Some light reading:
https://www.law360.com/articles/1795153/young-kc-chiefs-fan-s-parents-sue-deadspin-for-defamation
https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/news/deadspin-sued-by-holden-armentas-family-over-blackface-accusation/
https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2024/deadspin-defamation-lawsuit-chiefs-fan-1234765929/
https://nypost.com/2024/03/11/media/g-o-media-sells-deadspin-lays-off-entire-editorial-staff-with-barely-any-notice/
https://www.newsnationnow.com/on-balance-with-leland-vittert/chiefs-fan-blackface-sues-deadspin/
https://deadspin.com/judge-dismissed-trevor-bauers-lawsuit-against-deadspin-1850176308
https://gazette.com/news/wex/deadspin-sold-by-parent-company-in-wake-of-falsely-accusing-child-of-racism/article_beebf6b6-14a7-50c1-8097-c7768158a1f0.html
In what feels like a long while back compared to the date of this post’s release, a prominent sports news publication by the name of Deadspin, a household name I had not heard of until the dawning of the following controversy, wrote a hit piece against a child. They nagged him for wearing stereotypical dress of an Amerindian as part of his holding sacred the Kansas City Chiefs, an American football (i.e. extravagantly complicated rugby for all you Benedict Arnolds across the globe) team. Without uncertain terms, it was labeled Blackface. Blackface, kiddies, is when you put on black block printer’s ink and pink lipstick. Combine that with a turban, you can cosplay as one of the characters from Dragonball.
The kid’s family filed suit. Though Deadspin somehow got judges in the past to say no such defamation occurred and toss cases out of court, here the public fallout was instead as succinct as it was overwhelming. Its parent company, which had dumped plenty of capital and goodwill into the site opted out of enduring such an abusive relationship one nanosecond longer, sold the property to a European investing firm and wiped their hands clean with double the sanitizer lotion just in case.
Whether or not they had went through the legal motions to appropriately defame a mere child and boot him out of polite society forever for having the nerve to be a fan of the Chefs (“Great Googily-Moogily.”), the name of the site, “Deadspin”, just became the most literal interpretation of anything in the history of ever.
The name of their parent company: G/O Media.
Yes, that G/O Media.
A Little Philosophy
Which brings us to this site’s next “Golden Opportunity” by asking a serious question: do you want to get ahead or grow strong?
The distinction between them is the spirit they exude. Getting ahead simply means using an opportunity to “get ahead”. This means cornering a curve better as much as it is kicking down a ladder. Most of us frown on getting ahead, even though taking corners like a pro is fair and rightfully encouraged on zooming out. Growing strong means springing from tarmac unto the sun again. Not many people complain about this version, but it involves being led into the light and having access to fertile, moist, non-depleted soil.
In the Old Testament, heaven is described as an oasis where the palm tree happens to be in a position where its needs are tended. The New Testament discussed the Mustard Seed, a tiny thing that comes off an ugly-looking plant that happens to sow tons of seeds, always tossing out possibilities regardless of what circumstances the seeds themselves come across. That, my friends, is Growing Strong. There is no abject right or wrong in how one takes either parable, only that you…
A) nurture each opportunity, and
B) accept and distribute as many possibilities as possible.
Also C) don’t remove opportunities from others in the process!
This is my chance. With online media always in flux, it is my objective to ensure I get a cut of the action in order to serve others far more readily. Sure, this seed may land in the desert where it never gets water, but am I the kind who will make sure it never rains in the desert ever again, after slaving away to reach a favorable perch?
The Gauntlet Drops
I heard a little news that made me very wary about how my blog might stand a chance if its immediate and persistent big-time competition continues to linger. It might not. Not that I want to compete since I don’t want to be pigeonholed as being anything like said competition, but it is what it is and at the end of the day, squaring off against a personified threat on more than just principle shapes my blog’s creative direction regardless.
With that said, why open with a brief aside about Deadspin? You’re good for asking. This isn’t about Deadspin, by the way. That was never a factor except for being an interesting parallel. This is about G/O Media, because they run a bunch of venture capital-funded outlets that failed to generate any profit and are being sold at severe, inflated losses.
While not quite a bubble that the housing market created throughout the 2,000s, online media is deflating and shriveling in tandem–chill outside air, can’t take in more air with so many leaks. If you care to cite the nebulous catch-all term “Market Forces” as a chief culprit, let it be known that whatever product they sell is either defective or ineffective.
Advertisers are getting a raw deal for using said sites, courtesy of whatever perverse notion of copy these venture capital-anchored gossip rags are generating. Much of this stems from the breed of staff in the trenches–a jarring mixture of supremely college-educated moral arrogance. If you think the 2014 Gamergate controversy was an eye-opener for the regular public, just ponder the impact it had upon the terminally infiltrating.
Once the public called out the staff’s jig, the company, noticing that the money went away at just the same moment, enforced a 50 post quota of guides per month (wait, wait, wait… week? Fucking seriously, per week? I know they’re commies, but Jesus dined with tax collectors for crying out loud–what’s with all the unprecedented retaliatory sadism going on here? And you expect people to be on board with undertaking anything that even remotely has the chance to become a business of like size when it does nothing but encourage everybody else to pray against your coming and enforce unrealistic mandates as a means of inspiring a bunch of soft-quitting nonsense so the exiting staff can’t pick up unemployment benefits because you stop paying taxes just to spite the government that must now front all such bills by taxing the rest of the public even more in some violent swirling cesspool of endless supernatural hatred? Fuck that noise and fuck this noise. Even I wouldn’t entertain a 50/Week quota, even if the stipulations veered toward being theoretically merciful!), which scattered the editor in chief into a bunch of leaves like out of a choppily animated Japanese cartoon. The kind that is supposed to promote a print manga about ninjutsu, might I add, after the odd decade or so had seen lots of sneaking, blatant and overlapping and noisy just the same.
In the wake of this brain cancer drain through the sporty application of a solitary black-light bulb, a secret plot was underway to transform the skulls into an indomitable machine of total destruction–the greatest riposte that a herd of fucking ugly reds could orchestrate. By that, I mean the remaining staff will jockey for the top post by running through as much indie grassroots opposition to their politics as they can muster. If only I had kept better track of the names from all sides instead of just the one that’s actually relevant.
Okay, have you heard of the name Alyssa Mercante? I have heard it in passing but it never stuck in my head for long. She happens to be an editor, but not THE editor. If I could just remember! Chock it up to online media not having tactile feedback that helps generate memories of what you just read (or listened to); this phenomenon explains the enduring appeal of Trade Schools. I suggest printing out article outline forms so the free-associated text doesn’t constantly expand and litter your manuscript with each attempt to edit it. Also, the more senses involved, the better your recall because more of your body was involved in processing the inputs you then remember later.
Anyway, Alyssa Mercante should be a name most familiar to me considering my theoretical “dream job” of the week in entering the blogging world. In fact, I should pay lots of attention to the developments in the agency in which she is currently if tentatively employed: Kotaku. What’s Kotaku? What is a Kotaku? “I heard of the term ‘Otaku’ in my Japanese as Second Language class, but what’s the real deal?” Oh, the deal is real, all right. Long Summary: They Want to Transform Video Games Into a Focal Point of Ceaseless Bickering.
The Industry vs. The Industrious
If you have read this blog enough, you know I revere three giants: Cinemassacre, Clownfish Television, and The Rageholic.
Cinemassacre’s James Rolfe refused to entertain watching Ghostbusters 2016. Feminist Twitterati labeled him a bigot. Solution: never discuss it personally and let it slide. After their collective heat death, James admitted in an interview that he respected the cast’s chops and talent. He just figured the script couldn’t replicate the first films’ magic. That’s not a milquetoast assertion, either–it’s the literal truth. If you think the fallout around the Jem cinematic adaptation was bad, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call is more high-profile and, to wit, personal. After all, James produced a trilogy of AVGN episodes lampooning the licensed games.
Clownfish Television, my preferred venue for media news and analysis, is super-snarky around “Dismal Disney”. I can go on saying I don’t get the real appeal of hating Disney, considering it’s nowhere near the calamities of Electronic Arts or Microsoft on a whole (even then, I still use Windows 10 since it’s familiar and cite SSX Tricky as a personal favorite), just as much as I am skeptical of the Hasbro Corporation being the major problem when considering the D&D problem. Regardless, Kneon and Geeky Sparkles’ work ethic is immutable and they earn every last dime. So far, Cinemassacre & Clownfish TV have monetary and personal stakes, here.
Then, we have the Rageholic. What can you say? If you’re him, a lot. You keep having to scrub the time bar back and forth to register everything, or set it to half speed. Not because Raz0rfist talks too fast, but he isn’t afraid of getting censored, even though he talks about how awful the net becomes when we are. Meaning, you have to hear his jokes several times. Beyond the awesome slogans on t-shirts, he doesn’t quite do a whole lot of monetary stuff on his channel, opting out of receiving ad revenue since YouTube would scrub him of the privilege over his filthy mouth. He operated in a civilian/worker capacity in the games business before undertaking any prominent creative enterprise like penning comic books or filming retrospectives and commentaries on music or, in this case, the downfall of gaming journalism, which indicts most sites’ wonky, dependencies-riddled business model:
Oh, what’s that? “That’s not about Gaming Journalism!”? Well, it’s actually Gaming Journalism by proxy.
More specifically, this dude lays down the law about why this happens.
The money in media hinges on convictions and disasters and catastrophes when selling sensationalized tabloids. We often accuse online gossipmongers and greed-driven “grifters” of such, but few in the amateur circuit stoop to similar obscene lengths of the pestilence buzzing around Michael Jackson’s corpse. When it comes to stealing away a fixated readers’ dopamine, nothing works better than advertising death and destruction as our “primitive caveman” brains are drawn in. That’s why stories require conflict to hold our attention regardless of what it’s used for.
But composing stories is inherently writing fiction, even when based upon testimony, which should be shared undiluted. It is much better to not mix reality and fiction in your news. Yet, the online publishing business model is predicated on perpetuating disasters by making them seem closer and more impenetrably impermeable than what readers can handle. Even copywriters insist you use a convincing hook when detailing your reasoning behind the reader taking action (preferably with whatever hints, products, or services were mentioned over the text).
So, I stand by accidentally issuing a link to Razorfist’s assessment, for it critiques the sort of ribaldry seen at sites like Kotaku – all the ludicrous, hyperbolic claims made in spite of veracity if only because blood draws our eyes even if we steel ourselves. If you want to know why he despises Sony enough that I cringe whenever flea market guests ask about Sony speakers and whatnot regardless of what year they were produced, then here’s the Music Mythos retrospective:
Now that we got that out of our system….
Okay, more specifically….
I encourage you to watch the whole playlist from start to finish. Still relevant today, perhaps even more:
So, that’s Razorfist for you. His recurring jokes about Kotaku not being able to cite sources comes to mind when examining its plight of being threatened with getting shut down entirely. That’s right: it’s about to go down in flames.
Uh-Oh.
Now, let me reiterate something–let’s take a little aside, here. Had this been written by or announced by, say, Peter Jennings back in the 1990s when he was on fire enough to narrate famous quotes of famous American historical figures at Pops Goes the Fourth despite being Canadian and shit, even if he reported on this little event on ABC World News Tonight, it would not catch on as truly legitimate news reporting or generate jaw-dropping relevance. I mean, don’t make me discuss modern news figures. I stopped at Jon Stewart’s first run fixing news that kept on breaking down throughout the 2,000s. I read a book called Bias about how Tom Brokaw virtually doubled as a mafia hitman if not outright boss. I get it, okay?
Believe me, I might still insist on upholding Amendment #1, but the immediate beneficiaries aren’t making a thrilling-enough case, sorry to say. What I’m saying is that the above link passes itself off as a news article, but it’s subliminal copy pointing at whatever pop-ups are on display. It even posts screenshots of social media discourse. Online journalism has devolved into writing articles about other prominent figures typing remarks about goings-on within social media, a world-within-worlds situation that only has as much grip as your hand allows. I’m not sure if this is a low barrier of entry or the standard venues and media have no clue how to leverage a format so tied to and beloved by the grass roots and amateurs. Regardless, while I seem to take potshots at what I am doing here, at least I’m upfront and will not spiral bloody murder unto genocide.
(Oh, and you’ll never see me quote a Tweet. Never. I refuse.)
Nowhere near wrong, by the way.
Hence, my “Spin”
So, the editor-in-chief got fired and that an underling jockeying for that position, Alyssa Mercante, is a polarizing, shameless example of online journalism at large–not just the gaming version. Evil is a deed, not an inclination. I know they both need to hear it and then kiss and make up, but Alyssa’s attempt to interview Melonie Mac will do neither and forfeit both women’s reputation however tenuous or in flux. How difficult is it to have two girls chat about anything without it becoming a sadistic catfight?
Rather, how easy is it for the online space to capitalize on the fact that they’re both chicks about to engage in blood-sport on one another? Very easy, in fact. And it would not be hard even if it was a situation where others were not goading a confrontation out of some warped sense of reputation dangling from above and perched over a crumbling fault-line. This isn’t mud wrestling. There is no bisexual undercurrent. This is an ideological sparring match set inside an inescapable gilded cage of glass. And you know the worst part about this is?
People who dwell inside of glass houses have no sex life.
The whole “throwing stones” angle was never an issue. Forget about the whole “they’re all grifters” angle and just admit that you might as well replace one word with “sisters” to describe the sort of sour grapes resignation going on. We don’t believe they are being truthful or authentic, not because they’re lying, but because we anticipate falsehood whenever we doom-scroll. We just accept and believe wholeheartedly that everyone else but ourselves is always lying. What difference does anyone’s behavior make? Evil is a deed, but we keep saying, “These people are evil!”, reinforcing the very same notion that has made me question God’s plan on more than one occasion.
The real issue is that the public has already decided on the outcomes they will accept regardless of their takes on the contenders. Melonie is either a turncoat or a troll and Alyssa is either a ladder-kicker or a liar. They could be both these things, neither, or something even worse behind the scenes. Fact is, the higher the rung, the funnier it gets when they fall. We all pull for them to crash-land. While one deserves it far more, I am not one to wish anything upon them. My profession demands a modicum of tact around others in my vocation.
As Alyssa is currently entrenched in the gaming industry and is orchestrating a continued stranglehold upon her position instead of cutting losses and breaking out the deck of cards, I will ignore her for a brief moment more to discuss the other hot mess in the ring. Especially since working for Rooster Teeth isn’t a complete death battle. Just ask Monty Oum!*
Billed Weight, Billed Measurements
I bring this up because Melonie Mac worked in the gaming industry as a Frag Doll Cadette on behalf of Ubisoft. More or less a glorified booth babe who gets to display some actual gaming chops for once, and in a competitive venue. Melonie also voice-acted for Death Battle, an old-yet-still-fun-by-slim-margin Rooster Teeth production. Mel is rooted in the gaming industry, though no longer in an official or corporate capacity as she criticizes both.
Recently, given the constant flak directed at the right wing for having the audacity to exist, Melonie either saw an opportunity and took it, or saw an opportunity and took it because her sudden, seeming 180 was predicated on a newfound sense of morality, hard and clear while also devoid of the neuroses that rob youths of ever considering a higher power.
Mel became a born-again Christian, adopting by proxy its most jarring stereotypes, homophobia and now transphobia in particular, regardless of whether or not she is actually horrified by people according to their inclinations. However, Mel doesn’t disparage the inclination so much as actual conduct, thinking it detracts from God’s intentions for humankind. It isn’t to say you can’t do it at all. The statement is, “Be Fruitful and Multiply”, so the down-and-dirty deed should still be popping out new heads regardless of who you are attracted to. That’s a very utilitarian suggestion of me to make. Regardless, Melonie deems abject pleasure-seeking behavior of all kinds, in exclusion following the commandment’s latter half, as squandering and thus counterproductive in regards to our duty to the Lord.
It’s complicated, in other words.
If you read the above article at fandom.com (anathema among Doomers as it cribs their beloved Doomwiki.org while reaching higher prominence among search engines) now or sooner than later, notice the “Expanded Rules Demand This Article Be Expanded” message describing Melonie’s bio as a stub that “needs more information” to comply with an actual Word Count quota that debuted rather recently, September 2023 in fact. That’s a red flag.
First, it was issued on the exact same month when Melonie began her Bible Time channel. If the person raising the sign didn’t have the good sense or industriousness to pen an update in tastefully neutral tone, then who here thinks anybody else is willing? Secondly, online wikis summarily become echo chambers engineered and managed by whoever deigns to contribute. Look up any “Real Life Example” section from TVTropes.org. Any one of them explains why defecting emigrants from said site had engineered a stripped-down version, AlltheTropes.org, which I recommend you use when researching trendy shorthand terminology for mass media marketing techniques.
Wait… this was on Blaze TV?
Sure enough, Melonie’s incensed detractors will step up to the plate and ring alarm bells at the site while her true believers stand by and whisper, “Are we even speaking the same language? She doesn’t even remotely suck!” History is not written by winners so much as it fails to mention them in any realistic level of honesty well after snide cowards and miffed brutes have stopped lamenting whatever victories they never got to profit from happened. It won’t be a high-profile hit piece that derails Melonie so much as the insufferable barbs and briars that the enthusiastic laymen will lay upon her forehead, pearl necklace optional.
The Animist in the Room
If you thought Mel’s attitudes around sexuality were more than puritan, let me remind you that she is a recovering divorcee who, by firsthand experience and knowledge, insists on relationships being guided by something other than flesh. She’s wrong, by the way. It should be guided in part by flesh, but far more than just flesh. We’ve seen what hedonism is like – it’s bad for business besides – but I still think absence of pleasure, anhedonia, is far worse than contending with the issue head-on. If everyone had that plus merely witnessed, let alone partook in, natural childbirth, after having not experienced a post-orgasmic buzz, our species will have been extinct before Lucifer declaring himself most high was even a thought.
I’ve read screeds decrying cremation on the principle that the resurrection of the body means literally having the body and soul wait inside a cemetery for a while. That if you scatter your ashes to the winds, not even God (a perfect being who created us in what was essentially about a week of His time, mind you) is capable of picking up all the pieces of dust and reconstituting it into an eternally living specimen. “Oh no, we’ll just have the ones from graveyards stand around praising Jesus and wheel around all these cremated/incinerated souls in fucking wheelchairs!”
I doubt it’s really just those fedora-twirling rationalists who will draw these conclusions regardless of one’s fathoming of Biblical doctrine. I’m not sure who signed off on that part of the plan or who disclosed that fact to the faithful. I thought Purgatory was involved, myself, even when accounting for people who didn’t consciously come across knowledge about Jesus and yet did nothing criminally wrong over one’s life that didn’t receive a conscious attempt at repenting before any wronged parties. And yes, you can try that without specific devotion to a given religion. It’s just easier with one, but one of them stands tall among the rest, sorry to say, precisely because it insists upon perfect honesty with its members’ faults.
12-Step programs are “spiritual” in the sense that they insist on people holding themselves to a higher standard of conduct while accounting for historic slights, mending bridges and delivering the message of recovery for others. That’s just to address substance abuse. What do you think flesh is? “Be Fruitful & Multiply” are two different things. Why else do I call them “fruitcakes”? As I’ve mentioned above, you need both to continue as a species – receptiveness to and responsibility around pleasure plus an honest effort to either breed or shelter lost children.
It’d be upsetting for me if the only way to win this arm-wrestling match between God and Lucifer was to stop breeding assholes into existence by stopping all the breeding altogether regardless of whether it satisfies a dastardly suspicion that “God put me in the wrong body!” and I would never have written any of this if I didn’t give Melonie Mac the same deadeye that I give Jeremy Hambly’s occasional indiscretions.
All I know is that, in terms of civilization, the West sought flesh, the East sought spirit, and both flat-out suck harder than both strains of wingnut. Melonie’s skepticism around hedonism is necessarily furtive and predicated on the fair assumption that people who dwell upon it are more prone to commit evil. Why else do they say, “she’s got skin in the game”? Of course, if her supermodel good looks and appreciation of Lara Croft doesn’t tip you off, let it be known that Mel isn’t utterly opposed to sexual expression. As I might say, an absence of fear is far more unsettling than actually mastering one’s fear. Replace the word with gratification and you behold her personal, internal struggle that hits closer to home than most people care to admit.
And on This Corner….
Then, you have Alyssa. If you browse her articles, it is confirmed that she played damage control for Sweet Baby Inc., a consulting firm predicated on making games accessible to or palatable for minorities lacking in initiative and opportunity. The company is part of a wider industry trend, not the big boss hanging out over a bridge of lava. Alyssa also sports a linked-in page that describes her as writing compelling copy. I thought she was a journalist, not a copywriter.
You could describe several of Sweet Baby’s staff as such because, while copywriting techniques promote things, they used it to promote “persons” and summarily dipped countless hands in pots that should have been boiling for sanitary reasons. The result is a series of undercooked AAA video games that cannot impress its theoretical target audience anymore than the ones who do, in fact, play video games with regularity and tenacity.
Melonie stays abreast about video games. Journalists are brought up to think they can’t mingle their hobbies into their assignments. Alyssa might even be jealous of Melonie’s power to generate clout not only by addressing gamers directly instead of trying to appeal to them, but is the kind of gal who will harp on the written articles that likely took some modicum of effort to complete, and on a topic that the journalist might not even be an expert on and is perhaps pressured into passing herself off as one.
Hence, the eternal conflict. Both these chicks are trying to say their peace, thinking of themselves as correct or perhaps their immediate handlers are. Whereas Alyssa responds to the corporate interests in the room to solidify her job, Melonie might be soliciting the mob for attention. These are not the sole objectives, though outsiders will push hard to imply as such, but the stakes are far higher for one than the other. For one, it is professional and money-based; the other can always recoup clout.
Thus, Melonie does have the advantage. Whether her attitude at not mentioning Melonie’s name despite an obvious angle hinting at Melonie’s involvement was enough to put you off, just know that Alyssa treats this as a do-or-die situation and is pulling countless mistakes that make it sound like it’s in very bad faith. Melonie does not need to say yes, but must also believe the ball is in her court. It’s also a great opportunity to proselytize, or just clear the air about the seeming homophobia. A cursory search reveals no obvious spat with the online gaming community unless something happened to make them all very skeptical of Melonie.
And so, we get people weighing into the situation by saying, “Kotaku, if you let this bitch jockeying to be editor-in-chief go on and interview Melonie in a premeditated smear campaign, you will be sued. Even if it is not deemed that way by some judge in some lurid turnaround, your company will receive the ire of not just Melonie’s fans, but everyone who has seen you pull dirty tricks in pursuit of agendas that do not parallel with the public’s desire for ethical news coverage of the video game industry. Also, if you want Kotaku to suffer, do not entertain their gaming guide emphasis, enforced or otherwise, as it is not a cure for what damage their politicized hit pieces has incurred to the entire industry.”
Cornered Mice
I can’t really summarize Mark’s Tweets because I don’t go to Twitter at all and have a hard time trying to truncate a few paragraphs. Oh, and fandom.com’s word count quota? Ask Dungeons & Dragons players about later editions’ wordiness that shuts out potential players or hogs their time when developing a character or adjudicating rules or… okay, okay, I’ll reel it in.
Still, Brevity does not equal ambiguity, ambiguity equals ambiguity. If you have seen the left wing’s attempts at memes, you understand where I’m coming from. Math sucks because it often involves too many numbers or steps. If you can’t describe something in less than one paragraph of five hundred characters, you will lose the reader’s interest.
Come on. I’m trying. You probably have the head-start, anyway! In the spirit of dropping hints in the middle of a hit piece, let me go on record to say I never get the hostility towards media companies that get bought out. While it can often lead to an inferior product or phase of the company’s history, I do not always see it as outright moral offense. That’s just the pinko posse talking.
Of course, you’re allowed to cut deals or invite buyouts in getting the operating capital to expand operations in exchange for favors. It’s called doing business. Yes, Rooster Teeth got hoodwinked and discarded via the tired business model of “acquiring shiny stuff we know nothing about”. Company in question: Warner Bros. Explains why Superman killed Goku in a Death Battle episode. The parent company is paranoid about the New Rock and Roll, Manga and Anime, carving up their business. Melonie provided voice-over work for Death Battle episodes. I never even knew that until I started researching this post!
Razorfist brought the same issue up ages ago as a former employee of GameStop – having to promote the newly in-house Game Informer magazine the company had acquired, a mere advertising wing. Not to say advertising is soulless. It’s just that you have to like a product or the ad you make before you use it. Almost every fictional depiction of marketers, ironic and self-serving regardless of who’s depicting what, steers into the same sort of stereotyping that Melonie has been accused of in regards to gays and lesbians. Regardless of intent or spirit, they are rarely if ever flattering.
That said, this whole situation inspires a moderate primer on responsible consumption of news media regardless of slant.
Exploits
Spending time on describing someone as a grifter is even more disheartening. What have I told you about the value of your time, sweet summer child? The term denotes an actual con artist versed in a specific strain of legerdemain, when the online space uses the term for anybody who uses a pulpit in a capitalist capacity. That describes just about everybody in the online space and the few and proud-of-it Usenet crybabies lamenting their rise should point their fingers at the net’s commercialization decades ago.
It’s neither cute nor called for. Therefore, I’m instituting methodology to gauge “Exploits” and describe what podcasters can leverage for their craft or talking points. What helps to differentiate between the many personalities is citing stuff they do in the background as credentials. This does not include any binary watermark that only serves to help a person stay memorable. This excludes attire, physique, and generalized wits and magnetism as those things are more or less expected out of any presenter.
If you have chops such as patiently conveying the Bible on a specialized channel, or you infiltrate some of the most underhanded leftists’ gatherings at sequestered institutions, it’s very unreasonable for it to be that hard to earn a netizen’s respect. Spend weeks watching a given YouTuber’s content. Take notes about their personal testimony on work or play beyond commentating on a hot topic or other channel. If this suggests an actual soul living behind those eyes, natural ginger or not, you can start hitting Likes and Subscribe even or especially if you’re hesitant to accept their politics (and no, you do not get to write comments–this is not about you getting noticed, at least not that way).
If the Tuber’s experience manifests almost solely through their channel’s output without their resume hinting at a sizeable work history, that’s touchier, understandably so. But, if they persist for over a year without discernible or credibly deserved controversy itching at whatever chip exists on their shoulder, you should offer a modicum of respect and encourage the person via patient comments to diversify their experience portfolio just for the added boost in credibility regardless of “clout”.
So, where are we going with this? First of all, people credibly and uselessly accuse Melonie and Alyssa as being self-promoters. They just know it’s perfectly valid to point out, but it’s still irrelevant. I’m not one to cheer on a company’s demise, either. That’s the last thing I want to do. Who will mourn mine? Certainly don’t instigate the death of a company. “Eating Their Lunch” does not count–there’s plenty to go around. (By the way, that kid who sued Deadspin that allegedly wore Blackface? Amerindian-blooded.)
Second, most of these debates’ winners are never the ones in the ring itself, it’s a spectator’s sport. From now on, treat all sorts of media as preying on survival instincts. Know that you can switch them off and be happier for it. If you insist on writing anything, make sure the conflict described therein is nowhere near insurmountable if you wish for people to take any meaningful action.
Finally, stop assuming everyone is guided solely by clout, cash, communism, or chocolate. None of these are aphrodisiacs. You know what is, though? A gym crush!
If you are well-skilled, then good hunting him (her) [them all?] down.
Again:
“The guard is only human. He has to sleep and go to the bathroom like the rest of us. That’ll be your chance.”
* Because people remember Monty’s own work fondly, he is pretty much immortalized when compared to that company. Come on. You assume I am being sarcastic?