In 2007- long ago in Internet history at this point- users on the popular forum 4chan began playing a prank with each other. They would send each other links to content, telling the other person that the link was to something interesting- a news event or a link to further information. But it was not; it was a link to Rick Astley’s 1987 single Never Gonna Give You Up.
“Rickrolling”, as this prank was called, is no longer a prevalent trend on the Internet. But there is a new deception, called BOFA. The way it works is this: two people on the Internet argue, until one of them cites BOFA as a source. The other person asks what BOFA is, and the original speaker responds: “BOFA deez nuts!” This usually terminates the discussion.
These two memes, while different on the surface, show that communication is fundamentally changed in the Internet age. This hoaxing of discussion prevents true, honest discussion from being had, and instead allows people to talk only in pithy points. When asked for facts, they point to BOFA.
The breakdown of communication that these memes engender is fundamentally destructive to our society and for future generations.
Take a look at the astounding illustrations by Japanese artist “Flame.” These works honorably show their respect to early 20th Century illustrator Harry Clarke but Flame’s own personal influence of Manga and other contemporary inventions completely brings forth a new sense of wonderment as well as visceral landscapes to explore for any viewer.
Please continue below to see many more works by Flame:
Anonymous asked: So, what exactly was the cause of the anti-disco backlash back in the 70s? (Other than just the fact that disco is inherently terrible, I mean)
It’s 2015 and the basic model for American pop music is ABBA. They bought us a few decades. They knew what they were doing.
This is really interesting - the notion that human flows into Europe have dramatically increased recently because the smugglers who used to control bottlenecks were really just black market travel agents, rendered obsolete by the internet.
Truckful of Mexican guys just knocked on the door, offered to trim our oak trees for free if they could take the branches to sell as Halloween decorations. That’s a clever angle.
SEGA actually made pinball games for a while in the ‘90s too, after it absorbed the pinball arm of Data East, which it had previously distributed abroad. The Japanese tables aren’t well respected by competitive players - though the playfields were often pretty interesting and they introduced some major technical breakthroughs, the tendency was to have poorly designed rulesets.
Sometimes this meant the “best” move was to ignore all the interesting stuff in favor of doing one boring thing with an unbalanced risk/reward ratio over and over; often it meant that scoring didn’t scale with difficulty of starting features, such that a player that completed numerous intricate maneuvers to start advanced modes would be outscored by someone that started a trivially easy mode and got a few lucky bounces.
This was during the golden age of arcades, though, you could make an argument that the extensive (if competitively worthless) novelty and the front-loaded scoring were reasonably aimed not at the narrow market of pinball theorycrafters but at the broader “children who like flashing lights”. Also helping to draw eyeballs, SEGA/Data East were pioneers in theming their games around big-name licensed properties.
Now, American manufacturers had donelicensedtables for a while, and off-brand and ersatz themes were a tradition -
Hollywood Heat was really Miami Vice, Black Belt was kinda Karate Kid,
No Good Gofers and Teed Off were more or less a competition to pull off a better take on Caddyshack, F-14 Tomcat was Top Gun. The licensed Space Invaders was actually Alien, oddly enough.
(and the Spanish and Italian ones seemed to have the same relationship to IP as t-shirt manufacturers - SONIC [by then independent of SEGA] did a Star Wars that I’m not sure is any more legitimate than Turkish Star Wars)
But those had traditionally been mixed in with original properties or generic themes. Popular subjects were various sports, pool or casino gambling - which were the themes of “last man standing” manufacturer STERN’s lastthree non-licensed games, complete turds largely dumped on the European market in 2000.
Now that pinball’s in a renaissance new manufacturers are showing up but it’s not clear that’ll break the trend. Jersey Jack, the first people to actually deliver on their “let’s make a pinball game, gang!” mission (this usually goes the same way as “let’s make a retro JRPG, gang!”, there was an Arkh Project thing with a Big Lebowski table last year) are polishing a Hobbit table now, after making their debut in 2013 with, of all things, The Wizard of Oz.
I was going to say that the very newest underdog startup, Spooky Pinball, finally broke the trend with their America’s Most Haunted table. But on further investigation that’s not true - of all things, it’s based on an independent film that’s parodying basic cable “paranormal investigator” docu-reality shows, apparently playing up the fact that they’re a bunch of grown-ass adults running around playing Scooby Doo.
I’m house-hunting now. Haven’t found anything yet but it’s been fascinating walking into all sorts of strange homes all around town. High points:
1) Some of these houses built as early as the 1910s have been upgraded by their owners in unusual and ad-hoc ways along the line. Having a bathroom with bathtub/shower directly off the kitchen is odd but I suppose might make sense if you had an older resident who had problems with stairs and wanted to put a full bath on the first floor, near existing water lines. Putting a shower stall directly in the kitchen right next to the sink, though, that’s just bizarre. Saw one house with the stairs to the second floor starting in a bedroom closet.
2) Walked into a house that would be amazing in mint condition. Some floors were tilted by up to 10 degrees, went into the basement and the house was kept on the foundation by bailing wire and hope. My realtor said it was the worst thing she’d seen in a decade and took pictures to show around the office. Upstairs in the kitchen was evidence that someone had tried to flip it - there was the nameplate of a bottom-feeding financing company, and of anything in the house to attempt to fix, they had ripped out the cabinets and counters and replaced them with like the second-cheapest option from Home Depot. With the lean of the house, all the doors were hanging open.
3) Saw one house where some old grandmother had lived for a while, every surface in the house was covered with the most ‘70s treatment you could imagine, it was AMAZING. Busy floral print wallpaper, fake wood paneling, Harvest Gold tile, shag carpeting in different colors in each room - green, white, multicolored hexagonal patterns, brown/orange/red splotches. If a set designer told you to make a place scream “‘70s” and you came back with this she would tell you to dial it down by like 200%.
4) Most depressing house I toured, it was being sold by the owners because they were divorcing. And I walk up to the thing and it’s really colorful, like really playful but nice-looking red/yellow scheme on the house, and a hammock surrounded by these cool exotic plants out front, really fun sensibility, go up to the door and I notice this handmade sign hanging from the porch roof, like “Welcome to [Dave] and [Diana]’s Home”, and I remember the backstory and I’m like “…aw.”
And I go in and they’re still living in it so there’s evidence of their lives, like there are two adult-sized motorcycle helmets by the door and all their kids’ toys, and I can tell what sports they play, and the playful design sensibility continues, and there are two orange canvasases with all the family’s handprints on them in white, and I’m like “…aww.”
And I check out the bedrooms, and in the master bedroom one wall’s like this medley of pictures of them all together being an intact and happy and contented and happy-and-contented-for-being-intact family, and I check the kids’ room and it’s like this wonderland with bunk beds and a “space” theme and handmade wooden toys that don’t go too far into eat-your-vegetables hippiness, and I’m like “…awwwwww”
And then I go into the kitchen and on the counter propped up against like a bottle of vitamins is this note written by one of the kids in blue crayon, like
They: Borderline Personality Disorder is a Cluster B personality disorder characterized by dramatic and unpredictable shifts in self-image, emotions, and interpersonal relationships, with no apparent external cause.
Me: Uh, I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this, but that sounds an awful lot like a description of “women” as by Shakespeare. Or Roissy.
Me: So what’s the treatment?
They: You have a figure of intimate authority explain that their emotions are illogical and wrong.
Me: …are you fucking shitting me.
They: No, no, that’s trivial, the real problem is finding a figure they’re willing to submit to, that’s a total crapshoot.
EXTREME REAL MAN POWER FOR MAN MANLY NOT WOMAN MAN
Marketers generally don’t do this because men like it, they do it because women don’t like it
Usually this happens in a market where women’s demand is higher than men’s and they’re willing to pay more for the products, so segmenting the market into an expensive women’s version and a cheap men’s version is profitable. But if women are willing to buy the men’s version, the whole scheme falls apart, so they have to crank up the he-man woman-hating. It’s not about misogyny or “fragile masculinity” or the patriarchy, it’s all just marketing.
In markets where it’s the men who are willing to pay more you see cheaper pink sparkly versions of the same products being marketed to women.
My favorite example of this sort of thing is human hair trimmers and pet hair trimmers - I’ve seen some of those side by side made by the same company and the pet hair trimmer is the exact same product with a ‘for pets’ sticker on the box, and it sells for significantly less.
Market heterogeneity is really interesting, and I’m honestly surprised that somehow people were able to observe this and take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity present.
Capitalism: using your own righteous anger against you.
Related on appeals to identity and market segmentation: 1, 2, 3
It’s nothing personal, says Ben Ewen-Campen, he just doesn’t think French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir is
much of a painter. Monday, the Harvard postdoc joined some like-minded
aesthetes for a playful protest outside the Museum of Fine Arts. The
rally, which mostly bewildered passersby, was organized by Max Geller, creator of the Instagram account Renoir Sucks at Painting,
who wants the MFA to take its Renoirs off the walls and replace them
with something better. Holding homemade signs reading “God Hates Renoir”
and “Treacle Harms Society,” the protesters ate cheese pizza purchased
by Geller, and chanted: “Put some fingers on those hands! Give us work
by Paul Gauguin
!” and “Other art is worth your while! Renoir paints a steaming pile!”
Evangelion premiered 20 years ago on October 4th, 1995. This first broadcast consisted of 26 episodes that ran weekly. We felt compelled to mark the occasion.
Starting with a belated October 4th update later today, we’ll be following the original airdates and corresponding episodes, as well as some extras now and then!
