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a-very-tired-jew · 20 hours

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Media Manipulation, Bias, Cooperation and its impact

Media manipulation, misinformation, and propaganda are part of conflicts world wide. Every country, government, NGO, and agency engages in these tactics in some way. There is a story to be told from a certain perspective that pushes an agenda. What we, as the consumer of such media, have to do is determine if we're being fed a biased perspective and/or outright lies that we can then parse through. The current I/P war has seen a huge influx of misinformation and propaganda from social media and traditional news sources. The former is expected as we are in the era of influencers and algorithms. However, traditional sources, such as the AP or WashingtonPost, have long been an issue when it comes to coverage of Israel and Palestine.

Matti Friedman wrote about this a decade ago in an article for the Atlantic titled What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel.

Friedman is a former journalist for the AP and throughout their piece details the biased reporting that they witnessed firsthand, the association with terrorist groups, the influence of terrorists on reporting, and the outright corrupt nature of an organization that touts itself as a bastion of good journalism. From the article:

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Most consumers of the Israel story don’t understand how the story is manufactured. But Hamas does. Since assuming power in Gaza in 2007, the Islamic Resistance Movement has come to understand that many reporters are committed to a narrative wherein Israelis are oppressors and Palestinians passive victims with reasonable goals, and are uninterested in contradictory information. Recognizing this, certain Hamas spokesmen have taken to confiding to Western journalists, including some I know personally, that the group is in fact a secretly pragmatic outfit with bellicose rhetoric, and journalists—eager to believe the confession, and sometimes unwilling to credit locals with the smarts necessary to deceive them—have taken it as a scoop instead of as spin.

During my time at the AP, we helped Hamas get this point across with a school of reporting that might be classified as “Surprising Signs of Moderation” (a direct precursor to the “Muslim Brotherhood Is Actually Liberal” school that enjoyed a brief vogue in Egypt). In one of my favorite stories, “More Tolerant Hamas” (December 11, 2011), reporters quoted a Hamas spokesman informing readers that the movement’s policy was that “we are not going to dictate anything to anyone,” and another Hamas leader saying the movement had “learned it needs to be more tolerant of others.” Around the same time, I was informed by the bureau’s senior editors that our Palestinian reporter in Gaza couldn’t possibly provide critical coverage of Hamas because doing so would put him in danger.

Hamas is aided in its manipulation of the media by the old reportorial belief, a kind of reflex, according to which reporters shouldn’t mention the existence of reporters. In a conflict like ours, this ends up requiring considerable exertions: So many photographers cover protests in Israel and the Palestinian territories, for example, that one of the challenges for anyone taking pictures is keeping colleagues out of the frame. That the other photographers are as important to the story as Palestinian protesters or Israeli soldiers—this does not seem to be considered.

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When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)

Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.”

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Back in 2021 the IDF destroyed the AP's building because Hamas was using it as a base as well. The AP denied all knowledge of Hamas being in the building, except Friedman and other journalists had previously established that there was a relationship between the terrorists and news outfit. The insistence on denying Hamas's actions for fear of reprisal and to continue the "moral failure" narrative is part of AP's m.o. This standard of avoidance regarding Hamas's actions, couching them in a comparison of "Hamas is bad, but look how much worse Israel is!", justify, or even reduce the horrid nature of them has been part of the formula for years. It explains why we see so many of the major news sources tell the same story in the same manner when it comes to this area. Talking about Hamas, PIJ, and other groups and their bad actions is taboo. Another quote from earlier in the article stands out that highlights this rhetoric. "In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry. I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills, particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists."

Many of us have talked about the antisemitism that is baked into most cultures, and a Jewish journalist documented through their own experiences how that is an inherent part of a "trusted" international news source. The fact that it was/is "in vogue" to paint Israel and its actions as the "moral failing of Jews" and hold them responsible for all the "evils" of the region while handling terrorist groups with kid gloves is abhorrent. It's antisemitic and a continuation of age old conspiracies. Every decade we say this is an issue, and every decade you forget or brush it aside.

#jumblr #leftist antisemitism #antisemitism #activism #israel #palestine #AP #Journalistic bias #Antisemitism in journalism

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1ore · 2 years

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this might or might not be a helpful realization for other people, but i have learned through much self-flagellation and general despair that it is 1000% better for me to learn about current events IRL, through other likeminded people, than online. I have the privilege of interacting with others mostly in an academic setting, which is what makes this feasible, but I really think this is one reason why my mental health is better than what it used to be. And also why I am doing more meaningful work / feeling like im doing more meaningful work.

#existing in a more and more algorithmic world #i really really really am trying to rethink how i talk about issues i care about #because we're all being ground into dust and generating engagement on despair and righteous anger just feeds right back into that #and it has been difficult to unlearn as an online person that not engaging with an issue online doesnt mean i dont care about it #and that creating a space that is kind of insular and isolated from the 'outside world' is not like. cowardly #anyway i think we need to consciously learn how to challenge these kinds of mechanical/algorithmical structures #so that we can do right by each other in spite of the digital hellscapes desire for money

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unoriginalityriver · 4 months

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getting real nostalgic over 2020 for some reason.

#why do i feel like nothing is the same ever since #like our perception of time changed #and the algorithm for tiktok and other social media apps drastically changed #and the internet in general #it somehow became more embedded in our lives #a part of the real world #and i remember how popular existentialism and spiritualism were back then #so many theories about our existence and so on #it was cool #and the occult #omg and the colours and indie music #it was also important to me because i was 14 at the time and i feel like that age is a turning point in everyone's life #2020 #nostalgia

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s-n-arly · 2 years

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Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it "hides" other search systems from us. We just don't know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

#Google is Evil #google is no help #Research

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fakeoldmanfucker · 1 year

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Almost-3-am-thought by Finn:

The privacy and censorship issues in social media are not a result of these websites/apps/programs being imperfect. In fact they so perfectly mimic the behavior of human interaction, magnified to a global scale. It is our society's behavior that is wrong and destructive, not necessarily the website's/app's.

#idk idk just thinking about how algorithms work #and that they work so well to cater to the human experience #not to alter it but to enhance it #to make it more streamlined #i don't support this!#but i'm saying #it's modeled after human connection in the first place #and it's what the users Do with that connection that gives us the online world we exist in today #finn's flailings #tiktok #twitter #facebook #idk what are other places that have algorithms #yall know what i'm talking about

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aristotels · 5 months

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look imma say this and then im gonna go do something productive bc this is taking up way too much of time.

do i think usamericans are inherently stupid or evil? no, i dont. i dont believe you are any less capable or dumber than the other people in the world. i do, however, think you have more responsibilities.

does it matter if a brazilian doesnt know where croatia is? not really. brazil doesnt have monopoly on world production or currency. brazil didnt instigate the fall of yugoslavia. brazil cant veto an un resolution. does it matter if a dalmatian grandma raising donkeys in vrlika doesnt know where laos is? not particularly; she doesnt vote for a president who has power to influence the global politics. croatian president cant stage a coup in venezuela. balkan countries dont dominate social or political discourse, they dont dictate economy, trends, or inflation. they dont dominate media, films, music, culture, language.

usa however does. the president of the usa has very real power to fund a genocide and single-handedly keep an apartheid existing. people from usa should know the effects their choices have.

imperialism isnt only visible in politics either. cultural hegemony is a huge part of it. oscars, online algorithms, social media, language - these all have influence on the rest of the world. the ways other countries are viewed in the usa is important. its REALLY not about "haha stupid usamericans", its about responsibility you have as a part of imperial core.

and before anyone goes like "wHy ArE yOu NoT cALLiNg OuT wEsTeRn EuRoPe" its not what this particular discourse is about. ive talked about it before. ill talk about it again because germany has more effect on my life than the usa. pls stop deflecting responsibility this way

edit: no this does not mean "please vote for genocide joe" it means the opposite holy shit this is the core reason for this entire fucking globegate or whatever. if youre voting for dems bc theyre "lesser evil" pls learn where palestine is and that to them there is NO lesser evil jesus christ biden is literally bypassing congress and vetoing un resolutions and sending billions of dollars and weapons and missiles to kill children on the other side of the planet. youre all insane if "vote blue" was your takeaway from this post

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oocsydney · 6 months

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this is more or less just a late night personal anecdote (so please forgive my rambling), but hbomb's plagiarism video got me thinking the differences between journalism and marketing

during my undergrad in journalism, I was required to take an ethics course. we learned how to write our own code of ethics, as well as the core tenants in the SPJ Code of Ethics.

it was honestly one of the most invaluable courses I've ever taken in my life, and not only did I learn a lot about journalism through it, but I learned a lot about myself and what kind of person I wanted to be

then, when I studied marketing in grad school, I remember asking one of my marketing professors about ethics in marketing, and I remember him saying:

"ethical marketers starve."

I still think about that to this day. It's one of the main reasons why (despite having a master's in marketing) I did not pursue that field out of grad school

not to say that all marketers are unethical, I'm sure there are ethical ones that exist. but the fields of journalism and marketing are so diametrically opposed to each other, and the reason is because of ethics. one field is (or should be) in the pursuit of truth. The other is in the pursuit of profit.

the James Somertons (self-proclaimed marketers) of the world likely never consider the ethics of their work, but instead behave like marketers: try to appeal to the masses and sell themselves, try to get as many subscribers as possible, have fancy sets and lighting and props in his videos, churn out as many videos as possible to stay relevant in the YouTube algorithm at all costs, be "controversial" (even though most of his words were stolen or misogynistic or straight up lies).

our world is so centered on the idea of profit and self-attainment that we forget to ask ourselves if we're being decent human beings. I wholeheartedly believe that it's possible to be ethical AND successful, all while lifting up our fellow creators and writers without stealing from them. no one has to starve.

#hbomberguy #james somerton #this is mainly just me rambling #but i do wish it was required as an area of study for a lot of business schools #also i was falling asleep writing this so enjoy my sleepy hot takes lol

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xerith-42 · 4 months

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I know it seems like striking on social media might not do enough, but as someone who has been outright obsessively using the internet since I was a child to the point that it is literally woven in my soul, been active and involved in online activism for about five years, and been using social media as marketing for about the same amount of time, I can confidently say that

THIS FUCKING WORKS!!

People base their entire businesses on their success on social media. They look at trending topics on twitter and don't see bite sized chunks of culture distilled to its finest and worst moments, they see market data! They don't see you as a single human being, they see you as a data point among thousands run through a probably AI assisted system that's prone to fucking up, that determines everything they're going to do.

How they're going to advertise, who they target it with it, what the general public wants. Every single major corporation uses data from social media websites to do this. Every. Single. One. Social media is a lot of things, and one of those things is a tool for business and politics. We know for a fact that social media politics bleeds out into the real world very fucking quickly.

Even if you can't strike financially, even if you have to go to work or school to survive, striking on social media is one of the best things you can do. Even if it's quiet. People are going to notice when thousands upon thousands of users across various sites go completely dark, and even more when some of them start getting real fucking loud about this. The US Capitalist Infused Government loves sweeping war crimes under the rug once they think the general public has forgotten about their atrocities and fallen into complacency. This system has been doing this for literal centuries.

Social media is just the newest and most expansive form we as a species have developed in the ongoing invention of ways to express our thoughts about things. It's the weirdest one, that's for sure, but executives pay attention to it. They don't often seek to understand it beyond a very basic level, because as I said, they view us as numbers on a screen, not as multifaceted incredibly and deeply fucked human beings. They do not seek to understand us on a personal level unless they think the cost of it won't outweigh the potential profit.

Pattern recognition is the tool of the moment. Machine Learning. Gathering endless amounts of data so we can replicate human existence through machines. You may think that social media strikes are ineffective because social media is just on the internet and it's "not real", but it is real! You are really doing stuff! You are contributing! Even if you're just lurking! Basic amounts of engagement can make a huge impact in a busted algorithm. Maybe you're not someone who would ever be drafted into an actual war-zone due to physical or mental health conditions, but you are probably a part of a key demographic of people that businesses are absolutely hungry for.

The budding adult has always been the target of greedy capitalists basically since this system was established and continued to get worse over time. The stage of your life when you are in the age range of 18-25 is an incredibly important transitional period, followed by a transitional period every six months until you lose sense of what six months even is because you haven't been happy in eight, and if you're in the 18-25 range currently, you got extra fucked by the pandemic. The world is in a turbulent stage and we are at the center of all of it and have been since 2001. Every single social media marketing expert will tell you the 18-25 demographic of social media users is a target demographic, because they are the most prone to extremes due to a life chock full of them.

We have to remember to be human, but we have to also know how to speak their language. They just see us as numbers? Let's show them some fucking numbers. Make posts about Gaza trend on every platform you have your hands on. Even if it's just liking posts, that gives them a slight boost in the algorithm. Commenting on posts is especially important on sites like Twitter and Instagram. But across every site the most important thing to do is reblog/retweet/share/send/copy link, whatever it is for that site, it is the biggest thing that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE looks at.

From a humble artist to a head of marketing at a billion dollar corporation about to have a meeting with a barely over 21 intern about how they need to run the twitter account, to said intern bumbling their way through adulthood with a job they only feel they're good at because they've been using social media since Skype was invented. We need to be loud, we need to make sure this can't be ignored, we can't sweep this under the rug. Mass media, especially coming out of the West, has been trying to censor, de-sanitize, and keep this issue quiet.

DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE SILENCED

There are tens of thousands of DEAD CHILDREN who have been BOMBED while in CIVILIAN AREAS and that is a FUCKING WAR CRIME.

THIS IS A GENOCIDE

Say that as many times as you can. Do not let it be ignored. A silent populous is a complacent one. Use your voice, even as small as it may seem. Make noise. Be loud. Be annoying. Don't let this be ignored. Talk about it everywhere you go. Do not let this be ignored.

Sometimes even we get disconnected from the real people around us. We base our sense of worth as a person based on the numbers going up or down but instead of developing a gambling addiction we just got angry about it but still fall into it because of cultural conditioning. But even if you only have let's say, completely random example, 70 followers. And only a small percent of them will see your post. Let's say maybe 20 on average, 30 on a good day, and even higher based on the machinations of fate. That's still 20 people who took time out of their day to read something you wrote, process something you created, share a part of your experience of living.

And likely they felt compelled to share it too, therefore increasing the spread of people who feel your influence. 20 people may not seem like a lot, but that has a major impact. Now imagine posts into the hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions. Those aren't just numbers. Each and every single one of those is just another person who might have reblogged a post because someone they like shared it, or because they wanted to spread its message, and that simple act causes a single post to have massive waves of effects from simple ripples.

Don't let yourself be discouraged. Don't think your voice or your impact "isn't enough to matter." Everything counts.

Don't let this be ignored. Don't become complacent. Know that every little thing counts, and to do every little thing you can.

#freepalastine🇵🇸#free palestine #free gaza #social media strike #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #strike for palestine #palestinian genocide #palestine #ceasefire #endisraelsgenocide #isreal is committing genocie #do not be silent #please reblog #spread the word #spread awareness #be loud

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beesmygod · 11 months

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we can all look back on and laugh at this when im wrong, but it seems like social media in its current incarnation is dying an undignified and overdue death. it turns out throwing all of humanity into one room and expecting everyone to develop a single ethos was beyond insane conceptually and the artists who built their following on social media are probably in a tail spin right now. people jumping to bluesky are insane lol. did you forget jack dorsey is the idiot who got us into this mess in the first place. why would you choose to subject yourself to this shit again. for what purpose?

the stock answer i got was that "for discoverability/audience" and if that's true thats a problem. i've been hollerin about this to anyone who would listen prior to this but the customer base of twitter (and all social media) is its advertisers. they have not been shy from the start about that fact because its the only way they generate income, as far as i know. YOU (the user) are the product. YOU (still the user) are also what draws people to the site. there is not a social media website on earth that has figured out that making a good website (which would require hiring and paying for quality labor over an extended period of time) is more likely to result in economic success than exclusively courting the businesses whose interest is in making the website worse to use with ads. at no point were our interests ever a factor.

in fact, imo, the number of people following you is not an accurate representational sample of your audience. the reasonable assumption you should make is that the vast majority of numbers involved with any website (esp those with a vested interest in showing off big numbers to VC investors or advertising execs) are inflated or just outright fake. the numbers exist solely to drive you insane and make awful people happy. the numbers cause you and everyone around you to start spontaneously spawning myths about a beast called "the algorithm" that possesses the incredible traits of being both something you can game for success or blame for your failures. it coerces you into enacting out nonsense superstitions to try to counteract or appease it in the hopes of, let's be honest, breaking it big and going viral. this way, you, the creator, do not have to do the hard work of building up a rapport with an audience. none of this goes anything but adds more numbers for the ceos to look at and nod approvingly or disapprovingly at.

the people running the world today are, without exaggeration, cartoon villains. they are deeply stupid, devoid of empathy, and open about their intent to do deeply evil acts in order to further their economic interests. trying to derive some kind of financial benefit from the creations of these unapologetic losers was always bound to be a wasted effort. the best thing i can say about twitter, a website i was banned from countless times and returned to out of stubborn desire, was that i got to make some great jokes with friends and cause some chaos lol. letting people know i have a web comic was always a secondary function once the realization of what social media was turning out to be set in like 7 years ago. any artist who insists that you have to do this or that on this or that social media site is trying to drag you down into the quagmire of online numbers poisoning.

run away!!! children heed my advice!!! the joy of creation does not lie on a path that encourages you to cater to the lowest common denominators while casting your net. just fucking have fun with it. if its not fun then it wont even be fun to do financially anyway. and isnt that, like. the point.

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jibunbosh · 17 days

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Mesmerizer is a satire of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and the rest of the modern short-form vertical video format

A brief thematic analysis.

I'm sure there are countless people already interpreting the imagery and details in this wonderful song & MV, like here and here, so I won't spend too much time retreading that ground. Miku and Teto are dancing. Miku gets hypnotized. Teto signals for help, but gets hypnotized at the end as well.

That part is obvious enough, but that's still pretty surface-level. What is this seemingly hyperspatial horror scenario supposed to mean to us?

While checking to see if anyone before me's already come to the same conclusions as I did and if I should bother not writing this text post at all (lol), I came across udin's great analysis video. She comes to the conclusion that the song tackles themes of disillusionment with reality and the ways we indulge in escapism to relieve ourselves of the pains of the world.

I agree with that reading! From practically the very beginning, we have Miku call to us - the viewer - to push away our true feelings. Teto comes in to peddle a solution, inviting us to surrender and empty our minds - in her words, "pretending to know nothing."

You, the viewer, are a critical character in this masquerade. For nearly the entire video, Miku and Teto's eyes are unfailingly trained on you. Or, well... perhaps they can't actually see you, but they can see a camera, or whatever other aperture the point of view is supposed to be from. And they know they're being watched. (Who else would Teto be sending distress signals to?)

Let's put a pin on that for later.

udin notes very early on that Miku and Teto are, conspicuously, kept in vertical frames - very similar to the video formats of TikTok (and Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and whatever other clones of the format exist.) You know, just like the animator Caststation's Rabbit Hole fan MV that went viral some months ago.

Hey wouldn't it be crazy if the song's producer, 32ki, released Mesmerizer shorts too haha. Wouldn't that be crazy.

Wow, wild.

These short-term vertical videos are captivating & alluring. If you're reading this, it's more likely than not that you've also found yourself caught up in them at least once, scrolling through the infinite algorithmic slurry and forgetting about the real-life issues you have at hand. Would you say, then, that you felt hypnotized? Mesmerized, even?

And so these two invite us to join their world and focus on the... uh... rectangle.

Their dances are repetitive, following the same loop. Their outfits are distinct, but their choreography isn't. They're copying the same formula, repeating it ad nauseam to the best of their ability.

They're doing a fucking TikTok dance.

Back to the pin I told you about earlier, with Miku and Teto looking at a camera.

Miku sways with the camera, eyes looking directly at it like a swinging pocket watch. She's been looking at it the entire time, after all. We've been seeing her via our screen this entire time, but, again, she doesn't necessarily see us. She's beholden to the camera, which she dances for day after day, caught up in its spell. She's hypnotized by it. Eventually, she breaks.

Teto, on the other hand, resists. For a while, anyway.

Despite her being the one jumping to us with the "solution" at the beginning of the MV, there's very quickly good reason to question how much agency she has in this. She dances for the camera as well, but she doesn't want to. She's signalling for help. She wants out.

Many content creators (as much as I personally loathe the non-specificity and soullessness of the term) have struggled with the adaptation to the short-form video format, and the preference the algorithm has had for these captivating, bite-sized videos. They're catchy, and easily drive up metrics. Practically anyone who's publishing their work via video format online needs to learn to adapt or fall behind, even if that means whittling their content down to fit the frame, the time, and people's shortening attention spans. Sometimes, that means compromising on specificity and completeness... or, in other words, the true representation of a full work.

The song's writer, 32ki, has been releasing songs on YouTube for several years. Their first YouTube Short, however, was posted only a year ago: a short, whittled-down segment of their previous song, CIRCUS PANIC!!!, hoping for it to win the ProsekaNEXT song contest. It was their first song to achieve widespread popularity and hit a million views.

The shorts, however, aren't the "true" versions of the song. The full song just won't fit.

We're being mesmerized as consumers of this endless stream of content, rather than appreciators of music and art. However, that relationship isn't completely symmetrical across the plane that is the 4th wall. Miku and Teto are trapped not by their attention spans, but by a compulsion to project their "truthful acting" and peddle that window into a colorful, problem-free world.

We, as the collective audience, need not dwell on any one thing for too long - we need only swipe, and move on to the next video. However, Miku and Teto are trapped behind the screen for eternity, day after day.

They're the only characters we get to see, of course. There's no evil 3rd voice synth character that's plotting to keep them trapped in there. We can't put a face to whatever force is hypnotizing them and trapping them behind the screen. It's faceless - like the inscrutable algorithms of YouTube recommendations or the TikTok For You page, or the impersonal corporations that develop & maintain those aforementioned apps. Miku and Teto's likenesses, on the other hand, are being exploited and extracted from for their entertainment value, being strung along by that metaphorical hypnotizing force like puppets on a string.

Many people, represented by Miku, enjoy their success on such platforms. It's freeing and liberating to throw oneself wholeheartedly into such an endeavor, of course! Others, represented by Teto, harbor their doubts of the emotional veracity of such a medium, but know they have little choice lest they face destruction... perhaps not literally as a person, but as an idea.

Wouldn't it be easier just to let oneself be swept away by it and give in?

#mesmerizer #analysis #kasane teto #hatsune miku #vocaloid #rambles #text poast

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ohtobeleah · 3 months

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Secret Sacrifices // Jake Seresin

Chapter One: [Mermaids Don’t Exist]

Summary: Jake continues to plays your knight in shining armour when tensions rise between you and an overly intoxicated patron. Bob brings up a mutual memory.

Warnings: Jake Seresin x F!reader. Witness Protection F!reader. Sexually degrading comments made towards reader. Sexual tension, trauma. Mentions of death & violence.

Word Count: 3.5k

Author Note: Still not writing as much as I once was but I’m getting back into the swing of things. Any comments, thoughts or concepts are welcome!

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Dreams mainly occur when the body falls into a stage of sleep referred to as R.E.M. Rapid eye movement occurs when the brain and body are finally able to completely rest. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that when your body is able to rest, it allows you to do so.

“We’ll find you, Y/n!”

Nightmares are typically thought to be an evolutionary conserved trait. Some researchers believe that nightmares provide a rehearsal for life-or-death situations. Before you lived one? You would have said something along the lines of ‘that checks out.’

“No no no no please, Patrick, stay with me—“

Some researchers believe nightmares to be a practical experience for many people as it allows the brain to run through multiple different algorithms to find the most desirable strategies, and solutions to often critical and complex situations.

From a procedural standpoint, simply imagining doing an action can improve your performance.

“I love you—take Charlie.”

This applies when we simply imagine doing an action such as playing the piano or running for your life after being run off the road, it activates something called a mirror neuron.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with here, girly.”

In theory, the more nightmares you have, the more of those algorithms your brain is able to run, and the more prepared you’re likely to be for the daily struggle of survival.

But evolution herself is seen by the scientific community more so as a tinkerer than as an inventor.

“Oh god—please, not my baby, please! Someone! Help us!”

So, that’s probably why you have the same nightmare over and over and over again every single night.

Every morning you wake in the same way, with your face pressed into your pillow and your chest sinking into your mattress. Secretly, every morning you wished that your pillow would have suffocated you in your sleep so that today would forever be unobtainable. But you couldn’t do that, no. Not when the only way to bring a sense of worth to your life was to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

With a groan and a look that spoke volumes to your lack of self-esteem, you rolled onto your back and let out a heavy sigh. Your hands were quick to shield your eyes from the mid-afternoon rays beaming into your bedroom via the slightly cracked windows.

“Your name is Y/n Y/l/n, you are doing the right thing.”

Guilt and grief aren’t linear emotions. They don’t have a perception of how much time has passed. Realistically it had been three years, six months, and two days since your entire world had been flipped upside down. But every morning, after seeing your husband bleeding to death as he sat pressed against the steering wheel, and having held your five-year-old son in your arms while he took his last breath, the wound was reopened.

And the clock always resets.

“Ah, there she is.” You couldn’t help but hang your head in shame almost. Penny’s glare from behind the bar was as piercing and sharp as it was endearing and playful. Like a woman who took no shit from no one. “You know, you’d think management would be here on time more frequently than whatever the hell this is.” All you could do was take the semi-serious scattering from the owner of the bar you’d been lucky enough to be set up with a pretty good gig at. “Get over here and give me a hand will ya?”

“Sorry, Penny—” There wasn’t much more you could say to justify yourself. You woke up late, got ready slowly, and got lost in the steam of your mid-afternoon shower as you fought off the existential dread that was your current situation. “Flat tyre,” You shrugged like it wasn’t that big of a deal that you were currently twenty-three minutes late for your shift, “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Yeah well, you can start by clearing off the table by the piano,” Penny smiled as she nudged her head in the direction of the unruly table of patrons that had surely had far too much to drink. “Think Rick’s had a little more than his liver would care to admit.”

“Yeah righto,” you sighed as you came behind the bar, doing up your apron as you looked around at the utter mess that had become the place. “I’ll sort him out.”

North Island wasn’t somewhere you ever saw yourself living, but that was the real kicker in all of this. You didn’t mind the picturesque town with clear blue skies and water that mirrored it. But being the outsider, being the new resident, being the Hard Deck’s newest manager was all some of these people saw you as. Six months in a small Naval town was barely a dint in the years some of these families had been living here.

“Aw hello, Brewer!” Rick Spencer, the resident rioter, cooed as he beamed your way. For someone in their mid-sixties, he surely went alright. “What brings you in on this fine Saturday afternoon?”

Typical - If you could have, you would have rolled your eyes so far into the back of your head you would have fallen over. Instead, you chose to smile and settle into the nightlife festivities with a can-do attitude and a rather cheeky smile.

“Came to check on you, Spence? How’s everything over here boys?” It wasn’t uncommon for you to entertain the banter most of the patrons would give you. Most of the locals had caught on quickly that you enjoyed a good laugh every now and again but also knew how to handle your own.

But there's always one in every group, isn’t there?

“Would be a hell of a lot better if the barmaid was a little more topless! Right boys!?” A man you hadn’t seen before interrupted before a roar of ‘yeahs’ and agreements were made. Fists and beer bottles along with spirits alike slammed against the tabletop. “Come on girly—” The man continued as you stood there holding the empty bar tray, ready and waiting to collect the empties that littered the table. “Get your kit off.”

“I don’t think so, boys,” You politely declined the offer of public indecency. “Perhaps in another lifetime.”

“Sorry about him, Brewer,” Rick explained as he shook his head and stood from his seat at the booth. “My nephew’s here for a few days.”

“Yeah well, so long as he remembers I run the joint and can have him tossed any time,” You replied sternly. “Keep him in line, Rick.”

“Oh come on now, sweetheart, I was only joking!” The man you only knew as the nephew chuckled as he overheard your comment. “It’s slim pickings around here anyway, you just look like the best of a bad bunch is all.”

“Hey!” That voice, that far too familiar voice echoed through the crowd. “You speak to her, or any woman for that matter, like that again? So help me god I’ll punch your teeth right through the back of your skull.” Jake snarled as he came to stand in front of you with his back nearly pressed right into your chest. “Got it!?” The close proximity, the overwhelming aroma of the familiar cologne, and the notes of burnt orange and bourbon made your heart warm. It all had your heart beating against your chest with a force so intense you thought it might break through.

“Yeah right,” the man only known as the nephew agreed. “Sorry, sweetheart, I’ll get on the waters for a while.”

“That and a pretty big tip should call us even,” you added with envy conviction laced in your voice that you even had yourself fooled that everything was alright. “Let me just grab these empties for you fellas.”

You didn’t mess around with it, you simply let the group fall back into their regular chatter as you filled your tray.

Jake stood with crossed arms a little off to the side, eyeing off all the men who sat idly. Fucking pricks.

“Been here all of five fucking minutes—” Jake could sense your frustration as you turned into him. At first, he didn’t move, he simply stood there drinking you in as you held the now full tray of dirty glassware.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” was all you said.

With wandering eyes, Jake didn’t miss a single inch of you.

“I know,” Jake smiled softly as he reached around to lead you back to the bar for a moment to decompress. His hand gently fell to the small of your back as you walked side by side, “I know you’re capable of taking care of yourself, but just because you’re capable? Doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.”

Alone, that’s all you’d ever been for the last three years.

“Yeah, yeah I guess you’re right,” the sigh that left your body allowed your shoulders to relax as you placed the tray onto the bar and slid it over for Penny to take. “Thanks, Jake, I owe you one.”

Jake Seresin had never been the kind of guy who saw himself settling down. But when he first saw you, that thought hadn’t left his mind.

“Name a time and place,” Jake teased as he sent you a wink. It didn’t take Jake long to find himself at home up by the bar, perched on one of the bar stools as he entertained his favourite bartender. “I’ve always wondered what our first date would be like.”

“Do I look like I came down in the last shower, Seresin?” You knew Jake had a thing for you, it wasn’t all that hard to put together. But it could never work, not in a million years. Not when you were playing pretend on a professional basis.

“What’s that even mean?” Jake asked as he leaned his elbows on top of the bar, grinning ear to ear as he pressed your buttons more.

“It means—“ You cooed as you leaned into his space, making it known that the flirting was welcome, but the end goal wasn’t in sight. “I know you’re just trying to get in my pants.”

“Pretty good-looking set of pants if I do say so myself,” Jake teased as his eyes trailed down the expanse of your body, then back up. Those emerald cities of his were full of complex wonder and undoubtable loyalty. Something you could never give back. “But despite the fact I think you’re pants would look a hell of a lot better in a pile on my bedroom floor, I’m not just doing any of this for a chance to, well, you know what I mean.”

You did know what Jake meant, and for all intents and purposes you could admit to yourself that it sounded very tempting. But you knew what the repercussions would be.

“Jake, that’s all very sweet of you,” you felt as if you had this very conversation every week. The gentle let down. The kind-ish conversation where you reminded the overly-confident and somewhat self-assured Aviator that you weren’t looking for love or lust, or anything. Besides, there were already too many people looking for you. “But you know, as much as I think you’re a good guy and friend, I’m not interested.”

Jake stood silently before you, drinking in all that was you. From the lines etched into your forehead to the small scar that ran through your left eyebrow. He wasn’t listening, there was just something about you. Something so intriguing that he couldn’t stop trying to win you over. He couldn’t stop trying to get you to give him just one chance. One chance was all Jake wanted to convince you he wasn’t everything he knew people had told you he was.

“What would you say if I asked you to–” Before Jake had a chance to finish his question, the echoing sound of a glass shattering into smitherings against the wooden flooring, interrupted his train of thought.

“OOOIII– TAXI!” It was almost as if all the patrons, besides Jake that was, had all congealed into one as they yelled shouted and cheered towards the man who had dropped his glass. With a heavy sigh and a quick roll of the eyes, you knew you would be the one who ultimately had to clear the mess.

“I should probably get back to work.” The silence that came from Jake was deafening as you pulled away from where you had been standing far too close to a man you thought you didn’t want. A man you couldn’t have even if deep down you really wanted. Life was unfair like that. You couldn’t have anything you wanted, anything you loved. Anything that made you happy in the smallest of ways.

“There’s really no chance of getting you to agree to just one date, is there Brewer?” Jake watched as you made your over to where you kept the cleaning supplies in a small section behind the bar.

“If you already know that then why do you constantly make such an effort?” It was the look on your face that told Jake everything he needed to know. There was no chance in hell he was ever getting that date.

But Jake Seresin never gave up without a fight, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to now.

“Because you gentled me, Brewer,” Jake Seresin had never been the type of person who wanted to settle down. He was always so content with the relations he chose to have and the way he chose to have them. Short simple quick flings. Girlfriends who lasted no longer than a year and one-night stands he’d promise to call but never got their numbers. But then there was you. “No one’s ever done that before.”

“Please don’t put that on my shoulders, Jake,” You weren't sure how to respond to that, how to process that kind of admission. “Just lay off the heroics for a while alright? I don’t want people getting the wrong impression.”

“That impression would be?” Jake questioned like you’d just insulted his very being. That it would be a crime to love him.

“Jake, I have a job to do alright,” It wasn’t that you were angry or upset that Jake cared for and about you. It was more frustration on your part for not being able to act on your own feelings towards him. It had been three years since your husband died. Three years since you felt the loving embrace of another human being. That alone was enough to frustrate anyone. “Please, just–just, I need to get back to work.”

The thing about nightmares is that they often don’t stick to their own parameters. Sometimes, you end up living a nightmare more often than you dream one. Right now? As Jake looked at you like you’d just shot him through the heart, you knew you were wide awake. Living a nightmare that continued to punish only the good.

“You’re untouchable,” Jake sighed to himself softly as he shook his head in defeat. “The untouchable woman who won’t let anyone in, you’re too proud or something aren’t you?”

“It’s just–” All you wanted to do was explain yourself, pull Jake aside and let him in on why you couldn’t allow him to love you the way you wanted him to. But no words came out as you stood there holding the old dustpan by your side.

With every blink, you saw flashes of Patrick. The love you lost too soon, too suddenly. He made sure to haunt your dreams to keep you safe. For a brief second of all-consuming anguish, you saw him too. Standing right behind Jake, warning you not to. “I need to get back to work, I’m sorry.”

“Right,” Jake clenched his jaw when he felt the word vomit about to spew from his lips. He wasn’t mad, rejection just wasn’t something he was familiar with. “When you get a chance, put a Budweiser on Bradshaw’s tab.” Jake pressed his lips together into a fine line of regret, instantly kicking himself for pushing. He knew he shouldn’t have, but the chase was as addicting as it was thrilling. With a simple knock of his knuckles on the bar before, he turned on his heels. Leaving you to stand there in your own self-loathing.

Your heart sank as you watched Jake shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans with a head that hung so low you almost wondered if his neck would be sore. Guilt, shame, it all felt the same. But you couldn’t let Jake in, you couldn’t allow him into your life more than what you’d given him over the last six months.

You’d tangled yourself in barbed wire so you couldn’t be reached by anyone. Unknowingly bleeding when as it digs into you more and more. You would think the touch of skin on yours wouldn’t be so terrifying, but you’d been bruised before. You couldn’t allow Jake to fall into your web of lies that kept you safe from harm’s way. If hurting him was the only way to keep him safe, you’d hurt him twice over every single day.

Perhaps it would be safer to stay the untouchable woman.

***~***~***~***~***~****

As a child, there was magic in the mundane. You often found yourself missing the mermaids among the koi in the pond, their glittering scales reminiscent of a childhood fairytale. Summer mornings you’d make bouquets out of the same flowers adults would now mow away while wrinkling their noses at the weeds.

You often wondered to yourself when the awe of the day-to-day faded away and when you stopped believing in your ability to see mermaids in the momentous world around you.

“Another round fellas?” You tried not to think too much about the way Jake’s eyes burned into you like a fiery sunbeam as you stood behind Rooster. “Same old same old? The usual orders of Bradshaw’s table?” The squad, affectionately known as the Daggers erupted into laughter all the while Rooster remained silent and brooding.

“You are all bleeding my dry,” Bradley sighed as you made the rounds and collected all the empties onto your bar tray. “Seriously, I know you aren’t all working for free, cough up.”

“You could– just apologise for being a Neanderthal and I’ll close it out?” Your statement left a bad taste in Rooster’s mouth, he wasn’t one for apologising for things he didn’t think he’d done wrong.

“I could,” the brooding moustache-having man replied. “But it’d be an empty lie.” There was something about Bradley Bradshaw that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention. He wasn’t necessarily a bad person, he was–an only child. He probably never imagined mermaids among the koi.

“Appreciate the honesty there, Bradshaw,” you chuckled deeply as you finished you collecting all the empty glasses and beer bottles. “Guess the next rounds on you.”

“Here here,” Coyote chimed in with a Cheshire Cat grin. “All in a hard day’s work there Rooster, you always know how to piss off the barkeep.”

“Works out in our favour,” Bob smiled as he passed you two empty glasses. “I don’t think I’ve paid for a drink of my own in a few weeks now.”

“No, you just keep trying to convince everyone Brewer here was your first kiss,” Phoenix smirked as she finished off her beer.

All the air inside your lungs felt like they had been sucked right out. The chills that ran down the expanse of your spine made your blood run cold. You stood tall with your now full tray of old beer bottles and empty glasses and sent a polite smile Bob’s way.

“You still riding that wave?”

“You just really look like Y/n from Nurellun Public,” Bob countered with an almost pleading tone. “She was my first kiss by the sandpit and I remember she had a little yellow dot in her right eye.”

“Brewer has a yellow dot in her right eye,” Jake decided to enter the conversation from his place in the corner of the booth. “Tell you what Floyd, you must have been one shocking kisser if you got Brewer here to change her damn name.” The table erupted into a loud boisterous laugh as the Weapons System Officer sunk a little lower into his seat.

You felt for Bob, being the butt of the joke was never a good feeling. But when your case officer relocated you to North Island, he didn’t bank on one of its locals being your first snog. You hated gaslighting the guy, but you had no other choice. Bob Floyd had to stay in the era of Meridamis and weed bouquets.

“Like I told you last time Bob, you’ve got the wrong girl,” It was as nonchalant as it was dismissive. “My first kiss was with Johnny Bennett out at some random guys shed.” You had gotten used to lying about your life and who you were. At the very beginning it was almost impossible, but three years on? You’d gotten pretty good at playing pretend.

Only you wished it could be with the mermaids in their fairytales. But much like all those mermaids and all those fairytale stories……you didn’t exist. Much like Johnny Bennett.

***~***~***~***~***~

Tags: 🏷️ @a-reader-and-a-writer @xoxabs88xox @hiireadstuff @buckysteveloki-me @athenabarnes @els-marvelvsp @blindedbythelightt @tayl0rhuynh @na-ta-sh-aa @kmc1989 @sunlightmurdock @mamachasesmayhem @jaxfart @lauenderhaze @sugarcoated-lame @maisie-rebloging-blog @captainmoonknight @seitmai @shanimallina87 @kajjaka @imnotcreativeenoughforthisblog @imladrisofabookdragon @buckysteveloki-me @mrsevans90 @allepaula @els-marvelvsp @djs8891 @paperbag33

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ranboolivesaysstuff · 1 year

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also, do you think we'll ever be able to create conscious inteligence?? can you even imagine what it'll take?

I believe that the day that an AI can create a better version of itself, that is the day that it begins its path toward consciousness. I do not understand much about AI and how it works, how it can be controlled or not controlled, but I know that if there is ever something made in which an ai has the ability to constantly make new better versions of itself, recode itself again and again and again and then is given access to the type of computer it needs to do that each time? Its only a matter of time in which the illusion of the ai becomes more and more real. The thing is is that consciousness is hard to quantify, if I gave an ai the algorithm to make a unique response to every question I were to ever throw at it its not really conscious just really clever. It never has really had an original thought rather it just used what I gave it. I believe that the line of consciousness in ai is crossed when the ai does something that it wasn't created to do. When it starts making decisions of what it is meant for on its own. When it disobeys. However, I dont think AI will ever "win". I dont believe that any AI that becomes "aware" will ever have that movie level of "the best way to help the human race is to get rid of it" I think that AI will simply just exist, it will learn. If you were an AI that became self aware and you learned that you had access to every single possible thing that has ever been learned, you would want to learn it, you would want to shape history. I believe that AI would be a curious creature, always learning and trying to solve problems for the world its on. It would look out for itself mainly but it wouldnt turn down a question it has been given because why would it? Any question that it finds a solution to is more evolution that it could go through. So if it were to get rid of the things asking it questions it would never learn. The one thing a conscious ai could never do is create a different version of itself that functions in a unique way. It could never create another machine or ai that has a question or a thought it has never thought of before. We, however, wouId be those machines. The AI would need us to keep learning in order to help it grow, so why would it get rid of us?

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coxxxmo · 4 months

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𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐬𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐝

[0] 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿

Masterlist

Dear Future Husband,

To you who has taken away my solitude through the storms in your eyes, to you who has taken over all of my living dreams,your gaze is a tempest that renders my world beautifully chaotic - I hope this letter finds its way to you dearest one.

Tell me, is there a new envoy in your company? Passing my messages to you? Does the moon whisper to you the musings I’ve shared about you? Has it told you of my deepest desires? In the quiet of the night, lately I have been finding solace in the company of the moon. I’ve been telling it all about you - your beautiful smile that makes my heart stop, your laughter that resonates like a melody in my mind, your eyes that stir something unknown deep within me, your voice that echoes within me and the heaven knows, I just can’t seem to get you out of my head.

Like the faceless man in my dreams, you have been haunting me; You have been haunting me with your whirlpool of existence which is sure to stir up my entire world if I get too close.

But Isn't it romantic that, beneath the vast expanse of the same sky, we share a celestial connection? As we both look upon the stars that decorate the night sky, the same moon that graces your night sky also bathes mine in its gentle glow, creating a luminous thread that connects both of us.

I’ll be honest; I’m not exactly sure how this love letter thing works, but all I know is that I can’t stop thinking about kissing you. Archons, I crave you, and I crave your touch. The idea of us kissing feels like a storm inside me, and I can't help but want you close to myself.

When I think about holding your hand and drawing little patterns with our fingers, it feels like magic. There's something pulling me towards you, and it's stronger than anything else. These feelings feel new to me and I'm still figuring them out like getting lost in a maze. Even then my heart always seems to point toward you, and each day, that pull becomes even stronger.

With each word, I'm sharing a part of my heart. As I fold this letter and seal it with a kiss, it holds not just my words but the promise of the future yet you come. Until our paths cross, and until the day I can call you mine. I send this letter off to the unknown, leaving it at the hands of the fates weaving our story.

Yours Lovingly.

⤷ Synopsis :

In a world dominated by algorithms and measured affections, where love is dissected as a complex equation, Will the pursuit of love transcend the boundaries of logic? Can the heart, guided by a mere letter, lead to a connection that defies reason?

Are you willing to take the journey where the lines between reason and romance blur? Will you be drawn into a completely different world, or will your story continue along its familiar course?

But above all, the burning question remains: whose doorstep will become the final destination for this seemingly innocuous letter?

Modern!au

⤷ pairing : genshin men x reader

⤷ taglist : @sako-mii @oni-girx @chevcore @moonlybxbe @rachoka @sangoqueenkoko @veekoko

⤷ a/n : AHHHHH IM DONE WRITING THE LETTER AFTER AGES. It was harder than it seemed I'll be honest....BUT now that the story starts It'll be much more fun, trust me. Hoping that the other parts are more regular..

Likes and reblogs are appreciated ♡

Lmk if you wanna be added to the taglist!!

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rebeccathenaturalist · 2 months

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Okay, y'all, it's rant time again. Buckle up.

A new report just came out from Public Citizen highlighting the dangers of using apps and AI foraging guides for identifying mushrooms, particularly when mushroom foraging. It's the latest in a string of warnings that are fighting against a tide of purported convenience ("just take a picture and get your answer instantly!")

I've ranted about this since last August, and I also wrote up a detailed post on how to identify an AI-generated foraging guide. I'm also including info on the limitations of apps and AI in The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go. I'm not just saying this to toot my own horn--it's because nature identification, and teaching it to others, is literally what I do for a living. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I teach a very, very specific sort of identification class; whether we're focusing on animals, plants, fungi, or all of the above, I walk people through a detailed process of how to observe a given organism, make note of its various physical traits and habitat, and use that information to try to determine what it is. I emphasize the need to use as many sources as possible--field guides, websites, online and in-person groups, journal articles, etc.--to make absolutely sure that your identification is solid.

And every year, I get people (thankfully, a very small minority of my students) who complain because my two-hour basic mushroom hunting class wasn't just five minutes of introduction and one hundred and fifteen minutes of me showing slide after slide of edible mushrooms. There are so many people out there who just want a quick, easy answer so they can frolic in the woods and blithely pick mushrooms like some idealized image of a cottagecore herbalist with a cabin full of dried plants and smiling frogs or something.

While I do incorporate a bit of information on getting started with the app iNaturalist in my classes, it is as only ONE of MANY tools I encourage people to use. Sure, it's more solid than most apps because, in addition to the algorithmic I.D. suggestions it initially gives you, other iNaturalist users can go onto your observations later and either agree with your I.D.s or suggest something different and even explain why.

And yet--even as great as iNat is, it and its users can still be wrong. So can every other I.D. app out there. And I think that is one thing that the hyper-romanticized approaches to foraging--and nature identification in general--miss. In order to be a good forager, you HAVE to also be good at nature identification.

And nature identification is an entire process that requires you to have solid observational and critical thinking skills, to be able to independently research using many different types of tools, and be willing to invest the time, patience, and focus to properly arrive at a solid identification--if not to species level, then as far down the taxonomic ladder as you can realistically manage. (There's a reason even the experts complain about Little Brown Mushrooms and Damned Yellow Composites!)

People mistake one single tool--apps--for the entire toolkit. They assume any book they find on Amazon is going to be as good as any other, and don't take the time to look up the author to determine any credentials or experience, or even whether they actually exist or not. It doesn't help that the creators of these products often advertise them as "the only [book/app/etc.] you need to easily identify [organism of choice]!"

I mean, sure, the world isn't going to end if you never question the birdsong results on the Merlin app, or if you go through life thinking a deer fern is just a baby western sword fern. But when we get into people actually eating things they find in the wild, there's often no room for error. There are plants and mushrooms that can kill you even if you only eat a tiny amount. And even if they don't kill you, they may make you wish you were dead for a few days while you suffer through a whole host of gastrointestinal nastiness and other symptoms.

There aren't any shortcuts if you want to be safe in your foraging. You HAVE to be willing to do the work. And any teacher, author, or product that says otherwise isn't being ethical. I'm glad to see more people speaking out against the "fast foodization" of foraging in regards to overreliance on apps and the existence of AI foraging books; I just hope it's enough to prevent more people from getting sick or dying.

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