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#i also hate clickbait writers folks
mariacallous · 2 months
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“I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says. The admission surprises me: He has built a bustling business by snapping up abandoned news outlets and other websites and stuffing them full of algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his model rankles writers and readers alike, he says he’s simply embracing an unstoppable new tool—large language models—in the same way people rationally swapped horse-drawn buggies for gas-powered vehicles. “I hate cars. They’re making my planet bad,” he says. “But I’m not riding a horse anymore, right? I’m driving a car.”
I connected with Vujo after digging into the strange afterlife of indie women’s blog The Hairpin, which shut down in 2018. Last month, its website reawakened. In place of the voicey, funny blog posts it was known for, the site began churning out AI-generated, search-engine-optimized pablum about dream interpretations and painfully generic relationship advice like “effective communication is vital.” When I emailed an address listed on the zombie site’s About Us page, Vujo responded, claiming that it was just one of more than 2,000 sites he operates, in an AI-content-fueled fiefdom built by acquiring once-popular domains fallen on hard times. He’s the CEO of the digital marketing firm Shantel, which monetizes its AI-populated sites through programmatic ads, sponsored content, and selling the placement of “backlinks” to website owners trying to boost their credibility with search engines. He often targets distressed media sites because they have built-in audiences and a history of ranking highly in search results.
The foundation of that business is a long-established practice known as domain squatting—buying up web domains that once belonged to established brands and profiting off their reputations with Google and other search engines. Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at the marketing agency Amsive, calls it “the underbelly of the SEO industry.” But Vujo is part of a wave of entrepreneurs giving this old trade a new twist by using generative AI.
It’s dusk where I live in Chicago when I talk via Zoom with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo. (Although that’s the name he gives me, he has sometimes gone by just Nebojša Vujinović, including on the registration information for some of his domains.) It’s midnight in Belgrade, Serbia, where he lives with his girlfriend and their toddler, but he’s wide awake and chatty. Vujo attributes his erratic sleep schedule to years of late nights working as a DJ and still makes music—he likes to mix pop with Balkan folk and is working on a new song called “Fat Lady.” But right now he’s eager to talk, human-to-human, about his AI-fueled hustle.
He gets why writers are unhappy that their work has been erased and replaced by clickbait. (The Hairpin’s founding editor, Edith Zimmerman, calls his version of the site “grim.”) But he defends his choices, pointing out that his life has been tougher than that of the average American blogger. Although ethnically Serbian, Vujo was born in what is now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his family fled during the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars I escaped. I changed nine elementary schools because we were moving. We were migrants,” he says. “It was terrible to grow up in this part of the world.” He says his economic options have been limited, and this was simply a path available to him.
Vujo also insists that he does have editorial standards; although the majority of the blog posts he publishes are created with ChatGPT, he employs a staff of about a dozen human editors to check its work to avoid anything outright offensive. “Maybe it would be better for you that I’m a bad guy,” he tells me. “Better for your story. But I’m just an ordinary guy.”
Easy, Fast, and Insane
Vujo’s first big domain squatting victory came in 2017 when Italian chef Antonio Carluccio died, and it appears someone forgot to renew one of the websites associated with him. Vujo still talks about his good luck in scooping up the domain and turning it into a cooking-themed content mill. “It’s mine now,” he tells me cheerfully. “He almost invented carbonara—he’s a big celebrity!” Vujo has since also picked up Pope2you.net, formerly an official Vatican website meant to connect Pope Benedict XVI with younger believers, and TrumpPlaza.com, named after residential towers in Jersey City, New Jersey, codeveloped by former President Trump.
Vujo says his most significant—and consistently profitable—purchase is women’s media outlet The Frisky, which he acquired not long after he scored the Carluccio site. “It cost a lot—all the money that I had—but that was my opportunity,” he says. “It was life-changing.” (BuzzFeed News reported on the purchase in 2019.) Vujo says the site generated over $500,000 in the first year he bought the domain. In addition to healthy income from ads and clients willing to pay for backlinks, the brand was a magnet for companies willing to pay for sponsored posts. Because the outlet had long embraced risque topics, Vujo says sex toy companies are eager to do business with him.
Vujo initially hired human writers to create his SEO-optimized articles for The Frisky and his other site, sourcing from gig-economy platforms like Fiverr. In 2023, he saw that the advent of generative AI allowed him to shift his business into a higher, more people-efficient gear. Vujo estimates that his editorial staff is now around a tenth of what it once was. “We create the same amount of content, but my expenses are less,” he says, calling it “easy and fast and insane.”
To many in the media, that business model can feel offensive—especially when the AI-generated articles are posted at a domain where you used to write. For Vujo it’s not personal, though. “I’m just one guy who, yes, in business I am using AI to create shitty content on the internet to earn money or a fortune,” he says. He’s not a mustache-twirling supervillain, chortling as he spews journalism-killing AI slime. He’s an affable young dad who wants his kid to have a nicer childhood than he did.
That doesn’t make the collateral damage of the AI clickbait business any less unsettling. In April 2021, Jimmy Lai—a strident critic of the Chinese government—was sentenced to 14 months in prison in Hong Kong for participating in protests. A few months later police raided the headquarters of his pro-democracy tabloid newspaper Apple Daily, arresting several top editors. “Shutting down Apple Daily was an attack on the free press; closing and then confiscating the newspaper was an attack on the free market and property rights,” says Mark Simon, a former executive at the newspaper, via email.
Vujo snapped up the Apple Daily domain in 2023. The site no longer offers anything resembling news or that might be perceived as a threat to the Chinese government. It’s now a catchall SEO-bait website proffering headlines such as “45+ Happy Birthday Wishes for Teacher” and “40+ Romantic Happy Birthday Wishes for Lover- Happy Birthday Jaan.”
The aggressive banality of this new Apple Daily is no accident. Vujo, scavenger of dead journalism sites, has an editorial vision of his own and sees himself as apolitical. “War in Yugoslavia destroyed my childhood,” he says. “Because of all that, plus a hundred more reasons, I hate politics and all stupid things that separate people. We will not publish anything against anyone on Apple Daily, especially. I love and respect China too.”
Can Be Considered Spam
The way Apple Daily was so thoroughly emptied of the qualities that defined it makes the weak spot in this scheme immediately apparent. A plum domain’s initial benefit—a strong reputation with Google and a built-in audience—dwindles quickly as Vujo populates it with content primarily designed to snare search engines rather than interest people. AI content is successful not because it is replacing the work of human writers but because it coasts on the value created by their past labor.
“A lot of companies that have tried this did really well recently with AI content. They’d get crazy amounts of traffic, but then a few months later everything dropped down and died,” says SEO expert Barry Schwartz. “Google’s getting better at figuring out a lot of these techniques.”
Google’s role in directing traffic to AI-generated content is currently under intense scrutiny. 404 Media recently reported how automated knockoffs of its articles can be highly ranked in Google News. When asked about operations like Vujo’s, company spokesperson Jennifer Kutz maintains that Google has policies to combat them. “The tactics described as used with these sites are largely in violation of Search’s spam policies, and we have systems in place that specifically address this vector of abuse,” she says. “Our systems understand changes in ownership for a domain, and we take that into account when ranking pages. Automatically generated content produced primarily for ranking purposes can be considered spam.”
Whether it was because Google registered that the domain changed ownership or humans on the internet did, The Frisky’s readership has declined under Vujo’s stewardship. According to web-traffic analytics firm Semrush, the site could reach over a million pageviews per month in 2016. Now, it has been under 20,000 pageviews for the past two months. One of the top search terms currently drawing clicks is the seemingly mispelled phrase “a cup tities.” Vujo says The Frisky creates revenue of between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. Perhaps it will stabilize at that level, but to score another soaring success, he has to keep hunting for other distressed media properties with lapsed domains. “It’s like a drug,” Vujo says of the adrenaline rush of scouting potential squatting sites. “You never know what’s waiting.”
As he hunts, Vujo may find a more competitive field as the AI boom continues. While many people in the world of SEO loathe domain squatting and AI-generated content, others are embracing it. An emerging cottage industry of hustlers who make money coaching other people on how to squat and prosper with AI content appears to be expanding fast, says Lily Ray of Amsive. “It’s going to get exponentially worse.”
As AI text, image, and video generation improve and get much cheaper, can anything stop the internet from becoming carpeted with this content? Ray is hopeful that Google will eventually find a way to stifle the growth. “It’s going to take them a minute, but they’re working on it.” If Google can choke off the traffic that feeds operations like Vujo’s, what media outlets remain would face less competition in search results and other feeds from AI-generated rivals. Making a living, or a business, out of journalism would still be tough, but the fight might be fairer.
When I email back-and-forth with Vujo after our talk, he doubles down on insisting that his business model represents the internet’s inevitable future, like it or not. “I understand your position, AI is the biggest problem for content writers and journalists” he writes. “But just imagine how big a problem for the radio host was TV. Give up or UPGRADE, right?” It’s a punchy line but not a particularly convincing one. What feels like the evolution of the internet to a guy like Vujo looks to others like a loss, deterioration disguised as progress.
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batmanmaybe · 4 years
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you don't hate journalists. you hate clickbait writers.
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almost every cartoon youtube channel use to always rubs me the wrong way usually the way they review "modern" spongebob was going to cause the apocalypse and then rob you and then when hillenburg returned people started warming up and being a bit nicer to spunch bop but i really wonder is that they simply picked up spongebob again because of hillenburg and actually saw more modern spongebob episodes instead of cherrypicking the weaker eps hmm
in general about cartoon youtubers usually these days i feel like the early 2010s and some mid 2010s a lot of cartoon reviewers were a lot more negative for some reason but i am glad a lot more seem to have cool down and actually be a bit more positive and give real reviews and criticismm and i like the review more when they say things like "i personally didn't enjoy this but if you did i am glad you liked it!' instead of saying "this is bad because it's bad and the crew for these are horrible people and whoever actually likes these is cringe and that is fact"
You're very right! I've got more to add on this. I remember watching a lot of cartoon reviewers when I was younger. I stopped watching spongebob some time around 2011 because I just wasn't a fan of the episodes. So years later when these cartoon reviewers started popping up swearing they have an explaination as to why spongebob isn't good anymore, I believed it. I was a kid but still. There's a lot of holes in their arguments. They'd put out video after video of the same thing. Spongebob isn't good anymore because the creator left and the people working on the show now is bad. Only like the first 3 seasons otherwise you're a stupid kid.
That's dumb. Hillenburg didn't completely leave the show. He still had some work on the show. Reviewing episode plots and scripts. There's a lot of good moments post season 3. Some people straight up think some moments from post movie episodes are classic episodes and I've caught this often. The newer episodes have a lot of qualities older folks would enjoy. It isn't going to be exactly the same as the classics in tone and its understandable if you're not a fan but gosh these people have no respect.
In the early 2010s I feel like it was clickbait. It was something that can easily to get a microphone and talk about how modern spongebob is ruining the world to get a lot of likes. It appeals to the largest demographic and so why not? Its funny because most of the time they meant 6-8 and even those seasons aren't that bad. They have some weaker episodes for sure and that can be for a multitude of reasons not just "new writers bad". Even I'm wrong since I shat on those seasons before, only to find out recently from some rewatches. They aren't that bad. I mean when there's a bad episode like yeah its not great. But I think my main issue was I just didn't like the tone of the newer episodes. It was purely subjective and I couldn't see that for so long. It makes me laugh how blind I was. They're so creative too and do so much but I couldn't find myself liking them because I didn't like the chubby cheeks design on spongebob, I didn't like how slow some episodes are. Blah blah subjective stuff. And I couldn't see outside my bias. The Hot Shot is a genuinely good episode from season 8, Spongebob's Last Stand is one of my favorite SB episodes of all time, The Sponge Model is so weird, I can't help but laugh.
I'm getting off topic but I really wish it was as easy to say that they're changing now. I mean YouTube cartoon reviewers, the ones who especially shat on spongebob during the early 2010s started to turn around and enjoy the show post movie. I largely assumed it was tone change in the episodes. They started to become more spunky and goofy. Maybe that just appealed to them more. A new feel made them have a bit of change of heart. Especially watching season 9a and season 9b there's a big difference in feel.
But also like you said, they were probably only open to change because Hillenburg was now said to work on the show. Which he's always have been. Just now he's more involved than before. But since his passing, err some people have been pretty rude. I know even before people sent hate messages to the crew on spongebob. Largely fueled by those irresponsible youtube cartoon reviewers who acted like modern spongebob was the root of all evil. But now a days I feel like its too common. Probably because of all the misinformation around kamp koral, Hillenburg's passing, and also some people's dislike with the expressiveness post season 10. It's been fueling a lot of hate.
I get people not liking the expressiveness. Its not for everyone. But gosh it really isn't as bad as people make it out to be. And I hate keep running into the amount of hate people flooded the crew with. I hate even more whrn the movie came out, people acted like it was ruining the integrity of spongebob even though Hillenburg worked on it and pitched what is the main plot of the movie. And actually getting in arguments because people think I was a "movie defender" for stating the facts. They all acted shocked when they found out Hillenburg approved of the movie and Kamp Koral when Vincent Waller officially came out and said it. But for a long time, the facts were there and readily available. I admit I was wrong before since I also fell for the misinformation but even after a while, I just didn't want to fuel the hate because it drove people to do crazy shit.
Its also interesting seeing people's biases. I remember seeing a review where someone was review of sponge out of water and the person's review is essentially "I think its bad and if you like it then you should feel bad about it" someone needs to knock their ego down a bit. They were right earlier in their video that they didn't like it and didn't need to explain to people why they didn't like it. And that's right and I wish more of the internet would accept they don't need an elaborate reason to dislike something. But gosh that was a bad take.
And its funnier when the 3rd movie came out, they made a video acting like the film was hell on earth and remarked that the 2nd movie at least has some qualities and is enjoyable. Like before they weren't telling people they should feel bad for enjoying the 2nd movie.
Or how seasons 4-8 was considered modern spongebob. People shat all over it. Then when seasons 9-12 came out. They act like 4-8 is apart of the classics. Like season 8 is the last good season. It kinda feels like a joke. Or maybe they finally got over their blind hatred for those seasons and now found something new to hate because they can't let go that the classics era is long gone. I remember watching a review where some guy was just acting like seasons 9-12 is hell and was like "look how they massacred my boi" mans really was just drawn with an interesting facial expression. Calm down. And then he later admitted he never watched the modern seasons because he doesn't have the strength. He was just going off a random clip.
It gets frustrating. Tumblr here is very tame but on twitter or wherever else, some people really don't know how to behave and do research for themselves. They act like Hillenburg is some kind of god who will save the show and while shitting on the exact episodes he worked on. His name is literally in the credits before each episode.
They're like "oh I would fire all the current writers and hire the ones who worked on the classic episodes" the ones who worked on the classic episodes are working on the show now. What are you going to do? Fire them and hire them back on??
This turned into a long rant but uhh I just had a lot to share. It just gets on my nerves since the patrick show coming up adds more hate to deal with. I haven't the energy. If you have a problem with Nickelodeon's corporate decisions then deal with the executives themselves ya kno? But it wouldn't matter because people are really biased. Especially with the lasting effects of those early 2010s cartoon reviewers.
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warsofasoiaf · 4 years
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Rant time: recently Amazon recommended me a book on the Greco-Persian War whose blurb spouts things like "Battle for the West" & "West's first struggle for independence & survival". I hate clickbait phrases like this. It seems many media products couch the Persian Wars as an apocalyptic clash of civilizations, with the Persians taking the role of some ancient version of ISIS or Mordor hellbent on destroying all that is good & progressive about "The West". Do you have any thoughts on this?
It’s silly.
From a modern standpoint, if we look at both Classical Greek and Achaemenid Persian culture, we find them both to be beyond repugnant when applying modern standards of morality. Both cultures practiced slavery, both conducted methods of punishment and execution that we would consider to be torture, the list really goes on and on. So much of what they do are not just considered unacceptable, they’d be complete deal-breakers.
I understand where this concept of the Greco-Persian conflict as an apocalyptic clash of culture comes from, Classical Greece is considered to be one of the principal sources of “Western culture” from philosophy, art, and so on. Historical writings on the time period were predominantly taken from Greek sources who conceptualized the Greco-Persian Wars as a civilization clash, particularly writers who considered Persia to be decadent anti-democratic despots and rationalized their victory in part due to superior culture. Later writings used these historical takes and so that was what was passed into a reading and interpretation of history, those texts were foundational works for European education. The real history is muddy, Alexander himself espoused a sort of Hellenic culture that incorporated a lot of Persian
Of course, there were plenty of Persian influences that made their way into Western cultures, not the least of which being ideas from Zoroastrianism that influenced early Christianity. That’s nothing new though, cultures regularly influence each other, ideas meld and blend as easily as cuisine. Take rock and roll music, the classic “decadent Western” music genre as it was conceived of by the “East” of modern history, the Soviet Union. Rock and roll is a blending of African musical traditions with European instrumentation in general, and specifically you see a lot of blending of European and African folk music traditions that took place in the 20th century. Not to get too bogged down in the details, but the point is clear, as cultures evolve they also blend. So in terms of cultural apocalypse, it’s not only silly but wrong; there are ideas from the enemy Persians that influence the modern concept of western culture, and there were ideas from Ancient Greece that did not make the jump. While this is a dramatic oversimplification, I love Bruce Lee too much not to say it: Cultures are jeet kune do, they take what works.
The blurbs are clickbait, an overdramatization and a means to appeal to the audience through a sense of tribal chest-thumping. And I despise tribal chest-thumping.
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
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emeraldspiral · 6 years
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Why do you think Kylo Ren specifically is the target of so many comments about neo-Na/zi allegories and is critiqued in a poor way in general? Is it just about the way we consume media right now? Like, are there going to be hot takes after his arc is complete about how the story would’ve been so much better if he had died a villain and how the redemption arc was insensitive and awful?
Star Wars was already a huge franchise with wide and far reaching appeal before TFA came out. Then SJWs took one look at the black and female leads and the white male villain and saw an opportunity to make themselves out to be somehow acting for the betterment of mankind (and get lots of followers/make sweet clickbait money), simply by liking Star Wars, liking Finn and/or Rey, liking F1nnRey or St0rmpilot, and especially hating Kylo Ren/Reylo. This created a potent collision of typical ship war drama that’s been around for forever crossed with the cancer that is modern identity politics.
If TFA had come out 10 years ago the hatedom would be just as large because there would still be people who just can’t abide someone liking something they don’t.But everything is so much worse now because everyone’s equipped with a bunch of poorly thought and/or poorly understood rhetoric and buzzwords which embolden people to think that their every petty thought and emotion is an objective moral fact that justifies everything from rude comments to putting needles in cookies and sending CP to CSA survivors. It used to be you just talked shit about someone’s OTP and felt smug like you really knocked them down a peg and now you feel better about your own shit taste in waifus. Now those shippers/character stans aren’t merely annoying foolish plebs for their failure to recognize the superiority of your favs. Now they are an Evil That Must Be Stopped. Now you’re not just a petty jackass, you’re a Brave Hero serving your community. And the best part is, you didn’t even have to do anything. Just do exactly what you would’ve done anyway (and would normally be admonished for). Just remember to flash your Ron Swanson “I can do whatever I want” permit disguised as a set of moral principles.
Ultimately (disregarding the people who decide their film, character, or ship preferences purely on an insincere politically motivated basis, who don’t really care about any of the characters or ships) the reason Kylo Ren/Reylo suffers so much from The Discourse comes down to the same reasons any character or ship got shit on in the days of yore.
1) Adam Driver/Kylo Ren is not everyone’s cup of tea.
People who identify with Rey may want her to end up with their ideal man and can’t stand the thought of her choosing someone they don’t find attractive.
People who are attracted to Rey may want her to either stay single so they can imagine her with them/their Mary-Sue character, be a lesbian so they can imagine themselves as her girlfriend, or want her to be with a man who’s more like them in terms of personality or looks more like how they wish they looked.
People who do find Kylo attractive may only want him paired up with other attractive men for hawt yaoi smex.
2) Kylo/Reylo is popular.
Even people who ship a ship that doesn’t involve either party may still be jealous, annoyed and/or resentful of Kylo/Reylo and pray for a world where all the great fanartists and fanfic writers would make content that caters to them instead, or not make anything at all so they never have to see anything they don’t like/don’t care about.
3) Kylo is a divisive character.
People who are fans of Vader, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Finn, Poe, or another character that Kylo hurts/competes for popularity with/resembles/has more screen time than/etc… may feel that hating Kylo=defending their honor. People may also just plain not like Kylo for any number of reasons.
4) Kylo’s a main character.
It sucks when a character you don’t like gets a lot of screen time, plot significance and/or character development because you have to contend with them being part of the discussion and, if they’re popular, spawning 200 pieces of fanwork per second of screentime.
5) Reylo is canon.
If Reylo were really as unlikely as some people claim it is, the Reylo/Kylo hatedom wouldn’t be nearly as loud because it wouldn’t be a threat. But it is, very much so. Trashing the ship and the character is how these folks cope with it. Proclaiming that it would be morally irresponsible or illogical is how they reassure themselves that their ships can still be canon and Kylo can still be brutally murdered by his own mother. They bully Reylos and the actors/creators because they believe the majority can influence if not outright dictate the direction of the story.
“Can’t let the Reylos be because if there are too many, the creators might think Reylo is a good idea (assuming it wasn’t the plan to begin with). Gotta dismantle them so our voices telling the creators they’d better not dare make it canon are the only ones that can be heard!”
There will absolutely be hot takes. Nuclear takes. Takes hotter than a thousand suns at the end of this trilogy. Not one will be worth a single moment of your time.
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womenofcolor15 · 4 years
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French Cinema Organization Defends ‘Cuties’ Director During Backlash As Viewers Slam The Movie For ‘Sexualizing Children’
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Netflix and filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré have come under fire for the controversial coming-of-age film, Cuties. Now, UniFrance – a French cinema organization – is defending Maïmouna and her drama. More inside…
When the Cuties poster was first released, it was met with TONS of criticism. Mainly, people were outraged at how the poster sexualized young girls, which resulted in a trending #CancelNetflix hashtag.
The film is a coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old named Amy navigating life in modern society.
The synopsis reads:
Eleven-year-old Amy, her mother Mariam, and her younger siblings have newly relocated to a home in an impoverished suburb of Paris, awaiting Amy’s father to rejoin the family from Senegal. But as Mariam becomes increasingly distracted by challenges within her marriage, Amy begins to feel the weight of family responsibilities. Eager to seek refuge from her life at home, she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited and rebellious group of girls at her school. Hoping for a taste of freedom and the chance to become popular, she convinces them to let her join their dance crew, which the girls have dubbed “Cuties”. But as they rehearse for a local dance contest, Amy finds herself increasingly torn between her traditional Muslim upbringing and the diverse cultures and attitudes of her new friends in her adopted city.
Here's what the Senegalese-French film director said about her directorial debut:
“The main character of Amy is my alter ego,” director Maïmouna Doucouré told Shadow & Act. “She's based on my story. Just like Amy, I had questions about my femininity because I was growing up in two cultures, my parents' Senegalese culture, and then the French culture. So I had all of these questions also about how to become a woman."
“All of the stories that you see in the film are based on the stories that [were] told [to] me and I realized that these girls were learning to construct themselves and their version of femininity based on what they saw in social media. I realized that these girls were growing up with a vision that was objectifying women and that they were growing up with this idea of a woman being an object and a woman's worth and value being based on the number of likes that they received."
However, everyone didn’t see it that way.
Below are a few controversial scenes from the movie, which we are posting strictly as the reference point for a proper discussion to take place, as opposed to second hand descriptions:
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Are we sure that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t direct this movie? #cutiesnetflix pic.twitter.com/Nc9kVT6E6V
— Lolly Holes (@LollyHoles) September 11, 2020
And here are the outraged reactions:
#Netflix aka #Pedoflix has lost over $9 billion in market value since the #CancelNetflix hashtag went viral over the show "Cuties" which depicts young girls, age 11 being sexualized among other things. Good. #SaveOurChildren pic.twitter.com/5ASFhjPcWC
— Alex Poucher (@alexpoucher) September 13, 2020
Cancelled my membership due to the movie “Cuties”. I will not support pedophilia #cancelnetflix pic.twitter.com/py9MrAxjEj
— Griff (@griff8864) September 14, 2020
#CancelNetflix It is everyone’s responsibility to safeguard children and protect their innocence. So the Netflix censorship board all sat down and agreed that this was okay??! Pathetic!! pic.twitter.com/05s7Z7GHo4
— Tsitsi (@exceptional_tsi) September 14, 2020
There's two posters for cuties. Netflix used the worst one imaginable and described the movie horribly. pic.twitter.com/rIek28Zxff
— lyle abner (@lyleabner) September 10, 2020
Director Maïmouna Doucouré won a Directing Award for Cuties when the film debuted at Sundance in January. Months later, she found herself in the middle a online sh*tstorm of controversy after the release of the film’s poster. She said
The outrage got out of control where folks began to send to her death threats.
“I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film, who thought I was actually making a film that was apologetic about hypersexualiation of children,” she told Deadline in her first interview since the incident. “I also received numerous death threats.”
“We had several discussions back and forth after this happened,” she continued. “Netflix apologized publicly, and also personally to me,” she shared.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called her up to apologize.  Some right wingers have also used this debate to further their unfounded Qanon theories that people like Oprah, Ellen, the Obamas and Susan Rice (the latter two who became directly affiliated with Netflix AFTER this film was made) are on a mission to promote sex trafficking in everyone's faces.  They believe Trump is the designated person who will protect chldren from child predators.  Yes, the man who is accused of visiting Pedophile Island with Jeffrey Epstein and accused by almost 100 women of sexual assault.
Again, the conspiracy theories hold no water and have no credibility, but in a climate where conspiracy theories are being passed off as fact and believed by those looking to simply believe in something simplistic, it's all quite dangerous rhetoric. Many believe Cuties is simply being used as a vehicle to futher push these conspiracy theories.
Although the backlash has been tremendous, Maïmouna said she has received “extraordinary support” from the French government, and that the film will be used as an educational tool in her home country.
Most recently, French cinema organization UniFrance, which is backed by the French government and represents hundreds of local producers, sales agents, directors and talent agents, sent out a memo to the industry to “offer its full support” to the director and its French producers.
In part, the organization wrote:
Cuties offers a subtle and sophisticated denunciation of the hyper-sexualization of a young generation who translate and reproduce the images that inundate them in their daily lives, particularly via social media. Whether we are spectators, parents, teenagers, producers, or distributors, this film invites us to reflect on the power of these images and the complexity of the constant dialogue between young people and the generation of their parents. This film appeals to our sense of discernment, be that on an individual or a collective level, and calls on us to assume our responsibilities.
Over the past several weeks, we have been closely following the exceptionally violent reaction to the film in the United States, during a presidential election campaign in full swing. In this context, UniFrance and all of its members wish to pledge their full support to Maïmouna Doucouré and to reaffirm their commitment to supporting the freedom of artistic creation and expression. This is because one of the great strengths of cinema is its capacity to reach beyond borders and boundaries, and to offer a critical and constructive viewpoint on the world and the excesses of today’s societies.
Furthermore, we consider that the call to boycott the film and to have it removed from the Netflix catalogue, in addition to the hate messages, insults, and unfounded speculations about the intent of the director and her producers, pose a serious threat to the very space that cinema seeks to open up: a space of discussion, reflection, and of helping us to see beyond our own preconceived ideas.
You can read the full message here.
Avengers: Endgame star Tessa Thompson also came to the film’s defense:
Disappointed to see how it was positioned in terms of marketing. I understand the response of everybody. But it doesn’t speak to the film I saw. https://t.co/L6kmAcJFU1
— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020
”#CUTIES is a beautiful film. It gutted me at @sundancefest. It introduces a fresh voice at the helm. She’s a French Senegalese Black woman mining her experiences. The film comments on the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls. Disappointed to see the current discourse,” she tweeted. “Disappointed to see how it was positioned in terms of marketing. I understand the response of everybody. But it doesn’t speak to the film I saw,” she continued.
Netflix didn’t make this film y’all.
— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020
Writer Caz Armstrong wrote an essay for In Their Own League, about Cuties and she said Netflix “betrayed” Maïmouna by originally marketing the film with a sexualized image of the young characters.
  Original CUTIES movie poster, before Netflix tried to sexualize 11 year olds. pic.twitter.com/dHETTjS6FT
— Al Steel (@KnightofResist) September 12, 2020
  “When Netflix’s marketing puts out a sexually provocative poster, they are deliberately leveraging the most controversial aspect of the film in an inappropriate way,” Armstrong writes. “They’re doing exactly what the film itself puts under the microscope, sexually exploiting girls without the mature discussion required. It’s clickbait.”
While we get what the director was trying to do with the coming-of-age film, there’s a fine line that’s should be balanced when it comes to displaying children in a sexual manner, even when it is attempting to prove a point about the problem of sexualizing children.
While we’re all aware of how children these days are being exposed to explicit content at an earlier age, one must be super mindful with storytelling in order to properly get the point across.
Photo: Netflix via AP
[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/09/18/french-cinema-organization-defends-%E2%80%98cuties%E2%80%99-director-after-backlash-as-viewers-slam-the-m
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