«Felix Salmon: When did you first hear this word viral? This odd epidemiological metaphor that seems to have taken over the world?
Jonah Peretti: I’m not sure when I first heard it, but it’s one of those words that started to have a worse and worse brand, if you can think of a word having a brand. Viral marketing companies started to use it to describe a phenomenon that is actually not viral, which is making something and buying a million views for it and then saying, “This got a million views, it’s viral.” And then they’d say a million views means viral. We were thinking in terms of an actual epidemiological definition of viral, with a certain threshold of contagion that results in it growing through time. Instead of exponential decay, you get exponential growth. That is what viral is. [...] There’s always this matrix where you have the four quadrants. One dimension is, “Do people get it or do they not get it?” and then another dimension is, “Do they like it or do they hate it?”
Felix Salmon: You need a certain amount of don’t-get in order for these things to work?
Jonah Peretti: Yeah, probably.»
— BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti Goes Long | Medium
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«Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.
The other thing that happens is adjustment. You find out which part of the story works, which part to embellish, which to jettison. You fashion it. Your goal is to be entertaining. This is true for a story told at a dinner party, and it's true for stories told through movies. Don't let anyone tell you what a story is, what it needs to include. As an experiment, write a non-story. It will have a chance of being different.»
— Charlie Kaufman: why I wrote Being John Malkovich | The Guardian
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«For example, one thing Fincher made clear before filming even began was that there would be nothing of the likes of handheld filming, zooming, or Steadicam shots. Just like Spacey’s character, Frank Underwood, the look of the film needed to be cold, still, and calculating. The audience should be able to feel how kinetic everything is even if the camera’s completely still. The way in which House of Cards was filmed is almost an analogy to the show itself: there’s almost no action at all, and somehow both the show and its cinematography still find a way to keep audiences engaged.»
— The Cinematography Of House Of Cards | DIY Photography
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«What Game Of Thrones’ readers and viewers bring to the show is a privileged, heightened naïveté about the terrible mortification possible for the human body. The series’ glee, at times, in excavating these horrors is so enthusiastic that it’s also alienating. This is not violence designed for the victims. It’s violence designed for the privileged. It’s violence underwritten with carefully pointed empathy and staged for shock value, so that those who haven’t experienced mortification of the body might get a taste of its indignities. Critics of the show and the books, while making excellent points about both, have trouble with the idea that Martin created a fantasy world that is so brutal. But as I see it, the brutality is the point.»
— The violent wonderland of Game Of Thrones | The A. V. Club
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«In 1649 the French philosopher René Descartes argued that animals were automatons, lacking in feeling and self-awareness and operated unconsciously, like living machines. [...] The most resounding blow to this idea of human exceptionalism, at least in Western scientific circles, was delivered by Charles Darwin [...] Expression was one of Darwin’s last published arguments in support of his larger theory that humans were just another kind of animal. He believed that the similar emotional experiences of people and other creatures were additional proof that we shared animal ancestors. [...] In Expression Darwin described surliness, contempt, and disgust in chimps, astonishment among Paraguayan monkeys, love among dogs, between dogs and cats, and between dogs and humans. Perhaps most surprisingly he argued that many of these creatures were capable of enacting revenge, behaving courageously, and expressing their impatience or suspicion. [...] He was also convinced dogs experienced disappointment and dejection.»
— Do Animals Suffer From Mental Illness? | Medium
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