Avatar

the rantings of a mad british headphone murderer

@djemso / djemso.tumblr.com

D J E M · S O Claudie. The Claudinator. She Of Many Typos. Irish/English and isn't that fun. 32. INFP. Slytherin. Bi.Ace. Anxiety.. Psychology & Counselling student. Deadpan snarker. Fluid. Feminist. Crazy cat lady. Cooking. Marvel. DC. DCAU. MCU. Harry Potter. Star Wars. Rock & Punk. Foot in Mouth Syndrome.

okay i just had a bad epiphany but corporate interest’s influence on the internet is going to become so much stronger now that generations that are internet naturalized have grown up and starting working as “social media consultants”. advertising is going to become so much more subtle, manipulate your behavior to a greater extent, and completely pervade every aspect of our lives the more we rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to social validation. 

what im saying is its scary that corporate twitter accounts are getting good at twitter. to have the same avenue a human would to express themself. its like, an extreme anthromorphism of a brand, and that brand representing a corporate interest, and successfully passing itself off as a sentient entity on twitter, thats really weird to me.

like this is so fucked up. it doesnt immediately read as an advertisement, conceptually it executes the levels of irony and deconstruction that usually make for successful memes in this genre or whatever. its almost subverting itself, but ultimately it still succeeds as an advertisement. it makes me sick. for every misfire of corporations trying to relate (pepsi protest commercial), theres another company getting better at it

okay but like my thing about this is… who is actually eating at these places because shit like this? yeah it’s funny but i never go to wendy’s because a meme, if i go to wendy’s it’s because i want a gross burger and a frosty, same with taco bell and mcdonald’s and wherever the fuck.

i really think that you’re blowing this out of proportion and having very little faith in people’s ability to decide what they want for themselves. it’s just not that deep.

It’s not about the effectiveness of the ads in question, but their complete omnipresence in every aspect and moment of life, and how bizarre and sophisticated the mechanations of advertising have become. If people don’t call attention to these things, they become normal.

The effectiveness of marketing isnt one-to-one, like, “ad says burger is good, I think burger is good, I eat burger.” That was 50 years ago. Y'all, since then these multi-million dollar corporations have been hiring psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists to study how best to get under consumer skin and theyve figured out it’s not about making you WANT a burger,

It’s about creating a Brand Identity - an anthropomorphized personality that your brain fits into an established schema (system of thought) so it’s easier to just drop into the background of your everyday life. It’s not about making you want a burger, it’s about making it so, when you DO want a burger, the first place you think of is Wendy’s, because their ads have made you think about them five time already that day. And most importantly, it’s about making sure you dont realize how often they make you think about them, so you don’t resent how pervasive they’ve become. They do that by tricking your brain into thinking of them as just another human-like personality. Your Funny Meme Friend Wendy’s. Wine Aunt World Market. Woke Jock Nike. Even your Endearingly Unhip Uncle Geico.

(hey also if you want dozens of terrifying examples of what I mean, just type ‘brand identity schema’ into Google like I just did and take a gander at all those scholarly articles discussing how best to acquire consumers, like we’re a fucking commodity)

one time i said i didn’t like the wendys twitter and got called classist for hating retail employees 

this shit works. it makes people like Brands. gets under their skin and in to their minds. when i said i didnt like the wendys twitter i personally offended people that viewed wendys as a friend, that viewed the wendys social media manager as a friendly individual that they respected.

the wendys social media manager is not your friend. they don’t even really exist. there’s no one person that writes the tweets for wendys. there’s a team of 20 something year olds that casually observe the latest meme trends and crank out mspaint memes because they know they’ll get retweeted if the memes are relevant.

they trick you in to thinking that Wendys is a hip friendly young person, and they manipulate you in to thinking that disliking marketing is somehow a “problematic” “un-woke” thing to do. 

and it works

install ublock origin. on mobile, block every promoted tweet you see. don’t let them convince you that this shit is normal.

I just wanna say, not only was I extremely correct in my paranoid regarding these posts, but it’s actually gotten way fucking worse already

I’m just going to be blunt about it; America’s depression epidemic is a direct result of the all-encompassing alienation we experience under late stage capitalism, and now private interests are attempting to recuperate the general public’s feelings of hopelessness and despair into marketing material, the spectacle in effect recuperating our despair and making it appear that the powers that be are on our side. That we are being watched over by boardrooms with loving grace, despite the fact that they are part and parcel with the forces of economy that has driven so many people to not see any hope in their lives. By recuperating the public discourse about the root of endemic depression, the status quo is able to trivialize it and sterilize it before before safely incorporating it back into mainstream society. Not only are we unable to strike against our enemy, most of us can’t even see them for what they are, and the rest of us can’t even speak to the truth of what they are capable of.

Pay attention to little bizarre happenings like these, they betray the rest of the iceberg

Don’t just take it from me:

This is so fucked

Avatar

I literally just watched a video on this.

I know this site is very US-centric but I need to say that what the UK government has done to teenagers' exam results is absolutely disgusting and if you're in the UK please take a moment to sign this petition (from the Labour party, I recieved this via email because I'm a member) imploring the Tories not to fuck up the futures of kids who don't go to private fucking schools

The tl;dr is that students obviously haven't been able to sit exams this year, so the government has devised a clever algorithm that spits out grades for them based on the school's past performance and moreover the postcode of the school. This has resulted in tens of thousands of students being given grades way below what they deserve and most importantly has denied them conditional university places and bursaries they would have gotten with their correct marks.

In the past two days I've read dozens of stories of students who aced their mocks and coursework, who had predicted grades of As and A*s, only to be given Ds and Es because of where the school is. I've read dozens of stories of deserving pupils losing their places at prestigious universities because their grades are too low.

Rest assured this algorithm had no ill effect on private schools, which were in some cases awarding their students significantly higher results than their prior grades indicated.

The Conservative education secretary was notably quoted saying "The danger is that pupils will be overpromoted into jobs that are beyond their competence", as if that doesn't describe the entire Tory cabinet, in particular B*ris J*hnson.

to all uk students affected by this, I'm so sorry. Remember that you'll be able to vote in the next general election.

#ToriesOutNow

Avatar

I see a lot of people in the notes saying that they can’t find this because their zip code is wrong, so CLICK THIS LINK FOR A LIST OF A BUNCH OF ENGLISH ZIP CODES YOU CAN USE IN PLACE OF YOUR OWN IF YOU DO NOT LIVE IN ENGLAND. This action by the government is disgusting and violently classist and my heart goes out to my British comrades currently dealing with this shit.

Avatar

Masterpost of vaguely-addressed letters that actually got delivered to the right person. Whatever you say about Ireland, the lovely people at an Post clearly know how to do their job.

1. Your man Henderson, that boy with the glasses who is doing the PhD up here at Queen’s in Belfast, Buncrana, Co. Donegal, Ireland.

2. Blindboy Boatclub, Postman should know, Limerick, Limerick postman should know.

3. Mr. Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach, Castleknock, Dublin 15.

4. Petra Kindler and Donal Moore, unfortunately I forget the streetname but it’s near a street named Cul de Sac, The beautiful city of WATERFORD, well-known for its kindly postmen, IRELAND.

5. HERE PLEASE [on a map of the coastline near Dunmore East].

6. “Sam the Cat,” Rosscahill, Co. Galway.

Avatar

(Bruce Wayne voice) I’m Bruce Wayne, from Gotham City, I’m participating in Nailed It! because for years I’ve tried to learn how to bake to impress my father [cuts to old pic of baby Bruce trying to whisk in a bowl, wearing a crooked chef hat, Alfred trying to help him with a really loving look on his face], and- (someone in the background yells LIAR!!) (Bruce covers his face, the background music stops) fine I lost a bet to one of my kids and they thought it would be hilarious for me to participate because I’m terrible in the kitchen [cuts to picture of grown Bruce with a pan on fire, looking absolutely frantic, sad trombone sound] [the people behind the camera laugh]

Avatar

First challenge is recreating justice league cake pops, the camera zooms into Bruce who has the biggest forced smile ever on his face as he holds a cute green lantern pop.

Bruce: nailed it!

Nicole: (cackling as the camera zooms into the ugliest cake pop her eyes have ever laid on) WHAT IS THAT!

Bruce, as the camera pans into the details of the mess of a pop: personally I think it’s an accurate depiction of green lantern

Avatar

The cake challenge is making a giant cake with ALL the known batvigilantes in Gotham.

  • As bruce whisks in a bowl midway the process, if you edit the clip to make it loud enough you could hear him muttering under his breath why the fuck did I adopt so many kids
  • Nicole: and I genuinely don’t know what mr wayne is doing over there (cackle) (camera cuts to Bruce frantically counting the figures before adding them to the final cake as he knows if he forgets any of them they would never let him live it down)
  • Nicole: oh I love the purple you chose for spoiler’s Cape! / Bruce: it’s actually eggplant but thank you nic!
  • Jacques: as….. lo…vely as this cake looks.. I can’t help but notice.. you forgot to add batman to it
  • Bruce: (huge bleep)

Bruce: [makes a paper towel cowl and puts it over his face] Bruce: [stands behind his cake and sort of looms there] Bruce, as foppishly as possible: I’ll be being Batman. [doing the growly voice really badly] I’m Batman. Voices behind the camera: [all laugh]

Paper Towel Batman goes viral in gif form.

(Also Bruce, cutting out Nightwing’s emblem in fondant: I want the vigilantes of Gotham to know that I am making these in a manner designed to be efficient, and not in order of how much I love them. Host: That’s…nice?)