Dropped a Pin in my Coffee on Twitter

OR:

The Painful Sting of Spam

When I posted my Ko-Fi link to Twitter and pinned it to the top, I was very surprised by the response it got. It got a number of likes, and even a few retweets. I was very appreciative of this. Unfortunately, it also got replies in the form of spam. A self-proclaimed artist who steals most of his assets and then slaps his own name on them has a habit of posting spam links on forums on Thingiverse. He's been banned from Thingiverse at least twice by now, and had some of his models taken down on other sites for violating the Creative Commons agreements on his stolen assets. I've written about him several times and talked with many of the artists he's ripped off. I've openly mocked him, for which I make no apology, and he's done absolutely nothing to prove me wrong. 

There was retribution, however. It's extremely petty retribution, but annoying in its toxicity nonetheless. 

The way many sites handle spam is not to delete the comment so much as obfuscate it. The first time I saw this was on DeviantART, when I was dealing with an art thief and all-around bully who didn't quite understand how comments worked. What would normally have gone in a private message or even the main comment thread on my profile page went straight onto my most recent upload. I didn't want to outright delete the comment because that would leave a "comment deleted by artist" label, which looks really tacky and potentially makes it look like I'm censoring criticism rather than cleaning up spam. The matter's academic by now since DeviantART handles comments a little differently since then, and this particular individual had been banned before for similar behavior, so now those comments have their own special sort of "There Once Was a Hole Here" label. In short, he's gone and I get to save face. 

Bringing it all back to the semi-current situation (I did this circa October of last year and kind of forgot about it until today while rearranging my Wordpress page), this spammer replied to my pinned tweet about my Ko-Fi page with his own damn site. Now, you would think I could simply delete a tweet that is a reply to my own post, but Twitter isn't set up that way; every reply is a comment unto itself, so to speak. This isn't necessarily a problem, except that when it comes to spam, what I would hope should be an obvious thing to spot, Twitter likes to give the benefit of the doubt a little too much. It's funny to me how much people complain about Twitter being trigger-happy with suspending accounts and deleting tweets that are barely offensive, while I can't seem to get spam off my own pinned tweet. 

If I pin a tweet linking my own Ko-Fi page, how does a reply that's nothing more than a URL to someone else's website not qualify as spam? Better question, when he replies two or three times with the same URL to his own site, how is that not spam? Why does that report need to be queued? Harassment and bullying can have a lot of reasonable doubt to it when it isn't outright racist or life-threatening, but a URL with no context posted multiple times not only to me, but to several others virtually picked at random should be as open and shut a case as it gets. 

It may seem that the obvious solution would be to block the user in question. Sure, but blocks aren't retroactive. Yeah, my page would effectively be invisible to him, as he would also be to me, but everything he's already posted as replies to my tweets are still there, and still visible to anyone else. It's literally the same problem as reporting his replies as spam. The only difference is that the spam may eventually be dealt with, whereas if I block, the best I can hope for is he gets banned and all his tweets receive the unperson treatment. 

Sadly, it seems Twitter is holding onto a very archaic idea of what spam is. They're more than welcome to prove me wrong, but it's based on whether or not they think there's a real person behind it or simply a bot programmed by someone and left to run. I don't know if these are really a thing anymore (I haven't seen them on Twitter in years, and they only cropped up on Instagram for about a month before disappearing), but there used to be these "promotional service" accounts that would temporarily take control of your account and tweet a self-promotion on your behalf. It would seek out relevant hashtags and then add your message as a reply. For example, if you were trying to push your 3D printing services, your stock reply would show up attached to any tweet that used the hashtag "3DPrinting" or whatever. If this sounds like a bot, that's exactly what it is, but here is where things get a bit Kafkaesque. The bot works at a speed that is only about equal to a human being. That is, there's enough of a delay between posts that it could just as easily be done by someone casually browsing the hashtags and typing up the reply themselves. The idea is twofold, that this tricks any automatic algorithms searching for hummingbird levels of communication, and that it doesn't violate Twitter's terms of service anyway because it's self-throttling. 

I've heard some sects of the Amish have a similar attitude about technology, that there's nothing wrong with them using a machine to do a job, so long as it only works as well as a person or an animal. That's fine for them, but Twitter isn't trying to maintain a lifestyle consistent with a particular era of history. Spam in 1998 is no different than the spam of 2018, and every bit as irritating and unwelcome. The only difference is that I am fundamentally lord and master of my e-mail's inbox, while my social media page is a little more democratic by comparison. The former is a letter SLIPPED UNDER my door while the latter is a wheat-pasted flyer SLAPPED ON my door. 

My point is Twitter may be more aggressive with spam than I am giving them credit for, but my experience has not given me any reason to rethink my position to the contrary. When I flag something as spam, and it only hides it from my view until the report is deemed worthy of action at a later point in time (possibly never), that is not even addressing half the problem. I don't want my front door used as someone else's billboard, and the fact that I can't see it from inside my house is not peace of mind. 

Basically, I wanted to use a paint scraper, but had to get a new front door. I deleted the pinned tweet (which I hated doing), reposted it (likely to the annoyance of followers), and repinned it (effectively erasing all the likes and retweets along with the spam). Twitter, we need a better solution than this. 

Don't Patreon-ize Me (totes not begging)

Thank you for your Patreon-age.

Patreon made a big change to their platform, and it's getting a less-than favorable reaction. Their menu for both their desktop site and mobile app looks chunkier and geometrically harsher. Most notably, though, is their logo, which one Twitter user felt made it unrecognizable when compared to the original. 

Tip for the staff at @patreon: When thousands of vendors depend on your branding, don't mutilate it. #newpatreonlogo pic.twitter.com/eBbbpRsSuD

— Jon Perry - SC (@StatedClearly) June 14, 2017

I can understand his point of view, especially considering the logo looks less like a "P" and more like a lower-case "r". If I didn't know any better, I would have thought it was a new logo for ReasonTV. Then again, even before the rebranding, the Patreon logo tended to have trouble standing out, blending right in with the Google+ tile or even Blogger's icon. They're both reddish-orange squares with white lines in them. There would be times when I would click on a social link for what I thought was Patreon and found it to be a Blogger page. 

Besides, let's face it, more people have heard of Patreon than Reason (and I say that as a fan of ReasonTV). 

As for the new logo, it's certainly striking. White backgrounds tend to be a bit of a no-no in logos unless the line-work is strong (read: dark) so it can be used as a watermark or stamped onto simple stationary. Despite that, I like how the logo looks a little like crate paper with its muted, seemingly-translucent color scheme, especially that muted red-orange dot. It may not quite pop from the white the way a deeper red would (i.e., Japan's flag), but it's not lost in the great pale sea, either. The washed-out navy blue of the P's back also helps ground the whole design and helps center your eyes. Also, the more I look at it, the less I see that lower-case "r" and the more I see a stylized "P". That's the odd thing about rebranding; you can get used to almost anything. 
Many graphic designers will tell you about brand images that simply shouldn't work; Google, eBay, Yahoo, Apple's old rainbow logo, and MTV to name a few, yet with a handful of exceptions, they persist and endure. They don't necessarily rewrite any typography or design rules, but they earn their place and show that sometimes breaking the rules is how you stand out and get an edge (the iconoclast). DeviantART decided to forego having its initials in its icon and instead went a more abstract route, like if Matisse made traffic signs. It caused a stir, but down the road, it's as if it never happened, and I certainly haven't heard of anyone missing the "DA" hemisphere of old. ---Actually, I just now had the logo explained to me as the "mid-section" of a "d" sidling up to an "A" and now I feel a bit silly. 

Then again, let's face it, Seattle's Best Coffee still looks like it's advertising a blood drive, and SyFy is as stupid a name now as it was when it was announced, I don't care how good The Expanse is supposed to be. 

The point is that for all the testing and research and time invested into creating a new identity for a corporate entity, no one can afford a sharp turn or backpedal to begin with, and there is truly no good way of discerning how well a new logo will go over with audiences. People generally don't like change, and while some criticisms are more valid than others, events reveal that people can get used to an idea they were once opposed to. In the end, most of us likely weren't involved in the decision and it's not going to affect how we spend our money, so we'll either get on with our lives and carry on or we'll decide this new direction, however superficial, isn't worth our business.

Speaking of money and business....

I've debated setting up a creator's Patreon for myself. I once talked at great length about why I don't take commissions, and while I'm not motivated by money in my artwork (no artist is, it's just enthusiasm can't pay bills), I am grateful that people out there enjoy and appreciate what I do. As such, it's only fair that I offer people as many means of "supporting the cause" as possible, whether that's the share buttons on my journal pages or my DevaintART gallery or my Thingiverse profile, to more, er, direct means such as the Ko-Fi links both here and on my Twitter, the "tip designer" button on Thingiverse, my Paypal links I scatter in a few different places, and my Amazon wishlist (located in the sidebar). I've gotten a few tips here and there, and I even get asked about commissions (I'm not above making exceptions, especially to "support a cause" as it were). I've also gotten comments and other feedback such as dis/likes, up/down votes, hearts, stars, clovers and blue moons, pots of gold and rainbows, and me red ba--sorry. I'm grateful for it all and never want anyone to be shy about what they have to say about what I say and do (provided the freedom goes both ways, that's only fair). 
Going back to Patreon, what I do doesn't quite lend itself to much of a consistent output, and I don't feel like comparing the time and effort spent writing a journal entry or movie review with a painting or a comic. Thirty movie reviews in a month versus 10 digital paintings in the same month is not a quantification I feel like justifying to an audience, and I don't think you should have to entertain that concept either. As much as I like the "set and forget" nature of Patreon, even a small reward tier would simply feel like too much of an onus for me to place on someone. Maybe if I ever get to working on a regular webcomic I can commit to or I start doing livestreaming of my painting (which may happen as soon as Inktober of this year), then I'll consider it. 

Until then, thank you for visiting my page.