(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* If you want an additional twenty minutes of HBomberGuy talking about Iiluminatii here it is.

And Todd going 'oh and another thing' about Somerton here

* I've gotten 0 editing done, but hey I've had a nice brain break from writing and those are good sometimes?

* I did a photowalk tonight, but not the one I planned because we are having a series of 3 atmospheric rivers right now. Hopefully tomorrow I'll head out again because there is an inner SE shoot I need to do... But anyway I got away from screens and the internet and walked in the rain for a bit, it was probably better to do that than get back into writing tonight.

Comments

[razielim]

Oh, I was gonna ask in reply to your recent comment but now I'm seeing this "atmospheric river" phrase AGAIN, and I'm just dying of curiosity - is this a set phrase in Portland? What does it mean? Were you out walking in a literal river and it was very rainy and atmospheric? THREE of them?? I'm fascinated.

[olivermoss]

It's the term for the sheer amount of water in the upper atmosphere. Basically, intense narrow bands of water keep passing above us and dumping on us. We've been having flooding for days due to the amount of rain.

[razielim]

Oh, fascinating! Now it sounds to me almost scifi, both in terminology and phenomenon. :O I can viscerally picture this being part of a fictional extraterrestrial setting. "And there's our atmospheric rivers. We have five here, and you passed the largest, Huen, during your landing. Mind that you navigate around them when taking off again, and pray they don't lose surface tension during the next solar flare and come crashing down on us. There's still ongoing cleanup from the last time Huen broke its banks and flooded the city, fifty years ago."

[olivermoss]

Kinda like how waterfalls fall from nowhere in video games, just floating islands with water cascading down :)

Also, in London the Thames tributaries are mostly hidden under London, but I saw a video the other day about at least part of one of it's 'lost rivers' being in a tunnel over commuter's heads.

[mistressofmuses]

I'd watched the extra iiluminautii bit (and found her own inability to even be correct about *her own videos* funny), but had missed Todd's (maybe not a surprise, since it's unlisted, so thanks for the link!)

I'm glad you got a break and got to go on a walk, even if it was in the rain and not quite the plan.

[olivermoss]

She can't take the time to be correct about her own work when she has to make so much content 'for you'.

[mistressofmuses]

The repeated insistence on "having" to put out videos "for yoooou" at such a rapid rate, and blaming that for the "inaccuracies" or whatever... Yes, I DO understand that youtube's algorithms prioritize constant output, but that's the same category as "but more videos means more sponsorship blurbs." So many creators trying to pretend that this schedule is being FORCED on them (rather than being something that they have absolutely chosen, even knowing it means they're putting out crap) starts to grate a bit.

[olivermoss]

Everything she was doing was about maximizing revenue, but she pretended it was about anything but that.

It's amazing to me that people fall for these emotional appeals, but sometimes people want to. I swear in addition to media literacy we need some guides on when to see blatant bullshit.

Ugh, I am even seeing people wanting to think that Somerton's writing partner was innocent, maybe a bit to dazzled by James, they think his apology is heartfelt. FFS, he's also a content creator and he's trying to save face. His fucking hallucinations are part of the massive disinfo we're dealing with. And, the people wanting to think that he'll grow from this and become a good fiction writer... keep being met with more and more evidence that he knew and he's not sincere. But omg why are people so into the idea that Nick was someone a victim in this who will rise from the ashes? So many people want to see that story, and if they want to see that story... he'll serve it up.

Tangent, but there is no way Nick didn't know. James didn't understand the theories he was spouting, didn't watch the shows, etc. And on top of all that, since James and C&Ping scripts, the grammar would have varied wildly. Comma habits would have varied, word usage, etc. Also, do to the age of the material, whether there was one or two spaces after a period would have varied. How do you not notice that when you are a writer and dealing with someone's 'writing'?

There is no poor victim behind the scenes to be the hero of this story.

[mistressofmuses]

Recognizing obvious bullshit manipulation 101 would be a really useful course for a lot of people! Just because someone says they're doing something ~because they care about you~ does not mean that's true! Especially when they don't know you, and when "you" never actually asked for the thing they're doing to make themselves money!

I'm honestly very glad that Todd was nowhere near as sparing of Nick as Harris was. The screenshots about "I couldn't have plagiarized, because I don't read" and "we'd just make shit up and sometimes it turned out there wasn't any support for it and we left it in anyway" are... really fucking damning.
Like, sure, James was the face of the channel... but Nick was the cowriter. As someone trying to bill himself as a professional writer, yes he absolutely should have and would have noticed the differences in the spelling, grammar, and wordchoice between all of these widely varied sources. They rewrote plenty of the material, if only to the extent of fitting it to James' grating presentation style, and swapping certain terms for others - changing "trans" to "LGBT" or whatnot.
No, I do not buy that James somehow changed all of that stuff (but nothing else) before pasting his stolen shit into their shared scripts.

There is no poor victim, and I really do not want to see people trying to rehab Nick's image or treating him like he needs to be the next voice to be elevated. He is not the victim, he is one of the perpetrators.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, IDK what is up with hoping Nick will change and grow, outside of the fact that it would make a good story. It weirds me out. I don't want to see him become a twitter main character or be put on blast like James way, I just want him to go away. Also, this apology is on his website that hosts his fiction, man he's going to be doing numbers. I really hope we never see him again. Just think, in five years having to explain him to people when his new book is out.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I guess it's just that urge to have the underdog redemption story, as well as kind of a way to make James into an even bigger villain. That "even his henchman was a victim!" makes him into a bigger singular monster, rather than someone who was the main one at fault, but was also enabled by all the other people he surrounded himself with who also profited and helped him do it.
Which is ALSO frustrating, because a lot of the whole point of the video is not that this is JUST about James Somerton. This is about ALL the people who utilize these techniques to grift in similar ways. He's the biggest of many targets in the video because of his harm to the community he claimed to be the champion of, but the bigger problem is all the ways in which this is encouraged and enabled... and Nick is very much a part of that.

God, it really would be the awful timeline to have to remind people of all this shit when he's doing the publicity circuit to push his new book.

[olivermoss]

It's like people want to find their favorite fiction tropes in real life. People need to be more skeptical. Literally everything we know about Nick points to him being in the loop and also being fully aware that his weird hallucinated crap was doing harm to his own community.

Bastards do shit where they eat. If I was going to write about a gay con artist, I'd write about him conning... idk maybe tradwife influencers. In reality, a con artist is more likely to go after people who already are inclined to believe him. Influencers are real people, not dolls.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Is it bitchy of me to say that it feels like at least some of the people who want to try and force life to play out like a fictional redemption arc ARE also the people who insist that fiction IS reality, and play weird purity police games about what's "allowed" to be portrayed in fictional works? Like, ah, you really CAN'T tell the difference between fiction and reality. I see.
But yes, it strains my credulity to think that Nick was somehow oblivious to all of this, particularly when he admits to just *making shit up*. That hallucinated crap is part of the garbage that gets spread as "actual definite totally true fact" by their audience - who looked to them as knowledgeable authorities, assuming they were sharing actual information!

Yup. Con artists pick their marks deliberately, and exploiting in-group ties is a major way to smooth the way. So is playing into the targets' beliefs - telling someone what they want to hear is a great way to make them want to listen to you! That's very much it: they're people. While they may be playing a persona, they're still people behind it, not characters.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's like on some level they seen influencers are characters, dolls in a dollhouse. They want to see this drama with all it's deep lore play out. I get it on one level, having the Somerton stuff to watch play out was really entertaining and validating, but it's real life. Another chapter dropping in this story would be bad actually. The best thing is if he just goes away and we never hear about Nick again.

[mistressofmuses]

That's what it feels like, and it's... a little weird. I guess it's an extension of the general "parasocial" attitude toward influencers... not quite the same, but it feels like another aspect of treating people like they stop being... actual people once they have an audience. Deciding that someone's persona is the real them, or deciding that they're basically just a character that should fall into a narratively satisfying arc.

And yes, the whole Somerton thing was SUPER validating and very, very funny to watch happen, plus vindicating as hell to watch him just fucking VANISH afterwards... but it'd be so much better to have those sorts of things JUST NOT HAPPEN. We don't need a "new chapter" or "a surprise redemption"... the good ending here is for the thieves and grifters to stop being rewarded, and to be completely gone.