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btsandvmin · 3 years

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How much do we really know?

I really don't understand how any BTS shippers can be confident enough in their ships to turn into “supporters/believers” that believe their ship is real 100%. For any ship. Like even deep diving into some theories or getting literally 100+ reasons from various believers own mouths for why some ships have to be real, nothing has been big enough to count as proof in my opinion. (Of course this includes Vmin.)

Like... They all have questionable moments. Some more than others, sure. But proof of more than very strong and unusually intimate friendships? No.

You could argue some things seem “gay” or has possible LGBTQ+ connections. Like GCF having a LGBT+ song, or 4 o'clock including a reference to a gay movie, or Vmin's literal gay drama whatever that was. But most of it is just fans zooming in on various things and adding their own meaning to it. Like it has to mean something becaues it is connected to your ship. (But only for your ship.) Sometimes, a lot of times, it’s not even directly connected to the ship... It’s just assumed to be connected to them. It’s a guess or a theory, not a fact.

I get questions from Vminies not knowing things about Vmin all the time, and I myself know I’ll never be able to remember or even see everything that is out there with Vmin. And that’s just from the content we are able to consume to begin with. Beyond that is a lot of guessing and assumption based on the fraction of moments we get. But if some Vminies might not even know where the soulmate label comes from, or that 4 o’clock was written with Jimin in mind or that Vmin seem to casually sleep together in private (if we take Tae’s words for it in the Billboard vlive) it’s clear that something I might see as obvious and common knowledge isn’t. Even further it’s clear that other shippers will know even less about Vmin.

And how can you dismiss something you don’t even know about?

We all focus on, remember or look for/get exposed to our biases or favorite ships the most. Even if we consume the original content we will likely zoom in and see things for our own ship simply because we look for it. And there is nothing wrong with that, it’s natural. But we need to realize it means we will miss things when it comes to other ships, and need to be aware that we know more and end up in echo chambers of both facts and interpretations for our own ships.

It’s so blatantly obvious to me that many non-vminies have no clue about even some of the biggest moments between Vmin. And again, it’s nothing really odd or bad about that... Until you start to act superior even when you lack a lot of knowledge. So much misinformation is spread this way too...

That’s why even though I personally think I know more about other ships than perhaps the regular person, I still won’t preach or explain too much about other ships. Because just as I know others don’t seem to know or notice a lot about Vmin, I know I work the same in regards to other ships. I can’t possibly even remember everything when it comes to Vmin, so how can I with all other ships too?

If I get questions about tae/kook or ji/kook or any dynamic in BTS I might be able to answer it... But I might also lack the full context or might not even have noticed some things to begin with. Coming to me with questions about other ships will give you a very different view than if you ask a shipper focused on that ship directly. I try to be unbiased, but I can’t. I try to be informed but I can’t remember or notice everything. So even if I feel I know a lot, I might never know enough to get the full context of any situation regarding BTS.

Of course trying to remember to watch unbiased content is very important and helps to keep a better balance. Or as in my case where I actively looked up other ship theories and felt “I know enough to see there are weird things and I can’t dismiss everything since we don’t know the truth of what it might mean”. Just as I feel a lot of things about Vmin shouldn’t be dismissed. Many other shippers also came to me and talked long and detailed about why their ship is real and my isn’t. Many times I lacked knowledge about specific situations about other ships, but so did they about Vmin. I don’t think you can dismiss something if you don’t even know about it to begin with, and there is a big gap of knowledge between the shipping communities.

I mean, the way hyung x maknae line ships have so many great moments and you barely see them outside of the actual content. At this point all ships in BTS are big and get attention, but they don’t seem to register the same way in people’s minds, with the focus always being on the three youngest together.

This is the thing about worrying about “rival ships” too... They only matter if there is a moment between the ones you already see as “competition”. Does anyone worry or cry about Vmin or Ji/kook when Ji/hope or Hope/kook get very intimate and sweet moments? No, because they don’t seem to register at all.

I wasn’t even able to find a gif of this ji/hope moment from Run recently... (And I can’t add twitter videos from desktop)

youtube

Yoon/min holding hands and joking about breaking up.

Meanwhile if Tae/kook have fun together or if Ji/kook does something cute all hell breaks lose. We have been tainted by the narratives from shippers. The more we see and hear about other ships the bigger “impact” they will have on us.

If moments like this between other members doesn’t make me feel insecure about Vmin, then why would any similar moment from Ji/kook or Tae/kook? People need to stop hyper focusing on both skinship and “rival ship” moments in general and stop adding importance to them, especially when they don’t even do it equally with all ships.

It’s not that one is good:

One is neutral:

And one is bad:

They all happen and exist and we need to realize that’s how it always has been and likely always will be. Any interpretations of these moments shouldn’t change how you view them when nothing is even confirmed. They all happen so we should all accept that and be happy the members have close and intimate relationships with each other.

I really don’t think people understand my stance on all of this. I literally don’t mind if another ship turns out to be real (even if any ship being real is probably not that likely), because I trust in Vmin’s relationship after having watched it for 5 years. But since nothing is confirmed I still remain of the opinion that Vmin’s relationship and behavior is weirder than other ships IN MY VIEW, based on MY INTERPRETATIONS. But I am totally ok with being proven wrong, because it doesn’t matter what kind of relationship Vmin have as long as I can trust that the love they express for each other is real. Thus I also don’t have to downplay moments between other ships. They are there and that’s nice.

We lack a lot of information for many reasons even though we do get to see a lot. But even knowing all the things we know, I still don’t think it’s enough for any ship moments to count as “proof”. For example with Vmin, they were denied to sing a song because it was essentially “ too gay” and Taehyung complained about it, but that doesn't mean they have to be a couple and is forced apart by Big Hit.

We put weight into things because we have our biases and guesses and we find things because we look for them. Here are just some things that fans of various communities says have to mean something but to me really doesn't have to mean anything even if proven:

Physical intimacy Emotional intimacy Jealousy Screen time Fanservice “Sexual tension” Heart eyes or any looks in general Joking about being a couple Showering together Sleeping together Being alone together Living together Writing songs about each other Secret signs Hidden messages to fans Hiding in rooms

And so on...

But even If you do want to count these things to mean something, at least acknowledge how many of those things other ships have too. Vmin literally have several of these confirmed as well. Many of these moments either have happened or gets speculated to happen between many ships. You might find your ship isn’t as uniqe as you feel it is if you actually start diving deeper. If you did and it makes you doubt your own ships superiority, that’s good. Being sure won’t lead to any good for anyone.

Also if you wanna go there.... If other shipper say these have to mean something they are either ignoring Vmin or more likely doesn’t know or say it doesn’t mean the same if they do it.

Fine if hand holding and cuddling doesn’t make you wonder about Vmin, that’s totally legit. In fact you don’t have to wonder about Vmin unless you want to. But using excuses for why something doesn’t mean something you don’t want it to mean or downplaying moments or automatically calling them platonic and “not the same” doesn’t mean you can’t be wrong about those assumptions. Especially when you might not know the full context of it. Again, it should go both ways and include moments from all relationships.

I am legit curious how ji/kookers and tae/kookers are able to be so confident about their ship being real with Tae doing the things he does towards Jimin.... Like... They mean to tell me Tae and Jimin being soulmates, Tae wanting to sing a romantic Christmas song with Jimin, Tae writing 4 o'clock, Tae having Sweet night and telling us it's a personal song while he keeps calling Jimin his only best friend doesn't even have a possibility to mean something non platonic? 😗

Soulmates + Friends lyrics + "how could I know one day I would wake up feeling more" + "are you my best friend?" + "sweet night is a personal song" + "Of course Jimin is my only friend" + 4 o'clock/dumpling fight + the not allowed Christmas song + "Jimin-ah I like you the most" + "I told him to come sleep next to me as I was too lazy to go to him" + “we told our candid stories as honestly as possible” + “Oppa, why are you still awake? I’m dreaming of Jiminie” = Vmin is probably the best known guess to what relationship Tae might be talking about in Sweet Night.

Is it confirmed though? Can I call it proof? NO! Because while it fits in theory, we don’t know and we don’t have all the information to know. But I can make a damn good case for it and that’s the whole point. I can do that because I look for material, see things and add them together with a narrative. Just as other shippers do with their ships. In the end it’s all just narratives though, not proof.

Getting all these asks recently just confirms that the people who worry, or who says other ships are real, haven’t read even a fraction of my posts or they just don’t understand them. Or let alone noticed major moments between all BTS members that should show that their belief is not as “obvious” as they might think.

I am tired of insecurities when it shouldn’t even matter. If any ship in BTS is real, let’s support them and be happy. It doesn’t change the dynamics and relationships between the other members if some of them happen to be a couple. What we see is still there. The “worst” that can happen is that our ideas and theories prove to be wrong.

But let’s at least try to be aware of how little we see and know, and especially about ships that aren’t our own. I am writing about Vmin because there is a lot to see, but me focusing on Vmin also gives me a knowledge about them I can’t compare with other ships. Which is why I won’t sit and write essays about other ships, and which is why Vminies coming to me for information about other ships is going to lack the depth I can provide for Vmin. All shippers are biased and all shippers lack information.

If you want to ship do it, if you want to speculate go right ahead. But be aware that there is a big difference between facts and knowledge and narratives and speculation.

I hope you found this an interesting read. And if you are considering sending me asks worried about Vmin because of interactions between other members or you want to send “statments” or explenations about other ships being real, just know you are barking up the wrong tree.

#vmin #bts ships #shipping #btsandvmin #rant #vmin analysis #shipping analysis #bts analysis #shipping narratives #shipping agenda #my post

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johannas-motivational-insults · 3 years

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Jo’s Top 10 of 2020

I see lots of artists doing that thing where they post a piece from each month of the year... unfortunately my content creation isn’t necessarily consistent and it’s hard to track what month individual fic chapters were posted in, but I figured I’d do something similar and post my Top 10 pieces of content I created in 2020, what they’re about and why I love them. I actually did get a fair amount done this year thanks to the lockdown, but I’ve narrowed it down to these ten that I’d like to reflect on. (To be fair, I’m probably forgetting something huge. Feel free to leave comments if you think I passed over something important lol.)

10. Friendship in the Horde (meta): This is something I’d wanted to write for a while but finally got around to finishing in February. It’s basically a sociology paper lmao, an analysis of the social hierarchies and systems of the Horde. It was also a convenient excuse for me to gush about Catralonnie, an underrated (friend)ship. But honestly this was an important piece for me because I have always identified with the Horde characters way more than any of the rebels (other than Adora, who grew up in the Horde) and part of why is how they are in an unsafe environment and end up forming relationships that are helpful for survival but hinder them psychologically. And I think to understand the Horde characters and really evaluate their motives and choices you need to understand this first.

9. The Sting in My Eyes: On the surface this is just a run of the mill hurt/comfort oneshot, but it was a really important post-canon processing fic for me. I had a lot of feelings about Catra’s relationships with Shadow Weaver and Melog in season 5, particularly about how Catra must have felt really conflicted after Shadow Weaver told her what she wanted to hear all those years but in a way that felt unearned and out of the blue. It was really cathartic for me to write a scene where she struggles with those mixed feelings but has Adora and Melog to help her process them. And I had long associated the song the title is from with Catra and Shadow Weaver’s relationship, and the way she died trying to redeem herself really solidified that connection.

8. Hail Mary, chapter 6: This was supposed to be a short chapter mostly about the backstory between Catra and Scorpia in this au, with some Catradora yearning thrown in. It evolved into a massive, sprawling thing that is very atmospheric in terms of how the setting and vibes are described and how in the moment it feels. Hail Mary is like that sometimes but that type of narration is usually about football games rather than parties, so this chapter was a fun change of pace in many ways. It was really nostaglic for me to write too, the nerves of being a teenager at a party with your crush and how intense everything feels. And the Scorptra stuff really is delicious, it was nice seeing them have that conversation they never got to have in canon and truly make up, and the tiny sliver I added of Catra’s earlier history was heartbreaking in the best way. So this was not what I intended to write, but it turned out way better for it.

7. A Better Son or Daughter (AMV): I’ve done other Adora AMVs, but this one is really my iconic piece. The song is perfect for Adora, so perfect it’s on Noelle’s Adora playlist. The vid itself is a character study about Adora’s mental health struggles and the way she represses them, as well as a tribute to her resiliency and her eventual triumph of getting to a better place in her life. This is a song that gives me a lot of feelings and once I was making it about Adora it gave me even more, so this was a very satisfying piece to complete. I wish Noelle had gotten a chance to see it but oh well, maybe down the line.

6. Hail Mary, chapter 12: This is the chapter that much of the fic had been building to, Catra and Adora in conflict because Catra finally got the chance to be Adora’s hero and Adora shot her down. It’s painfully analogous to canon, both in terms of how (I suspect) Catra felt in Thaymor and Adora’s tendency to victim blame because she’s so pragmatic. There’s definitely some tones of Taking Control in there but Lonnie does a much better job of examining Catra’s psychology and needs than Glimmer did in canon (a writing error imo, Glimmer should have had more insight). Adora just wants to help but sometimes in her quest to do so she disenfranchises others, and this was a much needed look at that aspect of her character. It’s also an excellent illustration of what it’s like to play a peacekeeping role in an abusive household and how stressful it is trying to protect others while also protecting yourself.

5. Unstoppable (AMV): This is not my favorite Catra AMV I’ve ever done, but it might be the cleverest. The soundtrack is a song about mental illness masquerading as a song about being a bad bitch, which is basically Catra in a nutshell. The lyrics are incredibly fitting for her and her arc as it develops over seasons 1-4. The vid itself takes a hard turn in the interpretation of the lyrics, going from talking about how no one can stop Catra to how she can’t stop herself because she’s in such a terrible sunk cost fallacy spiral, and I think I got several death threats over that twist lmao. As someone who primarily deals in angst, there’s hardly a better compliment to be paid.

4. Demons, chapter 31: This one got real dark on me. The concept of this chapter was originally an examination of how comparing abuse can get really dicey but you also have to respect that other people have had different experiences from you and you have to be careful not to equate things or make it sound like you’re talking over someone else. I guess it’s also a bit of a look at how autistic people (like myself) will often explain why they can empathize so others know they understand rather than saying empty platitudes, but that can come off as insensitive or like they’re making things about them. I mean, in this case Adora kinda was making things about her, but she was provoked into it by a parade of comments insinuating she didn’t suffer at all, which was also unfair. Anyway it’s one of the more important Catradora fights in Demons and something I’d written bits of over a year prior, it was that important to the plot, but it also took a turn I was not originally planning. I finished the chapter when I was in a really bad depressive and self-loathing spiral and that bled onto the page, but it worked perfectly for Catra in this scenario... that push and pull of feeling like the world has hurt and victimized you mixed with knowing you’ve done some bad things yourself and feeling like you don’t have a leg to stand on when mourning the ways you’ve been hurt. It’s intense as all fuck but it’s excellent.

3. Hail Mary, chapter 11: Speaking of dark Catra content, this chapter... whew. It was really something else, to read and to write. I have written flashbacks in Demons that are more detailed and even include explicit violence but because those scenes are always in flashback form I never really got the chance to sit in the head of an abuse victim waiting for the other shoe to drop for an entire chapter like I did here. It’s quite different from the rest of Hail Mary stylistically and is both highly sensory and extremely internalized. It took me back to some terrifying moments in my own life so it was difficult but also extremely cathartic to write. It’s important too because it really sets up where Catra was at mentally heading into her big fight with Adora, and that chapter is in Adora POV. This chapter is ranked so high simply because it’s... polished, as @malachi-walker put it. It almost is its own story within the story and really noteworthy as a piece all its own.

2. Demons, chapter 26: This chapter is very similar thematically to Hail Mary 12, just based in the canonverse. It deals with one of the core (but highly neglected by fandom) conflicts between Catra and Adora, where they both need to feel like they can take care of and protect the other but also detest feeling weak or vulnerable themselves. It leads to Adora’s ego making Catra feel disrespected and Catra’s behavior confusing Adora and making her think she’s an ungrateful brat rather than someone who needs so badly to be needed, just like her. There’s definitely some power struggles in this chapter but finally they’re able to get to the heart of it and seeing them talk it out is so satisfying. Getting this chapter published was also important to me on a personal level because, like I said, this aspect of their conflict and relationship is rarely acknowleged for how important it is when really it’s one of the deepest conflicts between them in the series. It’s a scene I started writing pretty much as soon I knew I was extending the fic into something longer because I just needed them to have this conversation, so finishing it was so satisfying.

1. Satisfaction, chapter 3: This chapter took me a really long time to write, both in terms of time to get it published and time I actually spent working on it. It’s the crown jewel of a fic that’s really important to me and I had to get it just right, so I spent more time agonizing over every detail and rewriting things to get them absolutely perfect than I usually do (I’m a perfectionist anyway, but this took it to a whole other level). But in the end it was worth it, because this chapter is damn fine. It’s really hot, as you’d expect from a smut fic, but it’s also an excellent character study of how both Catra and Adora were affected by their abuse and trauma and the issues it raises for them in terms of sex and intimacy. Also, come on, we need more BDSM fics out there that focus on the actual point of it all (the trust involved) and promote communication and do the character work to explain why they might be into it in the first place.

BONUS (from December 31, 2019): One of my favorite pieces of 2020 technically came out in 2019, but I posted it on New Years Eve so most people first saw it in 2020. It’s an absolute banger of an AMV called I’m Not Jesus that’s all about Catra and Adora’s anger towards Shadow Weaver and their refusal to forgive their abuser. Funny enough this came out before Adora’s iconic “I will never forgive you” line, and Shadow Weaver definitely made things more complicated with how she went out, but I think the sentiment still applies.

#2020 recap #happy new year #writing #vidding #fanfic #spop #catradora #demons #hail mary #satisfaction #the sting in my eyes #a better son/daughter #unstoppable #i’m not jesus

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beacon-lamp · 3 years

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Thoughts on dreams response?

so i read the 19 page paper and then watched dream’s response video. don’t really know what the discourse surrounding his response is bc ✨i don’t care enough to go purposefully looking for it ✨

my overall thoughts on the Entire Situation under the cut because i talk A Lot:

first and foremost, the math in the paper is Incredibly Thorough. dream gave the Abridged Version in his video bc i doubt most people read the entire thing. but if you read the paper, you’ll see the author point out what calculations the mods did wrong and, more importantly, why they were wrong and how they fixed it. you’ll also notice that they mentioned several times that the results the author calculated did match some of that of the mods’ calculations. we love reproducibility.

questioning the credibility of the author is a waste of time and energy. they’re Anonymous for a reason. imagine getting a fucking doctorate in statistics (an additional 4-8 years of study after college in the US) and your biggest paycheck of the year comes from some dude in florida who plays minecraft for a living. jokes aside, you can argue in circles about “oh dream bribed the expert” but the intentions of the author and purpose of the paper are clearly stated in the first couple pages. before all the math stuff. people were so quick to believe the stuff in the paper the volunteer mods put out. why not believe the expert too?

there is a greater lesson here to be learned about bias. both for and against dream. it was Incredibly Concerning to see So Many People immediately jump to “dream cheated 100%” or “dream would never cheat he’s the best” before understanding all of the facts. i’ll admit, even i fell into this trap before i took a step back from the situation to look at the big picture. we all have biases, many of which we aren’t even aware of. but it’s always important to recognize those biases and account for them as much as possible before drawing conclusions, especially those that have real world implications. it’s also important to listen to Experts and those who Know More Than You. sometimes you just have to shut up and listen. you’re not going to know everything and that is Fine as long as you are open to Learning from those with credibility and knowledge. you’re going to make mistakes and have opinions you’ll later look back on and *cringe* and all of that is fine because we are all Growing and Learning.

aight let’s talk about the mods. i’ve already like vented in the tags of a post from like 2 week ago and my point still stands. statistics is Very Difficult to Do and unfortunately is an Incredibly Powerful Tool. there is No Right Way to do stats. the data is unbiased but the analysis and interpretation of that data can be. once again, that’s why it’s important to account for your biases. the mods tried. i’ll give them credit, i really do believe they Tried. but unfortunately trying sometimes just isn’t Good Enough. statistics can be weaponized to push forward an agenda, whether or not the author intended it. i know that this is “just minecraft” and it only affects “one person” but inaccurate publications or misrepresentations of data have Real Life Consequences. one Disproven and publicly denounced paper had people Believing that vaccines cause autism, contributing to the antivax movement that is Once Again having an impact during coronatime. the point is, the mods should’ve consulted a professional. someone with credentials about their math. there is no doubt in my mind that they knew the fallout that was to come. the drama this would stir up. there was Obvious, Documented bias against dream from the beginning. i’m sure there were people who wanted to take him down at least a peg or two. but once again, that’s no excuse to publish this without consulting a Credible Expert. i’m going in circles now you get the point, academic integrity is Very Important. also News Outlets have reported on this, overall shedding a pretty negative light on the minecraft speedrunning community as a whole, which also harms the mods too in my opinion.

finally, let’s talk about dream. if you don’t like him, that’s fine. it’s Okay to Not Like Someone. to Stop Watching their content. to Stop Supporting Them. dream responded incredibly immaturely to this entire situation, as we have seen him do Multiple Times before. personally, i don’t believe the excuse “i acted without thinking and i’m sorry” cuts it anymore, given his 14M subscriber count and 1M+ twitter followers. he is a grown adult and should learn to conduct himself better publicly. i have friends his age and this behavior in a professional setting, which for him twitter is because social media/ content creator is quite literally his job, would be Completely Unacceptable. it’s perfectly valid to be angry and yell about it to his friends, hell i’d be Furious. but he should know better than to tweet impulsively. feel free to draw your own conclusions on him as a CC and public figure. please do. i know “cancel culture” has deviated from it’s Original Meaning (much like the term “stan” has too) but hold content creators accountable for their actions. do not blindly defend him. at the same time, acknowledge that he is a young adult who is still growing and learning. these two ideas can and should coexist. however, ***do not accept apologies that are not yours to accept***. shut up and listen to others who know more than you about a particular thing. think for yourselves. draw your own conclusions but always be willing to Grow if/when you Learn New Information.

the world is Complicated. i’m sorry. i wish it were easier too.

in conclusion, i can’t believe *this* is the first time i’ve used statistics knowledge outside of an academic setting and in the Real World. 2020 is fucking wack. if you’ve made it this far, thank you for coming to my incoherent ted talk. no one is going to read this whole thing and i’ve accepted that.

#anon #so apparently i had a lot to say #in classic Beacon Lamp Fashion it's rambly and kinda coherent but also probably repetitive bc im not good at writing #also no one is going to read this and thats ok #discourse #discourse tw #Anonymous #also didn't proofread it before publishing so

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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

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In His Continued Sparring With Fauci, Sen. Rand Paul Oversimplified the Science

“Sorry Dr Fauci and other fearmongers, new study shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants. Good news for everyone but bureaucrats and petty tyrants!”

— Sen. Rand Paul in a tweet, March 21, 2021

That Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky often disagrees with infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is well known.

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

Recently, the pair clashed at a Senate hearing when Paul, a Republican, argued against mask recommendations for people who have had covid-19 or have been vaccinated against it.

At the hearing, Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, pushed back against Paul’s characterization of wearing masks as “theater.” Continued caution is advised, Fauci said, as scientists study the new variants now circulating in the U.S. and other countries.

Paul, an eye doctor by training, continued the squabble a few days later, calling out Fauci in a tweet, pointing to a study that he said “shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants.”

The tweet linked to a study published online at the JAMA Network, a family of specialty medical journals.

We reached out to Paul’s office for additional sources for his tweet but did not receive a reply.

So, we asked the experts: Are covid variants effectively neutralized by vaccines or natural immunity conferred on people who recover from the illness?

In short, the research cited by Paul does show good blood levels of neutralizing antibodies against at least some of the current variants following infection or vaccination. But they’re not the whole story.

Mehul S. Suthar, an author of the study Paul cited, said the results are encouraging but should not be seen as all-encompassing: “Our interpretation is that our study looks at one aspect of immune response, antibodies.”

Small Samples. Big Questions.

Neutralizing antibodies are important because they can block the ability of a virus like the one that causes covid to infect cells. But the body also has other defenses. T cells, for example, can be spurred by infection or vaccination, Suthar said, although the study was not designed to look at those.

For the study, researchers gathered blood samples from 40 people who were in the hospital with covid or had recovered from it. From the National Institutes of Health, they also received blood samples drawn from 14 people who had gotten both doses of the Moderna vaccine, said Suthar, an assistant professor at Emory University’s vaccine center.

Then they ran tests on those samples against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and three variants, including the one dubbed B.1.1.7, which first appeared in the United Kingdom and is now circulating widely in the U.S.

They wanted to know: Did antibodies produced by being infected or vaccinated neutralize B.1.1.7?

“We are lucky with B.1.1.7 that our antibodies appear to work well against this virus,” Suthar said.

However, as with any study, there are caveats. For one thing, the results were based on a small number of samples. And the analysis did not include other variants of concern, such as the ones that emerged in South Africa and Brazil, which limits the ability to draw broad conclusions.

Finally, antibodies are just one measure of potential protection against disease. Laboratory research measuring antibodies indicates that some immunity is created by both illness and vaccination, but the strength and longevity of that protection — the effectiveness in the real world — is a separate question. That’s partly because the ideal level of neutralizing antibodies needed for protection is not known and other immune protections, such as T cells, aren’t measured.

Also, in the real world, other factors — such as the variant a person is exposed to, and the presence of other mitigating factors, including masks and good ventilation — can make a difference.

“Part of the reason that real-world data are so important is looking at the whole picture of immunity,” said Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Also, with the level of community transmissions of disease, I would be concerned that there will be more variants that emerge.”

Nuance Matters

Paul’s tweet — taking aim at what he sees as an overcautious approach by public health experts — doesn’t capture that type of nuance, nor does it reference studies on the other emerging variants.

“Blanket assertions made by non-scientific experts are not going to help,” said Gronvall.

Dr. Jesse Goodman, professor of medicine and a specialist in infectious diseases at Georgetown University, agreed.

“It’s wrong to declare victory and say there’s no problem with variants and that everyone previously infected will be fine,” said Goodman, who served as chief scientist of the Food and Drug Administration under the Obama administration.

Viruses naturally mutate as they replicate. So it’s not surprising that the coronavirus has done so. Several variants have emerged, including home-grown ones from California and New York.

Lab tests on blood samples from vaccine trial participants in South Africa showed lower levels of neutralizing antibody production, possibly related to the variant circulating there.

How big a difference the lower levels measured in those samples make isn’t yet known.

Levels are still high and could “effectively neutralize the virus,” Fauci wrote in an editorial published Feb. 11 in JAMA.

Even so, clinical trials used to test covid vaccines before they were approved for emergency use showed lower efficacy when tested in areas where the South African variant was circulating.

“We expect vaccines and prior infection to offer significant protection against variants that are closely related,” said Goodman. “But as they become more genetically different — like the South African one — that protection could go down.”

The main goal of the vaccines is to prevent hospitalization and death, and all the vaccines in use in the U.S. appear to substantially reduce the risk of hospitalization and death from covid, according to research.

“Even if the current vaccines may not be perfect, they do appear to prevent more severe outcomes,” Goodman said.

Don’t assume, as Paul’s tweet implies, that recovering from covid or getting vaccinated means zero risk of infection.

For one thing, reinfection is rare but can occur.

Goodman pointed to a recent study conducted in Denmark showing that a small percentage (0.65%) of people who tested positive for covid in the spring fell ill again.

“People should not presume that even if they had the vaccine or were previously infected that there’s no future risk,” Goodman said.

Even though no vaccine is 100% effective, Gronvall at Hopkins said not to use that as an excuse to avoid inoculation.

“The vaccines appear to be great,” she said. “Get one when you can.”

Our Ruling

Paul is correct that the JAMA study showed vaccination or previous infection appeared, based on a small sample of people, to help neutralize the virus. However, he left out important details that make his position an oversimplification of a complicated issue.

The study considered only one variant — the one that emerged in the U.K. — and did not include an analysis of other types now circulating, or the potential for additional variants that could emerge. Also, the type of antibody studied is just one factor in protecting against disease, and just what those levels of neutralizing antibodies measured in a laboratory experiment may mean in the real world is not known.

So, for those reasons, we rate the senator’s statement Half True.

Source List:

Telephone interview with Mehul S. Suthar, assistant professor at the Emory Vaccine Center, March 22, 2021

Telephone interview with Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and associate professor in the environmental health and engineering department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, March 23, 2021

Telephone interview with Jesse Goodman, professor of medicine at Georgetown University and former chief scientist of the Food and Drug Administration, March 24, 2021

JAMA Network, “Neutralizing Antibodies Against SARS-CoV-2 Variants After Infection and Vaccination,” March 19, 2021

CNN Politics, “Masks Are Not Theater, Fauci Tells Sen. Rand Paul in Hearing Exchange,” March 18, 2021

The New England Journal of Medicine, “Neutralizing Activity of BNT162b2-Elicited Serum,” March 8, 2021

The New England Journal of Medicine, “Serum Neutralizing Activity Elicited by mRNA-1273 Vaccine,” March 17, 2021

Yale Medicine, “Comparing the COVID-19 Vaccines: How Are They Different?,” updated March 25, 2021

Fast Company, “Can I Get Covid-19 Twice? New ‘Lancet’ Study Offers Insight on Reinfection Rates,” March 22, 2021

JAMA Network, “SARS-CoV-2 Viral Variants — Tackling a Moving Target,” editorial, Feb. 11, 2021

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

In His Continued Sparring With Fauci, Sen. Rand Paul Oversimplified the Science published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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There’s a growing push to have celebrities who have ever made dark jokes about pedophilia face major consequences for their past humor. Since Disney’s firing of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn over tweets Gunn wrote several years ago, the right-wing internet mob that brought about his dismissal has moved on to other figures.

Most notably, Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon deleted his Twitter account entirely after Daryl, a short parody pilot he made almost a decade ago, was seized upon as further evidence of many people in the entertainment industry using comedy to mask their underground support of pedophilia.

Harmon made Daryl in 2009 as a pilot for Channel 101, an “untelevised TV network” he co-founded with his former writing partner Rob Schrab in 2002. The “network” takes the form of a monthly screening event in Los Angeles where five-minute TV pilots are shown to a live audience, and viewers vote on whether they want to see more episodes at the next month’s event.

The shows that are “picked up” produce additional episodes, as you can see by observing one of Channel 101’s longer-running titles, Harmon’s own Laser Fart. The project’s programming typically skews toward comedy — and often dark comedy — but isn’t always comedic in nature.

Which brings us back to Daryl. Harmon removed the pilot from the Channel 101 website a long time ago, perhaps realizing it wasn’t his finest hour, but you can still see the page for it. It’s a spoof of TV shows about vigilante justice, most notably Dexter, the Showtime series about a serial killer who kills serial killers that ran from 2006 to 2013 and was at the height of its popularity in 2009, when Daryl was made. Where Dexter’s title character killed killers, Daryl’s raped children to prevent them from becoming murderers.

It’s not really funny (Harmon — who’s stated before that he disliked these sorts of “murder reconfigured as entertainment” shows — would later parody them in more fruitful fashion in an episode of his 2009-2015 sitcom Community). But regardless of whether you think Daryl (which you can still watch on the surely reputable site “BitChute”) is brilliantly hilarious or stomach-churning and horrifying, it’s hard to imagine interpreting it as being in support of horrific sexual abuse of children.

Yet this is exactly the argument being advanced against Daryl in 2018. against Gunn’s tweets, against comments from so many other comedians with long, successful careers. (A tweet currently being used to pillory Patton Oswalt is one the comedian deliberately constructed to seem as if he was supportive of pedophiles, but only if taken completely out of context, which makes the head spin.) It’s a bad-faith argument, spun up by people who manipulate other people’s words and conjure some of the darkest behaviors humans are capable of to score cheap political points against those who criticize Donald Trump.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about it is that you can draw a direct line between the shock humor culture that produced Daryl and other edgy jokes, and the rise of the alt-right itself. But let’s start somewhere else: How did this strategy of trying to take down celebrities by weaponizing jokes they made a very long time ago come to be?

What has happened to Gunn, Harmon, and other public figures of late reflects a convergence of old-school trolling and organized attacks. The right-wing folks going after them are working from a scattered set of ambivalent and contradictory goals and motivations — but they’re using highly organized, systematic, and well-oiled tactics to carry out their disruptive work.

It’s crucial to understand that for many of the people involved in the quest to “take down” and delegitimize public figures like Gunn and Harmon, the whole endeavor is a giant joke. That’s because there’s rarely a singular motivation behind any given right-wing crusade, including this one, and why people seem to be angry isn’t the point. The point is to manufacture outrage, both to score victory points against the opposition and to sweep other bystanders into the fray.

This approach is essentially built atop a foundation of old-school trolling — the kind that originated in the forums of Something Awful in the early 2000s, spread to 4chan users, and ultimately made the leap, mainly through the Gamergate movement, to modern social media platforms.

Old-school trolling is absurdist artifice at heart, but it also covers a broad spectrum of sincerity and irony. The result is that no matter the topic at hand, some members of the modern internet mob will be arguing seriously and straightforwardly because they believe the argument.

Some will be making the argument as a total joke, because they think the argument itself is funny.

Some will be making the argument ironically, such that their performative outrage becomes the joke, regardless of what the actual argument is.

Some will say they are making the argument ironically, even though they secretly or not-so-secretly believe the argument is true.

And some will start out making the argument ironically, only to eventually start to believe it.

What’s more, many of the people making the argument for any of the reasons listed above also sincerely want other people to take them seriously — either so those people will join in the outrage ironically, thus contributing to the lulz, or so they’ll join in the outrage sincerely, thus creating the appearance that this socially constructed performance is authentic. In both cases, the result is that very real messages begin to spread with or without the “irony” still attached. This can lead to extreme harassment of whoever’s being targeted, often with serious, harmful, and even deadly consequences.

The most famous example of a modern post-trolling internet mob is probably the Gamergate movement, as its “success” gave many on the extreme right a template for how to attack their perceived enemies. Gamergate began in 2014 as a backlash against feminist game developer Zoe Quinn and a Kotaku journalist with whom she had a personal relationship. It then evolved into a widespread movement aimed at targeting feminist gamers and progressive gaming journalism at large.

Members of Gamergate worked under the guise of restoring “ethics in journalism” — but really, they used that so-called mission as an excuse to intensely harass individual feminists and journalists. They also used it to appeal to companies that advertised on websites that wrote critically about their behavior, in occasionally successful attempts to get the advertisers to withdraw their financial support.

The spark that lit the powder keg of Gamergate involved a blog post written by Quinn’s ex-boyfriend — and it deployed a tactic that would ultimately become a standard form of trolling used by the alt-right. He basically publicized a litany of private details about their lives in an attempt to paint Quinn as a manipulative abuser, citing “evidence” culled from private chats, texts, and emails. Context was stripped away from the exchanges, twisting their meaning to build a specific narrative around Quinn.

This shaming of Quinn was soon labeled “Gamergate,” and rapidly coalesced into a much bigger movement that started among the gamers who initially rallied around Quinn’s ex. They used the private details shared in his blog post as an excuse to harass Quinn, her supporters, and the aforementioned Kotaku writer — because simply being connected to Quinn, in the eyes of Gamergate, made the writer an unethical journalist whose bias toward Quinn and feminists like her was indicative of the broader corruption of games journalism at large.

The actual content of the so-called “damning evidence” against Quinn didn’t matter; what mattered was that it gave the mob a reason to harass her. They saw her as a “social justice warrior” who advocated for progressive politics, feminism, and diversity in gaming; by crying corruption and trying to ruin her career, their intent was to stop what they perceived as a threat to game culture.

The methods deployed in this ground-zero Gamergate event have since become standard practice for internet mobs wishing to attack seemingly anyone they believe to be a foe. We saw then with Quinn, as we’re seeing with Gunn and Harmon and other figures now, that the larger context of whatever “incendiary” material is on offer — be it a private text message or an old tweet — has been stripped away. And in the minds of the mob, it’s irrelevant anyway, because the outrage is performative rather than sincere.

Essentially, Gamergate systematized a form of online harassment that involved close-reading ancient chats and private messages, as well as public content and social media activity, in search of anything that could be used as fodder for righteous indignation.

Since 2014, this “manufactured outrage” approach has led to the firing of multiple game developers and staffers at game companies (with the latest example happening just a few weeks ago). It’s simultaneously diabolical and simple: Greatly exaggerate your enemies’ behavior while removing, distorting, or ignoring the context surrounding it.

And there’s an ironic twist to the way this tactic is being used today against the alt-right’s chosen enemies. The thing the group is now being performatively outraged about — shock humor — is arguably the foundation of its entire culture.

In 2017, as the Comedy Central series South Park turned 20 years old, writer Sean O’Neal pondered whether the show had inadvertently created a generation of trolls. Wrote O’Neal at the A.V. Club:

To these acolytes, Parker and Stone have spent two decades preaching a philosophy of pragmatic self-reliance, a distrust of elitism, in all its compartmentalized forms, and a virulent dislike of anything that smacks of dogma, be it organized religion, the way society polices itself, or whatever George Clooney is on his high horse about. Theirs can be a tricky ideology to pin down: “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals,” Stone said once, a quote that has reverberated across the scores of articles, books, and message-board forums spent trying to parse the duo’s politics, arguing over which side can rightfully claim South Park as its own. Nominally, Parker and Stone are libertarians, professing a straight-down-the-middle empathy for the little guy who just wants to be left alone by meddling political and cultural forces. But their only true allegiance is to whatever is funniest; their only tenet is that everything and everyone has the potential to suck equally. More than anything, they’ve taught their most devoted followers that taking anything too seriously is hella lame.

O’Neal was careful to distinguish between what South Park does — which at least has a comedic ethos behind it — and the rise of online, meme-driven alt-right humor, which mostly seems designed to shock people as much as possible. He was also careful (as he should have been) not to claim that South Park somehow created the alt-right, which arose from a wide variety of influences and took its humor style from 4chan and similar forums, where eliciting a shocked reaction is often the best thing you can possibly do.

But it’s not hard to draw parallels anyway, and to do so requires evaluating South Park as one of a whole bunch of jokesters who set out to lampoon American society by poking it in the eye, and then smiling. Most of these jokesters were late baby boomers and Gen X-ers, people who were raised by television and pop culture and could see all the seams.

Therefore, they often engaged in irony-drenched deconstruction of the tropes of that pop culture — via programs that seem tame now but were shocking then (like The Simpsons, which pulled apart the myths of the perfect sitcom family), or programs that pointed to the very artificiality of television (like David Letterman’s early talk show or Garry Shandling’s ’80s sitcom It’s Garry Shandling’s Show), or programs that traded in crude, politically incorrect humor intended to provoke a reaction (this is where South Park comes in).

Many of these programs and comedians are still around, still making jokes today. Some, like Sarah Silverman — whose earliest work was steeped in ironic racism — have mostly abandoned that sort of humor. Some, like Bill Maher — who built a whole career out of seeming to tell things like they were — now seem like relics. And some, like South Park and Family Guy, manage to evade much notice of just how out of time their comedy can feel because their animated trappings allow for some degree of detachment and distance.

But when it was more in vogue, this style of “Who can shock whom more?” humor became well established online, and the late 2000s and early 2010s saw plenty of it permeate Twitter and YouTube — two sites that are still around, still easily searchable, and still just sitting there waiting to sabotage the career of any famous person who doesn’t go back and do a hasty purge. (Someone like Gunn, who seemed to have left his own bad tweets intact as evidence of his later personal growth, apparently learned the wrong lesson from our age of weaponized social media histories.)

The act of dredging up and passing judgment on someone’s past social media posts is not new. You can look back as recently as 2015 to witness something similar happen to Trevor Noah before he took over The Daily Show — even if that particular instance of outrage was spurred much more by those on the left, who took issue with lazy, hacky jokes the comedian had made based on several awful stereotypes.

Still, Noah’s experience reflects a subtle but notable shift that occurred in the short period of time between Harmon’s Daryl (made in 2009) and most of Noah’s tweets (which were made just a few years later, in 2011 and 2012): At a certain point, ironic, shock-driven humor stopped being a cool way to get noticed, as more people realized it was an easy way to smuggle actual racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice into the discourse.

That’s because shock humor didn’t only reside on Twitter and YouTube. It also resided on 4chan and the other forums that gave rise to the alt-right, and it was too often expressed as, essentially, a kind of racist or sexist or [take your pick of any prejudice you like, really] gag that still said what everybody really thought. The key difference was that a great comedian could find a way to twist ironic racism so that the punchline was aimed at the ironic racist — an approach that had its pitfalls but was miles more nuanced than the slew of genuinely anti-Semitic images and other horrible “jokes” that spew out of various alt-right depositories.

And such “jokes” are the defining element of chan culture, where if you care, then you’ve lost and everybody can laugh at you. The idea is provocation for its own sake, but when you stew in that provocation long enough, it becomes extremely easy to forget where the jokes end, as described in this recent BuzzFeed article about an alt-right rising star who murdered his own father after accusing him of being a leftist pedophile.

The thing about Daryl or South Park or even James Gunn’s tweets is that even if you don’t think the jokes work, even if you believe they’re couching truly terrible things in irony while failing to consider the potential irresponsibility of those tactics, they’re all, on some level, coming from a place of thought and craft. They’re all trying to say something — about modern society, or about how ingrained horrible ideas are in our culture, or just about the TV show Dexter.

The great irony of this bad-faith war on comedians and other Hollywood figures by right-wing internet mobs is that the right-wing internet mobs are ultimately just as steeped in shock comedy culture as anybody else. But they’ve never understood what that culture intended, what its context was, or why some people found it funny. They only heard the racism and never the irony, and maybe that’s as perfect a parable for how we got to now as anything else.

Original Source -> Alt-right internet mobs are attacking celebrities with their own jokes. The irony is stark.

via The Conservative Brief

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