#or mb a post like this but better DOES exist (or someone wants to write it) in which case pls link me

[brittapcrrys]

lol so anyway i know u can’t like force anyone’s hand but as admins of a group it actually IS your responsibility to ensure there are rules and expectations in place to ensure diversity and inclusivity in your rp both in and out of character, and that the in-character rep includes both the muses themselves and the faceclaims being used to represent them. yes this means fat characters should fat fcs. yes this means disabled characters should have disabled fcs. yes this means trans and/or nonbinary muses should have trans and/or nonbinary fcs. yes this means characters over 50yo should have FCs over 50yo. and so on...!

obviously......in some cases......  some of these may be more difficult to adhere to, especially knowing that the entertainment industry is not particularly welcoming to or supportive of people of most of these identities (let alone those who encompass multiple!!!), & sometimes u may be wanting/needing a fc of a very specific ethnicity and unfortunately cannot find anyone of that background who fits the other criteria u seek, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still look!! research, ask around, if u have to settle on a less-suitable fc be open to changing that if someone new who aligns better with the muse’s story becomes a viable fc option, and always try to opt FIRST for the most respectful and inclusive faceclaims u can!!!

as an admin this means paying attention to the fcs ppl list in their apps, not just to flag problematic or otherwise banned individuals, but to see if the mun has chosen a fc whose gender or disability or age or whatever else it may be that matches that same detail in character, and if not....why not? did they consider more fitting options at all? are there any available? do your own research and see if you can find more appropriate alts to suggest!!

this means setting down rules ensuring diversity in the characters in your group across all members, but also (in a mumu) for each individual member. be realistic but firm about upholding these rules. have a fcs & character of colour/white fcs & character ratio count and a white limit, have cis/trans+nonbinary ratio and a limit on cis muses/fcs in the group overall at any one time. if you have rules like “if you play multiple muses, every x character/fc must be diverse in at least one of these ways” be mindful of the ways your members, but also you as admins,  are following this rule. allowing age, body diversity, gender diversity, disability, and more to be compiled into the one ~diversity/inclusivity~ rule can mean people will just pick up a bunch of character over 35, 40, 50 or whatever your rule is, and ignore plus size fcs entirely, or they may make a (planned default cis) character and intend to use a cis faceclaim and then realise they’ve reached their X character number and change the muse to nonbinary at the last moment and make few, if any, other changes - including to the fc!

these are things to remember as a member, as a 1x1/indie rper, even as a rph i guess, but i’ve seen one too many admins be like “oh, there’s nothing more we can do, we encourage diversity, have a [loose] rule about it, we can’t control what anyone does with that” and to some extent that’s correct but.... you can be more vigilant, you can make your rules more specific, you can ask more questions of applicants and members, and you can lead by example.

diverse muses are great!!! it’s good to be seeing so much more of this in some pockets of the rpc. but dont ignore the similarly diverse fcs - many of whom DO already have fc resources - existing in the public eye. we can all do better

#this has been irritating me for months but apparently i am tired and peeved enough for other reasons to say smth #this IS a mess and i AM heavily medicated atm so if i did word any of it really poorly or outright offensively do lmk #i will look over it with a clearer head later to check for myself ofc but.... to be clear i will welcome criticism and corrections like that #i was gonna tag as 'dnt rebI0g' but actually i dont have many followers and i haven't seen this topic covered before so #mb ... more ppl should see it #or mb a post like this but better DOES exist (or someone wants to write it) in which case pls link me

[scottsmithuk]

The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to Getting More YouTube Views for Free

So, you create YouTube videos. Great idea. Done right YouTube videos can be one of the best ways to promote a product, build your brand, establish yourself as an authority on some of your favorite subjects or just make a little extra cash.

The opportunity to do all of the above is certainly there. Although YouTube is now nearly fifteen years old – and has more than a few almost viable competitors in the video space in 2019 – it is still the granddaddy of video sites and the place most people – from all over the world and across almost every popular dynamic – head when they are looking for something interesting to watch.

How big is it still? Here are some facts to consider (accurate as of the time of writing and the numbers are YouTube’s own)

Total Number of Monthly Active YouTube Users: 1.9 billion

Total Number of Daily Active YouTube Users: 30+ million

YouTube TV Paying Subscribers: 300,000

Number of Videos Shared to Date: 5+ billion

Number of Users Creating Content Shared to Date: 50 million

Average Viewing Session 40 minutes, up 50% year-over-year

Number of Videos Watched Per Day 5 billion

Number of mobile YouTube views per day: 500 million

Number of Videos uploaded per minute: 300 hours

There is, as you can see, a huge audience just waiting to be tapped. In theory that is. Knowing all of this is very frustrating if the views on your own videos struggle to make it past double digits. So naturally you want more views on YouTube. For free. But how? Here are some pointers to get you started.

Ask People to Subscribe

That sounds very simplistic doesn’t it? And yet you would be surprised by just how many content creators on YouTube don’t actually bother to do it. They create videos that have fantastic information, are really entertaining and informative but then forget to make it clear to the audience that there is more of the same to come and so they should subscribe to be notified as soon as it does.

Once people subscribe, they can choose to be notified every time you upload new content and this will bring you instant views every time you release a new video. Add a call to action at the end of your video asking users to subscribe to your channel. And include a link in your video description that makes it easy for them to do so.

Use Playlists To Keep Those Eyeballs on Your Videos

According to YouTube’s own numbers s “top-performing brands on YouTube build and promote twice as many playlists as the bottom 25%.”

That’s because those top-performing brands understand the magic of auto-play. It’s much harder to pull yourself out of the YouTube rabbit hole when the videos just keep playing. Users might not actually be motivated enough to keep watching if they have to click play every few minutes, but if the ‘hits keep coming’ the chances are very good that they will just keep going. When you have a little more time head to one of our favourite YouTube entertainment channels – Watch Mojo UK –  and we can almost guarantee that you’ll be there for a while. As soon as one video stops the next one starts. And people are often there for hours.

So, how do you create a playlist? Here’s a video that explains it very simply:

TLDW? Here’s the quick explanation:

Navigate to the first video you want to include in the playlist.

Click Add to.

Select an existing playlist, or choose Create a new playlist (and then name that playlist).

Choose your playlist’s privacy setting. Since you’re aiming for YouTube views, you’ll likely want to keep it Public.

Click Create.

Ten minutes, tops, and provided you are creating good content this will almost certainly increase your views on YouTube.

Make Use of YouTube Cards and End Screens

The card and end screen functionalities on YouTube offer you another way to get your viewers watching more of your videos while also helping them get more familiar with your brand every time they do.

Cards are those pop ups you see in the body of the video itself. This video explains how to add them.

Since at this point your focus is getting more YouTube views for free, you will probably get most mileage out of a channel card that just links to the rest of your videos. However you could use a video or playlist card to point viewers to specific related videos that it would make sense for them to watch next.

Making end screens for your videos is almost as simple as adding cards. Here’s how it’s done:

From your YouTube account, click the Creator Studio link under your account icon.

Click Video Manager > Videos.

Click Edit on the video you want to add the end screen to, then click End screen.

Choose whether to copy an existing end screen, create one using a YouTube template, or create one from scratch using the Add element option.

When you’re happy with your selections, click Save.

Make Your Video Titles and Descriptions Search AND User Friendly

Before you can get new eyeballs on your videos they actually have to be able to find them, which means your YouTube SEO has to be on point. However, those efforts have to cover two slightly different ‘audiences’; YouTube’s search bots and actual human viewers.

YouTube SEO is actually a discipline all unto itself, and there’s a lot to learn (which is why you might want a YouTube SEO specialist to help you at first) But here are some of the basics:

When you are writing your descriptions and titles try out your potential keyword ideas in the YouTube search box itself. As the autocomplete populates you may get ideas for related terms you hadn’t thought of. Or even ideas for new videos (score) You can also click on a few of the videos that show up for keywords right now to get an idea of your current competition.

Where can you find high potential keywords? Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends are both potentially great sources of them, but do not include anything that isn’t relevant to your video’s content just because it’s a high volume keyword. YouTube knows that ‘trick’ and they will eventually penalise you for it.

As we mentioned, you have to keep your users in mind too. According to YouTube “Titles that perform best are often those that tell a story.” Search bots are not interested in stories but humans are, so you have to figure out a way to achieve this balance. Within 60 characters, to ensure that your full description is displayed in search.

Thumbnail Images Count

Most people just don’t read when they are online, they scan instead. And when they are scanning their way through the search results of a list of videos they might want to watch they are far more likely to click on the one that has an interesting/eye catching thumbnail image to draw them in.

YouTube will, of course, auto-generate a thumbnail but why let them? Take control of the first impression you want to make and upload a custom image. Make sure that image complements both the subject matter of your video and your brand.

Your custom thumbnail should be 1280 x 720 pixels and less than 2 MB in size, in JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG format. And you probably want to know how to add one, so here’s a video that explains that:

Optimize Your Channel

Almost as important as optimizing each video you create is optimizing your channel. Yet SO many people just do not bother to do that. YouTube’s top performing creators do though, and since your ambition is to get more views and actually become one of them it is something that you should be doing as well.

Visuals are important here of course. You need to take the time to create a great channel icon, one that helps accurately portray your brand and your content, especially as this icon will be used by both YouTube and Google Search. It also needs to be an 800X800 image that will also display well at 98×98 pixels. A tall order perhaps, but there are a lot of tools and tips in the YouTube Creator Academy that can help.

Then there is the channel description. You have up to 1,000 characters to create a compelling brand pitch for your YouTube channel, letting viewers know why they should care about the videos you’re posting, what you have to offer, and how often they can expect to see new content. It’s not much, but take the time to make it count.

If you are up for a little more work you can even choose to create a channel trailer. We’ll let this video explain this (and as you watch, learn, this lady has a lot of views and subscribers!)

Understand the Way the YouTube Algorithm Works

‘A search and discovery system’ is the way that YouTube officially describes its algorithm. This is what determines which videos are seen first in a user’s search results, in the suggested videos tabs and in those trending streams.

The algorithm has an awful lot to do with watch time. Primarily this refers to how much time someone spends watching your videos, measured in cumulative minutes watched. According to YouTube itself, “each video uploaded—as well as every channel on YouTube—is ‘ranked’ by watch time.”

But “watch time” is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, it includes the actual time people spend watching your videos. But channels also earn “watch time credits” for driving viewers to watch videos on other channels.

This means that YouTube is more likely to showcase your videos when people spend more time watching your videos, and when they spend more time watching videos by other users that you refer them to. It’s complex stuff sometimes, and working with a Youtube marketing specialist can help you, but getting a better grasp on what you have to do to please YouTube – versus pleasing Google – is something it pays to do.

Take the Time to Go Through Your YouTube Analytics

One of the biggest keys to the success of any marketing strategy – on or offline – is to continuously test, track and tweak according to watch you learn as you go. And this is where analytics come in.

YouTube itself offers a pretty robust analytics panel that will tell you a lot of what you need to know. It lets you know which of your videos performs the best, how engaged your viewers really are and, to a certain extent, just who those people actually are.

These are all things that you not only need to pay attention to in order to increase the views on your current videos but also to act as a guide when creating future content. Once you know who is watching, and what seems to be resonating with them the most you can make a point of creating even more of the same kinds of content to keep them coming back for more.

Promote Your YouTube Video to the Outside World

Finally, it’s important that you promote your YouTube videos to the outside world to draw them over to you channel to watch (and hopefully keep watching) your content. Embed them on your website, share them on your social channels, include them in your emails (even in your email signatures)

All of these tips should help you increase the number of views your YouTube videos get and, for the most part, are free. There is one thing that has to be noted here though. As is the case for anything else in the world of content creation all the tips, tricks and hacks in the world aren’t much use if the content isn’t good.

Take the time to learn from others, to test and tweak and invest what you need to to ensure that what you are creating is good, not just a thirty second filler you are using to try and ‘increase your visibility online’.

The post The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to Getting More YouTube Views for Free appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-getting-more-youtube-views-for-free/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-getting.html

[mitchelbobby]

The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to Getting More YouTube Views for Free

So, you create YouTube videos. Great idea. Done right YouTube videos can be one of the best ways to promote a product, build your brand, establish yourself as an authority on some of your favorite subjects or just make a little extra cash.

The opportunity to do all of the above is certainly there. Although YouTube is now nearly fifteen years old – and has more than a few almost viable competitors in the video space in 2019 – it is still the granddaddy of video sites and the place most people – from all over the world and across almost every popular dynamic – head when they are looking for something interesting to watch.

How big is it still? Here are some facts to consider (accurate as of the time of writing and the numbers are YouTube’s own)

Total Number of Monthly Active YouTube Users: 1.9 billion

Total Number of Daily Active YouTube Users: 30+ million

YouTube TV Paying Subscribers: 300,000

Number of Videos Shared to Date: 5+ billion

Number of Users Creating Content Shared to Date: 50 million

Average Viewing Session 40 minutes, up 50% year-over-year

Number of Videos Watched Per Day 5 billion

Number of mobile YouTube views per day: 500 million

Number of Videos uploaded per minute: 300 hours

There is, as you can see, a huge audience just waiting to be tapped. In theory that is. Knowing all of this is very frustrating if the views on your own videos struggle to make it past double digits. So naturally you want more views on YouTube. For free. But how? Here are some pointers to get you started.

Ask People to Subscribe

That sounds very simplistic doesn’t it? And yet you would be surprised by just how many content creators on YouTube don’t actually bother to do it. They create videos that have fantastic information, are really entertaining and informative but then forget to make it clear to the audience that there is more of the same to come and so they should subscribe to be notified as soon as it does.

Once people subscribe, they can choose to be notified every time you upload new content and this will bring you instant views every time you release a new video. Add a call to action at the end of your video asking users to subscribe to your channel. And include a link in your video description that makes it easy for them to do so.

Use Playlists To Keep Those Eyeballs on Your Videos

According to YouTube’s own numbers s “top-performing brands on YouTube build and promote twice as many playlists as the bottom 25%.”

That’s because those top-performing brands understand the magic of auto-play. It’s much harder to pull yourself out of the YouTube rabbit hole when the videos just keep playing. Users might not actually be motivated enough to keep watching if they have to click play every few minutes, but if the ‘hits keep coming’ the chances are very good that they will just keep going. When you have a little more time head to one of our favourite YouTube entertainment channels – Watch Mojo UK –  and we can almost guarantee that you’ll be there for a while. As soon as one video stops the next one starts. And people are often there for hours.

So, how do you create a playlist? Here’s a video that explains it very simply:

TLDW? Here’s the quick explanation:

Navigate to the first video you want to include in the playlist.

Click Add to.

Select an existing playlist, or choose Create a new playlist (and then name that playlist).

Choose your playlist’s privacy setting. Since you’re aiming for YouTube views, you’ll likely want to keep it Public.

Click Create.

Ten minutes, tops, and provided you are creating good content this will almost certainly increase your views on YouTube.

Make Use of YouTube Cards and End Screens

The card and end screen functionalities on YouTube offer you another way to get your viewers watching more of your videos while also helping them get more familiar with your brand every time they do.

Cards are those pop ups you see in the body of the video itself. This video explains how to add them.

Since at this point your focus is getting more YouTube views for free, you will probably get most mileage out of a channel card that just links to the rest of your videos. However you could use a video or playlist card to point viewers to specific related videos that it would make sense for them to watch next.

Making end screens for your videos is almost as simple as adding cards. Here’s how it’s done:

From your YouTube account, click the Creator Studio link under your account icon.

Click Video Manager > Videos.

Click Edit on the video you want to add the end screen to, then click End screen.

Choose whether to copy an existing end screen, create one using a YouTube template, or create one from scratch using the Add element option.

When you’re happy with your selections, click Save.

Make Your Video Titles and Descriptions Search AND User Friendly

Before you can get new eyeballs on your videos they actually have to be able to find them, which means your YouTube SEO has to be on point. However, those efforts have to cover two slightly different ‘audiences’; YouTube’s search bots and actual human viewers.

YouTube SEO is actually a discipline all unto itself, and there’s a lot to learn (which is why you might want a YouTube SEO specialist to help you at first) But here are some of the basics:

When you are writing your descriptions and titles try out your potential keyword ideas in the YouTube search box itself. As the autocomplete populates you may get ideas for related terms you hadn’t thought of. Or even ideas for new videos (score) You can also click on a few of the videos that show up for keywords right now to get an idea of your current competition.

Where can you find high potential keywords? Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends are both potentially great sources of them, but do not include anything that isn’t relevant to your video’s content just because it’s a high volume keyword. YouTube knows that ‘trick’ and they will eventually penalise you for it.

As we mentioned, you have to keep your users in mind too. According to YouTube “Titles that perform best are often those that tell a story.” Search bots are not interested in stories but humans are, so you have to figure out a way to achieve this balance. Within 60 characters, to ensure that your full description is displayed in search.

Thumbnail Images Count

Most people just don’t read when they are online, they scan instead. And when they are scanning their way through the search results of a list of videos they might want to watch they are far more likely to click on the one that has an interesting/eye catching thumbnail image to draw them in.

YouTube will, of course, auto-generate a thumbnail but why let them? Take control of the first impression you want to make and upload a custom image. Make sure that image complements both the subject matter of your video and your brand.

Your custom thumbnail should be 1280 x 720 pixels and less than 2 MB in size, in JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG format. And you probably want to know how to add one, so here’s a video that explains that:

Optimize Your Channel

Almost as important as optimizing each video you create is optimizing your channel. Yet SO many people just do not bother to do that. YouTube’s top performing creators do though, and since your ambition is to get more views and actually become one of them it is something that you should be doing as well.

Visuals are important here of course. You need to take the time to create a great channel icon, one that helps accurately portray your brand and your content, especially as this icon will be used by both YouTube and Google Search. It also needs to be an 800X800 image that will also display well at 98×98 pixels. A tall order perhaps, but there are a lot of tools and tips in the YouTube Creator Academy that can help.

Then there is the channel description. You have up to 1,000 characters to create a compelling brand pitch for your YouTube channel, letting viewers know why they should care about the videos you’re posting, what you have to offer, and how often they can expect to see new content. It’s not much, but take the time to make it count.

If you are up for a little more work you can even choose to create a channel trailer. We’ll let this video explain this (and as you watch, learn, this lady has a lot of views and subscribers!)

Understand the Way the YouTube Algorithm Works

‘A search and discovery system’ is the way that YouTube officially describes its algorithm. This is what determines which videos are seen first in a user’s search results, in the suggested videos tabs and in those trending streams.

The algorithm has an awful lot to do with watch time. Primarily this refers to how much time someone spends watching your videos, measured in cumulative minutes watched. According to YouTube itself, “each video uploaded—as well as every channel on YouTube—is ‘ranked’ by watch time.”

But “watch time” is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, it includes the actual time people spend watching your videos. But channels also earn “watch time credits” for driving viewers to watch videos on other channels.

This means that YouTube is more likely to showcase your videos when people spend more time watching your videos, and when they spend more time watching videos by other users that you refer them to. It’s complex stuff sometimes, and working with a Youtube marketing specialist can help you, but getting a better grasp on what you have to do to please YouTube – versus pleasing Google – is something it pays to do.

Take the Time to Go Through Your YouTube Analytics

One of the biggest keys to the success of any marketing strategy – on or offline – is to continuously test, track and tweak according to watch you learn as you go. And this is where analytics come in.

YouTube itself offers a pretty robust analytics panel that will tell you a lot of what you need to know. It lets you know which of your videos performs the best, how engaged your viewers really are and, to a certain extent, just who those people actually are.

These are all things that you not only need to pay attention to in order to increase the views on your current videos but also to act as a guide when creating future content. Once you know who is watching, and what seems to be resonating with them the most you can make a point of creating even more of the same kinds of content to keep them coming back for more.

Promote Your YouTube Video to the Outside World

Finally, it’s important that you promote your YouTube videos to the outside world to draw them over to you channel to watch (and hopefully keep watching) your content. Embed them on your website, share them on your social channels, include them in your emails (even in your email signatures)

All of these tips should help you increase the number of views your YouTube videos get and, for the most part, are free. There is one thing that has to be noted here though. As is the case for anything else in the world of content creation all the tips, tricks and hacks in the world aren’t much use if the content isn’t good.

Take the time to learn from others, to test and tweak and invest what you need to to ensure that what you are creating is good, not just a thirty second filler you are using to try and ‘increase your visibility online’.

The post The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to Getting More YouTube Views for Free appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-getting-more-youtube-views-for-free/ source https://pearllemon.tumblr.com/post/183496048874

[mindcoolness]

Does Catharsis of Aggression Work? The Truth about Anger Release

New Post has been published on http://www.mindcoolness.com/blog/catharsis-anger/

Does Catharsis of Aggression Work? The Truth about Anger Release

Does catharsis induce mindcoolness?

Does shouting curses at a hated person’s picture help to “release poisonous anger”? Does smashing a car with a sledgehammer help to “blow off steam”? Does a full-intensity round on the heavy bag help to “cleanse the soul”? Would it make you a better, freer, more authentic human being if you exercised emotional discharge on a regular basis? Should you practice catharsis to optimize your mental health?

Think about a man who rarely or never expresses anger. He must be stifled, emotionally repressed, right? What would help him, what would set him free from his self-inhibition, would be a way to express his anger in a safe environment, right? This is the idea of therapeutic catharsis: that aggressive behavior relieves the psychological pressure created by pent-up anger. Spoiler alert: If you believe this nonsense, you have been successfully deluded by the pseudopsychology presented in the mass media and the self-help industry.

Many modern self-improvement seminars are built on the illusion of cathartic release. You pay for the seminar. You clap and jump and yell and “release your stifled emotions.” You are taught that this is what authenticity and freedom feel like. And you feel empowered—at least for a few hours until you revert to your old, normal self, longing for the next seminar to re-spike your emotions.

There is nothing wrong with feeling good at a seminar (although you might get the same feelings cheaper at a metal/hardcore show), but the underlying narrative is simply false. It assumes that there is some kind of emotional vessel in the human bodymind that gets filled with anger (“bottled-up anger”), filled by negative experiences, filled over days, weeks, months, or even years, until it explodes or the anger is vented. In reality, no such vessel exists. Emotions come and go. They do not settle in the human soul, they do not accumulate, they do not require expression to pass. By their nature, emotions come and go on their own.

However, instead of venting emotions, cathartic anger expression could still break patterns of compulsive emotion suppression—if only by adding a new strategy (namely, expression) to one’s emotion regulation arsenal. But there are at least four problems with that:

Why would it have to be a cathartic process of screaming, shouting, bag-punching, and pillow-pounding, rather than, say, calmly verbalizing the anger or writing about it?

How is physical expression better than well-researched emotion regulation strategies such as acceptance and reappraisal?

Would reliance on catharsis, which involves a powerful bodily experience, not even discourage the use of abstract cognitive strategies?

Most importantly, to what extent can cathartic release, which typically happens in a safe environment without negative consequences and without a real trigger of anger, actually break a chronic pattern of anger suppression?

I can assure you from my personal experience involving years of untargeted yelling and being aggressive at the gym that it did not at all alter the way I express my anger at other people.

What does the science say?

Looking at the immediate effects of physical catharsis,* the scientific consensus is clear: it does not mitigate, but increase anger. Here are some key studies:

In Hornberger’s (1959) experiment, participants were first insulted and then asked either to pound nails with a hammer or to do nothing for ten minutes. Rather than having a cathartic effect, the aggressive act of pounding nails increased hostility toward the insulter.

Geen and Quanty (1977) reviewed all the data available by that time and concluded that catharsis makes people not less, but more aggressive; Warren and Kurlychek (1981) found the same.

Bushman (2002) had participants write an essay about abortion, for which they received fake negative feedback—”poorly organized,” “unoriginal,” “bad writing style,” “unpersuasive arguments,” “one of the worst essays I have read!”—by another participant, who did not exist. With the anger induced by this bogus criticism, participants hit a punching bag while thinking either about the other participant or about becoming physically fit; some did not punch the bag at all. Afterwards, they all played an aggressive game where they could punish the alleged other participant with blasts of loud white noise. The results: Thinking about the other participant while hitting the bag (i.e., catharsis) did not reduce, but increase self-reported anger and game-related aggression. Hitting the bag generally increased aggression, whereas those who did nothing but sit quietly for two minutes after they read the criticism were the least aggressive. The authors concluded, “[V]enting to reduce anger is like using gasoline to put out a fire—it only feeds the flame.”

In a similar study, Bushman and colleagues (1999) found that people who hit a punching bag were more aggressive afterwards, even if—and especially if—they had been led to believe that catharsis is highly effective. Therefore, catharsis does not even work as a self-fulfilling prophecy; and not only does it not work: it makes people who believe in it even more aggressive.

Catharsis does not “release trapped anger.” On the contrary, catharsis produces and reinforces anger. By yelling out loud, we trigger our body to activate the sympathetic nervous system, putting us in a fight-or-flight state, which, among other things, gives us an adrenalin rush. This has everything to do with basic human physiology and nothing with freedom, personal development, spiritual growth, or psychological healing. Yet, of course, it is a nice trick for self-help gurus to sell seminars and therapeutic charlatans to sell counseling.

The trick works because, despite being counterproductive for anger management, physical catharsis feels really good. It feels good to yell, smash, and go berserk without having to worry about negative consequences—not, however, because emotion expression is freedom, but because movement feels good and because aggression feels good. After all, aggressive behavior boosts testosterone, which is a hormone that feels good to have. Try lifting heavy weights while yelling on every rep like a rabid maniac—let it all out! Again, you are not “letting out” anything, except air and loud noises. In reality, you are building up anger and adding to your aggression, to your feeling of power, to your sense of strength.

It feels good to be aggressive, and if there are no negative consequences or moral judgments to worry about, it even feels good to be angry. This is why so many people in a frenzy of rage actually want to be feeling that way—they want their anger. It makes them feel positive, powerful, and alive, at least for the moment. Compare that to someone in a whirl of anxiety who would give everything to stop feeling anxious. How many people take medication against anger, compared to anxiety? I would even hypothesize that once anger feels bad, it has already turned into shame or guilt, and that that is the negatively valenced emotion, rather than the anger itself.

Finally, catharsis might induce mindcoolness, though not by “releasing anger,” “letting off steam,” or “cleansing the soul.” These mythical metaphors have nothing to do with how emotions really work. Catharsis can cool the mind only by deflecting attention away from emotional thoughts and toward action, movement, and bodily exertion. To the extent, however, that an aggressive behavior is cognitively associated with aggressive ideas, catharsis will heat up the mind by triggering thoughts of anger, hate, and retaliation. Thus, to enter a state of mindcoolness, forget about catharsis, forget about anger, forget about feelings, and be serenely aware of your body taking action, exerting itself aggressively, in the present moment.

Key Points

Catharsis does not release trapped emotions, cleanse your soul, or set you free; it probably cannot even break chronic patterns of emotion suppression.

According to experimental studies, physical catharsis is a counterproductive practice in aggression: instead of reducing anger, it reinforces it.

Aggressive behaviors like yelling and punching feel good because they elevate testosterone levels and trigger a fight-or-flight response.

Anger might actually be a positively valenced emotion, related to a sense of strength and vitality.

Catharsis may cool the mind by deflecting attention toward physical activity, but it may also heat the mind by means of cognitive association.

Do you think this man will soon be peaceful? He will be exhausted at best. (Source: WDR/Willi Weber)

* For other, non-physical forms of catharsis (e.g., verbalizing hostility, expressive writing, or playing video games), scientific studies have produced mixed results.

References

Bushman BJ (2002). Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame? Catharsis, Rumination, Distraction, Anger, and Aggressive Responding. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(6), 724-731.

Bushman BJ, Baumeister RJ, Stack AD (1999). Catharsis, Aggression, and Persuasive Influence: Self-Fulfilling or Self-Defeating Prophecies? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76(3), 367-376.

Geen RG, Quanty MB (1977). The catharsis of aggression: An evaluation of a hypothesis. Advances in Experimental Psychology 10, 1-37.

Hornberger RH (1959). The differential reduction of aggressive responses as a function of interpolated activities. American Psychologist 14, 354.

Warren R, Kurlychek RT (1981). Treatment of maladaptive anger and aggression: Catharsis vs behavior therapy. Corrective and Social Psychiatry and Journal of Behavior Technology Methods and Therapy 27, 135-139.

Further Reading

Is Suppressing Emotions Bad For You? (Jocko Willink Vs. Science)

How Anger Arises in the Body

The Truth about Testosterone: Aggression, Sex, and Social Status

Why Every Man Should Practice Aggressive Sports

To Control Your Emotions, Understand and Label Them (Affect Labeling)

#body-intelligence #emotions #freedom #mindcoolness #Blog

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It's easy to overlook the small percentage of use-cases where your product doesn't work first time or takes extra work to solve. Time is precious and those small problems won't help with rapid growth, right? But does that make for a future-proof product?This is a case study based on one of the products I work on in a startup environment, written by the guy who had the idea and built the product. The product does thousands of conversions a day. I'm sharing it here because I thought it might be useful for those coming from a less technical background to see from a developer's point of view. It was originally posted on the company blog, which I'll link to at the end.At first glance, SQLizer.io is a very simple web application. It has a single form. You upload a file, we read the file, and we turn the data in your file into a SQL script. How hard can it be?As is often the case, getting something that works 75% of the time isn’t too hard. But getting to 90% takes a lot of effort. And making it to 98% is a real nightmare.This post is about one area of SQLizer where edge cases forced us to put a lot of work into getting something that works almost all the time: Handling extremely large CSV files.By far the most common file type that SQLizer processes is Excel spreadsheets. But, we typically never see an Excel file larger than a few tens of Megabytes. That’s probably because it’s virtually impossible to open an Excel spreadsheet once it gets to 100MB in size. Maybe on a powerful machine with lots of memory it’s possible, but it’s slow, and it’s really not a very practical way to work with your data.But SQLizer also handles CSV files, which are perfect for dealing with large quantities of data, and we see some pretty huge CSV files coming through our system. It’s not unusual to see a 10GB CSV file being converted.When it comes to handling a 10GB CSV file, each step of the process must be broken down into stages. And each of those stages has had a lot of work done to it to help it handle very large files.UploadingTrying to upload a 10GB file in one HTTP Post using a simple web upload form is unlikely to work reliably. So we’ve had to develop a more robust way of getting files up to our servers.If you open Chrome’s developer tools while SQLizer is uploading a file larger than 5 MB, you’ll see that it’s breaking the file up into chunks and uploading each bit separately:The SQLizer API has a built in mechanism for specifying that an upload is coming in chunks rather than all in one go. The SQLizer website is a client of the SQLizer API so it takes advantage of this mechanism. It also uses the resumablejs javascript library to handle file-reading (using the browser's File API), uploading, and retrying failed chunks. The 404 errors in the above image are not bugs, the web page is asking the API whether each chunk has been uploaded yet, before it begins uploading. The 404 is just the APIs way of saying, “no I haven’t got that one yet”.However, getting the data up to our web server is only half the story. SQLizer uses Amazon’s S3 to store the files it’s working on. So each file chunk must be sent to S3, then re-assembled into a whole file once it gets there. Fortunately S3 has a mechanism for doing this known, as multipart uploads.The whole process involves keeping track of which parts have been uploaded to our server, which ones have then been uploaded to S3, and what their part IDs are. This sounds simple in theory but bear in mind that, in practice, the parts won’t necessarily arrive in the right order, or even at the same web server.Analysing / ProcessingOnce our 10GB file is safely reassembled in S3, we now need to start processing it. But, we don’t want to have to load the whole file into one server’s memory in order to process it. Renting servers with more than 10 GB of RAM is not cheap. So instead, our CSV conversion engine is built to work like a good Unix command line tool. It reads one line at a time and outputs SQL as it goes.In order to feed our CSV conversion engine, a layer exists which can download 5MB chunks of the S3 file using HTTP range requests and buffer them up for the conversion engine. This keeps the conversion engine running without ever loading the whole file into memory.Storing the ResultA 10GB CSV file is likely to result in a very large SQL output file too. And we don’t want all that SQL code sitting around in memory on the web server during the conversion process. We want to write that file out to disk as we go along. Seeing as we’re using S3 for file storage, that means another multi-part upload. So another service exists to buffer chunks of the output file, and upload 5MB chunks up to S3.When the whole thing is done, the resulting file is stitched together and a single download URL is generated.Keeping SQLizer Fast for OthersWhile our hypothetical 10GB file is being processed, other people will still be trying to get their small files converted. SQLizer can’t slow down for them, so our conversion engine shouldn’t get locked up working on one file and making other files wait. It’s true that we can (and do) run the conversion engine on more than one server, but having one of our servers effectively out of action for an hour or so while it works on a huge file, is not ideal. So we extended the file buffering service to intersperse chunks from different files.As you can see from the above diagram. A 50KB file that’s uploaded while SQLizer is working on a 10GB file will be processed simultaneously in amongst the other larger file.Presenting the ResultFor most files, the SQL script is loaded into a textarea in the user’s browser. But trying to download a 10GB SQL file into a textarea on a web page is going to kill the user’s computer! Fortunately our API tells the client how many data rows the file contains, so if that number gets too big, our website hides the textarea and just displays the download link.ConclusionsOne of our secret weapons when building SQLizer was the contact form on our website. When SQLizer users started finding this form and submitting requests for help, we knew we’d built something that was delivering real value, and that people needed.Our policy from the start was this: If someone paid for SQLizer and couldn’t convert their file, we would convert it for them manually. Handling large files was the number one reason for users getting in touch; either to ask whether SQLizer would be able to handle it, or to ask us to check on a particular file’s progress.This policy meant there were some people who paid $10 and received several hundred dollars worth of file conversion consultancy. But over time it forced us to make the product better. It’s now very rare we see a file coming through SQLizer that’s just too big for it to handle (Please do not treat this as a challenge!).Today, SQLizer customers benefit from all the engineering time spent on those edge cases with a product that just works.Originally posted at http://weared4.com/blog/why-edge-cases-matter/

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