A Chinese crackdown on pornography is taking a creative turn. Authorities have arrested over 20 women in Henan province for writing gay erotic fan fiction online, according to a report (video in Chinese) from Anhui Television… Since the launch of a “cleaning the web” campaign, the government has shuttered dozens of websites containing porn, as well as those dedicated to danmei. The reasoning, according to one police officer interviewed by Anhui Television, is the belief that slash fiction “is essentially pornography that promotes homosexuality.”
As a piece of filmmaking, The Other Woman is garbage, from the arbitrary scene transitions and incoherent editing to the decision to soundtrack a scene of girls having fun with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” As a piece of entertainment, it’s yet another example of how sexism and racism regularly sneak into ostensibly broad-minded popular films under the rubric of “comedy.” But you don’t even have to dial up the outrage machine to find the film comedically bankrupt: The ladies’ grand revenge scheme involves dosing Jaime with both laxatives AND estrogen supplements. Seriously. Those are jokes.
But the core of what I do at Fusion will be post-text. Text has had an amazing run, online, not least because it’s easy and cheap to produce. When it comes to digital storytelling, however, the possibilities — at least if you have the kind of resources that Fusion has — are much, much greater. I want to do immersive digital stuff, I want to make animations, I want to use video, I want to experiment with new ways of communicating in a new medium. I can do all of that at Fusion.
From Felix Salmon’s essay about why he’s moving from Reuters to start-up TV channel Fusion.
“Text has has an amazing run, online, not least because it’s easy and cheap to produce.” Goddamn, that line alone makes me so angry. The arrogance, the dismissiveness.
Lunchtime Is The Right Time For Procrastination
Digital | shop.2000adonline.com
Digital | shop.2000adonline.com
Get your thrills anywhere
Hey, Comics Internet: The 2000AD Digital Store is having a Rogue Trooper sale today, with pdf editions of the first three Tales from Nu Earth collections only £5.00 (which is $8.39, according to current exchange rates). There’s 400-odd pages in each one, and the second volume in particular is great. Future War has never been so tempting, trust me.
Because girls never exclude other girls or never exclude guys by claiming “safe space,” right? Jesus christ, I get that you have a daughter and you’re looking out for her, but that doesn’t mean that women have it any worse than guys now that you’re focusing on one. Wake the fuck up. What sex drops out of school at great rates? What sex has the highest poverty and suicide rate? What sex is less likely to get into college? Men. So stop being a mouthbreathing white knight.
I love when righteous indignation hides behind anonymity. You poor, poor boy. You are beyond wrong, and that you cannot see why, that you cannot see how the made-up data you cite itself is part of the problem, is part of the bias, only makes me pity you.
You’re a coward.
You’re exactly the problem I’m describing.
And you have no leg to stand on. I am tired of you, I am tired of your type.
Good luck with what I am sure will be a long and miserable life.
THE ULTIMATE FUTURE SHOCK
Gasp!! Can it be that I have never linked this on Tumblr?
This is so very, very wonderful.
Beyoncé releases an album – within a week it’s as if it had never happened
Beyoncé releases an album – within a week it’s as if it had never happened
David Hepworth: Why the revolution in digital distribution has made delivery of news, music and entertainment more significant than the contentThis is almost total horseshit – a lot of third-hand observations about social media, some of which are sometimes true about some things, wrapped around a really TERRIBLE example, a record that was the subject of passionate, sustained conversation among its main audience, with major ripples beyond. And maybe – just maybe – a 50something British white guy isn’t part of that audience, isn’t the best placed to judge how much “impact” the record had or how “important” it was to people. (Though simply by virtue of being on Tumblr this 40something BWG managed to twig that SOMETHING was up.)
No, the problem here – and I’m not even talking about Hepworth here, bad as the article is it’s a symptom, a symptom of something I suffer from too. An open letter to me, then.
The problem is that you hit a certain age and you stop doing the work. You assume that if conversation’s not happening amongst your ossifying set of professional contacts, it’s not happening anywhere. You imagine that your contributions are such that you will know what’s up by right, by licking a finger and sticking it into the air and sitting back down on your arse and re-typing something you once read about the internet.
Though, OK, “The revolution happened in distribution”, that’s a fair starting point. You can work from there. You can think about what that means for how stars present themselves, for how people become stars, for whether “singles and albums” are the best way of thinking about what a pop star does, about the art, the presence, “the content”. Though in this record’s case, there is content to spare. Maybe get specific and talk about how Beyoncé in particular is a really fascinating figure in this shift, coming up in the CD boom heyday and adapting (unlike almost any of her peers) partly by trying new things out.
What does it mean – just looking at the simplest, most public facts – that musicians dominate Facebook and Twitter fan scorecards, that music is so enormous on YouTube? You could take the analytic route – try and work out what the half-life of a song, or a video, is these days. Or you could take the journalistic route, find the people who Beyoncé means something to – something bad, something wonderful – and bloody ask them.
It’s not just lazy. It’s fine to get lazy. I can’t keep up any more, that’s just a fact. You don’t stop being useful – I hope! – you become more of a historian, turning your eye on the past a little more. Maybe use your experience as a scalpel on the times you lived through, not as a weapon against the present? No, fine, you don’t have to do that at all, if the present sucks people should say so. But not so ahistorically. When distribution shifts, exciting things happen. We can look at the history of radio, Dansette record players, sheet music, MTV, as evidence for that. Look for what’s changing. People aren’t mugs, or no more than they ever were. Look at why they care. Don’t trust yourself so much.
Utterly essential reading. (Tom’s comments, that is, not the original piece.)
Contents Under Pressure
I rarely use this to just blog. I’m going to just blog now, so you can all just ignore this if it’s not to your liking.
Warning. Contents under pressure.