all hail our koala overlords!

i mean, you gotta understand that a big part of what i'm doing right now is saving the comments before they disappear, rather than deleting them.

almost everything on youtube will eventually be deleted. when google+ and youtube were integrated, that didn't matter - the comments remained on google+. even when the video was removed. i would not have moved here, otherwise.

but, now there's a link to "view comments on youtube" that just goes to a 404.

if i don't do this, i will lose all of the comments.

and, so why keep commenting here at all?

like, i need to be clear.

i haven't lost a couple of comments.

i've lost hundreds of threads - many that carried on for months, with dozens of people.

hundreds of pages worth of writing.

hours - days, weeks - of my time.

and, i'm not happy about that.

if you're a heavy user of the comment section on youtube, take a flip through your google+ profile. it's no doubt a bloodbath.

this isn't a safe place to type.

so, it's kind of wrongheaded for you to think i'm destroying my profile.

i'm saving my writing.

i've cleared off the first six months of 2014. and, even with the dozens of threads that i've lost, it's over 280 pages. that suggests i should get over a thousand pages off by the time i'm done - and that i've lost who knows how much.

what i'll say, at least, is that most of what i've lost seems to be related to album discussions rather than politics. i'm not crying persecution or anything. i'm not being targeted. it was just incredible incompetence on the programming side of things, and it's left me with absolutely no confidence in the platform.

again: up until a point in late august, 2015,  videos going down did not delete the comments. so, comments could be made safely at youtube with the understanding that they would be archived at google+. with no warning that i received, the products were separated at the snap of a finger and all of the archived comments were deleted. these were comments that the previous system had safely stored in the google+ profiles, even though the videos were down.

the reality is that the separation deleted large amounts of google+ content.

i've been posting hyperlinks at google+ since, waiting for a youtube comment feed to appear. it's not happening. so, i'm cutting my losses and getting out.

as i've explained a few times, this page will relaunch once it's wiped - before july, anyways. probably more like april. but, it will be focusing purely on a perspective of 1996, moving forwards.

you know where my vlog site is.

the following page, however, may be a better continuity, as it will explore my cd collection - records i've actually purchased at some point.

https://plus.google.com/117744600467962080117/posts
https://www.youtube.com/user/dkdghfhjfdhfchlfa
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtoy6ABQovnt5dNL2fUbRir0gcYQUleEa

as i'm going through and archiving posts one by one, i'm running across some videos that are set to "private". i cannot access these discussions.

this is different than videos that have been deleted or profiles that have been removed. unfortunately, google fucked this up. before it disentangled youtube from google, those posts could be read on google+ - even if the videos had been deleted. now, they've been removed along with the videos.

part of the reason i moved to youtube was because i liked the integration. part of the reason i'm moving out is that the separation makes the platform useless. as these posts come down, the comments will disappear and become unrecoverable. so, what's the point of making them?

examples of destroyed content:

1) i had a long discussion about punk rock on a video for death. this was permanently destroyed when the video was taken down on copyright infringement.
2) i had a long discussion about language on a video for la dispute. destroyed, in a copyright takedown.

so, why would i continue to use the platform when i know the content will eventually be destroyed?

i'm going to put out a public request that the videos set to private are temporarily republished (and i'm informed of it) so that i can get the conversation out. as the page strips down, these posts set to private will reveal themselves as all that is left.

i'm not going to be able to recover any of this.

another thing that's happening repeatedly is that threads that i muted have evaporated altogether.

as a consequence of all of this, i've actually made the decision to refrain from using the comments section at all. google/youtube does not seem to have the slightest interest in developing the platform as a permanent record. to be frank, i'm not sure what the point of having comments is at all if the author is to lose all their content at the whim of somebody else.

once this page is wiped down, i will be commenting entirely on my own site - and those comments will be sent out solely through rss.

please follow my lead on this. let's decentralize...

i'm not going to pretend that i thought the move to google/youtube would be permanent. but, it's absolutely inconceivable - and totally unacceptable - to have entire conversations disappear like this.

i mean, imagine waking up and finding out that half of your facebook profile had just disappeared because of copyright claims. or that all of the tweets that you made about a specific topic have evaporated.

they had a good idea in integrating. it's not up to me to tell them how to run their network, either. but, the way they separated the two products was a disaster.

i would have never moved here if it wasn't for the integration - i want a feed of my comments. and, i gave them some time to work it out. but it's not being fixed. so, i'm out of here.

streaming media sites like spotify are not the future of independent music. rather, what i'm doing at this very moment - telling you to buy a couple of my records or to stop wasting my time, to fuck off and to stop following me on the internet - is the future of independent music.

as consumers, you have a choice to keep art alive. if you choose not to do this, the era of art as an accessible product for middle class consumption will end. the era of consumption will end, altogether.

this is the future that the internet is leading us towards:

Music is banned in Khomeini's Iran
On the grounds that it stimulates the brain
We've done him one better in the land of coke & honey
using music to put people's brains to sleep

Ever wonder why commercial radio's so bad?
It's 'cause someone upstairs wants it that way
If the Doors or John Lennon were getting started now
The industry wouldn't sign 'em in a million years

So what do we get
GOVERNMENT MUSIC
Christian censorship and taxed blank tapes
Shoppers strung out on our false hopes
Will flock to obey

i've got a start on wiping the old deathtokoalas profile. the videos are all gone. the truth is that it's going to be a while.

03. quitting smoking (dvd 3)

on second thought, i'm going to wait for this page because i'm going to have to do it all over again when i finish the period one disc, anyways.

i'm just going to get right to wiping out the deathtokoalas page, instead.

i just finished wiping/cleaning my main profile. that's done. this is up next. and, that will be it for my facebook wipe. it will be monthly cleaning after that.

this page will continue to exist as it does. i will create a new page for the alter-reality.

season 3

just another thing.

i've changed the profile to allow for my birth date, which is 1981, to be public. that's not an error. i am actually 35 years old. really.

i'm entirely aware that i literally look half of my age. or, let me rephrase that. i look precisely like a fashionable (and single) 35 year old woman - but i can very easily be mistaken for an unruly-looking 17 year-old boy. is that really particularly unusual?

while i acknowledge that there are some advantages to looking young, especially considering that i do not at all act my age, i also need to point out that i'm at the age where a significant generation gap exists. i'm not 17 years old. i'm 35 years old. i identify as generation x (people born from 1965-1985). that might be your parents' generation. and, i'm consequently a little bit leery about being hit on by 17 year-olds. or 25 year-olds, for that matter. of either gender.

and it does happen. which is why i'm pointing this out.

so, yeah. i'm old. we don't need to draw attention to it. but, it would be nice if we all realize it. if you see me out or about, just understand that i'm there to see the show and nothing more.

no: i don't want to hang out with a bunch of kids. i'm friendly. sure. but, no.

no: i don't want to get hit on by kids.

and, no: i'm not going to hit on children.

but, when you center your life around music as much as i have, you don't grow out of it. it's a lifelong thing. i'll be continuing to attend small shows when i'm 50, so long as i don't get bounced. not for the people, and not for the scene. just for the tunes.

this message will self-deconstruct....

it's not just an internet/distance thing. don't be embarassed if you thought i was in my 20s or younger. i get it all the time.

when i went to see jimmy chamberlain a few months ago, i ended up having a smoke outside with a kid from in the bar. i could see he was in his late teens. i ended up giving him a pumpkins lesson (he was there to see the sax player). but, his jaw just dropped when i told him my age - because it opened up a generation gap. he thought he was talking to a peer, at first. then, he felt like he was talking to an adult, and that changed his entire perspective of the situation. he visibly didn't like the idea of "smoking an adult".

then there's the kid in the unit upstairs. he seems to be in high school. and, it took him over two years for him to realize i wasn't in his age group. he seemed offended that i was keeping my distance. he kept obviously waiting for me to ask him to come hang out. but, i hardly want to hang out with the high school kid upstairs. it's just that he had no idea, right. he can't be more than 18, but he interpreted me as in his peer group; the feeling was not at all mutual - i immediately interpreted him as a kid. a few months ago, i gave him a link to my bandcamp site and i think he finally figured it out, because he's seemed more cognizant, since.

so, it's not just you. it's everybody. online. in real life. it's just how i look. and, in fact, it runs in the family - it's those finnish bottleneck genes. everybody from finland is like this.

if you like the pictures i am posting, i will block you and repost the pictures.

fuck off.

i want zero user interaction on this site. it's a read-only cv.

i just can't figure out how to disable likes.

fucking creeps.

go jerk off somewhere else.

this is historical documentation. that's all.

explanation of things...

new channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinQSeEtF0vSN1XVhQGfwKA

i just want to clarify that the reason i've set these videos to private is that the channel was not directing traffic to bandcamp as well as i hoped it would.

as a musician, trying to figure out how to exist in a world of streaming media is a delicate balance. streaming may be good for consumers, but it is not good for artists.

i do not care what is good for consumers. this all requires a little give and take, though - of course. in order for it to make sense for me to have my music on youtube, i need to be getting sales at bandcamp. for a musician, youtube is not a business model - it is an advertising platform. and, as an advertising platform, this approach is not working, largely because people are misinterpreting what it is.

see, people are interpreting this as the place where a product is published. they think i should get paid through ad revenue. it is this misunderstanding that is the core of the problem. if people understood that the youtube video is the ad for the product, and the product is available by clicking through the links, the system would work as intended.

so, what i've done is change my advertising delivery to something that:

(1) does not give away too much of my actual product for free.
(2) can act as a product, itself.

this video will not be up forever. rather, this site will go completely quiet within a few weeks - once i've archived and deleted all of the comments. the site will then relaunch within 4-6 months in the context of a historical based-alternate reality. but, most of the uploads will only be samples.

for the musician, youtube is still an experiment. and, i've deduced that it's a failed one.

and, for the inevitable "unsubbed" response, let me ask you this:

how many records did you buy?

i'm going to guess that you didn't buy any. so, why, exactly, do you think i want you to subscribe, or care that you've unsubbed?

you may want to note that i actually never asked you to subscribe in the first place. what i did ask you to do was go to my bandcamp site.

see, this is exactly the problem: you think i want you to subscribe. you think i want your views. no. these things are of precisely zero value. they're numbers on a screen that cannot be converted into anything tangible.

what i want is for you to go to my store and buy my records. and, if you don't want to do that, you can kindly fuck off.

in fact, i'm going to be wiping this page down altogether. it will relaunch in a different context some time in the summer.

in the mean-time, i'll be continuing to vlog.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinQSeEtF0vSN1XVhQGfwKA

29-01-2016: the return of the son of archiving

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

on second thought, i'm not going to need that other page because i'm rewinding back to 1996.

i know.

hear me out: this will give me time to prepare everything properly. and, it will allow me to construct a full alter-reality. plus, it's twenty years. round.

i know you're probably more interested in new material, and i'll be getting to it soon. 11 days before i need to figure shit out.

but, on the bright side: that's three weeks, cold turkey.

i needed an alter-reality to escape to to quit.

three weeks...

i'm making a bold move in setting all of my videos up to the alter-reality point to private. but, the reality is that i don't get paid for hits. and, it makes the presentation more thematic.

the whole thing is going to flatten out - i'm going to be wiping this page down, as well, to a point where it's only relevant in the context of the alter-reality.

things will come into focus as the history does.

this is a grand experiment. and, of course, this note will not exist forever.

i know it looks psychotic right now, but wait a few weeks and it will make sense. if you've been here up to this point, i suppose you're privy to the future in the alter-reality....

the politics page is done. kaput. deleted.

i dropped it all in temporary files, so i've got hundreds of pages to merge into the main file. but it's done...

that's two weeks, btw.

cold turkey.

it's in the two-three week window that i usually crack, although i must say this: i don't usually go that long as total, cold turkey. there's usually some kind of break in there. i might buy one of those $1.25 cigars, or maybe bum a smoke when i'm out. normally, what it really means is "two-three weeks without buying a pack".

but, this is totally cold turkey. so, it's different. and, i think i'm consequently just about there.

i guess i have about another week of data archival ahead of me. so, that will be three weeks - cold turkey. and, i can't see why i'd look back after that...