okay i just had a bad epiphany but corporate interest’s influence on the internet is going to become so much stronger now that generations that are internet naturalized have grown up and starting working as “social media consultants”. advertising is going to become so much more subtle, manipulate your behavior to a greater extent, and completely pervade every aspect of our lives the more we rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to social validation.
what im saying is its scary that corporate twitter accounts are getting good at twitter. to have the same avenue a human would to express themself. its like, an extreme anthromorphism of a brand, and that brand representing a corporate interest, and successfully passing itself off as a sentient entity on twitter, thats really weird to me.
like this is so fucked up. it doesnt immediately read as an advertisement, conceptually it executes the levels of irony and deconstruction that usually make for successful memes in this genre or whatever. its almost subverting itself, but ultimately it still succeeds as an advertisement. it makes me sick. for every misfire of corporations trying to relate (pepsi protest commercial), theres another company getting better at it
okay but like my thing about this is… who is actually eating at these places because shit like this? yeah it’s funny but i never go to wendy’s because a meme, if i go to wendy’s it’s because i want a gross burger and a frosty, same with taco bell and mcdonald’s and wherever the fuck.
i really think that you’re blowing this out of proportion and having very little faith in people’s ability to decide what they want for themselves. it’s just not that deep.
It’s not about the effectiveness of the ads in question, but their complete omnipresence in every aspect and moment of life, and how bizarre and sophisticated the mechanations of advertising have become. If people don’t call attention to these things, they become normal.
The effectiveness of marketing isnt one-to-one, like, “ad says burger is good, I think burger is good, I eat burger.” That was 50 years ago. Y’all, since then these multi-million dollar corporations have been hiring psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists to study how best to get under consumer skin and theyve figured out it’s not about making you WANT a burger,
It’s about creating a Brand Identity – an anthropomorphized personality that your brain fits into an established schema (system of thought) so it’s easier to just drop into the background of your everyday life. It’s not about making you want a burger, it’s about making it so, when you DO want a burger, the first place you think of is Wendy’s, because their ads have made you think about them five time already that day. And most importantly, it’s about making sure you dont realize how often they make you think about them, so you don’t resent how pervasive they’ve become. They do that by tricking your brain into thinking of them as just another human-like personality. Your Funny Meme Friend Wendy’s. Wine Aunt World Market. Woke Jock Nike. Even your Endearingly Unhip Uncle Geico.
(hey also if you want dozens of terrifying examples of what I mean, just type ‘brand identity schema’ into Google like I just did and take a gander at all those scholarly articles discussing how best to acquire consumers, like we’re a fucking commodity)
one time i said i didn’t like the wendys twitter and got called classist for hating retail employees
this shit works. it makes people like Brands. gets under their skin and in to their minds. when i said i didnt like the wendys twitter i personally offended people that viewed wendys as a friend, that viewed the wendys social media manager as a friendly individual that they respected.
the wendys social media manager is not your friend. they don’t even really exist. there’s no one person that writes the tweets for wendys. there’s a team of 20 something year olds that casually observe the latest meme trends and crank out mspaint memes because they know they’ll get retweeted if the memes are relevant.
they trick you in to thinking that Wendys is a hip friendly young person, and they manipulate you in to thinking that disliking marketing is somehow a “problematic” “un-woke” thing to do.
and it works.
install ublock origin. on mobile, block every promoted tweet you see. don’t let them convince you that this shit is normal.
Looking for a good scare, but don’t have the funds to spend on the latest PC or console splatterfest? Help yourself to this generous list of 100% FREE horror games to spook yourself silly (please note–these games are not listed in any particular order, and your mileage may vary when it comes to how entertaining you find them). This list also includes a few creepy interactive websites for added amusement.
WARNING: Some of these games/sites contain jump scares (I will try to tag as many as I can that contain startling moments–sorry if I miss any!), flashing lights, loud noises/music, blood and gore, and other mature content (on the flip side, many of the games containing a few jump scares aren’t entirely reliant on them, so don’t immediately disregard all games featuring these warnings, either. Said warnings are there to protect those with legitimate conditions that may be put in physical distress from such material). In any case, PLAYER DISCRETION IS ADVISED (and don’t be afraid to look up further info before jumping into a game).
Insanidade (jumpscare warning! However, the majority of the game relies on atmosphere, so don’t let this put you off too much. This one’s a gem)
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School (while not originally intended to be freeware, it is classified as abandonware, and is now free to play. Please note–it may be difficult to install/run) (jumpscare warning!)
Coulrophobia (jumpscare warning! Also, obviously avoid this if you have coulrophobia, as this game literally exists because the creator wanted to troll a friend)
Grey (as it is a mod, this game requires Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, but is still worth mentioning here for those that qualify) (jumpscare warning!)
Dreaming Mary (serious developer warning about content–not for the faint of heart)
Luna Game (Yes, I am including this one, because I goddamn feel like it. Also, I feel that it’s noteworthy due to its notoriety. If you don’t know what it is, you may want to read about it first. The link to read about it also contains links to the game’s numerous sequels) (jumpscare warning!)
Sad Satan (CLEAN VERSION. This contains no viruses, and no
illegal content. This is NOT the game played by Obscure Horror
Corner–that version is not available anywhere, and was likely created
by OHC himself. There is almost certainly no such thing as the “real” Sad
Satan. See info and links regarding this here)
Hotel 626 (I WISH I could give you a legitimate, working link to this game, but I still felt it was worth mentioning here, and I recommend watching any playthrough videos you can find for it. The game itself was wiped off the face of the internet, so you’re not likely to find it to play anywhere. If you DO somehow find it–which is doubtful–you play at your own risk)
Superbad.com (Click all over the place. It’s just very strange)
Anasomnia (incorporates your webcam, if you have one)
Staggering Beauty (MAJOR SEIZURE WARNING. Do NOT click if you are at all bothered by flashing lights and colors. I’m not entirely sure why I’m putting this one here, but feel free to use it to startle the ever-lovin’ fuck out of your unsuspecting friends and family) (jumpscare warning!)
I’m sure I may have forgotten a few great games or sites, so feel free to add to this list.
Exposure is a very stylish, surreal and creepy first person psychological horror game, played entirely via the viewpoint of a portable video camera, in which you play a person who is spending their first night in their new apartment – an apartment with some very dark secrets.
Home Sweet Home is a terrifying Unreal Engine 4 powered first person horror adventure that draws inspiration from Thai mythology as you solve puzzles and use stealth to escape a house that’s haunted by a malevolent evil spirit.
A FAIR WARNING that the quality of some games in this list can range from the worst to the best, yet please respect the creator, they’ve worked hard to make their creations enjoyable!
*all of games are freeware and translated to english
Its been NINE YEARS and i still dont think anyone knows exactly why teen titans was cancelled
Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up an’ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DC’s animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males don’t/can’t/shouldn’t like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that it’s popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titans— two million viewers for new episodes will do that— and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.
This is so fucked up.
To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.
In a nutshell, it’s much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.
This is why children’s toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits they’ve decided to use is “boys versus girls”.
Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? That’s market segregation in action.
The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; they’re viewed as “stealing” the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully “owns” it.
This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? It’s not just artificial, it’s deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying “this is the ways it’s always been” or “this is just what the market wants”, they’re lying through their teeth – this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.
(Interestingly, the reverse isn’t always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collector’s market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)
If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t.
Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof.
This concludes me attempting to be helpful.
yo I can vouch for this I’ve done this for the last few cakes I’ve made and holy crap it makes suuuuch a difference the cake is still fluffy, but it also seems more dense, and it doesn’t dry out like at all you can leave it uncovered on the counter all day after being cut into, and it won’t get all crusty and dry this is an amazing way to take your cakes to the next level
Random Toughts 