#even the video I uploaded to day is a great example of this

[vidding]

On June 23, 2021, You Tube announced that any Pre-2017 unlisted videos will be made private on July 23, 2021. Why? BTW this is an attempt to raise awareness about an event few fans may even know took place and highlight the importance of supporting archiving projects. It's written by those directly involved - any re-blogs are appreciated. An example of a rescued vid is at the end. Security update: Why? You Tube screwed up when it first developed unlisted videos. There was a loophole. Any unlisted video that was added to a playlist would automatically be made public. Oops! June 23, 2021 was when they made a formal announcement about their efforts to rectify it. You Tube's Solution? - Blanket privatization of ALL pre-2017 unlisted videos & then apply the security update for all new unlisted videos going forward. What if you don't want your pre-2017 unlisted videos to be made private? Filling out a form telling You Tube to do nothing is one option. Great for people who don't mind filling forms to send to You Tube. Make your videos public. 🤨 or download them and reupload them then make them unlisted with the new update. 🙄 You can watch the video below for descriptions of all the options. Most not ideal. Official Video: Released June 23, 2021. You can watch it whenever if you want to, but I must say contrary to what one would expect it is a very clear explanation without too much technical jargon. However, it doesn't really explain the obvious ramifications of this.

What are the freaking Ramifications: You Tube is 18 years old. What?!?!! 😲 Yeah, I know. Any pre-2017 videos would account for more than half of You Tube's history (11 years) and therefore fandom's history on You Tube. How many fans would be aware they had a 30-day notice and could act in time? Were you even aware of this?

More Issues: More importantly, how many users with abandoned accounts with noteworthy, valuable unlisted fanvids are no longer around to fill out a form. How many "Dead Embeds" would be the result of this when the videos go private. Many prefer to Unlist and Embed on other sites. Unlisted is not the same as private. It only means the videos can't be searched and found on You Tube but is available to anyone with a link or Embed. Private basically means no longer accessible and limited to people who were emailed a link directly.

There were only 2 people in Fandom (to my knowledge) who worked on rescuing content like that. We had about 2 weeks before the July 23, 2021 deadline to archive about 11 years of Pre-2017 unlisted fanvids and ask questions later. One of those people was Morgan Dawn and the other was myself. Other archive teams did work on this but their focus was on other types of videos related gaming, political history, anime, etc. Essentially non-fandom. In a nutshell, our collaboration led to the rescue approximately 12K unlisted fan videos. 12K fanvids that would have been made private forever and unable to be seen. The Work About 50% of that total came from accounts that had never uploaded a video since 2018. The work involved required more technical knowledge & resources than we had ever used before on any prior archive projects. There were several brand-new archive techniques we developed specifically out of necessity during that intense time period. One example was renting multiple virtual machines to sift through thousands of playlists just to find a fraction of unlisted videos. There was so much at stake. What happened with the content that was archived?

To my knowledge, there isn't an Open Doors for fanvids. There is just a few dedicated individuals who may be bad at promoting their work. Let's face it, when there is a fire at a library you marshal all resources to save as many books as you can and worry about everything else later. If archiving speaks to you whether that is fanzine, oral history or fanvid related, then there are certain things you can do:

Follow this Tumblr (we will post about relevant projects here)

If you have time, ask us how you can volunteer on projects and see if what we offer works for you. You can always opt out.

Re-blog this so that maybe someone who does have time sees this.

If you don't have time support our Patreon https://patreon.com/vidding

If you don't have time or money like this post acknowledging you appreciate that this work is being done even if you can't assist in those ways.

Choose whichever options work for you if possible.

This kind of work is done by very few people and not necessarily by those you would think would do this type of work. It can fly under the radar and so can support. This is an attempt to raise awareness which sometimes we are too busy to take time to do. If support doesn't go to the right places projects like this may never have happen or may not be as successful as they could be. This Unlisted You Tube Project is a perfect example of something a lot of fans may not be aware even took place. Thank you for whatever method of support you choose. The following experience was brought to you by archiving.

The following vid is one of the 12k saved. It's a Kirk/Spock vid. You will not find this vid anywhere but here. I know. I went to the original vidder's You Tube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@xKelociraptor and they have other vids on there. Last vid uploaded 11 years ago and no contact info. You want to know the kicker? I looked at all the other vids they have available but the best one (in my opinion) is the one that was unlisted & rescued. Unlisted vids are not necessarily unfinished projects or bad takes of a final version that should not see the light of day. They can in some cases be the best vids you will never see.

If you liked this post you might like this:

The last vidder friendly hosting & streaming site?

#fanvid #vidding #archiving #Youtube

[themessengervevo]

Hello my followers. Today I'm posting something that's not a piece of art I made or a responce to an ask, because I need your help. Several days ago, with the help of my very supportful art teacher, I made a Google account and a Youtube channel as well. She wanted me to post my music on there because she liked it alot and wanted other people to discover it as well. I shared those thoughts too. I also wanted to have a Google account as well because I had one up until 2019 where a phone number being removed caused it to instantly remove my access to the Google account, and thus the Youtube channels I had, which included an earlier instance of a channel dedicated to my music. My most succesful channel only had a slight big over a hundred subscribers.

So I got the Google account, and the Channel set up to where I wanted it and started work on the first upload. It was supposed to a full upload of my album "Suffering Embedded in Logic" with a remastering done by me. I completed the full upload, and even gone through the effort of verifying my account for the purpose of being able to upload a one hour video without hassle. I uploaded it, the copyright checks went through fine, and I uploaded it to the channel. I, obviously considering the big steps I took to getting here, advertised it everywhere, and I wanted to advertise it on this account as well. But then, after a total of three days since creating the account, and not even a day after uploading the video, I was greated to a screen.

It said my video was removed because my account has been terminated. I was obviously very much distressed by this. What could've caused this termination? Why? Was it the full album I posted? Was it something completely different? Did I spent all this time wishing to have a channel again to then be euthanized like that? So I sent an appeal to Youtube regarding my channel.

I got an email confirming that they were looking into the appeal, and that I would get it in around 2 business days.

All well and good, right? Well, I woke up today to this lovely message in my Inbox:

This was obviously shocking to me. In the email regarding my termination, Youtube said my channel had "severe or repeated violations of [their] Community Guidelines". I believe that I wasn't doing anything that could break their Guidelines. What part of the Guidelines I was apparently breaking was not detailed in any way, so in my appeal I said for them to atleast guide me to where in the Guidelines I was breaking these rules, but in their reply not only did they not tell what I was apparently breaking, but doubled down on their decision and are keeping me terminated. Fun little fact, you can only make ONE appeal to them, and no more.

This was infuriating to say the least. Not only did they banned someone who didn't do anything, they didn't even include a reason or anything so at to why they did this. So in their Feedback form thing, I wrote them this:

Please, PLEASE read this fully if you want to see my thoughts on this, but if you really can't, here is a "tl;dr" on my thoughts.

I have 2 working theories that might explain why I was inexplicably banned from this platform. And both arent the brightest in their image.

The first theory I have is that this is all a work of a Bot that just so decided to screw over a person for some false reasoning that it sticked to. This theory is confirmed by several support threads on Google's own support forums regarding this exact issue (which are still being made to this day), the one linked as an example. From there, I saw many a person talk about their channels being unfairly banned for unexplained reasons, including a small martial arts group that were only uploading clips of them. that martial arts group got the reasoning of "spam, deceptive practices, and misleading material" for their ban. I believe their network of bots sometimes falsely flag people and terminate them, and that human support doesn't come to correct these bots for many of the smaller people, resulting in an unfair permanent banning. As such, I proposed for them to give reasons as to why they ban people, as well as up the amount of appeals you can do, as well as for them to make their bots better.

The second theory though has more serious allegations. I don't usually talk about where I live, mostly for privacy concerns and also that I believe you shouldn't give out all your information for strangers online, but I have to talk about it for this part. I live in Russia. I have been living in Russia for my whole life. It isn't the best place to live in my opinion, but I've been stuck on this patch of land since I was born. Ever since the Russo-Ukranian War started, the already somewhat negative outlook of people outside of Russia has dropped significantly, many people from there who catered to people outside of Russia received many threats. One of my best friends, who I like to call Reggie, that is working in a store dedicated to people with Autism, had to stop working in Global markets because there was so much hate for Russians at the time that the Dollar-to-Ruble ratio dropped massively, and it was just too much. Many sites put sanctions on Russian sectors, including PayPal, which led to many Russians who used it to basically be poor. Which leads me to believe this: The reason why Youtube terminated my account with no explanation is because either it's human support is xenophobic, or that Youtube itself is xenophobic. I do not like this though, but I'm more and more convinced that this is the case.

Which leads me to a wider discussion of how Youtube is fundamentally broken. From letting big youtubers to stay on the platform despite them breaking their own rules, to many spam comments and scam accounts that exist solely to harvest subscribers and unsuspecting victims, to the whole ElsaGate debocle an how it returned in BIG amounts with Youtube doing nothing, to innocent channels getting silenced and punished for just existing, I believe that what Youtube meant in "making sure that Youtube is a safe place to all" is that they would make sure that Youtube is a safe place to all the big channels that are making money for them, which include scammers, botted accounts, hacks, and big television networks. I say NO to that. I say

FUCK

YOUTUBE

Youtube has shown to be late to things that should've been resolved way earlier, that they do not care about serious violations of their rules unless it is explicitly called out on Twitter, that they are inherently racist, homophobic, and xenophobic as was shown in many cases prior to this one (CoryXKenshin immediately brings to my mind), and that they will let their biggest cashcows to continue thriving on their platform and giving them money, even if they are the most scummiest creatures of this earth. This should NOT be how Youtube is. It should be a safe community for many people to go about their lives posting things they want to do, knowing they are safe from the threats of people who would gladfully steal their work knowing they are bigger than you and can get away with it or the system not banning them for arbitrary things they dont know. It should be safe for all, but its only safe for the biggest. So I again say

FUCK

YOUTUBE

Please spread my story everywhere you can. Reblog this, crosspost this, blaze it, share it anywhere (but especially on Twitter) you can to let my story be known. Please let everyone know how broken Youtube is, and keep fighting. Even when my Youtube account gets restored, keep. fighting. Keep fighting for the hope that Youtube will FINALLY listen to their cries, and that they will start fixing their shit, because any win we have is one step towards a truly safe place for all. If you have/had any experiences like this, or you live in Russia as well, tell me your thoughts and your story! Hopefully, this will lead to more stories of Youtube being in the wrong, and this will lead to a better future.

Hope you read and understood all of this.

So now that you have read of my channel's unfortunate sudden end, you might be wondering this:

"Well that was sad to hear, but how can I help YOU specifically?"

Glad you're asking that! I would love to have your support in any way. So here are places where you can help!

Tumblr

Obviously, considering you where you're currently are, you can support me here on Tumblr by reblogging and following this blog, as well my side blog @mailyftw! Here I post the art I make, as well as any serious announcements, while on the side blog I like reposting various things and showing whatever doodles I made today. It would be very helpful for me. You can also support me on Newgrounds, it's basically my side art archive, and also a music archive! Speaking of music,

Bandcamp

This is where I primarily upload my music on. I've been making Caretaker-like music since 2020, and I would love for you lot to hear it, espcially since I improved from that time. I may upload the remastered version of the album I mentioned earlier with some new tracks added, since I was planning to do this for a while now. I also host on there my supergroup The Haggstrom's albums. We've had some stuff out for a while to enjoy, infact we're making an album ABOUT the problems Youtube has! We have a dedicated server where you can talk about them and even make a submission for our projects, so if you want to support not only my work but the collective works of many people, you can do so by clicking this sentence! It would be very much appreciated, since work has exponentially slowed down there.

WeVidi and BitView

These two Youtube alternatives is where I currently upload my work to. On WeVidi, I upload content related to my music, particularly my albums. And on BitView I upload everything else basically, including memes and animation (hopefully soon). If you want to support me on there, please make an account on these platform and subscribe and share my videos, it will not only help me to be seen, but also help these revivals to thrive as more people see them. Hopefully, they won't lead to a Vidlii situation! Hopefully.

Socials, also known as "Other"

If you want to support me somewhere else, here are some other places I frequent: - SpaceHey! It's a revival of MySpace, and it's really great. I'm always on there, and I sometimes make bulletins or blogs. Friend me if you want! I'll accept most people that are sane and like the things I like. - Discord! Message me at the___messenger and maybe friend me too! Again, I'll accept most people that are sane and like the things I like. If you're one of the "big people", and you want to interview me, go ahead! Though please, link this blog post and the big places I'm in, and be mindful that I don't have the best camera in the world so I'll most likely be doing this in text or on phone. - Reddit! I'm active on there under Spot_Mark, you can message me if you want. Again, I'll accept most people that that are sane and like the things I like, or people wanting to interview me. - Escargot! If you are particularly privy, you can message at [email protected]. Once again, I'll accept most people that that are sane and like the things I like, or people wanting to interview me. Note that you'll need an escargot account and a copy of Windows Live Messenger, preferably 8.5, to even begin messaging. - Anywhere else! I'm on many platforms and places, usually on the smaller side. You can find me under "TheMessengerVEVO" or a similar name on a place. Any support will be thankful. - I'm considering getting a Boosty account for people to help me monetarily, since we here are basically scraping by, plus the wole PayPal nonsense. Hopefully yall could help when it comes out, if at all.

If you supported me because of this, I have nothing but the biggest thanks for you! I'll try updating you on this situation as it goes on, and hopefully it will result in things actually being done. I'm very scared of whatever might come, and also relieved now that I revealed the whole Russia thing. I wanted to reveal that anyway for the past couple of months. Anyway, I hope this gets big and gets the attention of Youtube!

- May our strength guide us forwards, The Messenger.

#text post #the caretaker #everywhere at the end of time #russia #peace #peace and love #youtube #fuck youtube #please reblog #pls reblog #please share #it would be very much appreciated #drama #2023

[kayas-kosmos]

Ko-Fi Challenge - 2024, the Year of Solarpunk!

[This post is intended for the Ko-Fi January 2024 challenge. However, I receive an error message every time I try to post this blog on Ko-Fi so I am uploading it here instead. I therefore don't know if I will quality for the challenge since I cannot get my posts to work, but it's worth a shot].

Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a great start to the year!

I have decided to dip my toes into the Ko-Fi January challenge and let everyone know about my plans for this year. Really, I only have one plan – Do something small every day to make the world a better place. But I plan to go about doing this in a big way.

The last several years have been extremely troubling with a lot of catastrophic Global crises happening on a daily basis. It's all around us and it feels inescapable. People are tired of the constant flood of bad news, they're tired of doomscrolling and they're tired of the deluge of films that portray some different flavour of the apocalypse. Even us artists can't escape into our art for comfort anymore because of the constant spectre of AI technology threatening to make our work obsolete. The future looks very grim and a lot of people are not looking forward to the year ahead.

That's where "Solarpunk" comes in.

Solarpunk offers an alternative to all of the doom and gloom and presents the idea of a bright future in the face of cataclysm. It is a movement both political and artistic designed to reignite our souls and excite imaginations with ideas rooted in science and observation of the world around us. Even if it is utopian, it's a utopia grounded in what is realistically achievable and the current tools we have at our disposal to succeed.

Here is a short video that gives a great summary of what Solarpunk is all about.

Now you know what Solarpunk is, here is where my art comes into all of this and what I am planning for the year ahead.

Flowerpunk.

The first and most important project I want to launch this year is Flowerpunk.

Flowerpunk is my webcomic that I have been developing since 2020. Taking place in a universe where magic has been reduced to nothing more than a commodity, the magic itself is starting to decay, causing the soul of the world itself to become sick. It is up to a group of punks and outcasts to take back the magic and heal the world of this rot.

For those who haven't seen it yet, I put up a trailer for the webcomic on Webtoon, Tapas and GlobalComix. Please check it out!

These first 9 chapters follow two main characters, Kimi and Ludwig. Kimi is a gentle soul who has a thing for pastel colours and Ludwig is a rebel with a burning spirit and big hopes.

They both have a pretty terrible taste in music as well!

A lot of work has already gone into this project. I have most of the world-building done, there's a whole myriad of magical creatures featuring in this universe and the first part of chapter 1 is only 11 panels away from completion.

Furthermore, Flowerpunk is an IP under a CC BY-NC licence, meaning that you can legally use my characters and creature designs for anything that is not monetised provided that credit is given.

"This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. Credit must be given to the creator. Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted."

To give some examples of what you can do:

~ Make derivative versions of my work (writing, art, AUs, etc...).

~ Make OCs from my species, or use them for your own stories removed from the original universe as long as the work remains non-commercial.

~ Use my creatures or character likeness for RP characters or in DnD/tabletop campaigns.

~ Using my work for any educational purposes (such as copying a drawing for an art study).

I want this project not just to tell a story of radical hope, but to also encourage the creativity of others and their own storytelling projects based in this universe.

But that's not all! Once Flowerpunk launches, this will lead me onto the next part of my plan which is...

Merch.

I would love to launch some new merch to help support Flowerpunk's development, including stickers, pins and most importantly, motivational posters. This image below is the kind of thing I am aiming for:

These posters will also be used on social media to help inspire people to take action and fight for a better world. And speaking of social media...

Social Media, TikTok and Twitch.

I plan to start Twitch streaming my process later in the year and I may even consider inviting guests to do chats and interviews with. This is inspired by the time I appeared on a LumiRue Twitch stream back in March of 2022 and the extremely productive conversation we had about art and activism. I also have shorter videos planned for my TikTok discussing a variety of topics, including Solarpunk (obviously), my webcomic universe, autism and disability and much more!

Recently, I created a Solarpunk feed for Bluesky and I plan to continue contributing more positive news and ideas to this feed. The feed consists of art, videos, book recommendation, games, real-world projects (such as re-wilding projects) and much, much more! The feed has seen a great success so far and I want to continue using it to spread positivity. I may even start inviting people to add their own contributions to the feed!

In Conclusion.

Despite the challenges we face this year, I feel like it's going to be a good one moving forward. There is a lot to look forward to and a lot of cool stuff on the way!

Also, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the people who have supported me here on Ko-Fi over the years, it really means a lot to me and has helped so much. Even small donations make a huge difference, especially in times like these when things have become so precarious for artists.

Hope you're all excited!

#artists on tumblr #fantasy artist #Solarpunk #Solarpunk Artist #fantasy art #digital art #autistic artist #creature design #character design #Flowerpunk #Flowerpunk Webcomic #Webcomic #Indie comics #Youtube #Ko Fi #Ko Fi Challenge

[rongzhi]

hey thank you for all the translations i really appreciate it and your taste in which videos to upload, great content:) I saw the tags on your pinned post, do you know that a lot of ppl say 'I hate this' as basically a slang phrase to mean it's funny when the video is silly/overthetop, just like saying 'why are you like this' to a friend. just wanted to ask cus that's the only context I've ever seen that tag! in case you've been blocking people who just enjoyed the posts:) thanks for your work

Well it's nice that you've never seen the tag in a non-joking manner but I can't say the same is true for me. Running a blog where even a few posts leave your normal network will basically guarantee you exposure to pockets of people on this site that you previously had no idea even existed, and those people have no problem tagging and commenting all sorts of bullshit.

I do distinguish joking "I hate this" tags and "I genuinely think it's horrible" tags. I really only block people over this if it has to do with something cultural/China specific/man-made which the post was specifically showcasing.

For example, a few people have tagged the sea hare video from the other day with "kill it with fire" type comments but I'm unlikely to block them over it because even though I might think it's bizarre that they would reblog something they think is gross, I recognise that some people just react that way to animals.

#text #answered ask #also most of the stuff on my pinned post i do not expect the target audience to bother reading #so i really only add that stuff to vent my frustrations

[freifraufischer]

Hello folks!

I've reached 2010 so it's time to update on how the cataloging project is going.

For those of you who haven't seen this before I took on the completely insane large task of trying to catalogue every gymnast whose performances survive in meet videos on youtube. The goal being so that fans can look up the name of their favorite gymnast and follow their career even in small or obscure meets that they may not know exist or haven't had individual routines uploaded in more easily searchable form. The second goal was so that gymnasts who may not know that any of their elite careers survived can find their own performances. The example I used before is that there is a Yugoslavian gymnast's floor routine at the end of the Spanish coverage of the 1982 World Cup. When google searching that woman to make sure I had her name spelled correctly I found no evidence of a gymnast but I did find a Slovenian philosophy professor who likely has no reason to know that a tiny bit of her teenage sport survives.

Originally I was doing this on a google doc but after several months (and about 350 pages) into that I finally accepted that was the wrong medium and have moved it all into spread sheet form which you can find here.

The first sheets in the document are the meets themselves with links to youtube and include things like the date and location of the meet, the format of competition, who was the broadcaster, what language the commentary is in, and who were the commentators.

The meet sheets are broken up into Elite (which is the backbone of the document), NCAA Post Season, Professional Leagues (eventually Bundesliga video will get it's sheet), Exhibitions as well as two sheets I want to explain. HV Recordings are those meets that we have surviving through video taken with home movie or video cameras either by fans in the stands or national federations. Because the experience of watching meets in this format is so different I wanted to catalogue them but keep them to their own page. Because it's often difficult or impossible to identify individual gymnasts in some of those recordings HV recordings are excluded from the individual gymnast sheets. The other odd ball is the USGF Single Elimination tournament which is a slightly odd creature to watch now but included some performances from great American gymnasts that don't have a lot of meet footage. They get their own sheet because it's just a strange beast but I wanted to be able to include them in the gymnasts index.

After that you get four sheets of gymnasts in alphabetical order (broken up to reduce lag). Those sheets are sorted by name and date with gymnasts listed in FAMILY NAME Given Name format. Please note the links are to the video in general not specific time stamps. If a gymnast is known by a different name either by marriage, name change, or transliteration differences (within limits) there are lines telling you where to find the main entry for that gymnast. For example: IOURTCHENKO Nataliia SEE: YURCHENKO Natalia or RYBACKI Beth SEE: KLINE Beth. Post Season NCAA performances are are only included if the gymnast was already in the document from a previous elite performance to limit the scope of the project.

This project is months from completion but you will find everything up to 2010 right now.

So what do I need help with: Well first of all I will have made mistakes. The sheer amount of data here makes that inevitable. As did the several days of brute force data entry when things were moved off the google doc and into the sheets. At one point Boginskaya was given to Belgium for example before the mistake was caught.

One of my biggest priorities is to try and spell peoples names as correctly as possible (given that this is an English language document). The invention of FIG licenses has made that a bit cleaner as I've gotten into more modern recordings but they strip off all the dialectic marks which are part of these people's names and I have made an effort to restore them but I'd appreciate any corrections people notice.

I am deeply concerned about Chinese and Korean gymnasts which have had non standardized spellings in some of the earlier material and whose family names and given names were often given in whatever order a meet decided but my ability to google the name and find the correct order was sometimes limited. I am also very concerned that I have used the wrong family names for Latin American and Spanish gymnasts because meets would often choose those at random. I've even seen Brazilian broadcasts that used inconsistent family names for the same gymnast at the same competition and European meets that decided to pick two names at random and designate them given and family names when they were both family names. I've done my best to try and locate the most correct versions but more eyes would be helpful.

Otherwise people are welcome to use the project as it is now if you want. If you save it to your own computer you will be able to sort the data how you want. Just know that this is a working document and so will continue to change as I make my way through future years.

#gymnastics

[famiconblogs]

My Journey with Garo

Extract of Garo issue cover art from the Garo Mandala (1991)

It must've been near the end of 2022 when I discovered the treasure trove that is the Monthly Manga Garo, a legendary alternative manga magazine that ran from 1964 to 2002 that thrived against the backdrop of a politically turbulent post-war Japan. In the English market now, we're fortunate enough to be getting a wide variety of translated works from some of the manga greats who had serialised in Garo. From pillars like Tsuge Yoshiharu and Shirato Sanpei to the heta-uma king Ebisu Yoshikazu, you won't ever be bored with the sheer variety of stories, art styles and subject matter that can be seen throughout Garo's lifetime. Pick up any issue and you'll be surprised as to how many types of stories will grace your eyes.

Now back to my personal experience with Garo. I had seen a Garo issue for the very first time through one of Shawn's videos from Japan Book Hunter, a manga plug that I've used for amazing and rare manga that you won't be able to find anywhere except in Japan's jungle of bookstores. His YouTube channel at the time was uploading extremely interesting manga hauls that touched upon a wide variety of lesser-known genres and niches in Japanese comics. There were alternative manga, Shoujo horror, SF, gag and all the other gritty stuff from the wider world of manga outside the usual Shounen Jump. I watched his channel religiously and still look back on some videos to this day, reflecting on how far I've come in learning about manga and manga history. Huge shoutout to Shawn and his store, check him out!

After moving away from the more well-known Seinen and Shounen titles in search of more to explore, my foray into alternative and underground manga was one of the most enlightening experiences in my reading journey. I'd equate my discovery of Garo to my first reads of Borge's short stories, both mind-blowing experiences that have completely transformed my tastes in fiction forever. Garo and my subsequent dives into other alternative manga have now created an insatiable curiosity into what else could be hidden out there in the largely untranslated world of manga. It seems like going backwards in time is the direction I'm taking, but I haven't even scraped the tip of the iceberg yet with Garo, let alone other niches like Shoujo horror and Kashihon. Slowly I'm completing issue after issue, gradually exposing myself to a legendary group of mangaka and artists that have cemented themselves in a magazine that I feel stands the test of time.

At this moment, I have about 40-ish Garo issues on my shelves, and I've read maybe 15 of those. It's a slow reading process, but it's insanely worth it. Each decade is vastly different from the others, so it's extremely fascinating to see the evolution of the magazine over time. For example, starting off in the 60s you have the legendary Kamui-den by Shirato Sanpei, a ninja tale set in feudal Japan that involves social/political commentary on topics like class conflict and oppression. The series was responsible for the birth of Garo because founder Katsuichi Nagai, who I believe was already experienced in the kashihon market, had wanted to give a platform for Shirato to serialize his work. Many stories in the 60s era of Garo were more politically expressive, coinciding with a lot of the unstable politics at the time in Japan. Other mangaka largely present throughout 60s Garo include Mizuki Shigeru, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Nagashima Shinji, Takita Yuu, Tsurita Kuniko and many more.

Various Garo issues from my bookshelf

Then, you move into the 70s. This is where mangaka and artists like Hayashi Seiichi, Tsuge Tadao, Susumu Katsuma and Abe Shinichi start to become more present in the spotlight and appear more frequently in issues. A more surreal and weirder style of stories begin to appear in this decade, marking a key period for Gekiga in my opinion. Personally, when I think Gekiga, my mind goes to people like Hayashi, Tatsumi, Tsuge and Abe, so it's a time that I feel was a very important one for Garo.

Flowering Harbour - Hayashi Seiichi (Garo 1969 May)

The majority of my Garo reads have been towards the tail end of the 60s, with some reads spread throughout the 70s and 90s. Funnily enough, I don't think I have many issues from the 80s. From what I've read from the later decades of Garo though, I've fallen deeply in love. Going from the Tsuges, Hayashis and Mizukis to a whole new world of more contemporary mangaka like Usamaru Furuya, Kawai Katsuo and Maruo Suehiro opened up an even bigger obsession for the magazine. You have an influx of ero-guro (erotic-grotesque) and heta-uma (bad-good) in the scene that introduced a great deal of new names, a lot of whom had also continued into Ax magazine, the spiritual successor to Garo, after the magazine's end. I can make a whole other post on Ax, but that's for another day.

My Youth - Maruo Suehiro (Garo 1983 August)

That about sums up my journey reading Garo from discovery to this current point in time. With 426 issues spanning from the 60s to the early 2000s, I'm not going to run out of issues to read anytime soon. Maybe in a future post, I'll talk more in-depth about specific mangaka and artists that I enjoy. But anyways, thanks for reading my first blog post if you've come this far! Hoping to get out more posts in the future because it really scratches an itch for me when I can express all my thoughts like this in an extended post format.

#garomagazine #alternativemanga #manga

[firespirited]

Long post. Press j to skip.

I AM SICK OF THE STUPID AI DEBATES, does it imagine, is it based on copyrightable material, are my patterns in there?

That's not the point.

I briefly got into website design freelancing (less than 3 months) before burn out.

The main reason was that automation had begun for generating stylesheets in somewhat tasteful palettes, for automatically making html/xml (they really haven't learned to simplify and tidy code though, they just load 50 divs instead of one), for batch colourising design elements to match and savvy designers weren't building graphics from scratch and to spec unless it was their day job.

Custom php and database design died with the free bundled CMS packages that come with your host with massive mostly empty unused values.

No-one has talked about the previous waves of people automated out of work by website design generators, code generators, the fiverr atomisation of what would have been a designers job into 1 logo and a swatch inserted into a CMS by an unpaid intern. Reviews, tutorials, explanations and articles are generated by stealing youtube video captions, scraping fan sites and putting them on a webpage. Digitally processing images got automated with scripts stolen from fan creators who shared. Screencaps went from curated processed images made by a person to machine produced once half a second and uploaded indiscriminately. Media recaps get run into google translate and back which is why they often read as a little odd when you look up the first results.

This was people's work, some of it done out of love, some done for pay. It's all automated and any paid work is immediately copied/co-opted for 20 different half baked articles on sites with more traffic now. Another area of expertise I'd cultivated was deep dive research, poring over scans of magazines and analysing papers, fact checking. I manually checked people's code for errors or simplifications, you can get generators to do that too, even for php. I used to be an english-french translator.

The generators got renamed AI and slightly better at picture making and writing but it's the same concept.

The artists that designed the web templates are obscured, paid a flat fee by the CMS developpers, the CMS coders are obscured, paid for their code often in flat fees by a company that owns all copyright over the code and all the design elements that go with. That would have been me if I hadn't had further health issues, hiding a layer in one of the graphics or a joke in the code that may or may not make it through to the final product. Or I could be a proof reader and fact checker for articles that get barely enough traffic while they run as "multi snippets" in other publications.

The problem isn't that the machines got smarter, it's that they now encroach on a new much larger area of workers. I'd like to ask why the text to speech folks got a flat fee for their work for example: it's mass usage it should be residual based. So many coders and artists and writers got screwed into flat fee gigs instead of jobs that pay a minimum and more if it gets mass use.

The people willing to pay an artist for a rendition of their pet in the artist's style are the same willing to pay for me to rewrite a machine translation to have the same nuances as the original text. The same people who want free are going to push forward so they keep free if a little less special cats and translations. They're the same people who make clocks that last 5 years instead of the ones my great uncle made that outlived him. The same computer chips my aunt assembled in the UK for a basic wage are made with a lot more damaged tossed chips in a factory far away that you live in with suicide nets on the stairs.

There is so much more to 'AI' than the narrow snake oil you are being sold: it is the classic and ancient automation of work by replacing a human with a limited machine. Robot from serf (forced work for a small living)

It's a large scale generator just like ye olde glitter text generators except that threw a few pennies at the coders who made the generator and glitter text only matters when a human with a spark of imagination knows when to deploy it to funny effect. The issue is that artists and writers are being forced to gig already. We have already toppled into precariousness. We are already half way down the slippery slope if you can get paid a flat fee of $300 for something that could make 300k for the company. The generators are the big threat keeping folks afraid and looking at the *wrong* thing.

We need art and companies can afford to pay you for art. Gig work for artists isn't a safe stable living. The fact that they want to make machines to take that pittance isn't the point. There is money, lots of money. It's not being sent to the people who make art. It's not supporting artists to mess around and create something new. It's not a fight between you and a machine, it's a fight to have artists and artisans valued as deserving a living wage not surviving between gigs.

#saf #Rantings #Yes but can the machine think #I don't care. I don't care. I really don't care if the machine is more precise than the artisan #What happens to all our artisans? #Long post #Press j to skip

[imogenleewriter]

💫🎈💝

(I just found this in my drafts. I haven't read the answers properly, but I saw down the bottom that I'm talking about releasing a new WIP which is Save Me, and it's been out for over 2 weeks now. Also, I can see that I said that ychiits was the 15th most commented on. It's actually now the 11th (!!!), So if some answers seem off, it's just because it's at least 2-3 weeks old, but I can't be bothered reading through and updating).

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback? All of them! I am SO SO SO blessed by the number of comments and feedback I get. Like... I don't even know how to explain it. Actually, I DO! If you sort all 42,000+ Larry fics by comments... my fic, which I started uploading less than 4 months ago and has only been finished for a month, is 15th. The fifteenth most commented-on Larry fic EVER. INSANE!! Like, that's so crazy, and I'm so, so thankful! But out of everything, there are two types I've obsessed with. The first are Tiktok videos about my fic. In a few days, two people (with large platforms) have reviewed it, and it's so amazing listening and watching people talk about it! It's so surreal.

The second are comments I got really early on. Two in particular stick out and I'll post them here:

But honestly, the fact anyone goes out of their way to interact at all means so, so much to me and there was no way I'd have gotten the fic done (or moved on to the next two WIPs if it wasn't for that).

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change? This is a weird way to write this question. I'm going to assume they mean process as opposed to style. I have a lot of coping techniques to fall back on when writing based on my mood. Best case scenario, I'm in a good mood, I know exactly what I want to say, I'm focused, and it all just comes out.

Worst case, nothing is working, and I spend the whole time procrastinating and answering questions like this in long detail.

Overall, yes. I'm a pretty big planner because that's what works for me (and I like weaving things through my fics, and that's hard to do on the run). I work out the goal of each chapter before writing it. Sometimes that's easy and it's literally just a sentence and everything flows.

The more stuck I get, the more I write out what the goal of the chapter is. And then break it down into scenes. So by the end, I might have 1000 words of notes about what needs to be included in the 6000-word chapter.

I'm very... immersive and try to get into characters' heads. One example of this is I have a notebook for each fic that fits the character's personality. So, like.. (okay this is weird), for my current WIP YMAEWK, Harry is a singer so the notebook I have for the fic is a leather bound one because I feel like it suits the fic/characters. Then another fic coming out has a teacher in it so the notebook I use for that is quite plain and gives off highschool teacher vibes.

And yeah, just a really big plotter. And when I struggle, I come back to the plot.

Okay, that was a lot.

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

Lol, so I have a burner ao3 account where I post things that I don't want to be associated with my actual account. Mainly just for pure smut so I get better at writing it. I wrote an outrageous one-shot that I was embarrassed to post even though it wasn't associated with me at all. Every few days I get an email saying it's gotten kudos and every time I'm like.. you have to be kidding me.

In general though, all of them. The fact they have readers is crazy. I'm surprised by the PA fic because people already seem invested which is great.

I'm really interested to see how a new WIP I'm releasing in two days is going to be received because the premise is so different to anything I've done.

#postingmydrafts #anon #answered #answeredanon #writing

[translationandbetrayals]

Cowboy Bebop: a perfect match between anime and music.

For my last post here, I would really like to talk about the musicality that lies within Cowboy Bebop, an anime that has grown in popularity for the last years. There are many reasons why this anime still gets a lot of attention from its audience: the animation, which excels all of the standards from the 90s, has CGI in it, a groundbreaking technique for those years. The characters, the spaceships, and basically every scene that involves movement have their own quality, and this is a very important aspect in the show, because other animes from the same era might have had great storylines, a great character development or memorable quotes, but the animation might fail sometimes and even lack quality. That kind of problem didn't happen when Cowboy Bebop was developed: the color palette stands on its own, the space scenes are hypnotizing and well made, the backgrounds and the scenery of everything that happens are on point.

Also, the characters have a great development and background stories: these stories are explained as the chapters go by. We have, for example, Eduardo's weird and lost origins, Faye's nostalgic trip to the past (that happens in a couple episodes, and it might make you feel really sad), Jet's love story and his life in the past as a cop, or Spike's story, the main one, which revolves around his old friendship with Vicious, his enemy, and Julia, his old lover that he can't seem to get out of his head. 

Also, the storyline has different moments: ranging from comedy, to drama, to dizzy scenes, to moments when teardrops fill your eyes, you have everything to check for yourself that this anime is one of the best you'll ever see.

But the main focus in this post is the music: Cowboy Bebop really has a thing with music, because it functions as a background for the different scenarios that we are shown, but at the same time the music has its own vibe and it's really enjoyable outside of the anime. Tank!, the opening, by the Seatbelts, it's perhaps one of the most popular anime OPs that exist out there. The musicians gave it all when recording the OST: the virtuosity from the band can be heard everywhere between those instrumental arrangements that change tempos, include super-high notes and set the mood for the fighting and persecution scenes, the silly moments that make you jiggle, or the more philosophical parts of the anime. I would highly recommend the Original Soundtrack album: it's great to put on a rainy day and just enjoy it. 

Cowboy Bebop is, also, a great anime for AMVs: its scenes fit perfectly with different songs that match the actions that are performed by the characters. As it is a show that reunites different aspects of life, a lot of genres are used to make these music videos, that fill youtube nowadays. Tributes are made too: for example, Saib, a musician that uploads his creations to different online platforms, has an entire album dedicated to this anime, sampling the original songs and creating his own guitar parts. The album is called "Bebop", and I highly recommend it.

I would also recommend the "No Disc", that includes less known songs: one of my favorite ones is "Fantaisie Sign", a song that is sung in french by Carla Vallet, and doesn't appear in the anime, but has a cool late 90's feeling to it.

All of the things that I mentioned before make Cowboy Bebop the greatest anime I've ever seen, and it holds a special place in my heart. I hope that this post serves as a recommendation for someone who might read it: it is an experience, it took me a long time to watch all of the episodes, but it was really worth it. It's one of the stories that will remain in your memory. 

Thanks for reading my posts. I'm glad I found a space where I could talk about the things that I love, and I'm grateful about this experience. Hope you are great, no matter when you read this.

By Camila Iglesias.

#Anime #Japan #essay #Sci-Fi #submission

[vidpros-services]

Revealing Reality: An Honest Review of beCreatives

Explore Easy Online Video Editing with beCreatives: A Detailed Review

Although beCreatives offers a simple platform for online video editing, catering to modern and social media-friendly needs, some challenges have arisen. Users have encountered issues like varying turnaround times, surprise charges, and difficulties in prioritization. For those desiring clear pricing and smooth workflows, Vidpros presents an appealing alternative, prioritizing client satisfaction.

Delve into this thorough beCreatives review for comprehensive insights and analysis.

beCreatives Website Experience

When I visited their video editing website, I was impressed by how modern and easy to use it looked. Right away, I could find clear explanations of their video editing services right on the homepage.

As I kept scrolling, I found lots of helpful info laid out neatly. They explained their process, showed different pricing options, shared examples of their work, and included reviews from happy clients. The site used bright pictures and left plenty of space, so it wasn't crowded and was nice to look at.

What really caught my eye was how clear and simple everything was. They made sure there was no confusion about what they offer, how long it takes, how much it costs, and they even promised to make things right if you're not happy. That made me trust them more.

Overall, the website felt welcoming and easy to understand. Even though they offer professional video editing, they kept things friendly and not too pushy.

beCreatives Pricing

For the most current and accurate pricing information, please visit beCreatives’ website to review their latest pricing plans.

They have two main pricing options: Scale and Pro.

The Scale plan costs $899 per month and is good for companies with moderate video needs. It comes with a dedicated video editor who will work on all your projects, offering unlimited revisions until you're happy. You'll get your first video draft in 2-3 business days.

If you need your videos done fast, the Pro plan costs $1999 per month and promises same-day delivery of your first drafts by your editing pro. It also includes unlimited revisions and custom animations and graphics, like the Scale plan.

You can get discounted rates if you pay for three or twelve months upfront. For example, if you choose the annual Pro plan, you'll pay $1666 per month, saving 20%.

No matter which plan you pick, you have control over your videos. You can ask for changes until your video matches what you want, using their easy collaboration platform.

Some reviews mention that there might be extra costs. If you want advanced graphics or customized animations and effects beyond the standard options, you might have to pay more.

Core Service: Video Editing

beCreatives makes professional video editing easy with their simple online platform. They focus on turning your raw footage into polished, captivating videos that match what you want.

One great thing about them is how quickly they work. With the Scale plan, you'll get your first draft in 2-3 business days, while the Pro plan offers same-day delivery. Both plans let you ask for as many changes as you need until you're happy, so you're in control.

Their online system makes it easy to work together. You can upload files and give feedback directly while their editors work on your drafts.

They offer a wide range of video editing features, like adding motion graphics, text, and improving colors. This makes sure your videos look amazing.

Their service combines fast turnarounds, lots of changes, and easy collaboration in one place. Their modern system makes it easy for editors to work and for you to see what's happening.

Their SPACE online workspace is a big part of this. From there, you can ask for edits, give footage and instructions, and say how you want your videos. SPACE tracks progress and lets you give feedback on drafts. You keep working with your editor until you're happy, and then you can download your finished video straight from SPACE.

Online Video Editing Style

beCreatives focuses on making modern, lively videos that catch people's eyes on social media. They use bold colors and smooth transitions to keep things interesting as people scroll through their feeds.

Their editors are good at adding lively animations, even in short videos. This makes their videos perfect for grabbing attention on social media. They know how to tell stories that keep people interested, even when they're in a hurry.

People like beCreatives' videos because they always look professional. They have smooth transitions, good sound, and clear video. Even though their videos look polished, they're also good at finishing them quickly without losing quality. People really like their creativity, skill, and how well they communicate.

With their modern editing style, beCreatives is great at keeping people interested in their videos. They're a good choice for businesses that want to make eye-catching videos for social media.

Communication and Turnaround Time

beCreatives makes sure talking with their video editors is easy and clear. They have a system that helps make working together smooth.

When you ask for a new video edit on their website, they match you with one editor who stays with you for the whole project.

This editor is like your personal video helper. They handle all the drafts and changes, so you only talk to one person, which makes things simpler.

They suggest having video calls and sharing your screen to make sure you and your editor are on the same page before they start.

While your editor works on drafts, you can use their easy review system to give feedback. You keep doing this until the video is just right.

And if you need help beyond editing, they have an account manager who can assist with other things like planning your videos or marketing.

Most people say beCreatives usually gets the first draft done in 1-2 business days, but sometimes it might take a bit longer, especially for more complicated edits.

Client Feedback: Advantages and Drawbacks of beCreatives

Based on both user reviews and our own Vidpros experience, beCreatives generally gets good feedback, especially for their skilled video editing and high-quality results. People often praise how professional they are and how easy it is to work with them on their platform.

However, we did face some issues. For one project, it took a while to assign a dedicated editor, and we weren't always informed about upfront charges or internal staffing problems that might delay our project. Some users also mentioned missed deadlines and delays in getting their edited videos back, especially for more complicated edits.

When it comes to pricing, while some customers feel it's a bit high compared to hiring freelancers, beCreatives does offer a 14-day money-back guarantee and unlimited revisions in all their pricing plans, which does add some value to their services.

beCreatives Alternative

Vidpros

Looking for alternatives to beCreatives? Check out Vidpros, a client-focused video production company founded in 2020. Since the beginning, Vidpros has been all about simplicity, transparency, and top-notch customer service. Their website lays out pricing, turnaround times, and services clearly and upfront.

At Vidpros, they believe in open communication. You'll work directly with your dedicated video editor in real-time, making sure your creative ideas are brought to life accurately and quickly.

What makes Vidpros different is their fractional video editing model. Instead of buying unlimited editing packages, you purchase a specific part of your editor's time each day or week. Whether it's a 2-hour editing session daily or another arrangement, your personal editor focuses only on your projects, ensuring high-quality work and understanding of your brand.

This fractional model offers full transparency, avoiding problems like backlogs or rushed work. Your videos get top priority during the editing hours you buy. Plus, Vidpros makes editing even better with free premium stock libraries, proofing tools, efficient file handling, and three months of unlimited project storage.

Wrapping Up

beCreatives offers a user-friendly video editing service with modern styles perfect for social media. Their SPACE platform makes it easy to work with dedicated editors. However, some clients have faced issues like inconsistent turnaround times, unexpected fees, and problems with prioritization, suggesting areas for improvement.

On the other hand, Vidpros provides a compelling alternative for businesses looking for transparency, efficient workflows, and personalized video experiences. Their fractional editing model offers clear pricing and ensures your videos always get top priority. Direct partnerships with editors and advanced platform tools further enhance the smooth editing process.

In summary, Vidpros shines with its client-focused approach to video production, addressing common challenges faced with traditional solutions. For a detailed comparison between beCreatives and Vidpros, check out our blog post, "beCreatives vs. Vidpros."

#Youtube

[tokoriart]

Commissions OPEN - New year problems - Life update

Hello everyone! I hope you're having a great holiday season 🎄💖 I'm bringing you some updates on my current life and condition.

As you all know, this winter my husband and I moved from Russia to the new home, the new apartment we finally have in Spain.

And the first few weeks were really good, we finally felt safe and relieved. But we encountered some new problems, which made me open my commissions earlier than planned and set a Ko-Fi goal.

The problem is... Our neighbours (from BOTH sides of the building) are really, and I mean REALLY loud and partying. They deliberately place their 2 huge speakers in the street or near their entrance and turn on their music. Sometimes it gets to the point where they don't turn it off for more than 10 hours straight, it can literally drive you crazy and the only solution is to go to a quiet place in town. We spoke to the president of our house and she told us that unfortunately it's not possible to find a solution with the neighbours, they ignore requests to turn it off or even turn it down. The police also ignore the problem, or sometimes they solve it for a few hours and then the music continues. Some days are pretty quiet, but other days we have to wear earplugs non-stop. And as our house president says, it's not just for the holidays, it's always like that. My husband got an ear infection after using them for a long time and it's almost impossible for him to sleep with earplugs in, so he only gets to sleep when it's relatively quiet.

I've uploaded some videos to the Google Drive folder to help you understand what I mean: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vLMXvJQ0M7UzbOMK31lf3PhJ8YqWl6ZP?usp=sharing

The only solution we have now is to install soundproof plastic windows, which will cost us... a lot. We have 1 window for our bedroom, 1 for my office, 2 for the kitchen and a big balcony door. The cheapest & small plastic window is about 280€, the balcony door is about 450€ and the instalment for each is 170-200€. I'm not saying it's absolutely impossible to live like this, I mean we're not in danger, we have a roof over our heads and that's great and we're honestly very happy! But we would really like to create better conditions for ourselves and that's our New Year's goal for 2024!

I will try to save the needed amount from the commissions, but I will also be grateful for any donations and Ko-Fi membership subscriptions!

✶My commissions are OPEN! Please contact me!✶

✦ Ko-Fi - https://ko-fi.com/tokori ✦ Google form for commissions! - https://forms.gle/NwrgmVVhc9VQ2p289 ✦ More examples & info - https://tokoricomms.carrd.co/ ✦ Discord & Telegram: Tokowl ✦ Mail: [email protected]

Thank you for your support! May you have a very happy 2024!

#furry #feral #anthro #commission #commissions #commissions open #illustration #fantasy #scene #chibi #refsheet #reference sheet #nature #animals #cute #icon #avatar #bust #token

[cinna-bunnie]

gaymer rant below ૮ – ﻌ–ა

you know, I'd probably fuck with HD remakes for video games if they were completely rebuilding and remodelling everything. maybe they do? but it doesn't Feel like it ykwim?

i was thinking of Metroid games as a really great example actually, where certain things played out without me ever having thought about it that tell me a lot about how i feel abt HD remakes.

I was late to the series and just grew up on the Prime trilogy and to this day i go back to it sometimes on an emulator. For emulators, people upload texture packs you can use for free so you can change the visuals of the game and in essence, I already had a sort of HD revamp of the prime games.

now i remember seeing they actually were putting out an HD remake for metroid prime but it only looked marginally better than what i already had in my emulator. I was still excited to check it out, “I'll get it after i beat elden ring” “I'll get it after i beat this indie” “I'll get it after tears of the kingdom” I realized I'm just never actually going to buy this game because this remake they want to sell me just feels like a slightly better reskin on what i already have!

I became completely disinterested in it and forgot about it without ever really giving it any thoughts or thinking bad of it. it was fine.. just didn't speak to me enough i guess!

But then I realize all HD remakes I've seen give me the same vibe. Prettier but not enough to feel like you got dropped into a whole new environment you know what I mean?

I want to see you take your original concepts and give it a modern look and feel, i think you should get to have fun and add some new stuff that didn't make the original cut, I think you should design stuff the way you would now with the new tools available to you instead of making them Look like the older version.

An example of this To Me was when I played Zero Mission and Fusion, then you go from those to playing Dread and the graphics are so so different and the gameplay is smooth and fast and there's new stuff you get to do — and I get that these are totally different games from different times but look,, if THIS is what an HD remake usually entailed, I'd be so excited about it!!

I even think about how blown my mind was when I got to play a PC game on the highest setting for the first time, and there was so much detail it felt like it breathed new life into the game even though I've played it on console for years. If your HD remake invokes a similar feeling I'd probably want to check it out, I think a good example of this would be the Resident Evil 4 remake. it's on My List.

I would also be excited about games where the concept was There but are very dated at this point to anyone who's never played it. I am thinking bittersweetly about the sequel to Eternal Darkness that never got to be. Please game companies u have a death grip on incredible universes you are not exploring or reviving... these reskins have never been interesting enough to me

honorary mention for Starfox Adventures. please.

[activismarchive]

Activism Defined

What is Activism? 

If I had to sum activism up in a singular sentence, I would say that it is an individual or a group fighting for a cause by either online or offline means with the goal of sparking change. Activists may implement many different tactics in order to convey their beliefs. Some of these mediums include physical movements such as striking, participating in organized marches, or through more dramatic direct action (examples include beheading a statue or vandalizing art). Activism can also occur through a more technological scope (phone calls and online messaging). However, one form of activism that is prevalent in the modern day is that of digital activism. 

What is Digital Activism? 

Digital activism, by definition, is very similar to that of traditional activism. Yet, it finds its home in the more current digital atmosphere. Social media has created an entirely new understanding of what communication can look like. Its community-based approach has helped move activism to a larger scale by connecting those with a similar belief system on a global scale. For example, we can take a look at online movements such as #metoo or #blacklivesmatter, both of which found themselves trending on major social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. The online push provided these issues with more news coverage than probably would have been afforded otherwise. Issues can exist both online and in the physical world. The #blacklivesmatter movement is a great example of this. While the hashtag #blacklivesmatter was trending on multiple social media platforms, protests and marches were taking place all around the world. Businesses were burned to the ground while black square posts were being uploaded to Instagram. Even more important to note, the activism surrounding this cause came to a head after a video, filmed on a cellphone, was circulated throughout social media. All of the posts and strikes were a direct result of the digital world. 

Giving Power to the People: Inequalities within Digital Activism 

The internet is accessible to people with varying degrees of fame, wealth, and social reach. While the viral and algorithmic natures of social platforms do give the “common” person a voice online, people of power are able to reach a very large audience rather quickly. This poses the question: do celebrities have a moral responsibility to speak up? While both sides of the issue could be argued, celebrity influence dominates society. It’s the reason celebrity brands can be found in many stores or why items can sell out in minutes if they are endorsed by the right person. Many look up to celebrities as cultural beacons. This phenomenon was brought to my attention during the recent writers’ strikes in Hollywood. The writers who were actively striking were not the ones who I saw several news stories about. Rather, I read many headlines about actors skipping film premieres in solidarity. The actors were the “face” of a movement that wasn’t directly related to them. This is just one example of many. If you apply this same viewpoint to both the #metoo and #blacklivesmatter movements as well, there are many similar trends in whose online posts were deemed “newsworthy”.  

Image Citation:

82,700+ Activist Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock (no date) www.istockphoto.com. Available at: https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/activist.