(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* I was going to photowalk last night, but it's been a heck of a week and I face planted instead. Not sure about heading out tonight... I probably will, but just not to the areas I'd planned. I photo walked through all the 2020 protests, but I am just not feeling up to seeing people using this as an excuse to cause trouble right now. I am just not in the right mindset to handle it, esp after my attempts at getting out and people around people in chill social ways these past few weeks all fell through or went badly.

* Insta keeps spamming me with these videos of someone Oh No spilling coffee or tea on their drawing and then, what's this? OMG they are painting with the coffee to make art! So Creative!

Every video you've ever seen of that is this specific ink. For at least 20 years that's been the special sauce in fake viral content.

* Yeah, I'm just not in the mood to deal with things right now and will probably stay in.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Oh jeez, is there a new wave of those videos going around? Ugh. I remember when that was a big trend a while back, maybe a couple years ago. I suspected it was something like that - I knew it wasn't just "my normal morning drip coffee" - but hadn't ever learned what it was!

[olivermoss]

It's possible a younger version of me did try to use like espresso and other stuff. I saw some art I really liked and... it looked so easy... *facepalm*

Yeah, it's all that one ink. I have actually some from subscription boxes now. It's nice but even using it there is a lot of water control and high quality paper helps a lot.

[mistressofmuses]

I'd considered trying to use teas brewed at different strengths at one point for a sepia-toned watercolor sort of thing, because exactly - it looked like such an EASY way to do An Art! It looked so good! Who would have known the color would build up like that? I never actually got around to trying, but I'm sure I would have been frustrated with it if I had.

I've seen some very cool things done with various ink washes, and the idea that the "spilled coffee" look is actually a specific ink... makes a lot of sense, actually. Though as with lots of things, I imagine the quality of all the other materials does matter as well. Not quite as "simple" as "oopsie, clumsy me spilled this on a regular old sheet of paper!"

I could see the "accidental spill" being a cute enough gimmick for a video someone put together the first time, but UGH, why is it a whole fucking GENRE?

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I tried with like freeze dried coffee as concentrated as I could get it.

With that one ink it's like once you know it's obvious, it's like that is exactly how that ink works. I really like sepia tones and mono-color art in general so I've been taken with some walnut ink drawings a few times.

It's all the 5 Minute Crafts and other content farms flooding the internet. Almost everything is BS, but without knowledge and context it can just make you feel inept. I mean, why would these videos have tens of millions of views if all bunk?

[mistressofmuses]

I'm glad I know what the specific trick is to those videos now! Ha.

Ugh, fucking 5 Minute Crafts. Just... fucking fuck. I remember getting drawn into the videos sometimes before I knew exactly how those sorts of content farms work. I know I'd saved some of the recipe and art ones as "things to try later!" because gosh, they just looked so easy!
Eventually I saw one that was just SO RIDICULOUS I couldn't imagine how anyone would believe it ("broke your grandmother's china plate? Just submerge it in milk overnight, and the break will magically repair itself!") and that kind of woke me up to how obviously fake a lot of them had to be.
Now I think it's slightly more well-known how garbagey they are - and there are the debunking videos like Anne Reardon does on youtube for the cooking ones - but if you don't know, you don't know. A lot of them use pretty convincing fakery to make things look plausible, and yeah, they've got millions of views that make it seem like it's gone through peer review, heh.

[olivermoss]

Video content like that is just so bad. It makes people feel inept, sometimes gets them to do dangerous things, etc. It's such a mess. I have no idea why a lot of that stuff is tolerated.

[mistressofmuses]

It is! So much of it is actively dangerous! I absolutely HATE that those sorts of content farms are allowed, and I hate even more that they seem to be rewarded by most platforms. After all, they get views, and that's all that matters, of course.