Catching up on the full Lil Tay story was depressing and I want to infect others with it.
2017, Canadian teen named Jason tries and fails to get into the Youtube diss rap world. He pivots to filming his 9yo half-sister Claire Tay Tian Hope perform diss raps he writes and wave fake bands around in fancy houses that their realtor mother has access to. (The mother loses her job for this.) That gets mildly successful, Jason and the mom take Tay to LA to try to capitalize on it, all without the permission/full knowledge of Tay's father Chris who has shared custody.
With Jason continuing to be the primary person running the account, in LA they film clips that get noticed with Bhad Bhabie and Chief Keef and others where Tay says heinous shit and racial slurs (which, funny because kid) all while taking meetings with and benefits from all kind of managers/influencer remoras. But they can't go forward with any contracts because they can't get visas because Chris never approved them to go to LA in the first place.
Chris is informed by Tay's elementary school of her conduct online and demands she return to Canada, claiming he's fine with her trying to pursue an influencer career as long as she directs some money to a trust and gets a real team that can get her ad partnerships and keep her from saying racial epithets. Jason and the mom see this as unfair and controlling but have no recourse.
2018 Tay has to come home, the account goes silent—except for intermittent posts with clearly faked legal document screencaps accusing Chris of various kinds of abuse and asking to #FreeLilTay, all likely posted by Jason given he is on record as wanting to start that hashtag.
Silence until this week 5 years later when someone with access to the account starts the death hoax. Chris (a medium-profile lawyer who you'd think would want to respond swiftly) and the family and a "former manager" inexplicably don't clarify for a full day, then the account admits to the hoax a day later and reveals it to be a stunt to launch a Lil Tay shitcoin.
There's still mystery at the end of it all: was it the scummy former manager, the at-best well-meaning but inattentive dad, the chaotic views-addicted brother or mom? All that can be said for sure is that this girl is being exploited and failed by people all around her.
Regarding the machine translation thing: I ran a game localization company here in Tokyo for many years. "Time to edit" could be an interesting metric of judging how good/bad an AI translation is, because, I can tell you from a lot of experience, machine translation has made huge strides over the last few years (ChatGPT/DeepL in particular). But, and this is a big but, this particular usage of "time to edit" is a metric coined by Translated, a huge multinational translation firm, so this isn't some impartial third party metric. Their claims of using "time to edit" as a marker of the singularity sound a lot like clever marketing.
Oh boy this makes bluesky sound so much like 2020ish Mastodon, where people were getting dogpiled for opinions such as "human sacrifice is bad" and "can you please not do horny replies to pictures of my dogs"
I have had my Twitter account private for a while now and almost entirely the requests I get are from blank accounts with some only fans type of link in the bio
The NYC subway/Bernie Wagenblast story is lovely, though i believe it falsely attributes at least one clip (“please stand away from the platform edge”) by the equally charming and vocally recognizable Charlie Pellet, who kindly recorded my name in the same voice when I worked with him on a museum audioguide & podcast (undiscarded.org, episode 10, if curious).
Next up, my dream voicemail: “stand clear of the closing beep, please!”
I've been watching twisted metal with my Gamer Boyfriend™, and It's okay. It has a real early 00s or late 90s feel to it, which I guess is kinda fun, but it's not something I would choose to watch otherwise. If you grew up playing the games and are in your late 30s or early 40s, you'll think it's a great time. But otherwise, I think it's a pass (I believe Players is a much better video game-related comedy). I'm not sure. Outside of middle age gamers and their partners, who are watching this show? My best guess is I could see it having an appeal to the walking dead or Fast and Furious audiences. Or maybe middle age gamers are a big enough micro audience that in the era of hyper-specific tv shows and atomized audiences, you can end up with a hit.
Unlocking the mystery of the McDonald's ice cream hack
Catching up on the full Lil Tay story was depressing and I want to infect others with it.
2017, Canadian teen named Jason tries and fails to get into the Youtube diss rap world. He pivots to filming his 9yo half-sister Claire Tay Tian Hope perform diss raps he writes and wave fake bands around in fancy houses that their realtor mother has access to. (The mother loses her job for this.) That gets mildly successful, Jason and the mom take Tay to LA to try to capitalize on it, all without the permission/full knowledge of Tay's father Chris who has shared custody.
With Jason continuing to be the primary person running the account, in LA they film clips that get noticed with Bhad Bhabie and Chief Keef and others where Tay says heinous shit and racial slurs (which, funny because kid) all while taking meetings with and benefits from all kind of managers/influencer remoras. But they can't go forward with any contracts because they can't get visas because Chris never approved them to go to LA in the first place.
Chris is informed by Tay's elementary school of her conduct online and demands she return to Canada, claiming he's fine with her trying to pursue an influencer career as long as she directs some money to a trust and gets a real team that can get her ad partnerships and keep her from saying racial epithets. Jason and the mom see this as unfair and controlling but have no recourse.
2018 Tay has to come home, the account goes silent—except for intermittent posts with clearly faked legal document screencaps accusing Chris of various kinds of abuse and asking to #FreeLilTay, all likely posted by Jason given he is on record as wanting to start that hashtag.
Silence until this week 5 years later when someone with access to the account starts the death hoax. Chris (a medium-profile lawyer who you'd think would want to respond swiftly) and the family and a "former manager" inexplicably don't clarify for a full day, then the account admits to the hoax a day later and reveals it to be a stunt to launch a Lil Tay shitcoin.
There's still mystery at the end of it all: was it the scummy former manager, the at-best well-meaning but inattentive dad, the chaotic views-addicted brother or mom? All that can be said for sure is that this girl is being exploited and failed by people all around her.
Regarding the machine translation thing: I ran a game localization company here in Tokyo for many years. "Time to edit" could be an interesting metric of judging how good/bad an AI translation is, because, I can tell you from a lot of experience, machine translation has made huge strides over the last few years (ChatGPT/DeepL in particular). But, and this is a big but, this particular usage of "time to edit" is a metric coined by Translated, a huge multinational translation firm, so this isn't some impartial third party metric. Their claims of using "time to edit" as a marker of the singularity sound a lot like clever marketing.
That is indeed a weird Barbie, but her uncle sounds even weirder.
Oh boy this makes bluesky sound so much like 2020ish Mastodon, where people were getting dogpiled for opinions such as "human sacrifice is bad" and "can you please not do horny replies to pictures of my dogs"
Cameo of garbage day/content mines old friend Rick Lax! So glad he’s still out there making bait!
I have had my Twitter account private for a while now and almost entirely the requests I get are from blank accounts with some only fans type of link in the bio
YouTube making a user-friendly change is deeply unsettling.
The NYC subway/Bernie Wagenblast story is lovely, though i believe it falsely attributes at least one clip (“please stand away from the platform edge”) by the equally charming and vocally recognizable Charlie Pellet, who kindly recorded my name in the same voice when I worked with him on a museum audioguide & podcast (undiscarded.org, episode 10, if curious).
Next up, my dream voicemail: “stand clear of the closing beep, please!”
This is gossipy news at its best - cheers
I've been watching twisted metal with my Gamer Boyfriend™, and It's okay. It has a real early 00s or late 90s feel to it, which I guess is kinda fun, but it's not something I would choose to watch otherwise. If you grew up playing the games and are in your late 30s or early 40s, you'll think it's a great time. But otherwise, I think it's a pass (I believe Players is a much better video game-related comedy). I'm not sure. Outside of middle age gamers and their partners, who are watching this show? My best guess is I could see it having an appeal to the walking dead or Fast and Furious audiences. Or maybe middle age gamers are a big enough micro audience that in the era of hyper-specific tv shows and atomized audiences, you can end up with a hit.
For whatever reason I still can't figure out how to join the discord
I watched all of Twisted Metal and enjoyed it, thank you very much.