#opinion
Ukraine>Will Smith Slap> School shooting
What’s the next distraction???
Funny how people quickly forget about these previous events
The Problem with Periscope
YouTuber and filmmaker Casey Neistat is a prolific user of social media. He uses YouTube, of course, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and even an app of his own creation: Beme. But he does not use Periscope. Why? He quite often makes that point that life is inherently boring, and thus, livestreaming it, unedited and unfiltered, makes for tedious content.
That’s just one of many problems with Periscope, the livestreaming app Twitter bought and launched in March 2015 before the original creators and founders released the app themselves.
The launch was quite messy and felt fairly rushed
- Another livestreaming smartphone app, Meerkat, beat them to it, making its debut at film, media, and tech convention South by Southwest 2015 just a couple of weeks earlier near the beginning of March
- Twitter actually cut off Meerkat from its social graph just as South by Southwest started, which didn’t really give people the favourable feels
- A few months down the line, Meerkat also beat Periscope to Android
- Twitter’s severed ties with Meerkat only helped propel the rival app into a stronger limelight. I’d go as far to say that Meerkat actually had a brief cult/celebrity moment. The Verge summarised this well »
That’s all in the past, though. I’ve heard hundreds of people talking about Periscope since it launched, but mentions of Meerkat have been nigh-on non-existent. Periscope have won, and I use ‘won’ very loosely, this battle. Let’s skip forward to the present, and start with the most alarming issues within the Periscope community before drilling down the app’s broken core.
Paedophilia and sexually abusive comments
Remember Omegle? A webcam chat service which connects you with another random user. It quickly became a cesspool of men flashing their penises, resulting in the number of female users shrinking to a bare minimum. Periscope is the opposite, in a way: most streams are by females, and most comments are from males.
The comments are usually deeply concerning:
- Tens or hundreds of guys incessantly commenting on the stream of one girl pressuring her to take her clothes off or expose herself
- This pressure frequently turns into demand, with language becoming violent and threatening
- This makes the streamer understandably nervous, tainting the quality of the stream as they get distracted by being targeted and find it impossible to have a decent conversation with genuinely interested viewers
- Males proceed in describing how they’re masturbating while watching the female’s stream
- Females often end streams abruptly, looking disgusted, hurt, and confused
For the past couple of weeks I’ve spent an hour each evening perusing Periscope’s global list and trying to talk to people. On two occasions, I’ve landed on streams from girls aged under 18. And on both of those occasions, a regular pattern emerged: commenters would write disgusting perverse things, someone would ask the girl their age, they’d say 15 (the first) or 16 (the second), but the demands for nudity would just keep on coming.
This is both illegal and disturbing behaviour. Periscope has a system in place for reporting this sort of behaviour though, right?
There’s no way to report this sort of behaviour
Nope.
- You can report broadcasts, but they’re rarely concerning. In fact, I’ve only seen one penis so far. The comments are almost always abusive, though.
- You can’t report comments. Not in your own stream or in other people’s streams. You can only block people.
- Periscope’sown guidelines say this: “If you see a user posting abusive comments in a broadcast, please take a screenshot and email [email protected]. We will take action if we find that the user violates the Periscope Community Guidelines.” This is not good enough. To properly quell hateful comments on a livestreaming service, there needs to be a team of people constantly monitoring certain abusive keywords.
For a moment, let’s imagine we’ve skipped forward two years and Periscope has implemented a suitable framework for reporting abusive comments or built a system intelligent enough to detect abusive comments. Let’s focus on…
The actual content of streams
- Three quarters of Periscope streams are people sat in their bedrooms talking to their front-facing camera. Watching these streams is a lot like being on the receiving end of awkward date small talk: it’s just not fun.
- Only, it’s worse than awkward date small talk, because streams regularly buffer every 30 seconds, and there are frequently 10-second delays between comments being sent and comments appearing on the streamer’s screen. This makes communication disjointed and turns something which could perhaps be fun into a chore.
- Sidenote: ‘Trying to reconnect…’ doesn’t feel like good copy design. Is it trying to reconnect, or is it reconnecting?
- People driving. Very soon we’ll hear of the first fatal car crash caused by people Periscoping while behind the wheel.
- If you’re lucky, you’ll open Periscope while someone is livestreaming an interesting event, like conferences or concerts. Obvious copyright issues aside, these streams only ever seem genuinely interesting for a few minutes. Events livestreamed from a smartphone fall into a monotonous grey area between experiencing live events for yourself in person and seeing photos/reading write-ups of events on news sites and blogs. Live broadcasts (e.g. televised sports) need a lot of work — multi-angles, replays, graphics, etc. — to be engaging.
Finding interesting content or people
When you open Periscope you’re presented with a feed of live broadcasts or archived replayable broadcasts from the people you follow. The second main screen is a global view — a list of randomly-selected streams from people around the world. More recently, Periscope introduced a map view for this worldwide feed. Let’s talk about both the list and the map view:
- At the top of the list view, there are usually three featured streams — the only attempt Periscope makes at pushing interesting content to the forefront. These are, most of the time, news anchors giving behind-the-scenes studio tours, which is interesting at first but quickly gets repetitive and bland.
- I haven’t the faintest of clues how the rest of the list view is selected from a technical perspective, but for all intents and purposes to the user, it’s entirely random. This would be a good thing if streams were typically engaging or interesting, but as explained above, they’re almost always not.
- LANGUAGE. One of the options in Periscope’s Settings panel is the ability to filter the list view down to only the languages you know. In my case, this is English and German. Do I see only English and German streams? No, I don’t. I see streams in every language. French, Dutch, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian — everything. What is the point of this option? What is the point of showing me streams in languages I don’t understand? I can’t listen. Or converse. The filter doesn’t work.
- HASHTAGS. It’s just about forgivable that the original developers didn’t implement a hashtag system to make it easier to search for content you might be interested in, but it’s the eighth deadly sin that Twitter, the pioneers of the hashtag, still haven’t developed this feature more than half a year after launching the app. Amusingly, users still include hashtags in the titles of their streams — entirely non-functional, and makes the list view look messy.
- CATEGORIES. Nope.
- RECOMMENDED PEOPLE. Nope.
- When you go to the third main screen of Periscope, the place where you find new people to follow, you’re presented with a couple of Featured Users and then a long list of everyone you follow on Twitter who has Periscope. Not people you follow on Twitter who actively use it — just people who have accounts. In alphabetical order.
- This screen doesn’t appear to be intelligent or tailored in any way. The Featured Users seem entirely random — I was recommended two Food Network accounts, and I don’t follow either on Twitter. Nor do I follow any foodies/chefs/restaurant brands on Periscope.
- People you follow on Twitter who actively use Periscope aren’t given priority over everyone else. As said, it’s just alphabetical.
- As for the map view, it’s not clear how the pins shown are selected. Instead of being able to zoom in on a place you’re interested in and see the streams from that location, you’re presented with a random array of dots across the world. Opening a live stream of a random place would actually be quite a nice idea if the livestreams were interesting, but alas, you end up staring at a bored teenager lying in bed 90% of the time.
It’s pretty impossible to purposefully find interesting content on Periscope. It’s like the lottery, but instead of hoping to win loads of money, you search in vain of some useful or intriguing content to watch.
Hearts
Comments are how watchers interact with streamers, so they have to appear somewhere. Annoyingly, they appear over the bottom third of the livestream, getting in the way of what you’re trying to watch. That’s okay, though, because where else are you going to put them?
Hearts aren’t necessary at all, though. They bounce and flow up the right edge of the screen, cutting out more of the livestream you’re trying to watch, and they don’t contribute to how the app is used. You can’t see a list of streams you’ve hearted, and you can’t see who has hearted your streams. Hearts just accumulate into an overall number which sits on people’s profiles.
If it’s a way for Periscope to figure out which content people are enjoying so that they can push certain livestreams to the forefront, fair enough. But that’s still a very one-dimensional way to measure interest and choose content to show users when they land in the app.
In summary
Periscope has a long way to go. Given that Jack Dorsey has just taken up the helm at Twitter and has already proven ruthless in the staff layoffs he’s actioned, hopefully for the benefit and interest of the ailing social network, it will be very interesting to see how he approaches Periscope, which, from the outside, looks much more like a burden than a blessing.
The team behind the app first need to address the legal issues Periscope presents: bullying, sexual abuse, paedophilia, and copyright. Then they need to throw lots of weight behind making it easier to find good content.
They also need to work with content creators from other platforms to give them an incentive to use Periscope. At the moment there’s no real clear reason for YouTubers, brands, businesses, et al to livestream through the app. Their audience isn’t there. Celebrities I’ve seen venture into Periscope territory have used the app once and then given up, never to return.
And with the first rumblings of Facebook’s own integrated livestreaming platform making the headlines, the clock is ticking if Periscope want to be the app where the revolution is livestreamed instead of the ultimate problematic fave.
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tell me what pisses you off when you’re reading fanfic. I’ll go first:
Idespise cross-fandom one shot compilations, and one shot compilations that use relationship tags that are not actually in the compilation.
What is the most Ariesthing an Aries placement has said to you?
What fictional character do you think best embodies Aries energy? ♈
“Tal vez no hay tal cosa como el destino. Tal vez son sólo las oportunidades que nos dan, y lo que hacemos con ellas.”
Remember ladies and gentlemen this generation loves performative activism without actually doing anything themselves or for others.
獻給用嘴巴開店的朋友們。
每次看到這樣的小店，就會有股蠢蠢欲動在心裡作祟，不是那種我也想開店所以看到這樣的小店頓時有了勇氣的那種蠢蠢欲動，而是人生中真的就單純的只有做與不做這兩個選擇而已吧的感覺。
我已經連續幾天在星巴克聽到不同種的讓人生「不糊」的各式宣傳，有直銷的拉下線入坑解說、有保險業的旅遊險壽險意外險說明、有投資客的存錢不如賺錢的理念傳播、甚至還有宗教的如何延續生命的故事分享，都是我在假裝是soho的時候聽到附近桌客人的談話內容，那些宣傳客都有一個共通點，就是喜歡把話講得很大聲，看看是否有機會順道拉到新客人… (其實只是造成干擾而已)
不管我們要做什麼樣的選擇讓自己(或下一代)的未來&人生過得更好，最終都是做與不做而已，過程的猶豫不決只是「怕」會後悔，但這樣的人不管怎樣都會後悔，為何不咬個牙直接選擇做還是不做，把中間猶豫的時間省下來留到事後要後悔的時候做彌補的思考？
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Scorpio, Leo, Aries, Virgo, Sagittarius & Capricorn
Lately being drunk has brought to my life many disappointments and trouble. My friend with benefits and I had been fighting a lot because of this problem.
The fact is that being with him is only pleasant and exciting when I’m drunk or when I get to smoke weed. But everytime this happens before, he tells me he doesn’t like me when I’m like this. He adds comments like: “You just look so stupid” “You become unbearable everytime you smoke or get drunk”.
The thing is that the last time we saw each other I was COMPLETELY drunk, after a meeting party with my school mates. I can’t remember what happened that night, but he is really upset. He doesn’t want to know anything about me or even hear my name.
Summer is coming and I’m starting my new life as a “proana” so I just have to wait to be skinny for him to come back right?
Been thinking of new avenues to pursue and video/a podcast has always something I’ve been interested in trying to start. What are y’all’s opinion on one for the blog?
Please let me know!
I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day, I never have been. Technically it is supposed to be a day to exchange tokens and affection. So if you have a significant other, great. Enjoy your day, but love them like you do every other day of the year. Sure, today may be a day that gives you reason to do something dramatic like buy an entire store’s worth of chocolates or an oversize teddy bear. But otherwise, you shouldn’t need one day to appreciate other people. If you are single, don’t get down about today. It is just another day of the year. Appreciate the people in your lives who love you, starting with your family and close friends. Like I said though, you should really appreciate these people every day.
Valentine’s day isn’t a problem for me because I am bitter or jealous of couples, because I’m not. I don’t like it because I find it obnoxious that it is one day out of the year designated to exchange affection. Do it everyday.
I want to expand AstronomyNerd into other social media platforms. Ideas are:
- Etsy (I do love to craft, it’d be astronomy related products!)
- Periscope
Or if you nerds use any other type of sites, let me know! What do you think I should expand to?
Katie is a character I really would have vibed with if I were still in high school. She’s a spunky aspiring filmmaker with a “lol random” sense of humor and chronic Nobody Gets Me syndrome. Which hey, might have been true. The film doesn’t show any of Katie’s friends before getting to college, so maybe she had zero friends in high school, but I digress.
Katie has one brother and two parents, none of which have red hair. The main conflict of the film is the progressive, redheaded Katie not getting along with or understanding her bearded traditional father, and suddenly I’m getting The Little Mermaid flashbacks. Not that that’s a bad thing.
So, how does she rank?
You can check out the full post here.
Livin’ like Neo
SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. Hearing these words repeat ominously as I watched my glorious replay after completing a level in SUPERHOT gave me a strange sense of power and satisfaction. SUPERHOTmade me feel like an unstoppable badass by the end of its levels which were both challenging and interesting to play through. It’s too bad then that the game ends far too soon and never really…
Cities: Skylines Snowfall Review
Nothing burns like the cold
As winter comes to a close (and comes to a peak for some of us) Cities: Skylines’ Snowfallexpansion sets out to bring the wonder, beauty, and civil engineering struggles that come with the ice cold weather. This new DLC comes packed with new winter themed parks, monuments, and transportation options as well as new gameplay mechanics that complement the seasonal…
I’M STILL WEARING A MASK
Two years ago, I sat across from someone in a light-filled, commercially decorated room in Inverness, Alabama and said “I’m going to do X, Y, and Z, and then I’m moving to New Orleans when my lease is up.” That someone looked at me with pride, and simply said, “that’s great.” ⇨ Read more on therisingcrescent.com.
・Photo: risingcrescentphotography.com
・Instagram: @risingcrescent
・Booking & business inquiries: [email protected]
・Do not delete caption, & if reposting on other platforms, give proper credit by also providing a link to the website. Thanks! :)
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Superman 2021
The beginning of the epilogue era for this blog - I promised I would do one last ‘State of the Union’ for Superman, and I actually took notes this year to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything substantial so I’d just as soon not let those go to waste. Which is good because otherwise something definitely would have gotten lost in the shuffle of what’s been on balance the best year for Superman since 1978.
Now, the qualifier there is 'best year for Superman since 1978’ would be 'above average!’ in Batman terms, but looking at the across-the-board success with a minimum of things going horrifically wrong (the only thing I recall landing with a total splat this year was Conner Kent’s inclusion in the Suicide Squad book and Injustice)? It truly feels like the powers that be shook their heads, opened their eyes, and remembered that Superman is not in fact by definition a cursed albatross, but rather a really big deal worth capitalizing on in a variety of ways to make a shitload of money. I suspect this is a matter of the new ownership going “…wait. We have Superman, and pretty recently he was a significantly lower priority than this guy?” Not that I’m inclined to salute the beneficence of corporate decisionmakers, but I’m glad the dominos at least fell in a good direction for once that seem to be setting up my favorite character for a vibrant, fascinating near future.
Comics
* The year kicked off with Future State, where for once Superman was the pretty clear winner of the line. Phillip Kennedy Johnson came out of the gate strong, Mark Russell and Steve Pugh reunited for Superman vs. Imperious Lex,Superman of MetropolisandSuperwoman, Kara Zor-El were both solid, Gene Yang kicked off his brief tenure in the line with Batman/Superman, and Dan Watters and Leila Del Duca’s Superman/Wonder Woman was for my money easily the best Jon Kent story to date.
* PKJ briefly took over both the primary Superman titles, remaining on Action Comics on a longterm basis; while news of his tenure was initially met with little excitement his work ultimately won over readers in a huge way, in no small part thanks to the unbelievable interior work of Daniel Sampere (who while leaving will soon be succeeded by the incredible Riccardo Federici) and the astounding variant covers of J. Totino Tedesco. Meanwhile Tom Taylor and Jon Timms launched the long expected Jon Kent Superman title as Son of Kal-El, which has varied significantly in critical response from issue to issue but grabbed mainstream headlines for having Jon be revealed as bi, making a queer Superman one of DC’s flagship characters. And acting as springboard for the new status quo was not only Grant Morrison’s return to the character but apparently truly final farewell to superhero comics (outside the occasional new installment of Klaus) in Superman & The Authority with Mikel Janin.
* In the 'family’ of assorted Superman titles were Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s gorgeous, melancholy Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Gene Yang and Ivan Reis’ beautifully clever The Archive of Worlds arc on Batman/Superman, and Robert Venditti’s solid and fan-favorite work on Superman '78 with Wilfredo Torres and the newly-launched World of Krypton with Michael Avon Oeming. Also while it has yet to hit the states Superman’s secured a manga series in Superman vs. Meshi, a series of him flying around Japan trying different local cuisines, and I want it immediately.
* In the more 'prestige’ corner, Superman at long last received his own counterpart to Batman: Black and WhiteinSuperman: Red and Blue, which churned out a fistful of all-timer short stories; John Ridley, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Alex Dos Diaz’s long-awaited The Other History Of The DC Universe used Superman as one of the main ongoing background figures, presenting him in a shockingly critical and nuanced light; Superman vs. Lobo marked Superman’s second time up under Black Label, to…mixed results.
* Superman held a presence in assorted team and event/Elseworlds titles such as Justice League,Infinite Frontier (which resulted in Brandon Thomas and Valentine De Landro’s spectacular President Superman story) and Justice League Incarnate,Event Leviathan: Checkmate,Justice League: Last Ride,Dark Knights of Steel,Justice League Infinity, and in a truly unexpected move made seemingly to delight me and me alone, RWBY/Justice League. Alongside all that, Lex Luthor is the anchoring figure of Tom King and Greg Smallwood’s The Human Target.
* On the analogue front, Utopian II headed up the hilariously timed Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem, while Steve Orlando presented Prizefighter and the eponymous Patron in the excellent Commanders in CrisisandProject Patron.
Mass-Media
* While CW’s Supergirlconcluded this year with its sixth season, it had already given birth to its successor series in Superman & Lois, the first live-action show starring Clark Kent as Superman in over two decades, debuting to about as close to universal acclaim as any mass-media Superman project has received since at least Superman: The Animated Series if not in fact the original Christopher Reeve movies (though with behind-the-scenes controversies that mustn’t be ignored). Notably it found far greater ratings success in streaming and BBC rebroadcast than on the CW proper.
* After years of sustained and severe agitation on social media by fandom in the name of the 'Snyder Cut’ - received depending on who you ask as a united front in the name of a mistreated creator who had suffered horrific personal tragedy, a crazed and gleefully virulent broad harassment campaign, or indeed some of both columns - Warner Brothers announced it would allow Zack Snyder to complete editing and VFX work on his original vision of Justice League (before the infamous reshoots and substantial alterations by Joss Whedon seen in the 2017 release) as an HBO Max exclusive. Zack Snyder’s Justice League, ultimately running $70 million and a theatrically unthinkable four hours, was released to shockingly widespread approval including from many who had disdained the director’s previous work with the characters.
* Superman appeared in Fortnite, which according to people much more tuned-in than me as to what video games are actually popular these days is a Very Big Deal, so that’s cool. That suit’s grody as hell though.
* Idris Elba was the lead of The Suicide Squad as a Superman villain. Bloodsport of all dudes, but.
* An Injusticeanimated movie dropped, with Superman also appearing in Justice Society: World War II.
* The overtly Superman-inspired Invincibledebuted on Amazon Prime to massive success, immediately being renewed through season 3. Netflix’s somewhat similar project in Jupiter’s Legacy debuted to…less.
Comics Announcements
* After over a decade away from DC Comics as a result of internal politics Mark Waid is returning, with an ongoing Batman/Superman: World’s Finest title illustrated by Dan Mora, and a 3-issue large-format Black Label miniseries drawn by Bryan Hitch and inked by Kevin Nowlan acting as a sequel to Superman: Birthright and exploring a 'grown-up’ take on Superman’s refusal to kill.
* Scott Snyder revealed in a podcast interview that his eventual return to DC Comics is planned to include a Superman-led event book acting as a companion and thematic trilogy-capper to the Batman-centric Metaland Wonder Woman-focused Death Metal.
*Superman & Lois: Ignition by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, and Vasco Georgiev was placed in the running for DC’s controversial Round Robin contest, with the couple on an interstellar odyssey to survive a boobytrapped solar system. While as expected from the beginning the Robinstitle easily won the vote, the editors behind the project noted their intent that some of the other proposed titles could still ultimately be published, and with Kelly and Lanzing’s star rising with the upcoming Batman Beyond: Neo-Year miniseries hope remains that the title could see publication.
Mass-Media Announcements
* Famed author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates is scripting a new Superman movie produced by J.J. Abrams; apparently apart from the shared universe of DC films in the same fashion as The BatmanandJoker, it will reportedly star a Black Clark Kent and may be a period piece.
* Sasha Calle will be debuting as a new take on Supergirl in 2022’s The Flash.
* Michael B. Jordan will be executive producing and possibly starring in an HBO Max Val-Zod series written by Darnell Metayer and Josh Peters.
*My Adventures of Superman, an animated reinterpretation of the character’s early years focusing on Lois, Clark, and Jimmy as a trio apparently in a post-Steven Universe/Infinity Train vein, will debut on HBO Max and Cartoon Network in 2023 with an initial two-season order. Cartoonist Jake Wyatt and frequent DC animation director (as well as Voltron: The Legendary Defender,Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and The Venture Bros.) Brendan Clogher will be co-executive producing with She-Ra head writer Josie Cambell producing, and with Jack Quaid and Alice Lee starring as Clark and Lois respectively.
*DC League of Super-Pets will debut theatrically in 2022, with Dwayne The Rock Johnson as Krypto and John Krasinski as Superman.
*Battle of the Super Sons will be DC’s first CG-animated DTV movie in 2022.
* There will be Superman and/or Lois Lane narrative podcasts on Spotify alongside the upcoming Batman Unburied.
* Superman will be one of the initial characters in the upcoming free-to-play fighter MultiVersus.
* Brian Bendis is writing for an HBO Max Legion of Super-Heroes adult animated series based on his reboot of the concept with Ryan Sook, presumably starring Jon Kent in the lead role.
Other items of note
* Tom Welling and Brandon Routh have both expressed interest in returning to (or in the former’s case donning for the first time) the cape in future projects, both actively pursuing the prospects with Welling and Michael Rosenbaum apparently pitching an animated Smallvillerevival.
*Lavender Jack cartoonist Dan Schkade shared his personal project David Lynch’s Superboy on Twitter.
* Karl Kerschl posted a Superman short story illustrated from a Scott Kurtz script shared 8 years earlier.
* Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished 1942 Superman poem The Man of To-Morrow’s Lament was discovered.
* Lead developer Salvatrix revealed details and footage from the infamously cancelled Factor 5 PS3/Xbox 360-era Superman game codenamed 'Blue Steel’.
* Character designer Phil Bourassa shared several images from a scrapped Superman project starring an older Man of Tomorrow and several young new members of the Superman Family.
* Gabriel Hardman revealed pitch art from an unrealized Elseworlds Superman OGN.
* Giant Panda King, creators of the elaborate coffee table book fan project Gotham: 1919-1939, have expressed their intent to follow it up with Metropolis: 1925-1945.
*Ritesh Babu,Sean Dillon, and I each had work published on the subject of Grant Morrison’s Superman this year, with my piece including spectacular commissioned art by Max Kay. Elsewhere in the critical sphere ComicsXF published Zack Rabiroff’s essential Superman The Jew: History Of A People Through The World’s Greatest Hero.
*@khancrackers revealed on Twitter detailsandearly artwork for his planned Superman/Multiversityinspired TTRPG Up! Up! And Beyond!
* Ed Pinsent and Mark Robinson’s cult classic fancomic Silver Age Supermanwas finally reprinted nearly 30 years later.
