(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Because we are in a heatwave, I've decided to live on salads and cereal with oatmilk. No cooking, and also food with high water content. However, I managed to buy the least-vegan lettuce ever. I've never seen so many bugs and down near the stem were actual slugs. So much washing...

* There was a clickbait article based on a debunked reddit thread about Stranger Things making stealth edits to past episodes. Everyone's gone full paranoid Mandala Effect. The dumb claims are getting so much traction online.

The irony that the articles criticizing being able to made edits... had to be edited due to false info is hilarious and ironic, yet that's getting no traction.

It kinda sucks because I feel The Duffers respect their audience more than most show runners. Most act like their audience has the memory of a goldfish. They are going to fix one date issue, but will not make stealth edits and have said they would expect the audience to be upset and disrespected if they pulled any BS.

* Still not dead from heat, but the building has the problem where it's so heat-saturated it like... sucks.

* Back to writing. I will get that done especially since for some reason I keep being too tired to photowalk. I may drag myself out anyway, even if beat. This may be the sort of blerg where taking myself for a walk will help.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Cereal with oatmilk represents a maybe startlingly high fraction of my diet even when not in a heatwave.

Free slugs with every lettuce purchase is not my favorite special.

I have seen that damn article (and a billion clones of it) shared fucking EVERYWHERE. I didn't see any debunkings, though I was pretty skeptical. A lot of people were claiming the DVDs of the first season proved it was changed, but... Yeah, no.

I do think it's fair to be a little leery of the fact that those types of edits are very possible (though that has been a thing for decades even with broadcast TV - certain episodes left out of syndication, or scenes removed entirely.) The idea of a studio or a streaming platform deciding to alter episodes based on reactions after the fact (like everyone who watches on day one is a test audience) is kind of an uncomfortable one to me, and one that I feel like could open up a lot of questions about artistic integrity and the role of criticism and such, blah blah. Probably plenty interesting to dive into there.
BUT. Those interesting questions are not served at ALL by fake scenarios that didn't actually happen.

I hope the heat gets more manageable and that writing goes well!

[olivermoss]

People with physical copies proved it didn't happen. They got that past backwards. That is one reason physical media is good, and also pirated copies. I am worried about stealth changes. It's been a while but I've seen excited articles about writers being able to 'patch' books. It's good to take this stuff seriously, but in this case the articles are about a swiftly and thoroughly debunked post because people run articles without spending even 5 seconds to see if there is a drop of truth in what they are saying which is far more dangerous than stealth edits.

My biggest fear is 'custom versions' of shows where different viewers get tweaked versions based on activity like how airline pricing varies based on your activity. There were worries that Netflix was experimenting with that with a series called Robots and the backlash against the idea of it was good. Backlash about stealth edits are good. But, this is just people running whatever shit will get them clicks.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, that doesn't surprise me that the article I (admittedly foolishly) even bothered opening got it utterly backward. I mean, I rolled my eyes and figured it was diregardable based on the fact that all the sources were comment threads with no *actual* evidence beyond alleged anecdotes.
But the way this type of clickbait proliferates (seriously, I saw a good four or five articles on different sites about this same non-event) is *absolutely* the bigger danger than stealth edits.

Oh jeez, yeah. I can definitely see "custom versions" being a thing. I remember the like... choose your own adventure style thing with the one episode of Black Mirror, and that's a different thing that I think can be pretty cool, in part because it's open about being interactive.
But something based on your watch history, or a preference list you've filled out in your profile? Based on a more nebulous activity history collected off the platform? Maybe if your political preference pings more conservative those queer side characters in an otherwise fairly generic drama get quietly edited out. If your watch history skews toward more lgbtq+ friendly, maybe a different movie gets a homophobic joke edited out... not out of genuine concern so much as trying to avoid any type of backlash about its inclusion for everyone else.

I HOPE backlash against the idea of that becoming a thing happens. Even the kind that isn't tailored to particular demographics, but based on feedback... I dislike the idea that a whole show could wind up retconned (with the original incarnation all but erased.)

I do see the potential benefits, and have seen it with authors glad they could potentially fix errors - continuity errors, or typos, or phrasing that proved confusing. I can understand why that's appealing, 100%! And I think it was the author of Red White and Royal Blue (maybe? I could be wrong. And I haven't read the book) who changed the ebook and future print editions to remove a couple offhand Harry Potter references because of JKR being a piece of shit. Which like... I get! I appreciate that feeling of "oh hey, this person actually sucks and I don't want my own work referencing them, especially when my target audience includes people they hurt."

But I also see ways that that kind of editing could get messy or be misused. Or just used badly.

[olivermoss]

Custom edits to appease everyone's political views would be completely disgusting. As it is there is so much 'lol I didn't think that movie had a gay joke' or 'lol they weren't gay'. If there actually were separate version, fking hell...

Yeah, referencing people can get tricky. Things happen that change what you were going for. But all art is a part of the time in which it was made. I understand wanting to excise things like JKR's horrendous turn, though. I don't like book updating, but if they do the OG version should be toggleable and all edits in the index.

But, also it's nothing new. I've told this story before but in my Queer Lit class we had to read The City and The Pillar. Half the class was confused as to why it was assigned and the teacher was very frustrated that they couldn't see why. Half the class had an edited version that looked identical to the version the other half of the class had. Creepy stuff, yo

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, for real. That absolutely seems like hell. No more "different interpretations", just straight-up different movies/different shows. No worrying about "what if my kid sees A Gay," just toggle to remove those scenes entirely!

I do understand the genuinely good motive behind "hey, this reference was a cute cultural touchstone when I wrote this, but now the same reference could really upset people, and I don't want my work to do do that when it's meant to be a sweet escapist romance."
But... yeah, the archeologist in me (and just someone interested in pop culture history and fandom history) hates the idea of functionally removing the ways in which, yes, art is made in certain cultural contexts.

I can see really overzealous or just kind of clueless attempts to "keep work relevant" by going through and replacing dated references with "updated" ones.

Or with classic lit that uses outdated language that is now offensive, replacing those words with more acceptable language. (And with the purity-culture leanings of way too many teens and young adults, plus moves to censor and remove books from schools and libraries, etc., that seems like the kind of "reasonable compromise" that would absolutely be proposed.)
Even with "good" intentions, that fundamentally changes the work itself, including the fact that sometimes a good story or a good work can fail in some ways, or that acceptability itself changes as time goes on, which are some of the important reasons TO study historical lit.

I think you have mentioned that particular event in the Queer Lit class. Which, holy hell, that is creepy as fuck, especially with the edited versions sounding like they were not clearly marked as such. And it's REALLY easy to imagine that kind of thing becoming even more common and frequent, again, as book bans and things become more and more of a thing, especially in conservative districts. "Of course we still teach the classics! Just... properly edited versions!"

Ugh, it sounds super dystopian, but also terrifyingly EASY.

[olivermoss]

Edits have always happened. One of the reasons why I've always wanted to have a 9th edition of Walt Whitman's Leave of Grass is that it's the gay one. He edited it and improved it with every addition, but in the 9th edition he put in references to being gay and it sold poorly... so they were taken out for the 10th. Which Leaves of Grass is Leaves of Grass? The 9th version or the final version?

These days we have the power to actually manage these edits by having toggleable versions and making sure the edits are tracked, are public knowledge, and are inherently part of any text you buy. A casual reader can just read the main text, and anyone with interest can check the notes, see changes, etc. But, it's not being handled that way. It's mostly covert edits and utter BS about the Duffer bros.

[mistressofmuses]

It's true - it's not that edits are really that new, and different updated versions (or later abridged versions, etc.) have certainly been common. I guess it's just the speed with which those edited versions can proliferate - especially in digital copies, where you could be given no choice but to have your ebook "updated" for you - that's somewhat new. That can be good when it's discovered that hey, a formatting error cut off half of page 127. Not so good when it comes to content edits that can change the work itself.
That, and the way it could intersect with things like data collection to "tailor" a book/movie/etc. to your predicted preferences without you even knowing.

(I hope it doesn't ever become like... an expected thing. I can see the WORST bullying and harassment campaigns designed to force changes if it were to become something treated as standard.)

I knew that Leaves of Grass had come out in many different editions, which were all very different from each other as they expanded, but I didn't realize there was a specific gay version, ha. (Though I probably should have known that, tbh.) When it comes to works like that, it is fair to ask the kind of philosophical question of which version is most "real." When things are added *and* taken away, which one is the most complete? Is it the last version, regardless of what it took away compared to previous ones? Is it whichever one had the *most* content?

I DO prefer the idea of having the ability to toggle between versions, because I think there's also value in seeing WHY something was changed. That removes most of the potential pitfalls of it having been changed, while still allowing it to better reflect the author's intent if they do feel like something about it should be changed.

(Silly, low-stakes personal whinge about "untoggleable" changes with a movie: One of my absolute favorite movies as a kid was the dub of Kiki's Delivery Service, a cute Studio Ghibli film. The dub that I watched as a kid also had English-language songs in it that child-me LOVED and I've still got a lot of nostalgic love for. But the only available DVD version "restored" the Japanese-language songs even to the dub. Now, I get how that could be considered an improvement, and keeping it closer to the original, and a better move for artistic integrity... but there's a part of me that will remain forever sad that I can't watch the version that was super magical for me as a kid.)

But yeah, with the ability to do this sort of thing it is used for weird stealth-edits, or garbage nonsense that ISN'T a real change. Misremembering how something happened doesn't mean it was changed, no matter how many times you lie about it on reddit!

[olivermoss]

I have absolutely edited spelling mistakes in my fic. This is a thing that ranges from absolutely fine to horribly dystopian. We need certain things to be 'set' to even be able to discuss media.

And yeah, nostalgia is important.

Semi-OT but part of why I love the lost media devotees is because they are all 'I didn't remember wrong, Sesame Street did do a weird domestic violence cartoon' and then go hard on proving that their childhood wasn't a fever dream. That is part of why I do want to do some writing that involves Lost Media as a sort of rebellion against a lot of things. Also, the lost Mr Rogers episode where the kingdom in the Land of Make-Believe starts preparing for war? Unsettling. Like, seriously unsettling.

What did and didn't happen, these things should be set and non-controversial.

That's too bad about the songs. It's nice to have the familiar version for nostalgia vibes and also sometimes digging into things that are meaningful for you can be good for creativity.

[mistressofmuses]

Oh same, I've fixed spelling errors and other mistakes. Went back to add in the name of a bar in one of my fics because I realized I hadn't given it one.

It's very true - there are perfectly mundane uses and benefits of editing something, or all the way on up to dystopian horror.
Without something that stays consistent, media can't be discussed or criticized, the meanings in it can't be shared... that would really be an awful thing.

I really do love Lost Media stuff! There's so much just genuinely weird, sometimes truly creepy shit out there, that through half-remembered snippets from childhood can sound absolutely bonkers to people who don't remember it or never saw it. Reconstructing those "forgotten" things through shoddy VHS recordings or old pirated files is actually pretty fascinating.

The songs are a shame. It's one of those things where like... it does make me sad that no one will ever get to see the same movie I saw as a kid. It mattered a lot to me in a way that's still deeply nostalgic, and while there's something available that SAYS it's the same thing, there's at least one part of it that's fundamentally different. I want to revisit it, yet I can't.

I think we do get nostalgic for certain things for a reason sometimes, and it can be really excellent for creativity and sussing out exactly WHY something resonated so strongly to get to revisit it. Or it just seems to help unlock some creativity or motivation.

[octahedrite]

Isn't that more vegan, though? Means it's so pesticide- and chemical-free that the bugs love it

[olivermoss]

Might be more organic, but not more vegan.

I think this is just poor quality control. I've had produce turn to mold the day after I got it home.