Things of Your Day

Yes, Ted. That was the joke.

https://youtu.be/-F_8qaQ3DD0

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Mamath and I have been working together again - well, that’s a rather Grandiose way to put it, she does 90% of the actual work - and I finally was able to deliver today, everything came out beautifully.

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First rule of Tickle club…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOBXuCYB4jQ

This may be one of the best expressions of this issue I have ever seen

Is it always wrong to tell a group’s story if you’re not part of it? You certainly need input form members of the group and a lot of research, but if a story is inspirational and marginalized, is it inherently wrong to tell it?

It’s certainly not what usually happens, especially in mass media, but as a white person writing about such events as Wounded Knee and Nat Turner’s Rebellion, a discussion of this could really help me do justice to those stories.

I don’t think the comic is saying that that’s wrong per se, but it can be be very problematic to say the least.

The comic frames this as a situation where the problem is “too few stories about X group” with the implied understanding that there is also a related problem of “too few stories told by X group”. What the over-represented Y group does in telling stories about X group addresses the “about” problem, which is good – diverse representation in both fiction and non-fiction is absolutely a good thing, especially when it’s founded on good research and a genuine desire to empathize. But it also does nothing to address the “told by” problem, because Y is still an over-represented creator group (never mind the problems that arise when a lot of members of Y group don’t do their research or muddy their presentation due to lack of experience/sensitivity). Whatever stories being told may be important, yes, but when you still have an issue of living, breathing creators from marginalized groups who aren’t being heard or paid to tell their stories nearly as often as the dominant group? It kind of undermines the idea that those groups are actually being supported.

I think you answered your own question on this one, though: input from members of the group is key to working against both the “about” and “told by” problems. Ideally, when telling stories about a marginalized group while also being a part of a dominant group, members of the marginalized group in question should get to be key voices in the creation of the work and have a chance to tell at least part of the story in their own way, and to be credited and paid for their work.

At the very least, though, if you take input or consultation from marginalized people without having them on as a part of the main creative team, you then should make sure you do your damnedest to also amplify things that marginalized creators do make. Put a platform somewhere in your work and in the promotion of said work to direct people towards more creations and causes of the people you’re advocating for. Link to creators’ crowdfunding campaigns or Amazon listings, tell your followers to check out their stuff online, donate to fund more of their works, invite them to collab with you on future projects, etc. Basically: signal boost awesome creators like crazy!

Your work may always have a problematic side to it by virtue of it continuing to boost the already over-boosted white creator market (heck, that’s a problem I acknowledge in my work too), but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to create or tell the stories that inspire you, especially not if you’re putting in your due diligence. As long as you’re not the cat who performs those stories without actually acknowledging that toads can tell stories too, then you’ll go a long way to help counteract the problem.

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Razzie nominees announced.

I have only seen one of those movies.

I didn’t realize they made a Blair Witchh remake?

The end of Yahoo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fczH85-0BDk

It’s not the one that was the TotD a while back, it’s the second one.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2dvnE2-bL8

I haven’t even watched the video, but I assume all of them. Including new, previously unknown types that were not even programmed, they’re literally just all the malware on download.com achieving sentience, having sloppy malware sex, and producing horrifying new forms of malware life.

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It’s not quite a virus that updates all your software and then installs antivirus but it’s getting there.

I think that is the definition of grey hat right there. I love it.

I read a bit deeper into it (I read the boing boing article in addition to that one) and it appears that this particular mutation of koolova isn’t really ready for the wild. The sec researcher who found it had to set up a tiny http server to get it to display the message that tells you to read articles for an easy out. Well outside the reach of most muggles, and as such, really not effective as grey hat. Even so the concept is still sound.

Australia day Lamb ads are out again this year. Quite like this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX__i-zeaWs

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According to 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 was built today in 1992.