Category Archives: News

The Hidden Ramifications of the #metoo Movement and the “Funnel of Male Response”

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Yesterday, Rob Porter, a top White House aid, resigned from his position due to allegations that he abused his former wives. So far, Chief of Staff John Kelly has mistakenly thrown his political clout into defending Porter, and conservatives are starting to feel the negative effects of having stood behind an abusive person for so long (and even after discovering the revelation of abuse). What’s interesting to me is what no one seems to have really noticed: The response has been the same response we’ve always gotten, but the results are turning out to be completely different.

That needs a bit of unpacking, specifically to explain what it is I’m talking about. The reason for that is people want so badly to turn this into a partisan issue because it looks so good as one to people who might benefit. But in reality, it’s anything but a partisan issue. It’s one of gender.

And that’s something that a lot of men don’t really want to talk about. So, let me explain.

In the past, when allegations come forward about a man abusing a woman, it’s had to make its way through a really weird news cycle I like to call “the Funnel of Male Response.” Men have historically held the reins of power in both government and news media, so when a woman made a claim of abuse, there was always a male decision maker who either had to decide whether or not to run with the story, or to respond to it legally or politically. Whether through backroom deals, collusion, or straight out incompetence, the issue was often ignored or given so little attention that it was like there wasn’t a complaint made in the first place.

In a really interesting tweet from Emma Evans, she points out that her mother needed her father’s permission to open a checking account and his permission to keep her checking account after they were married, even though she actually worked at a bank herself. So, just one generation ago, a spouse of a man pretty much had no permission to conduct business in society without the direction of a patriarchal figure.

Fast-forward to today, and you start to see why a woman being abused by her husband is probably getting very little attention from a very male-dominated media and male-dominated political environment. Using that “Funnel of Male Response”, think about how practically every political issue involving violence against women has been handled in local, state and national government. First, there’s a claim of a male having done something abhorrent to or towards a woman. And then the male response is almost always one coaxed in the blanket of how it affects that specific male rather than the woman who made the claim. How many times did we hear a male politician say something like, “I have daughters, so I wouldn’t want that sort of thing to happen to them”, “I would never want to see that happen to a woman I love,” or “As a father or husband, we must enact this legislation to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen to women.” Basically, the commiseration in most of these cases or types is that a male patriarchal figure is responding as a male effected because of his proximity or relations to women.

This is why when we hear a response from John Kelly, stating “I can’t say enough good things about him” and urged Porter to remain in his position, we’re hearing the kind of response we typically hear about these types of circumstances. Senator Orin Hatch kind of sums up the problem by his own responses to this story in which he started out defending Porter (and calling the accusers “character assassins”) before realizing the political ramifications of being on the wrong side of this issue and then started talking about how such behavior is not acceptable, if it happened.

And that sums up the majority of the responses we’ve been getting from most other political allies of Porter. After the “#MeToo” movement, there was a call to believe female complainers and to support them going forward, but as expected, the response has been to go the direction we’ve always gone, and that’s to play the “they need to prove their accusations” before we’re willing to state any sense of belief. And then, as if by script, once enough evidence is given, the powers that be will “accept” the punishment that comes and almost always there’s no approach to somehow change the environment so such a circumstance never happens again.

Which brings me back to pointing out why this problem is pervasive and almost immutable. Our society has not evolved enough to push beyond the rationalization that men still think the world revolves around them. Hell, I’m a guy, and even I realize that sometimes I fall into that sense without even realizing I have. One thing that has been so wonderful about the #MeToo movement is that it is sometimes silencing the male response and even eliminating the Funnel of Male Response in such a way that the usual mechanism of schema that men tend to rely upon don’t even get the opportunity to interject into a conversation. So, instead of a male directed approach of dealing with how Harvey Weinstein is just a symptom of a bigger problem, a wave of firings happened instead, so that Weinstein has been completely powerless in his ability to respond, which is EXACTLY the opposite of the circumstances that he used to “allegedly” cause the problems he did that ruined his life and career. What the #MeToo movement has done is provide rapid speed in responding to allegations that used to have a filter that could never be removed.

And yes, it’s going to cause problems for a lot of men who will probably get swept up in the movement to provide a new sense of accountability. But hopefully, once the first wave of this has run its course, a correction will take place, and then through punctuated equilibrium, we will achieve a new, level playing field where such atrocities against women are ever allowed to take place. For me, that is what I hope will be the true ramifications. Unfortunately, I suspect the actual ramifications will be male blow back where things sort of go back to the previous status quo again because people who have the power aren’t usually all that generous in giving it up, even if it is exactly the right thing to do.

Remaining Unknown in a Viral World: Popularity, ASMR and Celebrity Status

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Earlier today, I was examining the statistics on my website and realized that I have about 1.5 million hits on my site since I started it. That appears to be a lot, but then I started to think to myself that not a lot of people comment on it or send me messages based off of my web site (or its blog). So, this tells me that I seem to get a lot of traffic but apparently nothing seems to be going on with it. And yes, that opens up a lot of thought on a subject I’ll probably take up at another time (what do to with traffic when it gets to your site, as I don’t seem to be doing a whole of good with that area).

Last night, I was watching the latest episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which is still one of my favorite police procedural types of shows. And in this episode, an Instagram star hooked up with a MMA fighter and was raped, but it turns out the whole thing had been set up by a young woman who was a follower of both of their Instagram feeds. The prosecutor mentioned that a motive for the set up was that the Instgram model had tens of thousands of followers, the MMA fighter had 2 million, and the young, geek girl had 6. Therefore, this was vengeance against the two well known Instagram stars from someone who felt that she had an important voice but no one was listening to her.

That resonated quite a bit with me because I think a lot of us who aren’t big stars often feel the same way. Not that we’re about to set up someone famous like the plot line of this story, but at the same time the realization that there are people who are seriously famous for a sex tape, or for just looking good in pictures, can be a hard thing to face when one is trying really hard to become known as well, but doesn’t  have that advantage those pseudo celebrities have.

Recently, I’ve been following a bunch of ASMR artists who I find to be very good at their craft. In case you’re not familiar with ASMR, it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which according to Wikipedia is “is a term used for an experience characterised by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia.” And even with that definition, you’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t) at how many news agencies just don’t understand it, which you can see when they start to make statements that suggest watching President Trump gives “ASMR tingles” or when some celebrity posts a Youtube of her just staring at the screen and the media goes ga ga over her “ASMR video.”

In reality, ASMR is difficult to achieve and very few artists succeed at it. There’s a reason that there are a few very popular ASMR artists out there, and almost none of them are celebrities known for other things.

Which brings me back to my original subject, and that’s that viral popularity has a bad habit of creating an atmosphere that wasn’t intended in the first place. For those not completely familiar with ASMR, it’s pretty easy to fall into the trap of thinking ASMR is nothing but people whispering and making sounds with inanimate objects. And that’s because a lot of it comes from doing exactly that. But it also comes from a stronger understanding of how those actions can trigger the audience into feeling something more than just simple reactions. As a result, quite a few artists sometimes push the envelope and create what I’ve started to characterize as PG-13 ASMR. What I mean by that is ASMR that is designed to arouse rather than “tingle”, and for those not initiated in what ASMR, it can be very easy to mistake one for the other.

This happens quite often because the models who do ASMR are almost always attractive. Both male and female ASMR artists are generally above average in attractiveness and in their social tools for attracting others. This should be expected because this is a video environment where an unattractive artist is going to be avoided or ignored, and an attractive one is going to cause people to click the image being presented on the Youtube reception screen. This often resonates in the comments section of their videos where the anonymous nature of the Internet can cause trolling behavior you’d expect in a darkened strip club environment. To make matters worse, a number of ASMR artists chase the elusive crown of traffic and subscriptions (people subscribe to their personal channels), which leads to a revenue stream from Youtube. This causes the perpetrators of the more adult environment to keep pushing the adult envelope and the non-sexual artists to feel the need to participate because of loss of viewer clicks.

Youtube has somewhat cracked down on this phenomenon, but has done so with broad strokes that hurts mostly the non-sexual artists because they demonetize mostly based on viewer feedback, and the business has become somewhat cutthroat with an almost mob mentality towards those who are actually trying to comply and do the right thing. As usual, those are the ones who suffer the most, whereas the ones who are crossing the line are rewarded because none of their fans are ever going to turn them in for breaking any of the rules.

Which kind of brings me full circle in what I was originally talking about, and that’s the problem of trying to achieve any level of popularity in a bread and circuses environment where controversy, sex and violence are the things that attract the largest audience. How does the unknown artist achieve notoriety in a mostly celebrity driven world? In a free market mentality, one would think that the quality rises to the top and everything else remains at the bottom. But that’s rarely the case. Quite often, celebrity status is more than enough to create buzz so that its products remain at the top and everything else is left grasping for scraps. As a writer, I find this problem emblematic in the field because some really bad celebrity fiction gets serious attention when it’s not very good and it’s written by people who have about twenty years before they’ll actually ever write anything significant (if they were to work on it full time and not just in between movies or photo shoots). But the people who put in the work in hopes of one day becoming discovered may do so their entire lives and never get a nibble beyond a table scrap thrown their way.

So, the question is: Is there a balance, or is it just not worth the effort? I’m kind of on the cusp of this myself, as I’ve been writing for most of my entire life, creating computer games that were popular but too early for the industry to ever recognize, wrote music back in the day when such music was seen as too experimental, and any number of other creative tasks that have fumbled, fizzled or just never took off. People keep saying “Just keep at it and your day will come”, but part of me wonders if it’s just a crap shoot and my time might better be spent catching up on the latest season of The Walking Dead.

The Gender Problem: Being a Beta Male Has Always Been Seen As Bad

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My ivory tower where the world actually makes sense to me

There’s a current dilemma going on right now that seems to have origins dating way back in time, but for bizarre reasons, people are convinced the problem has only recently emerged. The problem stems from revelations that Harvey Weinstein ruled his Hollywood perch by forcing women into sexual relations with him without women’s consent. It comes from our current president bragging about grabbing women in sensitive off-limits areas and referring to it as “locker room talk”. It comes from politicians running for office, oblivious to the fact that dating 14 year old girls and then demanding those girls be tried for the crime of not reporting this crime until years later is not all that cool. Anyway, the dilemma is caused from men being called out for these types of things, including catcalling, sexual discrimination, hostile work environments and no end of other horrible circumstances. But what it really stems from is a sense of cognitive dissonance (ignoring) these things for so many years and then just casting such things off as “oh well, boys will be boys.”

But there’s no lack of conversation of this dilemma going on right now. Everyone is talking about it. But what’s lacking is a discussion about why this behavior is so prevalent, and, even more important, why it’s probably never going away.

You see, our society has done a miraculous job at making sure that guys who don’t participate in the one-sided sexual politics against women have been basically neutered or removed from the equation in any way whatsoever. We even have terms for guys who aren’t participating in this behavior. Guys call them “emasculated” or “pussy-whipped”. Women don’t call them at all; they’re basically invisible to the female half of the species.

Historically, we have called them “beta” males, and with that designation comes all sorts of negative connotations. Every dating site appeals specifically to the “alpha” male, specifically a guy who is aggressive, take charge and one who leads the pack (whatever that means). The “beta” male is seen as the follower, the one who makes room for the aggressive male and most often is seen as the “friend” to a woman rather than the potential mate. Having said that, there are those who argue that this isn’t the fate of a “beta” male, but way too often it becomes exactly that. And that’s mainly because of societal expectations and norms.

Think about it. You don’t see self-help books for guys that help them to embrace their “beta” side. Instead, what you see are all sorts of crap about how to best be an “alpha” male, the guy who gets the girl, the guy who gets the job, the guy who gets, well, pretty much everything that the “beta” male guy will never get. Instead, we get dating books with advice from guys who argue that it’s better to make your move and apologize after than to do nothing and never get the opportunity in the first place.

And that’s where we are right now. “Alpha” males have gotten themselves into serious trouble with society because they felt it was acceptable to do all sorts of sexual behavior that favors dominance and control from the male perspective. Women have been seen as something to be conquered, and thus, the ramifications have always been a) conquer and win, or b) fail to conquer and lose. We have so incorporated this behavior into our societal norms that when we challenge those behaviors we’re seen as sending misleading signals, and thus, doing the wrong thing by questioning such actions in the first place.

We’ve been doing it so long now that we have started to make arguments that it’s basically in our nature, that what is happening is because of anthropology, not psychology. If women don’t like it, then the argument is that they shouldn’t have rewarded it in the first place.

But we never gave any other option a chance. Equality has never been a part of our social fabric. Ever. When women were given the right to vote, we argued for it because it would allow them to address fundamentally female issues, like health care and children. Hell, in some cases we even argued that “feelings” come from the female side of the audience, like every man is some kind of binary computer algorithm.

But think about that last paragraph for a second. How many people even questioned the terminology of “women were given the right to vote”? Why should that have EVER been a choice given to men as to whether or not women were authorized to make democratic decisions for themselves? Yet, that’s a decision we only made about a hundred years ago. It’s not like we’ve had centuries since then to see how much more we might have evolved. On the grand scale of time, we made that decision ten minutes ago. We’ve been thinking that way for about as long as we’ve been able to think. Even now we’re still nowhere near where we should have been in the beginning. And we justify not making any further strides for all sorts of reasons, including history, tradition, science, religion, hatred and racism.

Which brings me to the original point I was trying to make because yes, I will admit it. I’m a beta male, and I’ve always been one. Over the years I’ve been humiliated, talked down to, laughed at, dismissed, looked past, friend-zoned, threatened and ignored. What’s interesting about this dilemma is that this attitude is one that a future male species appears to be heading towards if we’re ever going to see gender equality, but I suspect that we’re so very far away from achieving this that comfortable acceptance of this status is not going to be in our lifetimes.

So, expect this conversation to continue as it has for many years to come. Hollywood won’t be cleaned up with the alienation of a few producers and actors. Politicians won’t clean up their ways with a few of their numbers being sidelined. Expect to see these same people re-emerge as comeback stories and overcoming past indiscretions (but changing nothing but the optics); we’re really, really good at wanting to forgive people who used to be in our corner, even if they’ve done nothing to deserve such forgiveness. And if you’re ever looking for a reason why none of this will ever change, THAT alone is the reason. As long as there are Weiners, Bill Clintons, Roy Moores, Jerry Falwells, Mel Gibsons, Woody Allens, Kevin Spaceys, Ubers, Trumps, Thomas’s, etc., we’re never changing our ways.

And if you looked at ANY of those names and thought “I agree with one of those but not one of the others,” then you’re the reason why.

“The First One Is Free” and “Foot in the Door” as gimmicks don’t work with television shows

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Crouching Captain, Hidden Ratings

A new trend has started with networks and their television shows. Instead of trying to hook you with their television shows by airing them and then creating buzz (or creating buzz first and then airing them), they’re trying a new process of trying to hook people by presenting one episode in one location and then hoping that will lead to return viewership in their usual location.

An example: A new series, Marvel’s Inhumans, was going to start this season. But rather than air it on television (where the show would actually appear), they decided to have it appear in IMAX as a theater presentation and then show up on television. It bombed horribly. Imagine that. Turns out, people don’t want to go to the movies to watch a television show. What a shocker. When IT was released a week or so later, IMAX removed Inhumans and put in an actual movie.

Another example is Star Trek’s Discovery. While I’m one of those who loves the idea of a new Star Trek show, this one isn’t going to be on the regular network but is being used to sell CBS’s long running pay station, as it will only air there (and on Netflix if you’re overseas). The first episode will air pretty much everywhere, and then after that you need to pay the fee to watch content on CBS’s online site.

In case you don’t know this, CBS’s paywall site has been around for years. I signed up for it ages ago when I wanted to watch a couple of shows that were hard to find, especially when I cut my cord. But after about a year, I realized it wasn’t really giving me anything superior to Hulu, so I discontinued it. I don’t intend to start it back up again just to watch one television show. Just isn’t worth it.

But CBS is convinced that Star Trek is just a strong property that it will result in huge sales of its paywall channel. We’ll see what happens, but I’m not really holding my breath.

People who watch television generally want one of two things: Make it free, or make it convenient. Free is easy, but to make something convenient, you need to avoid making it a hassle to have to go through another service just to watch television programming. So far, most of these companies haven’t done that well. CBS certainly hasn’t. So, we’ll see what happens.

So, Hillary thinks that if the election was held today, she might win. She’s wrong.

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It was reported today on CNN‘s site that Hillary Clinton believes that if the presidential election was held today, she might win. I have bad news for her. She’s wrong.

And it’s not because I don’t like Hillary Clinton, which is usually where these kinds of stories and posts go. It’s because of something much deeper that for reasons that make complete sense, NO ONE IN THE MEDIA UNDERSTANDS.

You see, there’s this strange belief in the mainstream media that everybody hates Donald Trump because the mainstream media keeps reporting bad things about Donald Trump. And they keep repeating this information over and over. Then they conduct polls among the people who consume their news and wonder why the results keep telling them everything they keep reporting. YET, this was exactly what they did with their polls and reports during the election, and they were completely blindsided by the results.

What’s going on is something that the media just doesn’t want to face, or is just too lazy to admit might be happening: They’re reporting on only one segment of the population, and that population isn’t the majority.

You can start to see this when you read through message boards that aren’t one-sided or pay attention to the comment sections of stories on pretty much every other web site out there. There is an entire segment of the population that seems pretty angry and is just not being heard. And whenever they ARE heard, they’re treated as outliers, or crazy people, and then ignored. Yet, I suspect they’re a major part of the reason why Trump was elected in the first place. And they’re a major part of the reason why he’ll be re-elected, even though I still keep reading stories about how he can only be a one-term president because of how so many people hate him.

The sad thing is: I mentioned this during the election when people kept telling me how Donald Trump was a joke and how he had zero chance of winning the election. Whenever I mentioned that I thought the media was missing a large segment of the population, people just laughed at me and told me I had no idea what I was talking about. I suspect they’ll do the same again now. Oh well.

What’s most annoying about the Equifax Data Breach

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By  now (September 8, 2017), most people have heard that there was a data breach at Equifax that has made over 143 million Americans vulnerable (about half of the entire country). Read more about it here.

Equifax hasn’t done itself any favors since the breach. First, it waited a month to let anyone know that their security was compromised. Second, 3 of its executives decided to cash out stock in the company a few days after discovering the breach. And third, in order to sign up for the “free” protection services, you have to agree to their Terms of Service, which basically say that you agree to arbitration and lose the right to participate in any class action lawsuit. None of those revelations sound good for the company.

But what makes this breach most annoying to the average American is that there was no way we could have avoided being involved. Most of us don’t do business with Equifax. We don’t open accounts with them. They open accounts ON us. We are their product, and we don’t have a choice in the matter.

Yet, we’re the ones affected. We’re the ones who will be cheated out of our money and thrown into the poorhouse if this runs the course it most likely will run. Equifax will protect Equifax long before it protects any of us. It’s entire model is not built on protecting consumers, but in reporting on consumers to big companies that give them business.

This is a lot like Facebook, even though you may not realize it. Facebook’s product is us, not its web site. Without us, Facebook has no business. Equifax is exactly the same way. The big difference is: Most of us choose to be on Facebook to take advantage of its use of us. So very few of us EVER chose to do business with Equifax, aside from the few people who wanted to monitor their credit before this all happened.

So, let this be another example to you that there are those companies out there who see YOU as a their product and aren’t willing to give you a single cent in order to exploit you. Feel good about that because it’s only going to get worse. Nuff said.

Why the BBC is so much of a better news source than CNN

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Why the BBC is so much of a better news source than CNN

The recent Charlottesville riot (get together/protest) is a really good example of why the BBC is so much more superior to crappy CNN. When watching the feed on the BBC story, it has absolutely no voice over and shows the actual protest going on. When you watch CNN’s coverage, it’s a voice over, explaining the situation, and then immediately after two talking heads starts bantering back and forth.

http://www.cnn.com/…/charlottesville-white-natio…/index.html

And I don’t think people ever even realize how significantly different the coverage is over one particular story. The alt-right will often equate BBC with CNN, calling both “liberal journalism” or, my favorite, “fake media.” What has basically happened is that the whole talking heads phenomenon that CNN projects into its coverage is bringing down other news agencies that are actually pretty damn good at being completely a reported story rather than a participant observer to a story (like CNN).

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40909547

I really wish more people would see this and that news agencies would try to be BBC rather than CNN because nothing is more frustrating than having a news agency dictate the news to you rather than report it to you.

(Unfortunately, Facebook sucks for embedding stories, as it only wants to show the first one, and not the second one, if you’re trying to make a comparison. Follow the links rather than rely on Facebook, which gets no kudos for being a lousy service for reporting the news)

The Fear of Pissing Off Your Audience While Trying to Get One in the First Place

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The cover of my new book. Someone told me it looks like something they may have read, but I’m not seeing it.

One of the problems of being political or taking a political stance is that chances are pretty good that you’re going to end up pissing off someone when you didn’t intend to do just that. As a writer, my goal is always to entertain as many people as possible, so whenever I deal with political issues, I get scared that whatever I’m going to say is bound to cause an audience member to dislike me. And these days, when someone dislikes you, that person tends to stop following and you never hear from that person again.

Therefore, it becomes a dilemma.

Because if one focuses on this type of fear then a writer is bound to water down whatever he or she has to say and only say the things that he or she hopes the audience is interested in hearing. And I can only imagine how bland and boring that might turn out to be.

The other day, I posted a tongue in cheek comment about something, and one of my politically correct “friends” corrected me and told me that I had to be careful, because saying such things can be construed to be wrong. I didn’t respond, but part of me was thinking: “Hey, I said what I said because it was something I wanted to say. If it bothers you, just ignore it or go frack yourself.” I didn’t say that because I’m a complete coward, but it did cause me to think.

And then the next week, that same person posted something that was completely one-sided, told in a tone that she knew best and anyone else who disagreed was obviously stupid. Basically, she did exactly what she told me not to do and then didn’t think anything of it. I then started to notice she does that all of the time.

Some people are like that. They are good at criticizing, but not so good at avoiding the behavior they criticize in the first place.

But then, she’s not a writer worried about people not continuing to read what she writes, and I am. So, there’s the dilemma.

Which kind of brings me to wondering how it is possible for polemic people to write the types of articles they do, knowing that people are going to be annoyed at what they write. I’m thinking about people like Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, and Tomi Lahren. The first two have completely established audiences that they’re probably never going to lose, but like the latter one, it leaves me wondering what kinds of risks is someone like Lahren willing to make in order to remain somewhat relevant in a very hostile media atmosphere. And part of me is also constantly wondering if part of the appeal is physical attractiveness as well, because if there wasn’t that, I kind of wonder at how many followers someone like her would have if the audience isn’t already cemented.

Social media seems to be one of those weird animals in that some people just come to it naturally and do really well right out the gate, whereas others, like me, take to it slowly and never really seem to reach the audiences they dream of achieving. It’s like the market for writing novel e-books. I’ve been writing for decades, and the readers I have tend to be the same readers who found me some years back. Others, I’ve seen them publish their first book and suddenly they’re selling them faster than Amazon can print them. Okay, Amazon doesn’t exactly print them, but you get the idea. I hope.

Some people just do really well with little effort while others succeed without trying. I’m starting to believe that that is how social media works for some people as well. While some people have the added benefit of being attractive to, well, attract others, those of us like me, toad-like in appearance, pretty much have to fight for each stride of existence. Okay, not toad-like, but I will admit that when my picture is put next to Brad Pitt’s, people tend not to stop and think: “Wow, I can’t tell them apart.” Definitely not. Brad’s got nothing on me!

Anyway, so the point is that getting an audience can be pretty tough and then once you do, it’s like walking on egg shells to make sure that you don’t lose any of your listeners. People can be pretty fickle about such things, and once you’ve lost a member of your audience, you tend to never get that person back.

So, if this bothers anyone who happens to be reading this, understand that it was someone else who said it, not me. I would never say anything to piss you off. Really. I’m just that kind of guy.

Please don’t go!

ASMR: One of the strangest phenomenons to hit Youtube

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So, a couple of months ago, I was having trouble falling asleep at night, so after a bunch of frustrated attempts to sleep, I did what any 21st century geek would do: I turned on my computer and Googled something that had to do with sleep. And that was how I came across a video of a woman on Youtube who whispered and made unique sounds while trying to help the viewer fall to sleep. That was also the first time I had heard the term “ASMR”.

ASMR, or lesser known as “autonomous sensory meridian response” is a really niche segment of the Youtube population that caters specifically to people filming videos of themselves talking to the camera while making various sounds that are supposed to activate “tingles” in audience members. So, this could be anything from scratching a piece of paper to extremely elaborate presentations of mixing jugs of water back and forth. Sometimes, the purpose is to help someone sleep or relax, and other times it’s just to evoke some kind of response from the person watching the video. And those responses can be all sorts of different types.

After a bit of time of crawling down this rabbit hole of ASMR, a couple of things start to become apparent.

  1. The people involved in this phenomenon are like most Youtube channel owners. They want subscribers, which causes them to have to do more and more things that differentiate them from other people doing the same sorts of things. In the beginning, I was following a couple of the artists who were doing very generic, sleep type of videos, but then I started to notice as their time line stretched into the present, they were doing more and more elaborate types of presentations. Rather than just speak to the audience, I started to see role play presentations where the artist would pretend to be a doctor, a nurse, a police woman, a vampire, or pretty much anything else you might imagine. The ASMR activity would remain similar, but the antics would become much more involved in the script than the results the artist was originally trying to achieve.
  2. The subscriber aspect of the system favors women more than men demonstrably. While I did observe a few men who were doing regular ASMR videos, the majority of the material coming out on Youtube was strictly women. Young women. And very attractive women. Which then led me to start to observe that more and more of the highly successful ASMR artists tended to have a very interesting history, where their videos began as generic, fun videos and then slowly became much more sexualized, somewhat PG-rated. It practically opened up a separate category of ASMR, which I began to call “Kidnap ASMR” where a woman would roleplay that she has “captured” the viewer and was now doing ASMR stuff to him/her. This type of thing ranged from crazy girlfriends kidnapping someone she was in love with to female police officers “arresting” someone and interrogating the person for “ASMR activity.” Some became quite innovative, like artist “Innocent Whispers” who orchestrated a series of videos where she pretended to be an officer of the FBI, “Federal Bureau of the Internet” and she was investigating individuals who were brought to her so that she can ascertain their level of ASMR response. To this day, I’m still trying to figure out if her purpose in the roleplay was to “catch” people for their ASMR interests or to do research for her somewhat weird federal agency.
  3. There seems to be no end to the types of sensory responses that ASMR artists are capable of exploring. When I first started watching these videos, the type of “noise” the artists would focus on was usually some type of tapping (fingers on surfaces, devices on other devices and on the microphones themselves), and then as those videos became somewhat generic all sorts of alternative sound-generating possibilities were explored. One recent video focused on fire, as one woman continued lighting matches over and over again so that the listener/viewer experienced both the visual aspect of the fire and with an extremely expensive microphone also experienced the auditory sound of the fire erupting each and every time the match was struck.
  4. Whispering is a huge segment of this activity as well. Very rarely does the artist raise her voice above light speaking. Most of the time, whispering is how the artist communicates with the listener. My experience so far has caused me to believe that the whispering creates a much more personal experience between the speaker and the listener.
  5. Most often, the atmosphere is one of positive energy. Quite a few ASMR artists tend to focus on trying to make the listener feel better in some way, whether the reaction be a state of hypnosis, better ability to sleep, feeling good through positive affirmations or any other positive type reaction. I’ve seen a few specific ASMR videos that are designed to be the complete opposite (such as “negative affirmations” where a woman basically insulted the listener nonstop) but those are rarities and seem to be more fetish-based than a part of the overall scheme that ASMR tends to represent. Quite a few ASMR videos are designed around the concept of making the listener feel better.
  6. There can often be a lot of humor incorporated into ASMR. What probably leads to a lot of the hits that ASMR artists receive (and the large numbers of followers/subscribers) has to do with the personality of the artists themselves. Humor is often one of the strongest points of the better known ASMR artists. Humor becomes a huge part of the bantering of the artist as she communicates with her following. However, I have noticed that when humor is the intent of the actual video, it tends to not do as well, which suggests that incorporating humor is good, but focusing on it doesn’t yield the same positive results.
  7. ASMR is not limited to Americans, or even English speakers. One phenomenon I’ve noticed is that quite a few artists are from variously diverse places across the planet. Some of the better known ones are Eastern European, Korean and Japanese. However, quite a few of the ASMR videos tend to be in the English language, and if an artist does not strictly do English language videos, there will be a few here and there as the artist starts to become better known. However, as a lot of ASMR can be conducted without any words whatsoever (tapping, inaudible whispering, etc.), a number of non-English speaking ASMR artists can strive and do well with non-specific language videos.
  8. The microphones themselves are quite unique. Before studying this are of Youtube, I thought I knew something about microphones. But I was wrong. I knew nothing, Jon Snow. What they use in a lot of ASMR videos is this type of microphone I have here as a picture. It is almost like a person that the artist is speaking to (including ears). Quite a few artists play with the “ears” and it can sometimes be a bit weird (well, to me). However, the microphones are extremely expensive and are set up to handle stereo recordings, which means that when the artist moves to the left side of the screen, if you’re listening with headphones, you are going to hear her voice come out of the left speaker, so that it can actually feel like the person is walking around you as she is two dimensional on the screen. This microphone in the picture is about $600. I’ve seen some of the microphones (including one that’s a representation of a person’s head) run for close to ten thousand dollars. Obviously, some of these artists are extremely invested in this activity.

So, this has been my adventure so far in studying ASMR. I got into it once because I was having trouble sleeping, and then the communication scholar in me started to see this as an untapped area of exploration that I believe more people should be aware is happening around them. The phenomenon is relativity new (still pretty much in its infancy in comparison to other phenomena), but I suspect its continued evolution might lead to all sorts of interesting perspectives and insights.

Why the Idea of Celebrities on Twitter Drives Me Nuts (and why it should do it to you, too)

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For those who don’t know it, I have a Twitter presence (@duanegundrum). It’s not extremely popular, and I’m lucky if I get a “like” here or there. Mostly, it’s me ranting or making jokes, and no one in the world knowing the difference. As a writer, I have about 5,000 followers. I follow about 500 people. Not great, but not bad either.

At the same time, someone like Kim Kardassian has 54 million followers. She only follows 104 people. Compare that to the most popular writer in the world, Stephen King, who has 3.48 million followers (and follows 63 people). If you go through the lists of really famous people, they tend to have millions of followers and really don’t follow anyone else. In case you haven’t figured it out, they use Twitter as a megaphone, not a tool to communicate with their followers.

When Twitter came about, the idea was that it would be a great place for celebrities to communicate with their fans. But instead of actually “communicate”, they pontificate and there’s little communication that takes place. To make sense of that, you have to understand what communication means to begin with.

Communication, as explained by professors today, involves information exchange between at least two entities. But what’s important about that model is that it’s not just one side speaking to a listener. It’s an exchange of information, so that the receiver then becomes the transmitter and the process continues until the channel is finally closed. In other words, a telephone is used for communicating; a television is not.

When I got involved in Twitter in the early days, I had about 25 followers. They were mainly friends of mine. Over the years, fans and acquaintances joined those numbers, and now I have about 5k, which is a larger number than most people who aren’t straight out celebrities. But part of the “drug” of social media is the desire to constantly improve those numbers so that more people are listening to you or (in my case) having a conversation with you.

There are few people on Twitter I’ve come across who are actual convervationalists. They write stuff, and they respond to stuff. Generally, they have a lot of people who they follow. Others tend to have fewer people they follow but they respond quite often to people who respond to them (which is actually a pretty healthy conversation). George Takei (of Star Trek fame) is one I’d consider in this category (@GeorgeTakei, 2.44 million followers and follows 643 people).

This has often left me wondering how to break into this category of actually making my voice heard. And then I reached a crappy conclusion as an event occurred that I didn’t even realize was happening to me.

I often respond to celebrity posts that are of interest to me, specifically anything that is communication-related, political, or involves writing topics. One pretty famous celebrity (known for his role as one of the current crop of superheroes) posted something about media, and I responded with a Twitter message, basically pointing out how certain messages are put forth by media outlets by using specific phrases, like “some people say”, which is a common vernacular of “Fox News”, brought up often by Jon Stewart of the Daily Show during his years heading that show. The celebrity responded with something like “that’s like what they do on Fox News”, as if it was a new insight. That response received no small number of “likes” from his fan base.

So, since then, I’ve been receiving nonstop “like” notifications of his response while not a single one of them has actually come across from my actual post, meaning that the likes weren’t for the idea but for the fact that someone famous repeated it after me. It’s like the old infamous adage in the science community of how a great idea is irrelevant; communicating it, however, is what’s more important.

So, for all of you out there trying to get your voices heard, this is somewhat of a sobering thought. You can have the greatest ideas and insights that have ever existed, but if you don’t have a megaphone to let anyone know, your idea will never be heard. McLuhan’s idea of “the medium is the message” couldn’t be more significant than today because it may be the only way you will ever be heard. And with all of the noise of Kardassians and reality star driven, your chance of being heard is only going to get that much harder.