The day in posts: 7/2/2019

July 2, 2019

“Services break tracks. Labels break artists.” (Maybe)

“When I saw TikTok, I instantly went: This is how it’s done,” Sueco told me on the phone earlier this month. “[The musician doesn’t] need to make the content, they have other people making the content for them. It blows up and becomes a meme organically on this app.”
It is widely known that Tik-Tok broke “Old Town Road” and now it’s the number one song in the country.
Writing for The Ringer, Alyssa Bereznak looks at how Bytedance’s platform is colliding with the music business: “Memes Are the New Pop Stars: How TikTok Became the Future of the Music Industry”
posted by Going To Maine at 10:37 PM PST - 24 comments

Why fans think HBO’s Euphoria crossed a major fanfiction boundary

“'[Larry] is a subject that was funny at first but now is actually hard to deal with, as I am in a relationship. Me and Harry are best friends. People look into our every move — it is actually affecting the way me and Harry are in public.' Facing the negative consequences of certain 'Larries’' actions, 'Larry' became the poster child of fandom taken too far." (SLPolygon)
posted by Caduceus at 10:11 PM PST - 84 comments

Nike Pulls “Betsy Ross” Shoes- Flag is Used by Hate Groups

Nike is shelving a plan to sell sneakers emblazoned with images of an early version of the American flag after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick complained to the company. Various conservatives are having conniptions over Nike wisely realizing its mistake, with Arizona's governor threatening to withdraw tax incentives to Nike to build in AZ. The problem isn't the flag itself per-say, but the fact that multiple hate groups including III% and the KKK have used the "Betsy Ross" flag as a logo or as letterheads. Betsy Ross herself is largely a myth, and is unavailable to comment.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:45 PM PST - 80 comments

Now my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake.

Protest season is here for Portland, OR! On Saturday, June 29th, the first major rally of the summer began, with an estimated 300 people from various leftist groups (Rose City Antifa, the Portland Democratic Socialists of America chapter, and Popular Mobilization), showed up to Lawnsdale Park to confront the city's arch-nemesis, Patriot Prayer, an extremist right-wing group from across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, and their allies, the Proud Boys, a white nationalist hate group. [more inside]
posted by gucci mane at 7:42 PM PST - 59 comments

Glenn Kessler sucks and that’s a fact

The fact checkers’ rules limit them to interpreting the world in various ways, which puts them at odds with anyone who is trying to change it.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 5:33 PM PST - 34 comments

Girls Rush Out Like Ghosts

“Every time you slice into the canon, girls rush out like ghosts. . . . It takes a tiny inkling of a tiny person in the vast cavern of history and tries to pull the plug on their aura of singular, masculine genius. I can only offer a method, and it isn’t even mine. Can the past one hundred years be written through the lives of the wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters, workers, and spinsters?” Audrey Wollen on reading Rilke without reading Rilke.
posted by sallybrown at 2:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Complexity made slightly less complicated

Complexity explained offers a set of articles, systems, and interactive toys that explain aspects of the new field of complexity science, from the emergence of the blob, to the reasons for traffic jams, to the dynamics of herd immunity.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:41 PM PST - 24 comments

“It’s at odds with the language we use to talk about video game genre.”

Stop Calling Games 'Metroidvania' [Kotaku] “Let’s talk about one of my least favorite words in the video game lexicon: metroidvania [wiki]. A portmanteau combining the video game titles Metroid and Castlevania, it takes two made-up video game titles that are pretty cool and evocative on their own and inelegantly mashes them into something worse. And now, that word is one we use to talk about a whole genre of incredible video games. Let us count the ways the word is a disaster. Aesthetically, it’s miserable and inefficient, five syllables in the mouth and rakish in the ear.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:39 PM PST - 67 comments