so much have members. They have hashtags, followers, viewers, and subscribers. This insulates them from their own audience. If Gabe, as a member of that audience, were to go out and commit a crime on their behalf, there’d be little doubt they had a hand in radicalizing him, but it’d be very hard to claim they told him to do it. On some of these sites, where Gabe spends hours and hours of his day, he’s never created an account or left a comment; the people radicalizing him don’t even know he’s there.

This distributed nature is what makes the Alt-Right, and the movements connected to it, unique. (You may remember a notable proof-of-concept for this strategy.) Doing almost everything online has, as compared with traditional hate movements, dramatically increased their reach and inoculated them from consequence. The trade-off, as we will see, is a lack of control.

And so we come to Gabe.

Gabe exists at the intersection of the kinds of people the Alt-Right is looking for - straight white cis men who feel emasculated by modern society, primarily, though they do make exceptions - and the kinds of people who are vulnerable to recruitment. Gabe fits the first profile in that he got bullied in high school, and often feels he has to hide his nerdy side for fear of getting ridiculed. The Alt-Right also has success with men who can’t get laid or recently got divorced or feel anxious about an influx of non-white people in their community. These things can make one feel like less than the confident white man they’re “supposed” to be. And it’s the closest they will ever come to being minoritized.

Regarding the second profile, it’s important to know that Gabe is not categorically different from you or me. He’s a cishet white dude - his problems are not unique. There isn’t a ton of research into the demography of the Alt-Right, but there may be a higher-than-average chance Gabe has a history of being abused or comes from a broken home. You don’t know if it’s true of Gabe, he’s never said. But most abuse survivors don’t become Nazis. The things that make people like Gabe recruitable tend to be situational: it happens often during periods of transition, as dramatic as the death of a loved or as benign as moving to a new city. Things that make people ask big life questions. Gabe has concerns like economic precarity, not knowing his place in a changing world, stressful working conditions. In other words, Gabe is suffering under late capitalism, same as everyone, and it’s entirely plausible he could have gone down the path to becoming a Leftist.

This is not to make an “economic anxiety” argument: the animating force of the Far Right is and always has been bigotry. But the Alt-Right targets Gabe by treating his “economic anxiety” as one of many things bigotry can be sold as a solution to. It is their aim that, when dissatisfied white men go looking for answers, they find the Alt-Right before they find us.

Step Two: Establish a Community

Were Gabe pledging an old-school hate movement, there would probably be a recruiter to usher him into an existing community. But that’s the kind of formalized interaction modern extremists try to avoid. Online extremism has many points of entry, and everybody’s journey is unique, so rather than be comprehensive we will focus on what are, in my estimation, the two most common pathways: the Far Right creates a community Gabe is likely to stumble into, or infiltrates a community Gabe is already in.

The stumble-upon method has two main branches, one of which is just “Gabe ends up on a chan board,” which we’ve already done a video about. The other is kind of the polar opposite of 4chan’s cult of anonymity: Gabe ends up in the fandom of a Far Right thought leader.

These folks are charismatic media personalities (that’s charismatic according to Gabe’s tastes, not ours; I don’t understand it, either). These personalities may gain traction on any number of platforms, from podcasts to reportage to blogging, though the most effective platform for redpilling is, and yes I am biting the hand that feeds me, YouTube. They may get Gabe’s attention through fairly standard means, like talking about or even generating controversy to get themselves trending, while some of the more committed will employ dubious SEO tactics like clickbait, google bombing, and data voids (just pause for definitions, we don’t have time).

What they tend to have in common, especially the most accessible ones, is that they don’t present themselves as entry points to the radical Right. In fact, many did not set out to be Far Right thought leaders, and may not think of themselves as such (though they are often selling products, of which the Alt-Right are among their biggest purchasers, and it’s not like they’re turning the money away). How they present is the same way anyone presents who wants to be successful on social media: accessible, approachable, authentic. The face-to-face relationship a budding extremist forms with their recruiter or the leader of their hate group’s local chapter are here folded into one parasocial relationship with a complete stranger.

Why this person appeals to Gabe is they’re not selling politics as politics, but conservatism as a kind of lifestyle brand. They rely heavily on criticizing or ridiculing the Left: feminists are oversensitive, Black people unintelligent, queer folks doomed to loneliness, and trans people insane; I dunno if it’s a coincidence that these are all things Gabe thinks about himself in his low moments. By contrast, they don’t sell conservatism as having sounder policies or a more coherent moral framework, but that abandoning progressive principles and embracing conservative ones will make Gabe happier. Remember, Gabe isn’t looking for white nationalism or misogyny, what he wants is the cure to soul-sickness, and these friendly micro-celebs are here to offer a shot of life advice with politics as the chaser. It is extremely important that politics be presented as a set of affects, not a set of beliefs.

The second pathway is infiltration, which is its own beast. Media personalities sometimes become gateways to the Right almost by accident: they do something edgy, a part of their audience reacts positively, and, facing no real consequence, they do it more; this leads to further positive reinforcement from conservative fans, the rest of the audience acclimates, and the cycle repeats, the personality pushing the envelope further and further based on what flies with their increasingly conservative audience. In this way, they become a right-wing figure by both radicalizing and being radicalized by their audience.

Infiltration is deliberate.

The Far Right will reliably target any community that has 1) a large, white, male population, 2) whose niche interests allow them to feel vaguely marginalized, and 3) who are not used to progressive critique of said interests. This isn’t to say progressive critique doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been baked into the property from the beginning, but that it has been, so far, easy for white guys to ignore. As such, progressives within that community probably don’t talk politics much, and women and minorities are perfectly welcome to post, same as anyone, but just, you know, don’t, don’t make identity politics, you know, like, a thing.

Given Gabe’s proclivities, he’s probably already in a number of fan communities where he can geek out and not get teased. And this is where the Far Right will go looking for him

Communities are at their most vulnerable to infiltration at times of political discord. This can happen naturally - say, a new property in the fandom has a Black protagonist - or it can be provoked - say, a bunch of channers join the forum and say provocative things about race to get people arguing - or both. Left to its own devices, the community might sort out its differences and maybe even come out more progressive than they started. But, with the right pressure applied in the right moment, these communities can devolve into arguments about the need to remove a nebulously-defined “politics” from the conversation.

The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with,” but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.

(Now, it is curious how the things that provoke the most disagreement tend to be whichever ones make white dudes uncomfortable. One of life’s great, unanswerable mysteries.)

You can gather where this is going: a community that doesn’t tolerate progressivism but does tolerate Nazism is going to start collecting Nazis, Nazis whose goal is to drive a wedge between the community and the Left. Once the Left acknowledges, “Hey, your community’s developing a Nazi problem,” the Nazis - who are, remember, trusted, apolitical members of the community who might just be kidding about all the Nazi shit - say, “Did you hear that, guys?! Those cultural Marxists just called all of us Nazis!” Wedge. Similarly, any community members who say, “but Nazis though” are framed as infiltrators pushing an agenda, even if they’ve been there longer than the Nazis have. They get the wedge, too.

This is how fandoms radicalize. They are built as - yeah, I’ll say it - safe spaces for nerds, weebs, and furries, and are told that the Left is a threat to their safety. Given a choice between leaving a community that has mattered to him for years and simply adjusting to the community’s shifting politics, the assumption is that Gabe will stay. This assumption is right often enough that a lot of fandoms have been colonized.

What is true of both of these methods - Gabe finding the Right or the Right finding him - is that Gabe does not come nor stay for the ideology. He’s here for the community, the sense of belonging, of being with his people, of having his fears validated and his enjoyment shared. The ideology is simply the price of admission.

Step Three: Isolate

There is a vast, interconnected network of Far Right communities out there, and Gabe is, at this point, only on the periphery. In order to keep him in, they need to disrupt his relationships to other communities, and become, more and more, his primary online social space. Having made this space hostile to the Left, they now seek to break his connections to progressives elsewhere in his life.

This is hard to do online. The whole appeal of moving radicalism to the internet is that your away-from-keyboard life doesn’t have to change. You are crypto the moment you log off. Some thought leaders will encourage their audience to cut ties with Family of Origin, or “deFOO,” but, even then, they can’t monitor whether the audience has actually done it the way an in-person movement could. And so alienating Gabe from the Left is less controlled, and, consequently, may be less total. How much Gabe isolates is up to him.

But the vast majority of Far Right media presumes an alienation from the Left. Part of conservative bloggers and YouTubers making the Left look pathetic is doing a lot take-downs and responses. This is a constant repetition of the Left’s arguments for the purpose of mockery, and, for Gabe, it starts to replace any engagement with progressive media directly. He soon knows the Left only through caricature. It also trains him, if he does directly engage, to approach the Left with the same combative stance as his role models. (For reference, see my comment section.) And this is only if he doesn’t partake in one of the many active boycotts of “SJW media.”

In addition to mocking the Left’s arguments, they also, curiously, appropriate them. This is one part sanitization: liberal centrism is more socially acceptable; indeed, many figures on the outer layers think of themselves as moderates, even as they serve as gateways to radicalism. But, also, many of Gabe’s problems could be addressed by progressive leftism, so they sell him racist, sexist versions of it. Yes, there is a problem with workers being underpaid and overextended, but the solution isn’t unions, it’s deporting immigrants; yes, there is a chronic loneliness and anger to being a man in the modern age, but it’s not because of the toxic masculine expectations placed on you by the patriarchy, it’s women being slutty; yes, wealth disparity does mean a tiny percentage of elites have more influence over culture and politics than the rest of us combined, but the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the Jews. And it’s hard for Gabe to reject these ideas without, in the process, rejecting the progressive ideas they’re copied from; the Right’s “take the red pill” is, to the untrained eye, similar to the Left’s “get woke.” (Or, at least, the bowdlerized version of “get woke” that is no longer specifically about race which came to fashion when white people started saying it, grumble grumble.)

Take the red pill or reject them both; either is a step to the right.

As this rhetoric slips into his day-to-day conversation, even as seemingly harmless “irreverence,” it may strain relationships with people who are not entertained by this shit. Off-color comments about race and gender can certainly be wearying for female and non-white friends, which can lead to a passive distance or an eventual confrontation [“why is everyone but me so sensitive?!”], which only seem to confirm what his reactionary community says about liberal snowflakes. If he says these things on social media, he may get his account suspended, and, if he comes back under an alt, you can bet his new reactionary friends will be the first to reconnect, applaud the behavior that got him banned, and repeat should he get banned again. A few cycles of this and he’s lost touch with everyone else.

Also, his adoption of the insular, meme-laden terminology of this community makes him less and less comprehensible to outsiders.

Over time, sources of information get replaced with community-approved ones: conservative news, conservative YouTube, conservative Wikipedia if he’s really committed. The Algorithm soon takes note and stops recommending media from the Left. He stops watching shows with a “liberal agenda,” which usually means shows starring women and people of color. Now, there is evidence that the human mind responds to fictional characters similarly to real people, and that consuming diverse media can decrease bigotry in ways roughly analogous to having a diverse group of friends, which is one of many reasons we say representation matters. By consuming a homogenous media diet, Gabe stymies his ability to have even parasocial relationships with anyone who isn’t a cishet conservative white dude or one of their approved exceptions.

To the extent that any of this happens, it happens at Gabe’s discretion and at his own chosen pace. It has not been forced on him, only encouraged and rewarded. But the fact that it hasn’t been forced can make him all the more willing to accept it, because it seems safe to consider; even though his life and social circle are changing to accommodate, he does not feel committed. But many Gabes have walked these halls, and, if they close the door behind them, there’s nowhere left to go but down.

Step Four: Raise their Power Level

(...and they say we ruined anime.)

Consider the ecosystem of the Alt-Right as layers of an onion, with Gabe sitting at the edge and ready to traverse towards the center. (No, I’m not just going to reiterate the PewDiePipeline, though, if you haven’t seen it, go do that.)

The outer layer of the onion is extremism at its most plausibly deniable. Without careful scrutiny, the public-facing figureheads could pass as dispassionate, and the websites as merely problematic rather than softly fascist. It is valuable if Gabe believes this as well; that, at this stage, he believe the bigotry is simply trolling, the extremists an insignificant minority, and any report of harassment faked. That he believe where he is is as deep as the rabbit hole goes. And that he continue to believe this at each successive layer.

People in the deepest crevices of the Alt-Right self-report getting redpilled on multiple issues at different times in their journey to the center of the onion. If Gabe’s first red pill is about the SJWs coming for his free speech, he’ll think that’s all anyone in his community believes; there’s no racism here, people are just making a point about their right to use slurs. Then, when he gets redpilled on the white genocide, he’ll laugh at those Alt-Lite cucks who tried to sweep the race realists under the rug, and at himself for having once been one, but acknowledge that those channels and websites are still useful for onboarding people, so he won’t denounce them. At the same time, nobody takes those manosphere betas seriously.

And this process is reiterated with every pill swallowed: gender essentialism, autogynephilia, birtherism, Sandy Hook truth, pizzagate, QAnon if he’s really out there. The heart of the onion is typically the Jewish Question, but these can happen in any order, and in any number. But each layer sells itself as being, finally, the ultimate truth. Each denies the validity of the others; the layers ahead don’t exist, they’re made up my liberals, while the people behind are asleep where you are now awake. That’s why they chose “the red pill” as their metaphor: take it, and everything will be revealed. That’s why it cozies up with conspiracism. But what’s supposed to follow is that this knowledge help Gabe in some way, and it doesn’t. Blaming immigrants doesn’t actually fix the economy, and hating women doesn’t make men less lonely. But, having been alienated from everything outside the onion, once that sinks in, the only recourse on offer is to seek out the next pill.

And pills are easy to find. Those within the network have laissez-faire relationships, even as they, on paper, disavow one another. When they need a source or a guest host, they aren’t going to go to the Left; they’re going to feature each other. The Left is the enemy; their ideas are beneath consideration, and the only reason to engage them is for public humiliation. [Shapiro’s book.] But you can interview “western chauvinists” and that doesn’t mean you’re endorsing them, just, you know, it’s fine to hear ‘em out, nothing should be off-limits in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, Nazis are apolitical.

And because these folks keep showing up in each others’ metadata, regardless of what they say, Google thinks there is definitely a relationship between the guy “just asking questions” and the guy denying the Holocaust. Gabe is softly exposed to many flavors of conservatism just slightly more radical than he is now, and is expected, at the very least, to not question their presence. This is an environment where deradicalizing - listening to the Left - would be sleeping with the enemy, but radicalizing further? You do you, buddy.

Gabe’s emotional journey, however, is somewhat more complex. If you’ve spent any time reading or watching reactionary media you’ve probably noticed it’s really. fucking. repetitive. It’s a few thousand phrasings of the same handful of arguments. Like, there’s only so many jokes about attack helicopters! But these people just crank out content, and most of it’s derivative; the reason to pick one personality over another isn’t because they say something different, but because they say it differently. Gabe just picks the affect it’s delivered in.

Repetition dulls the shock of the most egregious statements, making them appear normal and prepping him for more extreme ideas. Meanwhile, the arguments themselves? They’re not good. (BreadTube will never run out of shit to debunk.) They are repetitive because they’re not good. They’re mantric. A good argument you only need to hear one time; if you can follow it, internalize it, and explain it to someone else, you know you’ve understood it. But a bad argument can’t convince you on its own merits, so it will often rely on affect. This can be the snappy, thought-terminating cliche, or the long, winding diatribe that sounds really sensible while you’re hearing it but when someone asks you for the gist you can only say “go watch these 17 videos and it’ll all make sense.” Both these approaches are largely devoid of content, but, gosh, if they don’t sound sure of themselves.

And that mode can be very persuasive, but it doesn’t stick the way a coherent argument does. It needs to be repeated, the affect replenished, because the words matter less than the delivery. There needs to be a steady stream of confident voices saying “we’ve got this figured out and everyone else is stupid” or Gabe’s gonna notice the flaws. They are not well-hidden.

And the catch-22 of returning to that stream over and over is that these communities are stressful even as they are calming. People afraid they will die virgins go to forums with people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, you will die a virgin.” People afraid Syrians are coming to kill us all watch videos by people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, Syrians are coming to kill us all.” Others have already pointed out that rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of digital self-harm, but I need to you understand the toxic recursion of it: Gabe is going to these communities to get upset. Every emotion is converted into anger, because sadness, fear, and despair are paralyzing but anger is motivating; Gabe feels less helpless when he’s pissed off. And so, while he’s topping up on reassuring nonsense, he’s also topping up on stress. And, being cut off from everything outside the network, the only place he knows to go to release that stress is back to the place that gives it to him. It’s a feedback loop, pulling him deeper and deeper on the promise that, at some point, relief will come.

It is a similar dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships.

When someone in Gabe’s community makes a racist joke, they are presenting Gabe with a choice between the human interaction of laughing with his friends and his societal responsibility not to be a fuckin’ racist. And not laughing seems ridiculous; everybody’s friends here; no one’s getting hurt; this is harmless. And so the irreverent race joke draws a line between the personal and the political, and suggests that one can be safely prioritized over the other. One way to look at radicalization is being asked to stick with that seemingly innocuous decision as the stakes are raised incrementally: first with edgier humor, and then comments that are funny because they’re shocking but you couldn’t really call them jokes, and then “funny” comments that are also sincerely angry, but, in each instance, since he laughed with his bros last time, it stands to reason he should keep favoring the personal over some abstracted notion of “politics.”

This is why the progressive adage “the personal is political” is among the most threatening things you can say in these spaces.

I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument. Most of us who laughed at edgy jokes when we were teenagers didn’t grow up to be Nazis. It is a slippery slope in the specific context of being in community with people trying to radicalize you. Gabe is a lonely white boy in need of friends, and laughing at a racist joke is personal, while not laughing is political. Staying in a community that has Nazis in it is personal, and leaving is political. The personal is what brings people together and the political drives them apart. (The “only if some of them are bigots” part of that sentence is usually lopped off). There’s this joke on the internet that nerds perceive only two races: white and political. Following that logic, what could be more apolitical than an ethnostate?

They are banking on his willingness to adapt his beliefs to suit an environment that meets a need. That same need can be satisfied by white nationalism. There are few things more seductive to people who doubt their own worth than being told you are valuable simply for being white. And you can sub in male, cis, straight, allosexual, or able-bodied. It just takes priming: by the time Gabe officially embraces bigotry, he’s already been acting like a bigot for months. The red pill is simply the moment he says it out loud.

Change Gabe’s surroundings, and you change Gabe.

Step Five: ???

The final step in a traditional extremist group would be getting a mission. But that is one thing the Alt-Right can’t do. Once you start giving clear directives, you can’t play yourselves off as a bunch of unaffiliated hashtags and think tanks; you are now a formalized movement accountable to its followers, and can be judged and policed as such.

To my mind, Charlottesville was an attempt to become such a movement, taking things offline and getting all the different groups working collectively. And, as so often happens when these people get in the same space - especially with no official leaders or means of control over their members - it backfired. Their true colors came out before they were ready and a counter-protester lost her life.

This would be the point where, historically, an extremist group starts to disintegrate. Their veneer of respectability gone, they’re now hated by the public, the media wants nothing more to do with them, and everyone not in jail turns on each other or goes underground. This is also the point where the liberal establishment says, “My job here is done,” and utterly fails to retake control of the narrative, allowing the next batch of radicals to pick up more or less where the last one left off.

But to an already-decentralized group like the Alt-Right, Charlottesville was bad but eminently survivable. People retreated back to the internet, with its code words and anonymous forums, but that’s where much of the work was already done anyway. The platforms where they organized kept tolerating them, the authorities still didn’t classify them as terrorists, and any disgraced figureheads were replaced with up-and-comers.

The major change in strategy is that it doesn’t seem anyone has tried to formalize the Alt-Right since.

So where does that leave Gabe? He’s gone through this whole process of largely hands-off indoctrination - and I should stress his journey may look like what we’ve outlined or it may look different in places, this video is not comprehensive - but now he’s swallowed every pill he cares to, he blames half a dozen minorities for everything he sees as wrong with the world, and no one will give him anything to do. You’ve got this ad hoc movement frothing young men into a militant fervor and then just leaving them to stew in their own hate. Should we really be surprised at how many commit mass shootings?

This is a machine for producing lone wolves.

Leaving men to take up arms of their own volition is a way of enacting terror while being just outside the popular conception of a terror cell. There are also, of course, more classic militias that will offer Gabe clear directives - they’re recruiting from the same pool. And Gabe may stop short of this step, settling in a middle layer that suits him or finding the inner layers too extreme. But violence is the logical conclusion of an ideology of hate, and, should Gabe take this step, he can approach violence in the same incremental fashion he approached conservatism.

He can start with yelling at people on Twitter, and then maybe collective brigading, DDoS attacks, sharing dox, leaking nudes, calling their phone numbers, texting them pictures of their houses from the sidewalk. These acts of cruelty become games of oneupmanship within his community. All this can start as far back as Step 2, and get more intense the deeper he goes. Some people join explicitly partake in harassment and violence the way Gabe joined to talk about anime.

But this behavior can serve as a kind of buy-in. The Left and the feminists and the LGBTQs and the Muslims and the immigrants are all, within his community, subhuman. You’ve maybe heard the conservative catchphrase “feminism is cancer”; well don’t treat cancer by having a respectful exchange of ideas with it, but by eradicating it down to the last cell. Cruelty against the Left is framed as righteous.

From any other perspective, posting someone’s bank information is something you might feel ashamed of. Which creates a psychological imperative not to consider other perspectives. A thing that keeps people in is staving off the guilt they will reckon with the moment they step out. Gabe is also aware that anything he’s done to the Left could be done to him if he leaves; some communities even keep dox on their members as insurance. And the things he’s been encouraged to do to the Left will likely make him feel that the Left would never take him now; the radical Right is the only home he’s got. Harassment becomes another tool of isolation.

Steadily, options for Gabe are whittled down to being a vigilante or a nihilist. There are periods of elation: moments the Alt-Right feels it’s winning - or, more accurately, the people they hate are losing - are like cocaine. They are authoritarians, after all. But the times in between are mean and angry. They are antisocial, starved of emotional connection, consuming incompatible conspiracies that may at any point run them afoul of one another, devoted to figureheads who cater to but cannot risk leading them, and living under constant threat of being outed to the Left or turned on by the Right for stepping out of line. Gabe took this journey for the sense of community and purpose, and, but for the rare moments everything goes their way, the Alt-Right can’t maintain either. They can only keep promising his day will come, a story he could get from a $5 palm reading.

The feeling there’s nothing left but to kill yourself or someone else is so common it’s a meme.

But there is always a third option: Gabe can leave.

Pre-Conclusion: For Fuck’s Sake Do Not Make Gabe Your Whole-Ass Praxis

Before we continue, I want to state plainly that Gabe went off the deep end because he found a community willing to tell him that, because he is a cishet white man, the world revolves around him. Do not treat him like this is true.

If a fraction of the energy spent having debates with America’s Gabes were spent instead on voter re-enfranchisement, prisoner’s rights, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and redistricting, Gabe’s opinions, in the societal sense, wouldn’t matter. Reactionary conservatism is a small and largely unpopular ideology that is only so represented in our culture and politics because they’ve learned how to game the system.

And I get it. Those are huge problems that are going to take years to address, where, if you know a Gabe, that’s a conversation you could have today. And, if you think you can get through to him, it is worthwhile to try. This is a fight on many fronts and deradicalization is one of them. But it is only one, so please keep it in perspective. It sends an awful message when we spend more time trying to get bigots back on our side than we do the people they are bigoted against.

Your value as a lefty does not hinge on whether you can change Gabe’s mind.

Conclusion: How Gabe Gets Out

He may just grow out of it. These communities skew young, and some folks hit a point where hanging with edgy teens doesn’t feel cool anymore.

He may become disillusioned after the movement fails to deliver on its promises.

He may become disillusioned if something goes wrong in his life and his community isn’t there for him, if he feels they like his race and his gender but don’t actually care about him.

He may be shocked if he sees the Alt-Right at its worst before being appropriately conditioned. Charlottesville was a step too far for a lot of people.

His community may turn on him for any perceived unorthodoxy, and he may leave out of necessity.

He may be separated by circumstance from the community - a trip with no internet, hospitalization, arrest - and not be able to top up on the rhetoric. This may lead him to question his beliefs.

His community may disappear, either tearing itself apart or getting shut down by authorities.

He may have incidental contact with populations he’s supposed to hate, and have trouble reconciling who they are in person with what he’s been told about them. In his community, people bond over shared intolerance, but, suddenly, being tolerant helps him make friends. (This is one reason the Alt-Right has made a battleground of the college campus.)

He may form or revisit relationships outside the network, people who can offer him the connection he’s been looking for. This may reintroduce outside perspectives. More importantly, it rekindles his ability to have healthy relationships at all, something the Alt-Right has estranged him from.

As with recruiters, it seems these “escape hatch” relationships can sometimes be parasocial; coming to respect a public figure who is on the Left, or is critical of the Alt-Right.

Someone he is close to may compel him to choose, “me or the movement.” A lot of young men leave to save a romantic relationship.

Hearing stories from people who’ve already jumped may help; there aren’t a lot of public formers, and some raise suspicions as to their sincerity, but it is getting more common, and may be the closest we get to exit counseling for the Alt-Right.

He may become aware of the ways he’s being manipulated, or have them revealed to him, maybe because he stumbled into BreadTube, I dunno. Knowledge that you are being indoctrinated is no guarantee it won’t work - you are not immune to propaganda - but it can help one resist.

And he may revisit a core belief system that used to guide him, be it religion or social justice or a really wholesome fandom, and be reminded of the identity he used to have.

Moments like these, in isolation or in aggregate, can inspire Gabe to jump. They are also good times for friends to intervene. The reach and the impunity that comes with the internet means it has never been easier to fall into reactionary extremism. It has also never been easier to get out. People who exit skinhead gangs often fear for their lives; for Gabe, there’s a chance getting out is as simple as going to a different website. Much of his community does not know his name or his face and he may not important enough to dox.

What doesn’t get Gabe out - not reliably, not that I have seen - is an argument with a stranger who proves all his facts wrong and his ideology bunk. Facts don’t always work because facts don’t care about his feelings. This was about staying in a community, and holding onto an identity, that mattered to him. It was about belonging, and that is something a rando from the other side of the culture war can’t give him and probably shouldn’t be responsible for.

The theme here is human connection. Before he can do the work of disentangling himself, and facing the guilt of what he’s believed and maybe done, he has to know there’s somewhere for him on the other end of it. That the Right hasn’t ruined him. They’ve told him all of history is groups fighting each other over status, and, without his clan, he’ll be an exile. He needs a better story.

I don’t know that lefty spaces are ideal for this, in no small part because bringing someone who’s a bit of a Nazi but working on it into diverse communities is… questionable. And it probably wouldn’t be good for him, either; having just gotten out of a toxic belief system, he’s going to be deeply skeptical of all ideologies. In a perfect world, people who care about Gabe could build for him - to use a therapy term - a holding space. Someplace private - physical or digital - where Gabe can work out his feelings, where he is both encouraged and expected to be better but is not, in the moment, judged. That comes later. It is delicate and time-consuming work that should not be done in public, but we find these beliefs, built up over the course of months or years, tend to fall away very quickly with a shift of environment. Change Gabe’s surroundings and you change Gabe.

But, instead, a lot of people who jump are functionally deprogramming themselves, which is working for a lot of them, but it’s haphazard, and there are recidivists.

If you don’t personally know a Gabe, or have training as a counselor, you may not be in a position to help him. Possibly there are things you can do to disrupt the recruitment process or prevent infiltration of spaces you’re in - I’m looking into it, but talk to your mods - but, elephant in the room: meaningful change will require reform on the part of platform holders. Tools to disrupt this process already exist and are being used on groups like ISIS, but they’re not being used on the Alt-Right because they try oh so very hard not to get classified as terrorists (and also any functioning anti-radicalization policy would require banning a lot of conservative politicians, so there’s that...).

But what makes our story better than theirs is that the fight for social and economic justice, though it is long, and difficult, and frustrating, when it works, it fulfills the promise the Right can’t keep: it materially make people’s lives better. I am not prone to sentimentality, or to giving these videos happy endings. But one thing we have that the Alt-Right doesn’t is hope.

#video essay

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straykidsupdate · 5 years

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Stray Kids Is Your Next K-Pop Obsession — Here’s Why

Just a little over a year after exploding onto the K-pop scene, the young nine-member boy band Stay Kids stands onstage thousands of miles away from their home in Seoul. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center is packed with thousands of fans, called STAY. The majority female audience — strikingly diverse in ethnicity and age — is shouting the opening “na-na”s of “My Pace,” the band’s gritty breakout hit about trusting in your own path and not comparing yourself to others. It’s one thing to hear it on the track, but another entirely to hear it thundering from nearly 3,500 young people in a cavernous space. It’s an empowering, rollicking battle cry.

K-pop has often been likened to a “factory” by the media — a “machine” that pumps out bands on a conveyor belt and hands them hollow, algorithmic pop songs to lip-sync as they move in perfect synchronization. The new generation of South Korean pop groups proves that stereotype resoundingly false. And few subvert it more than Stray Kids — with members Bang Chan, Woojin, Seungmin, Hyunjin, Changbin, HAN, Lee Know, Felix, and I.N — whose inventive mix of EDM, rap, and rock rebel against the norm, and whose sincere, self-penned lyrics are inspiring the rising generation to speak up, because they have something to say.

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“We want to be remembered as a team that not only makes good music, but makes the kind of music that really influences and helps people,” fox-faced vocalist and youngest member I.N tells Refinery29 ahead of the second the band’s two sold out shows in Newark, the first stop on the on the U.S. leg of their “UNVEIL Tour 'I am…' world tour. “That's one of our biggest dreams.”

“I don't think it's fair for anyone to say K-pop is a machine. It’s a stereotype." BANG CHAN

Ingrained in Stray Kids’ DNA is their creative agency. Bang Chan, Changbin, and HAN — known as 3racha — have written and produced the majority of the group's discography, but all nine members have had writing credits on their work, which isn't often seen from young bands in the industry. This ownership has allowed them to experiment and play with their sound, and even their videos — many of their visuals are of them singing and goofing off, filmed on GoPros (as one does when not questioning your entire existence). It’s also allowed them to showcase each member’s versatility. While many K-pop group members usually have defined roles within a group, there’s a joke within the fandom that Stray Kids sometimes feels like it has nine rappers and nine vocalists — whether it’s vocalist Lee Know dishing a scorching opening rap in “District 9,” or rapper Hyunjin letting his gentle tenor shine in “불면증 (Insomnia).”

It’s also this personal, hands-on approach that not only allows them to tell their stories as authentically as possible, but has allowed them to speak even more directly to their fans. This line of communication to the generation they speak for is the most vital to their success thus far, so the perception that their work could be anything but personal is ill-conceived.

“I don't think it's fair for anyone to say K-pop is a machine. It’s a stereotype,” says Bang Chan, turning contemplative. “But I think the reason why people might think that is because the way K-pop is built is very well-organized, and performance-wise everything is precise and well-crafted. What some people probably don’t understand is that we think of it as a gateway that allows artists to reach out to their fans.”

Stray Kids discography weaves a narrative that begins with the fictional dystopia of District 9, in which they are prisoners of a suffocating system that tries to define them. They then explored their own identities throughout the group’s I Am… trilogy as they grappled with questions that plague both them and their fans, who are growing up along with them.

“The question that we always come back to, that everyone asks themselves, that I ask myself is, 'Who am I?'” says 21-year-old Australia-raised leader Bang Chan. “I think I've been thinking about that from a really young age. Honestly right now I haven't found out who I am, and I'm still trying to figure that out. Through our music we wanted to express that and reach out to those who feel the same way, so we can have a connection with one another.”

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In March, they released a new, more confident chapter of their story, Clé 1: Miroh, led by the massive, boisterous single “Miroh.” Pulsing with brassy beats and lion’s roars, the song, according to rapid-fire rapper Changbin is about “gaining the confidence to face new challenges.” The visual, set in a Hunger Games-esque world, finds the members organizing a rebellion and literally grabbing the mic from the elite class in charge.

If anything, this is the machine that Stray Kids actively fight against — societal expectations and unmanageable pressure put on young people today. And while songs on Clé 1: Miroh such as “Victory Song” and “Boxer” share the same dauntless spirit, the group still leave room for vulnerability. “19” is a haunting, echoing song written by HAN about his fears as he teeters on the cusp of adulthood.

“When I was 19 [Koreans calculate age differently], going into my twenties, I was excited to become an adult,” says HAN. “But as the time actually came closer, I had so many emotions and thoughts running through my head. I was scared, but I wanted to express my feelings to my fans who are going through the same thing through this song.”

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Before Stray Kids debuted as a group, they were on a self-titled musical competition TV series. Felix and Lee Know were cut from the group, to the devastation of the other members, but were later added again after proving themselves once more. This emotional rollercoaster that the members endured is partially to thank for their close bond, and why the group treat each other and their STAYs like family. That and the examples set by their own families growing up.

“When we were young, whenever we went through hard times, my mom would always try to cheer me and my sisters up,” says Australian-Korean Felix, whose deep bass tone is in striking contrast to his lithe stature. “This example of loving and supporting one another is something I carry with me constantly. She inspired me to want to help other people, make others feel better by surprising or comforting them.”

“I'm so thankful to my mom for giving me unconditional love,” adds honey-voiced eldest member Woojin. “I learned a lot from her — she takes so much care in how she interacts with other people and keeps good, healthy relationships with the people around her as well.”

This all helped build the foundation of what Stray Kids is today — a group of young people who, by acknowledging their fears and faults, want nothing more than to unite with those who understand them across language and geographic borders, using the tools at their disposal. And even with only a year under their belts, it looks as if their message is already resonating.

“Each and every one of you have your own special story, right?,” Bang Chan said as the Newark show neared its close, and after fans finished a vibrant “We love you!” chant to the nine young men on stage. “[...] So I feel like today is not just STAY and people being in this beautiful venue: it’s a thousand stories all inside this really big space. I’m just glad that through music — and through the music that we make — we can gather all these stories and relate to each other. I think that’s really fantastic.”

Article Source: here

#stray kids #190524 #era: clé 1 miroh #t: article #refinery29

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finelytaylored · 4 years

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Walking With A Ghost

Summary:

Rey leaned forward to hit the record button on her webcam before scooting back to her previous spot and positioning herself slightly off center.

"Hi guys! Rey here with another video. I'm going to be doing something a bit different today. So many of you have requested that I post a reaction to this video, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm in for here. So it's going to be quite an adventure for all of us." Rey said with a laugh. "I'm trusting you guys on this one... I'm slightly terrified. But I'm also extremely curious, so let's just jump into this and see what happens."

Rey paused briefly before leaning over until she could reach her laptop. She opened the browser window where she had queued up the video. Her eyes scanned the title and she bit her lip, already trying to keep from laughing. "I'VE NEVER SEEN MY BEST FRIEND'S FACE?!". That, paired with the thumbnail- she knew she was in for an interesting 7 minutes at the very least.

She hit 'play' and quickly got herself situated as the opening sequence for the channel "WhatTheHux" played and then faded out. Two men appeared on screen- well, one was definitely a man. He had very vibrant, natural red hair and a very pale skin tone. Sitting next to him was someone - with broad shoulders and a mask covering their entire face- their entire head. She couldn't even see a single strand of hair peaking out from beneath it. She was already intrigued.

(read on AO3) (or continue reading below)

Rey stared at the equipment sitting in the corner of the room and let out a long drawn-out sigh. She could've sworn it was mocking her. She knew she absolutely needed to record that day. She hadn't posted anything in almost a week, and even though she only had a few hundred subscribers she needed to stay dedicated. If she ever had any hope of her channel actually growing into something, she couldn't allow herself to get lazy. The moment she started giving herself an inch, a month would pass without her uploading. It hadn't happened- yet. She was trying to keep it that way.

Rey shook her head at how ridiculous she was being. She started doing this because she enjoyed it. It gave her a consistent hobby. It also kept her productive, which helped keep some of her anxiety and depression from completely swallowing her whole.

She didn't really have the space to record the way she wanted to. She shared a bedroom with her roommate Rose, and the only other open space was the living room. It was a cozy little place they shared and she loved it; it just meant she had to get creative with her set up.

Normally, if Rose wasn't using the living room or the attached kitchen, Rey would use their shelf of movies as her backdrop and the coffee table as her desktop. It wasn't much, but she made it work for her. Sitting on the floor wasn't always the most comfortable thing, but she didn't have much of a choice.

She crawled over to the coffee table and pulled up the tabs she needed on her laptop just as she heard the lock jiggling in the front door. She smirked to herself as Rose walked through it a few seconds later. "Just in time. I almost thought I'd have to start without you."

"Hello to you too", Rose replied, as she shut the door behind her and leaned down to untie her boots. "Do you just put off recording until you think I'm going to be home?"

Rey laughed and shook her head. "Me? Procrastinate? I'm a bit insulted you'd even suggest that." She replied as she finished adjusted her camera. "But now that you're here, I don't see why..."

"I knew it!" Rose laughed, cutting her sentence short. "You just didn't want to record by yourself."

"Viewers really enjoy it when we record together! You've seen the comments, Rose" Rey replied, turning to look at her roommate as she walked into their bedroom.

Rey knew that being on camera wasn't really Roses' thing. It certainly wasn't for everybody. But they did have great chemistry and it actually gave Rey someone to interact with. It created an energy on screen that she had to work so much harder to achieve when she recorded by herself. She had only started the channel by herself because she had to. She didn't have any friends with channels in their little part of the world, and didn't know anyone who would have started one with her.

So she had to resort to trying to drag her roommate into it as often as she could.

"What are you reacting to today?" Rose asked from the other room.

"I'm actually doing something new tonight." Rey replied. "There's this video- no idea what it is- but I've gotten loads of comments asking me to post a reaction."

"Yeah?" She could tell Rose as at least curious. She counted it as a small victory. Rose walked back into the shared living space. "I don't know if you should be excited or terrified... people on the internet are into some weird shit sometimes."

Rey couldn't disagree with her there. "I've done a bit of checking into it, without watching the actual video, because I'd like to avoid being completely scarred for life if at all possible." She said in reassurance.

"Good. I've taught you well." Rose replied with a smile as she flung herself onto one of the couches.

Rey scoffed and looked at Rose, giving her the look. "Which one of us still uses a flip phone that doesn't even have internet capabilities on purpose?"

"My phone does everything I need it to, thank you very much." Rose replied, raising her eyebrows.

"It's like I don't even know who you are sometimes."

"You don't know what you'd do without me." Rose replied, sticking her tongue out.

"You're bloody right about that. Who would I be perpetually single with if you weren't around?" Rey admitted.

"Exactly. Although, I'm still willing to put money on you getting married before I do. If I ever do." Rose replied.

Rey giggled as she responded. "You're so ridiculous. The more you say that, the more I'm convinced the universe is going to make sure you eat your words. You'll be married before all of us."

"And you say that every time it gets brought up. Stop giving the universe ideas." Rose threatened playfully, throwing one of the couch pillows at her.

Rey caught it and threw it back at her. "Rude." Rose just laughed.

"Are you going to record this with me or are you going to be a creep like you usually are and just watch me do it?"

"Hey! I am not creepy. Your subscribers love when I give my offscreen commentary. Makes it feel more authentic." Rose replied.

"Fair enough." Rey conceded with a sigh. "Let's get this over with then."

Rey leaned forward to hit the record button on her webcam before scooting back to her previous spot and positioning herself slightly off center.

"That mask is insane. There's no way this is a one off. They spent some serious time, or money, or both on that thing..."

"...most of you probably know, my name is Hux and you may have noticed I have a guest joining me today."

Hux spoke with an accent much like Rey's. There were a handful of highly successful YouTubers who were English, most of who she kept up with. But she couldn't say she'd seen his videos before.

"If you spend most of your free time getting sucked into the YouTube void, you should recognize my guest as Kylo Ren. That's right- THE Kylo Ren. Kylo doesn't normally agree to do collaborations, but after years and years of nagging, and despite constant threats of renouncing our friendship completely, he has agreed to do "The Best Friend tag" with me."

"I immediately regret all of my life choices that lead to this moment." Kylo said, speaking for the first time since the video started.

She noticed right away that the voice coming from the mask was... a bit odd. It was clearly going through a filter- a voice changer of some sort. She couldn't help but wonder what this guy did on his own channel. So much went into connecting to and finding an audience, and she had always believed that - whether you were putting on a persona for your channel or not- eye contact with the camera meant everything.

Clearly this Kylo Ren had found a way around that; if he was as popular as Hux made him out to be.

"You don't mean that, Ren" Hux replied rolling his eyes. "That means you regret the last ten years we've known each other and our entire friendship."

"I can already tell admitting to the internet that we know each other and that I willingly spend time with you was a mistake. Why did I agree to this again?" Kylo replied with a sigh.

Rey was completely sucked in. Hux and Kylo had a dynamic that was fun to watch. It was easy to tell that they were actually friends, as painful as that seemed to be for Kylo in that moment.

"Because despite what you want everyone to believe, you do actually enjoy my company. Also, your life would be a mess without me." Hux replied with a smirk.

Kylo didn't reply, and he didn't have to. His silence was almost funnier than anything he could've said. He just had a presence that telegraphed his disdain.

"They haven't even gotten to any of the questions yet and this is brilliant. Big thanks to everyone who requested this because I can already tell I'm going to love this." Rey said to the camera, a big smile on her face.

"Your silence is supremely encouraging, thank you." Hux continued. "So, we have a list of ten questions to answer for each other, and whoever gets the most right wins- because it means they actually pay attendant and know their best friend very well."

"I hope you're prepared to be supremely disappointed." Kylo said.

The tone of his voice didn't really change- but there had to at least be a smirk under that mask. Or the most exasperated facial expression in the entire world. As the video continued and Hux tried his best to get Kylo to participate in this little game he'd somehow convinced him to be part of in this first place, Rey found herself caught up in trying to imagine what the mystery man's facial expressions looked like. The one liners he would throw out were complete gold. Whether it was on purpose or not, his comedic timing was brilliant.

"First question- Describe each other in one word." Hux read out from the piece of paper in his hands. "There are plenty of words I could choose here.. but I think that 'mysterious' is probably best. All encompassing. Might be a bit too obvious though..."

"Delightful" Kylo suddenly says, clearly catching Hux off guard.

"I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me" Hux replied, genuine shock on his face.

"No, me. The word I think you should be using for me is delightful. You're more of an.... insufferable. Clingy."

"Clingy?! How am I clingy?!" Hux replied.

"There mere fact that I'm in this video right now proves that."

Hux was clearly not in control of the situation, and Rey had a feeling that wasn't unusual. Kylo knew how to get under Hux's skin.

"I've changed my mind. 'Insufferable' is now the word I'm using for you." Hux replied. "Okay, next question. How would you describe our friendship?"

"A ten hanging out with a five." Kylo replied without missing a beat.

Rey burst out into surprised laughter. This Kylo Ren was relentless. "This 'Kylo Ren' is either a comedic genius or a complete asshole. Maybe a little bit of both."

It didn't take long for Rose to pop in and join her- it was comedic gold and even she didn't want to miss out on it. It was funny if you listened to it, but watching it made it even better. Kylo Ren was so calm and composed- even in his body language. It contrasted well with how animated Hux was when he spoke.

"I can't believe this is the first time these two have collaborated. They've been depriving the internet of years of comedy gold." Rey said between laughs, trying to catch her breath. Rose was nearly in tears next to her as they continued to watch the video. By the time they reached the end of it, both of them were a mess.

"Oh my god Rose. What did we even just watch." Rey said, wiping tears from her face.

"You're right. It really is a travesty that this is the only collaboration video they've done... it's probably also a good thing though because otherwise I'd just sit around watching them and never get anything done." Rose replied.

"You and me both. Well, thank you again to everyone out there who requested this, because you just made our night. If you liked what you saw, don't gorget to subscribe and keep sending in requests. You guys are the best, we'll see you next time!" Rey said, closing out the video.

X x X x X x X

"I told you it was a brilliant idea." Hux said for what felt like the millionth time since he posted the video.

Be rolled his eyes, keeping his back turned and focusing on the task at hand. It didn't take that much concentration to cook dinner, but he knew it would annoy Hux.

"Are you just going to keep saying that every day, a thousand times a day until we die? It's been two months" Ben replied.

Hux scoffed. "Only until you admit I was right. Which I obviously was."

He couldn't exactly argue with him. Their video had reached a couple million views in just a few hours, and his subscriber count had definitely increased.

"You do realize I never said it was a bad idea in terms of content." Ben replied. "Kylo has never done a collaboration- that in itself was going to attract viewers."

"Exactly. I know you knew it was mutually beneficial. Which is why I still don't get why it took literally years of me begging for you to finally agree to it." Hux replied.

"Because you clearly still don't understand what it actually takes to keep my channel operating successfully. All it takes is one little hint- the smallest piece of identifiable information- and someone out there will figure it out. And then it'll be all over the internet and the 6 years of work I've put into my channel will mean nothing." Ben explained, finally turning around to look at him. "It's also why there was no way in hell I was letting you edit that thing without supervision." His lips twitched up into a smirk as Hux attempted to glare a hole through him.

"... I hate you."

Ben turned his attention back to the stove and smiled to himself. It was rare for Hux to not have a clever comeback. It usually only happened when he knew Ben had a point and didn't want to admit it. Normally, he'd give him shit for it, but he was feeling generous today. "So, what's on your long and exciting list of plans for the weekend?"

"Oh y'know, the usual." Hux sighed, sinking down onto the couch. "Hit the circuit. Take advantage of the free alcohol. Stop by at an unacceptable hour of the morning completely pissed and steal your leftovers."

"So, the usual then?" Ben asked, raising an eyebrow as he turned to walk over to the couch. He took a bite of the food he had just finished preparing and sat down. Hux's weekend antics had been the same since they were in their early 20's. It stopped phasing him a long time ago.

Hux shot him a knowing look. "Don't be bitter, Solo. You know you're more than welcome to join me instead of being a shut in all weekend. But only if you're not going to stand in the corner and sulk."

Ben protested. "Excuse me, I don't stand in the corner and sulk. I find a comfortable spot and observe. Despite my better judgement, I even let you convince me to get drunk enough to dance occasionally."

Hux snorted. "If only I still had videos from some of those nights. I don't know why you don't let loose more often."

Ben shook his head, taking another bite of his food. "It's part of the genius behind my branding decisions. I can decide when I want to go out and when I don't, and I rarely have to make appearances in general. Anyone can throw on a mask for a few minutes, shake some hands and leave."

"I don't think I've ever met someone who is as smart as you are, while also being an absolute moron." Hux replied. "You found a brand that has given you attention other YouTubers would kill for, while still maintaining anonymity and you're not even taking advantage of it."

"How many times have you given me this lecture now?" Ben asked, clearly amused by the situation.

"Clearly not enough. Because you still refuse to learn anything from my extremely valuable wisdom." Hux replied.

"I don't think 'wisdom' is really the word I'd use for it."

"You really are insufferable." Hux said, standing and grabbing his keys from the kitchen counter. "I'm going to get ready and at 7:00 I'm coming back here and you better be dressed and ready for a night you won't remember tomorrow." He was out the door, shutting it behind himself before Ben could respond.

He had a little under 3 hours to decide if he was going to indulge Hux or not. He could just leave. Find somewhere to hang out and be gone by the time Hux came looking for him. Ben sighed as he took the last couple bites of his food. "I'm really, really going to regret this." he mumbled to himself.

Eventually he talked himself into getting up and putting his dish in the sink. He spent a few minutes just staring down the hall at his bedroom door.

In his 20's, Ben had been part of Hux's antics more than his best friend likes to give him credit for. He's never used 'Kylo Ren' the way Hux would've if their roles were reversed. He'd even fired his long time manager not long ago because of it. When he first started his channel, he had almost been swayed to go in that direction with it. But he could only take the persona so far. It took him some time to realize it, but he still wanted to have parts of Ben Solo left when he turned the camera off. The bleed through was hard to maintain, and he'd made some mistakes he was still learning to live with. Some he'd probably spend the rest of his life trying to mend, if he ever had the courage to actually try and deal with any of it.

That was the thing Hux - or anyone else for that matter - would never understand. Not really. Hux had been one of the only people to actually witness him struggle through that time in his life. He'd encouraged Ben to fall into it; to do what his manager wanted. He still didn't know how their friendship survived that.

Ben snapped himself out of his thoughts, knowing that was not a spiral he wanted to go down today. "Damn it."

He knew he needed to get his mind off of it. He already hated the smug look Hux was going to have on his face when he showed up and Ben was actually dressed to go out.

When he reached his bedroom, he walked over to the closet and pulled out a black v-neck and a pair of black jeans. He knew it would only take him about 10 minutes to shower and get changed. It would still leave him with the better part of two hours to do some editing before Hux came looking for him.

It wasn't unusual for him to completely lose track of time when he was editing. He'd gone days without eating or sleeping before, and despite how much he hated to admit it, it was probably a good thing he had Hux around to bother him every couple of days to make sure he was still alive. At the moment, he had 3 videos recorded waiting to be edited and compressed. He tried to keep a pretty consistent upload schedule, considering it was where most of his income came from; well, the income he felt comfortable using.

Before he realized it, Hux was barging into his apartment. "Solo, I swear if I walk into that bedroom and you aren't-"

He didn't even have time to finish his sentence before he burst into the room. Ben swiveled around in his office chair to face him. It took all of Ben's restraint not to burst out laughing at the look on Hux's face. He looked so genuinely shocked, like he assumed he was going to have to drag Ben out of his apartment to get him to go out.

"Am I dead? I must have died on my way over to your flat because you're actually dressed and ready to go out like I told you to be." Hux said. "You have your good blazer on and everything!"

Ben smirked, enjoying the reaction he was getting out of him. "Don't make me regret this decision before we even leave my apartment."

"No. No way. Come on, let's go. You're not getting out of this now." Hux replied, reaching over and pulling Ben to stand up and practically dragging him out of the apartment.

"This is going to be a loongggg night." Ben mumbled to himself as he shut and locked the door behind them.

#reylo #rey x kylo ren #ben solo #fan fic #fanfic #star wars #rey x ben

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 4 years

Text

Stitched Up Heart – Out of the Darkness

Dead Rhetoric: Do you feel that releasing all of the songs on a monthly basis has given the album the support you were hoping for?

Mixi: To be honest, I have no idea what the sales look like now. It’s hard to compare because I have no idea what it would be if it was released all at once. The one thing I do like about it, is that it keeps momentum going. Instead of giving everyone the whole thing at once, you get a taste every month or so. You aren’t just throwing everything out that you have, and people’s attention spans are so short these days. I just feel that this is the way the rock industry is going to start moving – I think singles in general. I think the whole musical world is going to turn into a singles world instead of albums, just because of the way that the streaming situation is. But that’s just what I believe. Who knows what will happen? We were just trying to be innovative and try something new.

Dead Rhetoric: I can completely agree with that. There’s a lot of bands that are going towards more EP-type approaches, where they can put out 4 songs and maybe even just do that twice a year in some cases. It keeps you more in the loop.

Mixi: It took us three years to release new music. We are probably going to continue to do it somewhat like this. We’ll see how exactly it goes down, but I have a feeling that it is doing well. Obviously, our first week sales are going to be a lot different as well. But first week sales on any album in the industry today is a lot more difficult too. We’ll see what happens [laughs].

Dead Rhetoric: You had over 70 songs written for Darkness. What became the guideline as to what made a song one that you could work with versus one that was cut?

Mixi: We really wanted to evolve and grow. In the beginning, we really threw paint in opposite directions. From super, super heavy to super, super poppy. It was probably more than half way through the writing process when we realized that this was working. Lyrically, I changed what I felt that I wanted to say. Originally, I wanted this album to be all about strength, power, and hope, like “You can do it,” you know? The lyrics weren’t coming out completely authentically because deep down inside, I am a little girl [laughs]. I had stuff that I had to go through to make me feel strong. I found that writing the dark and the light together again was where I felt I could be the most authentic and real.

When it came to the music and sound, in the end, we finally dialed in where we wanted to go and the producer that we wanted to do it with. For us, the producer that we end up going with ends up kind of being the icing on the cake when it comes to the music. Never Alone was Mitchell Marlow, who I am actually going to be writing with next week. You can hear a different quality in producing versus Matt Good, who produced Darkness. They are two totally awesome producers, but also totally different and unique in their own way. They kind of turn into an extra band member. Out of the 70 songs we wrote, in the end, we used the last 11 or 12 that we wrote. We didn’t use more than two of the songs that we wrote previously. It was the last bunch that we ended up using for the record.

Dead Rhetoric: Was there anything you took away or learned from Never Alone that you wanted to do differently this time around?

Mixi: I think that we did pretty good in finding a good guideline [with Never Alone], but I don’t want any album to sound the same. We built a radio world with Never Alone, and we wanted to explore more on the artsy side of things with Darkness and see what happens. With Never Alone, we learned what a radio chart was – it was our first album with a label and a booking agent. We were really like a ‘baby band.’ We had been doing everything on our own before then. So I wouldn’t say there was anything we would do differently because I’m very proud of that album. But we just wanted to change it up and not write the same exact record. We are already working on thoughts and ideas for the next album, because we don’t want there to be such a gap.

Dead Rhetoric: Is there a song that you feel sticks out, or you personally identify with on Darkness?

Mixi: Every single one of them, but I think “Warrior” is one of my favorites. “Problems,” “Darkness,” “Lost” are all some of my favorites. I’m really very proud of this record. As far as lyrically, for me, I really tried to dig as possible and “Darkness” is probably the deepest I got, in terms of the content of the song. I really can’t pick a favorite, but for now I’ll say “Warrior.”

Dead Rhetoric: How important is the band’s relationship with fans – do you feel that the interactions has led you to a more devoted fanbase and larger following?

Mixi: I think it’s changed a little bit over time. When we first started touring, we would be out watching the shows and the other bands, hanging out in the audience front-and-center, hanging out with people the whole time, and then going to people’s houses and hanging out there until whenever. We were a lot more social, but as time goes on and touring happens – you get tired and things can get a little more dangerous. You kind of have to be a bit more careful as the fanbase grows. We’ve realized that we can’t always be out at the shows. There’s been a few scary situations. We try to be as connected as possible without putting ourselves into a situation that would be unsafe. But I definitely think that when bands are connected to their fans, and are available for them to reach out to at any point, to where there’s a level that fans feel more connected, they want to stick around longer. They aren’t so different.

Dead Rhetoric: With safety, I don’t think anyone is going to argue that point. As you get bigger as a band, there’s more exposure and for lack of a better term, there’s a lot of creepy people out there.

Mixi: [Laughs] Yeah, the bigger the band gets, it gets harder. It’s tougher to give all of the attention to everybody too. I would still come out to the merch tables and try to meet everyone but one person would cut like, and I had no control, and then someone wants to talk for an hour while the next one is waiting, and I wouldn’t know what to do. We have found that doing the VIP thing is better to filter people out – people that really want to meet the band and want a guarantee to meet us and hang out. It also helps the band afford to be able to keep touring.

Dead Rhetoric: What have been some of your favorite touring experiences? Do you feel you learn something new each time you go out on the road with different bands?

Mixi: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think the Godsmack tour and the Halestorm tour were probably the biggest learning experiences for us. We had never been on an arena tour before. Halestorm took us out on our first arena tour and it was just like, what we got a taste of it, “Wow!” There’s so much that goes into it, and so much to learn. You try to soak up everything that you can. But everything is a learning experience though. We learn a lot of what not to do [laughs], and I think that’s why bands progress and grow. We tried to learn from what we did right and wrong in the last run, and try to fix it in the next tour so we can get better and grow. We’ve learned a lot from those bigger tours.

Dead Rhetoric: You’ve toured with a number of various musical bands on tour, do you feel that Stitched Up Heart has an advantage in that regard? It seems like you are pretty malleable as a group, where you can do a tour with Godsmack or Lacuna Coil, or you can do Steel Panther or Sebastian Bach.

Mixi: It’s really interesting, because I don’t think the active rock radio genre has really hit the market or ‘80s hair metal, or the mix in-between very much. The response we got from the Steel Panther fans was a surprise. We didn’t think anybody would latch onto us, because our music isn’t really like theirs. But with the show, they were really so excited and it went over so well, that when the Sebastian Bach tour [offer] happened, we’ll see how his fans go – but so far, I think we can try different genres and see what happens. I mean, how many times can you go out with the same band? We are trying to do something different, as you can tell, we like to do that a lot.

Dead Rhetoric: You’ve also made a lot of connections with other bands out on the road – does that networking aspect help among bands?

Mixi: It is huge. To build relationships, in general, with everyone. There’s so many bands that I look up to, and we are doing a bunch of festivals soon. I just can’t wait! I want to meet everyone. But building relationships is such a big deal – be it with bands, radio stations, our fans and followers. It’s important. It’s probably the most important thing – to build big, genuine relationships.

Dead Rhetoric: Patreon is a platform that more bands are doing, but there was some pushback when it first started. How do you feel that you’ve benefitted from it?

Mixi: Well, I met you [laughs]! I definitely wouldn’t know you so well [without Patreon]. Behind the scenes, you can go out of your way to ensure that they [supporters] are happy and you can go out of your way to give them a little extra little things that you can’t do with the usual person who watches your social media or Spotify. There’s t-shirts, paintings, handwritten lyrics, Skype hangouts – it’s definitely helped to grow this family that supports and helps each other. Again, it helps the people that really, truly care – I feel like I can go to them with any concerns or what I’m feeling any day and just tell them and it will be totally fine. They aren’t going to judge me like the rest of the social media world would. They really, really care.

Also, when it comes to the money – musicians don’t make a lot of money, I feel that Patreon is such a huge movement for independent artists, or even artists like us who are on a label. The music money goes to the label for paying for the albums. When we go on tour, we make money. When we get home, we are just sitting there, on our hands, like what do we do? No musician wants to get a job delivering pizzas, which is what I have been doing for years and years before Patreon happened. I’d go on the road and be a rock star, then come home and deliver pizzas. It was just the worst! You can’t keep a normal job when you are constantly touring. I realized that Patreon has made me able to focus solely on music and art, and it has been amazing. It also gives me time to do more volunteer work as wel.

Dead Rhetoric: I think there is a difference too – if you look at your Patreon compared to some others out there. There’s a lot of focus on your end. Not all of them have that same level of effort. It’s a testament to what you do that you are able to grow with it as well.

Mixi: I don’t really know what other people do, but I like to be able to touch base with the secret groups every single day. I try to make sure that everyone hears from me at least once a month with the signed autograph things, but I really can’t compare since I don’t know what other people do. But I’m glad that you think I do a good job, because I feel like I never really do enough. You have no idea how grateful I am for it. I think about it every day. If I didn’t have this, I would be so bummed. I want to make sure that everyone is happy, all the time. Maybe that’s why there’s not too many people that every really leave my Patreon, they usually just drop down. I hope that we’ve built a pretty decent community.

Dead Rhetoric: You just mentioned the volunteering piece. You do a lot of work with animals – rescue kittens, horses and have the Filthy Animal clothing company, among other things. Is it important to give back?

Mixi: Absolutely – I feel like this world, if you are constantly taking, the world will take too. It’s a balance. When I do things to help the kittens, I feel like it helps me more than I am helping them. Right now, it’s not really kitten season, and I’m bummed that I can’t bottle-feed. It’s starting up soon, but I’ll be on tour most of the year. But when I can between tours, it doesn’t even feel like volunteer work when you love it. The horses – when the fires happened in Malibu I got kind of drawn into it. They haven’t really needed my help much lately, so I feel I need to find more stuff to volunteer for until kittens are back in season. I feel like doing stuff for others feeds your soul so much. You get back way more than what you give.

Dead Rhetoric: At this point in your life, what does Stitched Up Heart mean to you?

Mixi: It is probably one of the most important things to me. The band is on my mind constantly, 24/7. I think about it all the time, and I don’t know what I would do without it. It’s a top priority.

Dead Rhetoric: In looking at the cover for both albums, is there any connection with having birds on the covers of Never Alone and Darkness?

Mixi: Obviously, I love animals so I wanted to make sure that the artwork for Never Alone had animals on it. It needed to be something that represented what the lyrical content was – hopefulness and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. All of that positive energy that was a part of that album. The doves being a very light representation of being able to break free through the window, with the darkness inside. You are in the darkness and going into the light.

With Darkness, I kept seeing crows everywhere. I looked at it as a sign, and it would coincide with the doves. I wanted it to be the opposite, where you are going back into the darkness again, but you aren’t as afraid. It’s like the dark dove diving back into the clouds with the white background. It’s like life, there’s ups and downs, tunnels and light. The more you go through it the more you grow and learn.

Dead Rhetoric: You have some dates for the coming months already announced. Is the plan for 2020 basically just to tour as much as possible?

Mixi: Yeah, lots of festivals, and lots of tours. We are going to try to start writing more music, so that when this album comes out, we can keep a more consistent release time in the future. We’re trying to keep things moving!

#alecia mixi demner #stitched up heart #2020 interviews

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drnucleus · 5 years

Text

Burn This – A Review in Thirst, Energy and Hilarity

When @leofgyth offered me to go with her and a group of friends to see Adam Driver star in Burn This on Broadway I was ecstatic. Go see our fave in person and hang out with some fellow Adam Stans/Reylos? Hell yes. Also, there be spoilers ahead so BEWARE.

So, in preparation I bought a copy of the play. I read if four times before seeing it Saturday night. Mostly because Jimmy, aka Pale – Adam’s character has dizzying monologues that rail and race along a rollercoaster of emotion that on the page make them hard to follow. I knew though, instinctually that Adam would pull off the dizzying effect to great degree.

The house music was all 80s great new wave hits that set the right tone. From Manic Monday to Voices Carry. I was immediately transported to a time when I was too young to remember much aside from the music blaring from my mom’s record player.

Now I don’t want to spend this entire review thirsting after Adam. Because believe me, no one who goes into that play comes out not thirsting to some degree. I’ll get to him soon. But first I really want to talk about the other three characters in the play. What they brought to it. How they fared up against Adam’s intensity and undeniable energy.

First up, let’s talk about Burton. He’s Anna’s off and on boyfriend. He’s a screenwriter, rich, successful, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’s enamored with Anna despite the fact that they seem more square peg-round hole as a pairing. He’s funny, however. His entire monologue about how there are no good movies in Hollywood and how everything gets remade every ten years is hilariously accurate even 32 years after the initial Broadway run and just goes to show that not much has changed three decades.

Burton is flawed. Entitled. Spoiled. Not used to understanding the financial struggles that Anna and Larry have gone through. But he has a good heart despite himself. He’s played by David Furr, who is almost as tall as Adam, and pretty fit too. He’s a big guy with a teddy bear like quality about him that makes you feel comfortable in his proximity. He brings that sort of energy to Burton and you kind of feel for the guy that he is the supporting lover who gets passed over and not the romantic lead. His interaction with Pale is limited to one scene of spectacular inebriated fighting and revelation. His interactions with Anna are soft, and bring out his insecurity as a writer, and the rambling disjointed way he describes his ideas hit home for a writer like myself.

Let’s move on to Larry. Oh Larry. He’s gay. A marketing exec. And dear fucking GOD he is the hidden gem of this play. I went in expecting excellent performances from Keri and Adam and they no doubt delivered. Larry consistently stole scenes from every fucking cast member, Adam included. He was so funny and his timing and delivery were perfection. From him flopping himself down on the sofa whilst playfully calling Anna a slut for fucking Pale. To him singing the song Pale sings to her to tease her about hearing the entire tryst. To his reaction to Burton’s story about getting blown by some rando guy in the snow in his twenties. To the call back to that moment with something along the lines of “Hey Burton, look, it’s snowing, wanna find a dark doorway?” He’s cheeky and enigmatic and loves Anna with a brotherly protectiveness that is so lovely. Brandon Uranowitz is the actor who plays him and he’s a delightful surprise. When I read the play I was paying far more attention to Pale and Anna’s connection than to the wise cracking gay man she lives with. Definitely pay attention to him if you happen to be going to the play. He’s so wonderful.

Now let’s dish on Ms. Russell. At first blush you can tell she is really starting to get her bearings as a stage actress. To be frank, stage acting is very different than screen acting. You have to emote more, you have to be slightly over the top to ensure that even the person in the last row can feel the intensity of emotion you’re displaying. Whereas on a screen it’s easier to be subtle and still have the same effect. What bits of her acting style have changed since she’s started the play have shown through and shine through a beautifully nuanced performance that not even two unscripted improvisations by Adam Driver could completely throw her out of character for more than a split second to give him a “Are you fucking kidding me?” look a chuckle and then move on. She gives emotion and vulnerability as well as a gigantic emotional brick wall around herself as Anna as both Pale and Burton try to bust it down. With only Pale who is the one to break through.

She walks herself through grief. Anger at Robbie – her dance partner who dies suddenly and is the emotional center of the play as she tries to move from being a dancer to a choreographer. Desperation for connection – with Burton – only to shove him away when his enthusiasm and compassion become too much. To her frightened exchange with Pale upon their first scene together to how he busts down her walls and makes her reach out to comfort him through his pain of losing his younger brother. She holds her own against Adam’s explosive performance. She has her own moments that are just as gut wrenching but in her you feel the tight containment of her discipline as a dancer that beautifully juxtaposes Pale’s explosive grief.

I knew going to see Adam would be an experience. Having seen his performances on the big screen and the small screen I knew this was a role he would both love and find so much meat to sink his acting chops into. This is Adam at his finest. He’s an emotional trainwreck throughout the play. In his first scene he steals the audiences attention, commanding it as he paces like a caged animal, ranting about parking and pot holes, and Ray the bartender who he decked out for not shutting up to full on the floor, full body sobs with real tears and screams of grief. His dialogue is dizzying and circular, coming back around several times with the same questions. He plays inebriated, drunk, coke high and belligerent with an authenticity and veracity that makes it almost too real. Pale has no filter. He thinks it he says it. Bluntly. Boldly. It’s the exact kind of snark and sass that Adam is becoming famous for a la Adam Sackler in Girls and the explosive anger of Sackler and his even more famous character Kylo Ren/Ben Solo of the Star Wars franchise. His physicality and range of emotions in his opening scene is enough to give the audience emotional whiplash.

His acting ability in person is even more powerful than it is on the screen. You feel the emotions he sends out as a wave of energy that engulfs and enslaves the room. We laugh at his snark and quick wit, but the audience grows quiet as Pale begins to work through his intense grief. There’s a humanness to Adam’s style that makes you believe that he is not just some actor playing a part but that he IS Pale in those moments. That type of immersive acting is something I personally will never forget and am so grateful for seeing in person.

Physically, I didn’t think Adam could get more attractive than I had seen in photos, tv and movies. Oh boy was I wrong. Every review I read. Every interview with female costars I’ve read. All of that previous knowledge did nothing to prepare me for the reality of seeing him in person. The minute you hear his voice, yelling just offstage for Anna to let him in at five in the morning, the hair on the back of your neck stands up because you know an entrance™ is about to be made.

Bursting on stage he gets uproarious applause from the audience as he launches into his initial rant about pot holes, and finding parking in a city that’s dying of crotch rot. He’s so good at going from 0-100 on the emotional scale at the drop of a hat that it’s startling to witness in the same room.

From him taking off his pants to not wrinkle them your eyes immediately go to the stark contrast of his pale legs against the black socks, shirt and underwear. Or to him gliding out of Anna’s bedroom on his second visit there in her purple floral silk kimono (that he ripped the sleeve of rather accidentally) with it open to reveal more pale skin and tiny euro black briefs that made the entire audience audibly inhale. Adam’s costumes throughout the play go from sleek suits to the fun comical use of a woman’s robe to a leather bomber, jeans and shitkickers. His stage presence and physical form is a veritable feast for the eyes as his voice, intonations and blue collar diction is just as entertaining. He improvs as I mentioned before, once when he did a little twirl that seemed like it was extremely on the fly, an amused smirk on his face as Keri almost broke out laughing. And again, when they’re on the sofa together and he did something that surprised her but I can’t quite pinpoint what that was having only seen the play once.

All in all this is a play where nothing happens and everything happens. Four people processing grief in varying degrees. From Larry and Anna’s personal grief as Robbie’s found family, to Pale’s outrageous self-destructive spiral and Burton’s tangential disconnected sympathy. It makes Burn This and Lanford Wilson’s prose jump from page to stage with veracity and life that I think would make the playwright proud.

#burnthis #broadway #adam driver #keri russell

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nikkidrobertson · 6 years

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4 Back to School Tips for New (and not so new) School Librarians

*originally written for School Library Journal

Congratulations on your new job as a school librarian! It is hands down the absolutely best job...EVER! Last year, entering my twenty-sixth year as an educator and twenty-first year as a school librarian, I found myself in the position of being a new librarian again in quite a few ways. I retired from Alabama and moved to Texas for an awesome school library position to work for an administrator for whom I have great respect and admiration. I moved from working at a high school library for the past twelve years to working at an elementary school. I moved from having a flexible schedule to a fixed schedule as part of the Specials rotation with Art, Music, and PE. I moved from having amazing, full time library aides to having no full time aide. I changed from having no district library supervisor to having and incredibly supportive one. I moved from not having a unified district library structure to having a very well structured program. So much was all new to me! Below are four tips to help you as you enter this new chapter of your life.

Get Connected

Being a school librarian can be a shockingly isolating profession, especially after having formed tight, supportive networks while you were a classroom teacher. As a school librarian you are in a sort of no man’s land. You aren’t part of the teacher peer group, you aren’t part of the administrative peer group. Often, you are the only person in your school that works in and understands what it takes to run an active, engaging, supportive library. Many school districts, unfortunately, often perpetuate this isolation by not allowing time for district librarians to meet and plan collaboratively which only exacerbates the isolation.

FIND YOUR PEOPLE

Don’t wait around for your district to connect you. Reach out to the other librarians in your district and find out what you have in common. Maybe your children both play softball, go to gymnastics, or dance class. Perhaps you could set up playdates, or other social interactions to get together outside the school day. My favorite since my children are grown and out of the house is to set up weekend brunch/lunch meetings or after school dinner meetings. Talk, have fun, swap ideas and plan. Plus, it’s fun to have time away with friends who really get each other. Don’t stop there. Connecting with librarians outside of your school, district, and state, and country brings a unique worldview into your library program and enriches student learning.

Where To Find Your People

Twitter

Twitter is one of the best places you can go to connect, share, learn and grow with other school librarians and connected educators. Twitter is how I went from being a burned out educator to feeling like I never want to do anything else but teach. Teaching before Twitter was lonely, frustrating, and boring. Teaching with Twitter is energizing, invigorating, fun, creative, and I never want to get off this ride of bringing awesome learning opportunities to my students and teachers.

There are a few secrets to truly harnessing the power of Twitter.

Hashtags: By following, commenting, sharing, and connecting using hashtags you will maximize your own professional learning.

Three hashtags I’d recommend for school librarians are:

#TLChat

#FutureReadyLibs

#ISTELib

Don’t limit yourself to just these hashtags. Make sure to connect using state education hashtags, makerspace hashtags, and educational technology hashtags as well.

Twitter Chats: Twitter chats are the scheduled conversations, usually in a Q/A format lead by a moderator or moderators that take place on a weekly or monthly basis.

Two places to find hashtags for you, your teachers, and administrators are:

Participate Learning Chats

Cybraryman’s Educational Hashtags

Facebook

Facebook is a great place to join groups. A few of my favorite Facebook Groups include:

Future Ready Librarians

ISTE Librarians Network

The School Librarian’s Workshop

MakerSpaces and the Participatory Library

Professional Development Resources for School Librarians

Below are a few professional development resources where you can find your people and have official professional development at the same time.

Future Ready Librarians Webinars

Library 2.0 Webinar Series

ISTE Librarians Network Professional Development

I owe my much of my success to my PLN. Without their strength, support, guidance, ideas and more I would not be able to accomplish so many of my professional and personal goals. Through social media connections I have developed true friendships with other librarians and educators who will cry with you and lift you up when you are struggling and laugh, dance, and celebrate with you when you are successful.

Be Fearless

Be fearless even if you are trembling on the inside. Be the one who demonstrates that it is ok to not know something but be willing to learn, fail, and start again. We need to model for both our students and our teachers the willingness to not know everything and the need to not control everything.

While I am in no way a fan of being on a fixed schedule as part of the Specials rotation, was awesome to have a captive audience to try out new ideas garnered through my incredible and diverse PLN (Professional Learning Network). I loved learning about a new technology, app, website, craft, and more and knowing that I could go into work the next day and try it out with the kids even if I didn’t really know how to do it myself. Part of the fun was learning right along with the students and letting them teach me!

We also need to assist our teachers with expanding collaboration beyond the school building to forge authentic real world learning opportunities with others across the country and around the world using video conferencing tools like Google Hangouts, YouTube Live, and Skype. Events like Read Across America, World Read Aloud Day, International Dot Day, Andy Plemmons’ Picture Book Smackdown, Elissa Malespina’s virtual debates, Stony Evans’ #StonyStories empowering students to be in house PD and national presenters, National Poetry Month/Poem in Your Pocket Day, Mystery Skype, and so many more events can be made exponentially better by connecting with other schools celebrating or doing the same things. I love that Shannon Miller put together a Google Document this past year where we can all share monthly Library Celebrations, any of which could be made collaborative.

One new technology I want to use this year is #GridPals via FlipGrid. I introduced my students and school to FlipGrid during my first year. Students, teachers, administrators, and parents could all contribute to our two FlipGrid topics; Book of the Day and Quote of the Day. These grids were then incorporated into our morning news show. That way the whole school community had an opportunity to be part of the morning announcements.

This year I want to connect my students through the new #Gridpals program. While FlipGrid has a Google Form where you can connect your students with other students around the world, you can always team up with another teacher or teachers you know to do something similar on your own.

I challenge you this year to be fearless! Part of being fearless is stepping out and trying new things even if you have never tried them before. The willingness to learn and put yourself out there even if failure ensues (and it will) is the most fearless thing you can do!

Remember That You Are HUMAN

Entering a brand new chapter as a school librarian I set an impossibly high bar for myself in part because I knew what I had been able to do in my past schools. I failed to take into account all of the supports that I had in place in my old schools that I no longer had in my new school; a full time aide, a flexible schedule, student library aide (a great high school perk), and more.

I worked myself at a frenzied pace to try to meet my own unrealistic goals. I weeded a collection that had not been weeded properly in twelve years with the help of my new district library supervisor, Becky Calzada. I genrefied the collection. I ripped shelving off the walls, moved and discarded furniture, and took apart and rearranged the circulation desk. I started a morning news show for our school’s morning announcements. I created makespace style centers and introduced cool new technologies to the kids like green screens, robotics, coding, and more. My third through fifth grade students created and maintained digital portfolios.

I found myself working all night at home and all weekend just to keep up with all the tasks I had heaped on my professional plate. I was exhausted, frustrated, angry, and after just the first year at my new school I was quickly moving into burnout mode.

Then I talked to my library hero and mentor, Jennifer Lagarde. After attentively listening to my woes she said, “What advice would you give another librarian if they were saying these same things to you?” Jennifer also asked, “Would you talk to another librarian the way you are talking to yourself?” Wow! Jennifer’s words really made me stop and think.

I would advise another librarian to choose just one goal for each school year and concentrate on that. I’d also say, “Give yourself a break. Celebrate the cool things you are doing rather than beating yourself up over the things you aren’t doing.” Being a connected educator is great for ideas and support from people who “get you” but can also make you feel as if you aren’t doing enough. As long as students are your main focus you are moving in the right direction. You are not a superhero. You are a beautiful, wonderful, talented human being with much to offer to your new students, staff, administrators, parents, and community members.

Make Community Connections

The PTA, parents, and grandparents this first year in Texas were my saving grace. I was so fortunate to have an involved and supportive PTA. They took charge of the first Scholastic Book Fair of two booked by the previous librarian for the school year. I still felt as if I was drowning when that first book fair came around and couldn’t have possibly done it without them.

I was also blessed with some pretty incredible parent and grandparent volunteers. With over 800 students and a tight back to back fixed schedule the ability to just shelve books was overwhelming. My two grandparent volunteers, Ms. Gloria and Ms. Jean came every Tuesday and Thursday to shelve books. Whew! If it weren’t for them I would be buried under piles of books. Ms. Phan, Ms. Bercu, Ms. Roberts, and Ms. Williams were also great helpers, often coming in to shelve books but also to help out with our library center activities.

My new school also hosted a WatchDog Dads program. My very basic understanding of the program is that the dads come to school with their kids and help out where needed but also spend time with their kids in class. Just at moments when I thought I would just curl up into a ball and start crying, a WatchDog Dad would walk into the library and save me. One day in particular the Internet went out which meant my book checkout system was down as were most of my center activities. I was frantically trying to devise a plan when three WatchDog Dads walked into the library. Together we quickly came up with a plan of action and the day was saved!

My principal and front office staff also helped me out by sending substitute teachers to the library whenever they had a planning period on their schedule. I liked this because I could learn more about the school and community by talking and making friends with them. I can’t believe I went 25 years without knowing you could have substitutes help out like that!

Final Thoughts

More than any other advice I can give I think the most important things you can do as a new librarian is have fun, don’t take yourself too seriously, and always put serving others with joy (even when you don’t feel joyful) before all other tasks (management tasks can wait...people are more important).

Want to read my 5 Tips for New School Librarians (and those who aren't so new) posted summer of 2017? Click HERE and enjoy!

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