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milo_rI think I've definitely settled on making these compilation posts rather than posting links/things as I come across them. I want my overall internet experience to feel slower, so it makes sense that the rhythm at which I spew out content into the world should also slow down. Not that I'd been doing much posting these past few months but still -- I should aim for less fedi, less DW, less tumblr, or at least a more thoughtful version of them. Now that I'm on holiday I've been forced to think again about my relationship with my phone and I don't like what I see (30 hours weekly screen time).
And speaking of slowness and internet and social media --
So I wasn't in love with season 3, but that was still an entertaining watch compared to season 4.
I haven't looked into whether this was affected by the strikes but it must have been given it's 1) set during Christmas but coming out in August and 2) a total mess, writing-wise.
It's a GoT situation in the sense that they're working having exhausted everything from the comics except I don't think that alone should mean this much of a drop in quality, given how much material they already had to come up with independently for previous seasons. I got into this with low expectations and really, the character arcs are non-existent, it's full of filler when it should be tying up lose hands and heading towards a conclusion, but I was sort of braced for all of that. The worst thing about it is that it's just not fun to watch.
The jokes are bad, the dialogue is cliched, absolutely nothing makes you care what's going to happen next. If I'm not given any emotional closure or a coherent plot that builds towards a satisfying ending then the hijinks should be entertaining, like they still sort of were in S3. But here you just keep asking yourself why we're spending time on Allison and Claire having to rescue Klaus from a Satanist pimp when it's less than 90 minutes from wrap up.
Speaking of, I think this season takes the cake when it comes to "situations we put Klaus in that should be dramatic but we're only mining them for jokes." And like, TUA the comic is full of black humour, but the Klaus stuff has often felt like such a tonal shift in the show, what with Robert Sheehan playing him progressively more one-dimensional and cartoonish and nothing sticking to him anymore, be it sexual violence or death or what-have-you. Either go full Pulp Fiction or find a balance.
Unless the point of having them all dick around while Ben was mind-melding with the color from outer space was to further drive home that they're mostly useless as superheroes? Which, I think would be a moderately stupid authorial choice for a variety of reasons but at least it would be a choice. I can't tell whether any of what I got out of this season re: the characters was intentional or not. I think the writers simply didn't know what was left to do with most of them, see: the obligatory troubled marriage plotline with the only established couple left standing or how Luther and Diego magically turned into even more of a pair of fools than they had in S3.
Really, I hate when people compare media properties to fic disparagingly, but this was TUA crackfic. Of the kind where Baby Shark is played four times and according to the author this should be enough to make you laugh. There's some good ideas in it, like the Mandela/Umbrella effect cult, but half of them are still recycled from material that worked in past seasons, kind of like in Stranger Things S4, e.g: Gene and Jean as the quirky murder duo/Hazel and Cha Cha of the hour, Five and Lila stuck in the timeline subway. You get glimpses of what this season should feel like, mostly in the first few episodes, with the G&J intro or the Girl in the Squid concept or everyone still having, like, actual human problems and emotions but it all feels like an echo of the og TUA show, which had already amped up the cheese and the love drama on the story compared to the comics. Really, what's up with the amount of unnecessary romance on this show? The cult is right, this is the wrong timeline and the way to tell them apart is that the good ones have talking monkeys in them.
Also, again, I was already over expecting much character development or plot from this show. My requirements when it comes to plot consistency for TUA are like only two steps above those I have for Doctor Who. It's fine if the extent of Allison's powers changes based on vibes, so long as the vibes are good. But oh my god, Viktor's whole plan for rescuing Ben was to extract the marigold particles from his body and yet when it turns out they all have to die because they're filled with marigold, he doesn't even try to offer to try?? hello???? Like not even two lines of dialogue between him and Five to get an intra-episode continuity issue out of the way. Are we a superhero show or what.
I wasn't even mad about the oh-we-have-to-sacrifice-ourselves ending, that felt like a pretty obvious possible conclusion, but everything about how we got there was so lazy and unsatisfying. Oh, and the final scene with the good timeline being that long shot in a plain green field with two seconds of narration has strong "we ran out of money" energy.
Originally I closed this post with a bunch of thoughts on Neil Gaiman but I think I might like to keep those in a separate, locked post. Partially because it ended up being more personal than I thought it would and partially because it focuses on fan response, which is already dominating the discussion too much at a time when we still don't even have a public statement from the guy and half the SFF world is pretending nothing's happened. Like, it's impossible to keep up with the news browsing the Neil Gaiman tag on tumblr because of the amount of GO fans talking about what this means for their enjoyment/follow up seasons of the show and I don't feel like adding to that energy. But also I'm going to have to vomit my thoughts somewhere at some point or I might implode. So friend-lock it is.
And speaking of slowness and internet and social media --
articles that hit lately
- You; Sitting With Yourself – time spent offline: There weren’t enough tips, tools, tricks in the world, no amount of gimmicks that could save me from the thing that kept me running back to the noise, to the avatars: I disliked myself. which ended up reminding me of -
- How to live without your phone - by Sam Kriss: A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive. This is what all its functions and features ultimately achieve: cameras deliver you from time, GPS abstracts you out of space, and an all-consuming screen that keeps you a constant safe distance from yourself. If there’s something you’re worried or upset about, you can simply hide behind your phone and it will all go away.
- Why do we use social media? - by Max Read: As everyone who’s had pain in their thumb from scrolling knows, the actual point of “screen time” is the time part--the hours it allows you to numbly burn up. There’s no “more efficient” version of social media because you can’t pass time any more quickly.
sort-of relevant news
- Internet Archive "glitch" deletes years of user data and accounts | Hacker News or: Literally My Number One Fear. I don't keep anything worth salvaging in mine but apparently this fucks up the discoverability of certain files (uploads don't seem to have been deleted). And also, well, it just raises questions about how safe IA storage is.
- I totally missed that someone spent thousands on fraudulent votes to rig the Hugos. They haven't shared the name fo the finalist favored because they can't establish whether they were aware of anything but I'll be đź‘€ looking (also, I mean. who spends thousands on rigging an award for someone they don't have a connection with unless it's some 4D chess move to try and get them disqualified?)
media log but it's just me complaining about TUA S4 for 800+ words
So I wasn't in love with season 3, but that was still an entertaining watch compared to season 4.I haven't looked into whether this was affected by the strikes but it must have been given it's 1) set during Christmas but coming out in August and 2) a total mess, writing-wise.
It's a GoT situation in the sense that they're working having exhausted everything from the comics except I don't think that alone should mean this much of a drop in quality, given how much material they already had to come up with independently for previous seasons. I got into this with low expectations and really, the character arcs are non-existent, it's full of filler when it should be tying up lose hands and heading towards a conclusion, but I was sort of braced for all of that. The worst thing about it is that it's just not fun to watch.
The jokes are bad, the dialogue is cliched, absolutely nothing makes you care what's going to happen next. If I'm not given any emotional closure or a coherent plot that builds towards a satisfying ending then the hijinks should be entertaining, like they still sort of were in S3. But here you just keep asking yourself why we're spending time on Allison and Claire having to rescue Klaus from a Satanist pimp when it's less than 90 minutes from wrap up.
Speaking of, I think this season takes the cake when it comes to "situations we put Klaus in that should be dramatic but we're only mining them for jokes." And like, TUA the comic is full of black humour, but the Klaus stuff has often felt like such a tonal shift in the show, what with Robert Sheehan playing him progressively more one-dimensional and cartoonish and nothing sticking to him anymore, be it sexual violence or death or what-have-you. Either go full Pulp Fiction or find a balance.
Unless the point of having them all dick around while Ben was mind-melding with the color from outer space was to further drive home that they're mostly useless as superheroes? Which, I think would be a moderately stupid authorial choice for a variety of reasons but at least it would be a choice. I can't tell whether any of what I got out of this season re: the characters was intentional or not. I think the writers simply didn't know what was left to do with most of them, see: the obligatory troubled marriage plotline with the only established couple left standing or how Luther and Diego magically turned into even more of a pair of fools than they had in S3.
Really, I hate when people compare media properties to fic disparagingly, but this was TUA crackfic. Of the kind where Baby Shark is played four times and according to the author this should be enough to make you laugh. There's some good ideas in it, like the Mandela/Umbrella effect cult, but half of them are still recycled from material that worked in past seasons, kind of like in Stranger Things S4, e.g: Gene and Jean as the quirky murder duo/Hazel and Cha Cha of the hour, Five and Lila stuck in the timeline subway. You get glimpses of what this season should feel like, mostly in the first few episodes, with the G&J intro or the Girl in the Squid concept or everyone still having, like, actual human problems and emotions but it all feels like an echo of the og TUA show, which had already amped up the cheese and the love drama on the story compared to the comics. Really, what's up with the amount of unnecessary romance on this show? The cult is right, this is the wrong timeline and the way to tell them apart is that the good ones have talking monkeys in them.
Also, again, I was already over expecting much character development or plot from this show. My requirements when it comes to plot consistency for TUA are like only two steps above those I have for Doctor Who. It's fine if the extent of Allison's powers changes based on vibes, so long as the vibes are good. But oh my god, Viktor's whole plan for rescuing Ben was to extract the marigold particles from his body and yet when it turns out they all have to die because they're filled with marigold, he doesn't even try to offer to try?? hello???? Like not even two lines of dialogue between him and Five to get an intra-episode continuity issue out of the way. Are we a superhero show or what.
I wasn't even mad about the oh-we-have-to-sacrifice-ourselves ending, that felt like a pretty obvious possible conclusion, but everything about how we got there was so lazy and unsatisfying. Oh, and the final scene with the good timeline being that long shot in a plain green field with two seconds of narration has strong "we ran out of money" energy.
Originally I closed this post with a bunch of thoughts on Neil Gaiman but I think I might like to keep those in a separate, locked post. Partially because it ended up being more personal than I thought it would and partially because it focuses on fan response, which is already dominating the discussion too much at a time when we still don't even have a public statement from the guy and half the SFF world is pretending nothing's happened. Like, it's impossible to keep up with the news browsing the Neil Gaiman tag on tumblr because of the amount of GO fans talking about what this means for their enjoyment/follow up seasons of the show and I don't feel like adding to that energy. But also I'm going to have to vomit my thoughts somewhere at some point or I might implode. So friend-lock it is.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-09-01 10:02 am (UTC)That makes sense. Some people just do a weekly or monthly update.
>>I should aim for less fedi, less DW, less tumblr, or at least a more thoughtful version of them.<<
I'd say, think about how you use them, not just how much. DW offers things that many shortform venues really don't, like the ability to carry long deep conversations, which contributes to closer relationships. It's also good for sharing a wide range of creative content whether you write, draw, cook food, garden, or whatever.
>> As everyone who’s had pain in their thumb from scrolling knows, the actual point of “screen time” is the time part--the hours it allows you to numbly burn up.<<
Yeah, I'm a freak again. I mostly use social media for deep conversations, hanging out with far-flung friends, information-sharing, and professional writing. It does make a good activity for when I'm too tired for actual work but not ready for bed, but that's a minor use for me.
>>And also, well, it just raises questions about how safe IA storage is.<<
No electronic data is really safe. It can be more safe or less safe, but it's all just 1s and 0s. Anything can crash. Anything can be hacked. Hardcopy is safer. Society is currently being careless about this, but any archivist knows better.
(well if this isn't me actually nailing the slower web experience given i'm two months late)
Date: 2024-11-04 09:50 pm (UTC)i agree that DW is much better than the rest of what i listed, i think chiefly because it's a fundamentally "dated" user experience, pre-engagement metrics and the like. as much as i dig mastodon and its core values, it still draws inspiration from that kind of social media site.
but for me there's a dimension of feeling like i have to "keep up" even on here -- i start asking myself, am i posting enough? am i participating enough? i've had to prune a lot of comms off my reading page to get rid of the urge or i end up not making anything for fear of not making the right kind of thing.
plus it's just very easy for me to end up aimlessly scrolling, on any site i'm on, so i think cold turkey/abstinence for me is a good choice in many cases.
Re: (well if this isn't me actually nailing the slower web experience given i'm two months late)
Date: 2024-11-04 10:47 pm (UTC)I don't find it dated. It meets a different set of needs than short-form social media. Some people prefer long-form and that's okay.
I'm really not a fan of technological addiction where people are always chasing the next fix, and in the process, breaking a lot of things that were working just fine. The treadmill wastes a lot of time, money, and energy.
>> as much as i dig mastodon and its core values, it still draws inspiration from that kind of social media site.<<
Exactly. And that model is meant to extract time, attention, and money from users instead of providing concrete gains.
>> but for me there's a dimension of feeling like i have to "keep up" even on here <<
That can happen. Remind yourself that there are no obligations. Quite a lot of people only use theirs once a year during the
>> i start asking myself, am i posting enough? <<
Some general points that might help:
* A blog is highly active if it posts multiple times a week, daily, or more. This is too fast for many readers; I'm in this category and people sometimes unsubscribe because of it, but it's ideal for folks who want lots of flow.
* Most people consider a blog "active" if it posts at least once a week. A single type of recurring post (such as a weekly update) will fill this without ever having to worry about anything else. Doesn't even have to be yours; you can use a weekly community like
For my Follow Friday posts, I count a blog or community as "highly active" if it has too many posts to count at a glance, "active" if it has at least one post in the last month or two, and "somewhat active" if it has at least one post in the last year or two.
>> am i participating enough? <<
Participation is not required; lurking is fine and many people do it, especially when new.
If you want to make actual friends or support an activity, however, participation will help those goals. Commenting on a friend's blog or in a community is the easiest way to do this; volunteering in an activity is more involved. If you worry about frequency, consider the Community Thursdays project. Interact with at least one community and post about what you did -- if you wish, this can also be your weekly blog activity.
>> i've had to prune a lot of comms off my reading page to get rid of the urge or i end up not making anything for fear of not making the right kind of thing.<<
Yeah, some are not clear about what is okay or not, and I've seen moderators be absolutely vicious for no good reason. (I avoid those people and don't recommend their comms.)
There are other options, including but not limited to:
* Comms that give you a list of welcome things to post or talk about.
-- "Things You Can Talk About Here" on
-- "Types of Posts" on
-- a short list of suggested topics in the profile of
* Comms that give you a specific template to fill out, because they only have one or a few types of post to make. Many review / recommendation comms are like this and will give the template in a sticky or linked post or the profile.
>> plus it's just very easy for me to end up aimlessly scrolling, on any site i'm on, so i think cold turkey/abstinence for me is a good choice in many cases.<<
That's probably prudent for any site you identify as a time sink.