“We — the grown-up influencers in this country, the people with platforms and with educations and with power— are allowing a clear message to be sent to women: We will easily forgive a person who victimizes you. We are able to look beyond the fact that you were treated as less than human, that a bigger, stronger person decided to resolve a conflict with you through violence. We know it happened, but it's just not that big of a deal to us.”
—via this article at hellogiggles.“We’re accepting the message that women just aren’t that important, that their health and their safety and their self-respect is only important until it stops being convenient for everyone. We should be angry about this, and we should be angry publicly about this.”
—Sasha Pasulka at HelloGiggles
“Seattle’s great at building technology, but we don’t understand marketing. San Francisco’s great at marketing. That’s why great B-to-C companies come out of San Francisco and not Seattle.” A managing partner at a VC firm said this to me several months ago. It solidified, in my mind, something I’ve been wanting to scream at Seattle entrepreneurs for a while: Users aren’t free. I want to scream it to investors, too. As we close out the angel round for Salad Labs, I notice a certain type of investor asks a question that makes me want to tear my hair out: Have you thought about making the product more viral? “Oh, viral? Why didn’t I think of that? If only we were doing a better job of spamming Facebook walls, we wouldn’t even need to be raising money! We’d be gazillionaires! Viral! What a totally innovative and unconditionally effective user acquisition strategy.” But this is how Seattle’s investors think, and, in turn, it’s how Seattle’s entrepreneurs have learned to think, and it isn’t working. “Be really viral” isn’t a marketing strategy. It isn’t a user acquisition strategy. It isn’t the best way to approach building a great consumer company, and I suspect that’s a core reason why Seattle can’t seem to create the next Pinterest, Zynga or Foursquare. If more viral hooks always equated to increased user acquisition and engagement, no online consumer company would ever have failed in the social era. But fail they do. Because, as it turns out, users aren’t free.”
—Hey, startups, users aren’t free, by Sasha PasulkaDid Anyone Else Wonder How Uncomfortable Rihanna May Have Felt At The Grammys With Chris Brown There?
hellogiggles.comI sure did. So did Sasha Pasulka. Well written piece.
“We – the grown-up influencers in this country, the people with platforms and with educations and with power — are allowing a clear message to be sent to women: We will easily forgive a person who victimizes you. We are able to look beyond the fact that you were treated as less than human, that a bigger, stronger person decided to resolve a conflict with you through violence. We know it happened, but it’s just not that big of a deal to us.”
—I’m Not OK With Chris Brown Performing at the Grammy’s And I’m Not Sure Why You AreSasha Pasulka: I’m Not Okay with Chris Brown Performing at the Grammys and I’m Not Sure Why You Are
hellogiggles.com“We – the grown-up influencers in this country, the people with platforms and with educations and with power — are allowing a clear message to be sent to women: We will easily forgive a person who victimizes you. We are able to look beyond the fact that you were treated as less than human, that a bigger, stronger person decided to resolve a conflict with you through violence. We know it happened, but it’s just not that big of a deal to us.
We were so mad when the Komen Foundation pulled its funding for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. “This is not fair,” we shouted. “This is not fair to women, and this is not fair to the women who don’t have a voice, and we will not allow it.” We shouted it so loudly that Komen reversed its decision in three days. We forced the resignation of one of their top executives.
Planned Parenthood, no doubt, has a well-funded and fine-tuned PR machine, adept at galvanizing a population against a perceived injustice. They outmaneuvered Komen easily.
Does domestic violence have a less sophisticated PR machine than Chris Brown does?
Because to me, this situation isn’t all that different. Accepting that Chris Brown gets to perform at the Grammys because some people bought his album is no different from accepting that women without health insurance don’t get to be screened for breast cancer because some VP at Komen is anti-abortion. It may happen, but that doesn’t mean we should tacitly accept it. What if Chris Brown had hit your sister that night? Or your daughter? (What if Chris Brown had hit Taylor Swift that night?)”
I’M NOT OKAY WITH CHRIS BROWN PERFORMING AT THE GRAMMYS AND I’M NOT SURE WHY YOU ARE
hellogiggles.comWe’re accepting the message that women just aren’t that important, that their health and their safety and their self-respect is only important until it stops being convenient for everyone. We should be angry about this, and we should be angry publicly about this.
So I want to say this to anyone who is listening: This is not okay with me. A man hitting a woman in anger is unacceptable and is not easily forgotten or forgiven. A man who hits a woman in anger deserves to be reported to the authorities and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of who might be inconvenienced in the process. A man who hits a woman in anger may eventually be permitted to go on with his own life, but he is not permitted back in my life, even if it’s been three whole years. - Sasha Pasulka
The Grammys were the victims of Chris Brown???
“We’re glad to have [Chris Brown] back,” said executive producer Ken Ehrlich. “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.”
To read Sasha Pasulka’s fantastic diatribe against Chris Brown, visit HelloGiggles.
I'm Not Okay With Chris Brown Performing at the Grammys and I'm Not Sure Why You Are
hellogiggles.comSasha Pasulka expresses my feelings about Chris Brown performing at the Grammys better than I ever could. So I’m just going to say I agree with every single word in this article and leave it at that.
A couple of interesting articles.
I just thought I’d share a few pieces I’ve read today that I found interesting for one reason or another. I’m considering making this a regular thing, listing some of my favourite articles every week. (We’ll see how long THAT lasts. Probably a week, that’s my guess.)
For this inaugural post, it’s one part women’s rights and three parts comic books. If I ever get around to making a second such blog post, I’ll try to make it a wee bit more varied.
- http://hellogiggles.com/im-not-okay-with-chris-brown-performing-at-the-grammys-and-im-not-sure-why-you-are
An excellent piece by Sasha Pasulka at Hello Giggles about how morally reprehensible it is for Chris Brown to be performing at the Grammys while he’s on probation for physically assaulting Rihanna.
It says a lot about our society that some people actually came to his defence and made this scumbag appear the victim, while Rihanna was essentially vilified. And the Grammy are practically rewarding him by letting him perform? Insulting in the extreme.
A thought-provoking, and rather moving, article by Mark Evanier about the shameful and, again, morally reprehensible, goings-on at Marvel Comics and it’s treatment of Gary Friedrich, the penniless creator of Ghost Rider who is being completely shafted by Marvel’s law squad.
In addition to not seeing a single penny of the first Ghost Rider movie’s $228,738,393 profits, he’s being forced to pay $17,000 out of his own pocket to Marvel to cover their lawsuit fees. Even discounting the legal aspect, morally it’s digusting.
- http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/twelve_not_exactly_original_notes_about_there_soon_to_be_more_watchmen_writ/
A lengthy write-up by Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter about the shitstorm kicked up by DC Comics after they announced a series of prequels to Watchmen, the ground-breaking and genre-defining 1986 comic that effectively redefined the industry. I’m in complete agreement with him; the prequels are unwanted, they’re redundant, and they fly in the face of the original comic’s intention.
Where the Watchmen of 1986 was a bold statement highlighting the potential maturity of the medium and the importance of creator rights, these prequels are tacky and give the impression of a cashing-in on the comic’s name. Similar to Marvel, DC engaged in some scummy rights-holder bullshit to prevent Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons from obtaining what was (and still is) rightfully theirs.
And finally, something a little more light-hearted (it’s a few years old now but it’s still a good read). Hanstock and Bill over at Progressive Boink share 40 of the worst pieces of comic art by Rob Liefield, an unbelievably shitty artist who, inexplicably, is massively wealthy despite his artwork being sinfully awful.
Even a relative newbie to comics like myself recognises how badly females are portrayed in today’s industry. Overly sexualised (to the point of ridicule) and grossly disproportionate, it’s little wonder that female readers find a lot of comics off-putting.
It makes you wonder if some of these “professional” artists have ever seen a woman’s body or even understand fundamental biology (humans need a place for their organs to live; those obscenely thin waists are ridiculous, guys.)
@SashRocks, i'm not okay with it either.
hellogiggles.comin a post on @hellogiggles, Sasha Pasulka, VP of Marketing at Pop Salad, as if she took the thoughts right outta my head, tells us why she doesn’t think Chris Brown should have been performing at the Grammys. and i agree, with every word. click the link above to read her post. i never would have managed to express my feelings without dropping an obscene amount of four-letter words so, thank you @SashRocks for doing it for me.
also, i would have just reblog’d it directly but the original post includes a photo of that jet-skiing, over-dancing, lip-synching asshole and there is just no way that’s going anywhere near this blog.
ugh, see.
(a snippet of my research paper) In response to Chris Brown's song "Look At Me Now" and the Chris/Rihanna relationship overall.
The fact that Chris Brown equates the amount of money one has to the kind of person he is furthers his inability to show any kind of remorse for his actions, and instead sees them as acceptable to joke about. The worst part of all of this is the media was silent at the time of the abuse and those who did speak up defended Brown’s actions, going so far as to use Rihanna as a scapegoat, claiming that she had to have a part in her own abuse. Women advocates across the globe were furious with the media’s take on the incident but blaming the victim is something that happens often in domestic abuse, often the victim starts to blame her/himself as well. Blogger Sasha Pasulka of “Hello Giggles” commented on this issue saying “The message we sent to young women was unmistakeable: You are powerless. You are worthless. You will be a victim, and that will be okay with us”.
