The Left Sidebar Isn’t Fixed

Peek-a-boo

When I scroll through my timeline, why is it that the top bar follows me everywhere, but Trending Topics and my Compose new Tweet text box don’t? The only thing that should be scrollable on New Twitter is the Timeline. Remember on Old Twitter, if you clicked on a Tweet or User, the info would pop up in a panel on the right? If you scrolled then, the info panel stayed in place. Well, that’s what the left sidebar should do now. Why do I lose valuable information like Trending Topics and gain empty space if I go scanning old tweets?

Trending Topics Disappear Under Connect

The new @Reply/Mentions tab is called Connect. That’s where I like to spend most of my time, so I don’t have to read all of Donald Trump’s tweets whining about Obama and the economy.

Now I have no idea what Justin Bieber is up to!

If I hang out on Connect all day, I won’t know what’s going on in the world, unless someone tweets it at me. The Trending Topics list doesn’t appear here. I’m guessing it’s a marketing ploy since timeline ads aren’t served to you unless you’re actually looking at your timeline. Twitter doesn’t want you to use Connect as your default view. That’s what Home is for. Still, I shouldn’t lose information when I switch over to check my replies.

New Follows Are Interactions

I suppose technically they are an interaction. But the annoyance here comes from seeing the “42 new Interactions” message only to be disappointed with new spambot followers when clicking it.

Why must you tease me?

Of course, I could use the Mentions sub-section, but then I’d miss out on Retweets and Favorites. I preferred Old New New Twitter when the activity was refreshed automatically. This way, the new followers would casually pass by on the screen. The call-out for me to click to see new interactions, though, fills me with anticipation and suspense that is often for naught.

I Still Don’t Know When I Receive a Message

The biggest problem I’ve always had with Twitter has been with Direct Message alerting. There never was any. That was the main reason I got the Android app. Even if I’m sitting in front of my computer, I needed an alert to tell me I’ve got a new message. Otherwise, I might leave someone hanging for eternity.

Is that a notification or are you just happy to see me?

New Twitter improved on this somewhat, but still dropped the ball. The Direct Message notification light is hardly noticeable. It could easily go overlooked. And that’s not the only problem with Direct Messages on New Twitter.

Direct Message Blue Balls Are Inconsistent

Yes, New Twitter has given us all blue balls. That’s how we know which messages still need to be read when viewing our Direct Messages.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work like Facebook where reading the message from anywhere will mark it as read everywhere. I have Twitter open on multiple computers. Now, when I get home I have to re-read all the messages I received while at work.

One of you is lying to me.

An uneven number of blue balls

Yet even all of this isn’t the most annoying part of Direct Messages.

I Can’t View a Person’s Profile from a Direct Message

Who am I talking to? Who is this person that just offered me a free iPhone over Twitter? If only I could click on their name or their portrait and view their profile. Nope.

Who the Hell is this jerk?

So, there you have it. I don’t mind making progress, but let’s try not to add more mistakes. Things should get better. And there is one actual improvement. The only thing that I find truly a godsend from New Twitter:

She must be really smart

This one feature lets me know who on Twitter is worth my time. A simple check of their profile gives me the most important information I need: is this person following me? Speaking of which, are you following me? If not, you should probably get on that.

If you have any complaints or compliments for New Twitter, leave a comment below.

Maps, stars, prices….all from Google’s vast offering of ad extensions. Though Google has several extensions available to its advertisers, some unfortunately didn’t make the cut. Our crack team of investigative journalists found out just which ad extensions were ultimately rejected by Google. Who knows, maybe some will be reconsidered again down the road!

Competitors Extension

Don’t you hate how your competitors are all bidding on the same keywords as you? It can be difficult to differentiate yourself, and you may not have the money for first position CPCs. So, there’s the Competitors Extension.

Use it to talk trash about your competitors! Let them pay the high costs for first position. You can hang back and snipe at them. Of course, Google is indemnified against all legal responsibility for the content of your ads. So, that’s on you! Or it would be if this extension made it through Google Labs.

Pretty Please Extension

Anytime you asked for something as a kid, your mom would always say, “William, what do you say?” It’s a shame she never learned your name. But the magic word can greatly increase your chance of success. This extension not only would increase click-through rates, but conversions would rise too! Who could say no to that face?

Fine Print Extension

This a sneaky little bastard. Lawyers love it.

By clicking on your ad, users are agreeing to whatever terms you lay out in the fine print. So, why bother with a landing page to get that conversion? Just slap them with a breach of contract lawsuit within 30 days of when they clicked the ad and watch your conversion rate skyrocket!

Haxor Extension

The Internet elite can make excellent customers, if you can speak their language well enough to get their attention. Often secluded in a basement somewhere, these users generally resort to purchasing everything online. After all, any contact with sunlight would be defeat in their minds.

This extension would allow advertisers to translate their ad creatives into something haxor-types would be more receptive to.

Peer Pressure Extension

Everyone knows that the most powerful motivator in the world is other people. This is where Facebook has an advantage on Google in the world of advertising. But Google has been working on improving the social power of their advertising network.

Just like smoking, this ad is irresistible!

Writing wasn’t always this difficult. Clovis Galt was once a prolific writer….not to be confused with successful. As a younger man, he would save receipts from purchases. They would be folded up and stuffed into his shirt pocket. He valued them only for their blank backs. If there were useless coupons printed all along the other side, he’d toss them out. This habit ensured he had paper to write on with the pen he wore either in the same shirt pocket or atop his right ear. He needed all this paper for his ideas. Ideas came at any moment, and Clovis had to be prepared.

The screen of his tablet lit brightly, reminding Clovis of the darkness in which he’d been sitting. Surely I’ve got something here, he thought sliding his shivering finger across its surface. Tap. Tap. Tap. Swipe. Tap. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.

Nothing. Though he had stopped writing nearly two years ago, Clovis made it a point to continue noting his ideas. It was even the excuse he used for buying an expensive mobile device. His sanity told him it was just an over-sized phone without the phone. It was a waste of money, unless, he rationalized, he used it to easily jot down his great literary ideas. No more scribbling on receipts. Everything would be digitized, tagged and searchable. The time spent reviewing and organizing his handwritten blather surely would be cut in half. Instead, it seemed the number of new ideas he had were cut in half. Despite the increased efficiency, the sleek rectangle seemed to restrain his creativity.

Clovis tossed the gadget onto his bed. He rose from his seat in front of the computer, grabbing a red plastic cup. More water, he thought. That’s what I need. Hydration. He went into the kitchen and filled the half-empty cup from a pitcher of filtered water. He drank from it as he returned to his desk, but didn’t sit down. “Lisa threw her shoe at the second story window,” he said aloud. “Lisa threw her shoe at a second story window.” The or a?

Lisa was an idea from an old receipt. Several years ago, he had scribbled, “Lisa, heartbroken. Demands Needs closure. Confronts ex but learns she never knew him. Their love hasn’t happened.”

The first few weeks without writing seemed to be just a rut. Clovis knew he’d get out of it when he was ready, when he had the right story. Eventually, it was as though he had forgotten that he was a writer. He still considered himself to be one but had been in denial about the fact he hadn’t actually written anything in nearly a year. That was when his first realization came. It was time to write something. He had retrieved a couple of boxes from his storage facility on Spring Street. It was within walking distance of his apartment, so he set out on the journey to recover his forgotten ideas. Inside the boxes were many notebooks, relics of a time before technology, filled with poetry, prose and the occasional doodle. The notebooks were buried in ink-stained litter that was the result of Clovis’s past potency.

Enough time had gone by that he had forgotten much of it, and reading his old writing was like finding a lost novel of a favorite author. Clovis was struck with reassurance. His writing was good. It was entertaining and interesting. Of course, he did come across some trite composition here and there, but it was just unpolished, unfinished.

Inside those boxes was where he found Lisa. Several concepts he had started on intrigued him, but there was something special about this one. Reading over the note, he felt a strong desire to know what happens next. And that meant there was a story to be told. He had to tell it.

For whatever reason, right then and there wasn’t the time to begin. Clovis decided that he’d need to be well-rested and have plenty of time set aside to make serious progress on the project. So, his life went on, taking precedence over Lisa’s.

He decided that perhaps starting with a simple description would be easiest. “A slender woman of twenty-four walked quickly down the street, her heels”– It’s always a slender lady in heels walking down a street! He got up from the desk again and ran his fingers through his hair, partly out of frustration and partly for the warmth. After deciding against starting with the violent act of throwing a shoe at a window, Clovis had returned to the keyboard hoping for a new approach to come to him. Lisa is a quiet, calm character. Sure, she eventually erupts and throws the shoe she was wearing against the window of her assumed ex-lover, but the reader, and Lisa, would need to progress to that point. He needed to introduce her in a way that would ennoble her, and he wasn’t able to do that.

Standing around in the middle of his bedroom, Clovis thought about how he wanted to describe Lisa. She is a wonderful woman, really. The reader has no choice but to fall in love with her. She’s smart, kindhearted and beautiful in a cute and sophisticated kind of way. She’s not a “hottie”, a sex object. Her physical attractiveness transcends animalistic desire; it’s something in the realm of art, a true beauty that matches her very nature. He couldn’t think of a way to put it into words. Godlike.

When Clovis had been digging through his old ramblings, he noticed a pattern. Everything that went on to become a completed work was very much about him. There was the short story of the NYU dropout finding his own path to professional success, while finding fulfillment in his free time. There was the poem about losing a close friend at a young age. Even the obvious works of fiction, like the Old West gunslinger killing just to make a living or the unassuming accountant forced into defending his home from alien invasion, were definitely modeled after his own experiences and character. He began to wonder if he was ever truly creative or if everything was just an embellished retelling of his life, his hopes and his fears.

But Lisa isn’t him. He realized that immediately. She is a better person and far more interesting. Though he had put off writing her story for several months after rediscovering it, Clovis had used his newfangled note-taking machine to record a few revelations. He had an entire tag devoted to her, simply called, “Lisa”. Sometimes while lost in misanthropic thoughts on the subway, Lisa would guide him out from the barren landscape of cynicism. A hopeful curiosity surrounded the idea of her in his imagination. How does she know this man? Has she loved before? What does she dream about? Not every question could be answered, but a few good answers came to him at times. He would diligently tap them into his digital companion.

Prose was what he needed now, though. He picked the tablet back up from the bed where he had tossed it moments earlier. Words, not ideas, he thought as he pulled up the “Lisa” tag in his notepad program. There were trivial notes about Lisa, such as those stating that she had red hair and that she was born on January 22nd. The year was deliberately left out because, in Clovis’s mind, Lisa is timeless. She’s twenty-four years old now, and when someone reads her story five years from now, she’ll be twenty-four.

There was a note all about her romantic interest, Louis Avery. The first name was a reference to Clovis’s own, being a variant of his. However, it was important that it was just a way to add his signature to the story, a kind of calling card. Louis Avery was nothing like Clovis Galt. For starters, when Lisa comes to Louis raving about the love they had shared, a love only she seems to remember, Louis is unaffected emotionally by it. It’s only after spending more time with her does he begin to fall in love. Clovis would have fallen in love immediately at the thought of being loved by someone. Then, there was Louis Avery’s job: sales. It was something Clovis could never do. The dishonesty would prove impossible, or at least succeeding at it would. Clovis could tell a lie, just not well. He always preferred the truth, and pretending to think or feel something he didn’t was a skill he lacked. That might make Louis sound like a jerk, just another sleazy salesman. Well, that was Clovis’s plan. The reader is supposed to believe that there’s no way this incredible creature would have fallen in love with a seemingly superficial phony. Not knowing whether the love they had was real or just a fabrication in Lisa’s mind was a central component to the story. So, making the relationship seem impossible had to be an early stroke of the writer’s brush. As the reader gets deeper into the narrative they’ll learn the truth about Louis Avery. Instead of hating him for being a bamboozler who callously ignores the beloved protagonist, readers will find that he has other, important obligations. And they’ll lose any sympathy for the victims of his charisma and quick tongue, who are all self-important socialites voluntarily throwing away their undeserved money to grab useless status symbols.

Could I start with Louis? It didn’t make sense to him, but the night seemed to be wasting away without any progress being made. Clovis was getting desperate. He just needed one good line to kick things off. Then, it would be easy.

Clovis began to think that starting out with the sickly Mrs. Avery would offer a good scene. He worried that the revelation of Louis having a dying mother whose treatment he pays for wouldn’t be as strong if it happens upfront. Clovis wanted to ease the reader into understanding the situation Louis is in, offering it as an explanation, an answer to his initial aloofness. He doesn’t have time for silly romance. His mother is sick, and with one sibling in jail and the other working a minimum-wage job in between stints in rehab, a lot of responsibility falls on him. This revelation would allow forgiveness of his earlier behavior. No, Clovis thought. “Can’t start with Louis.”

Perhaps a distraction, he thought. After all, he hadn’t any momentum to lose just yet. Clovis checked his email and was happy to find that a new message was waiting.

It was spam. He quickly checked the box next to the message and clicked “Delete”. He then switched to some other tabs, browsing the web pages already opened on his computer. He refreshed a few to see if there were any updates. He also closed a couple. One was the definition of “incongruous”. He had known that the word meant dissonant, being incompatible or opposed. He was curious about the connotations, though. He needed to make sure he understood the exact definition. It was a word that had been considered in an early thought for the beginning of Lisa’s story. “The lovers’ memories of their shared passion were incongruous.” Ultimately, Clovis decided that sounded too calculating, like a simple boolean test answering with “false”.

He was getting hungry now. He’d already eaten supper hours ago. Sleep would need to come soon. If he ate anything more, he’d be awake all night. Clovis always found it difficult to sleep after a meal. It was as though digestion needed his full, waking attention. His stomach wasn’t growling. That was a good sign. It meant he still had time to call it a night before having to give in and commit to another meal. He drank water, hoping that would help hold off starvation. He just needed enough time to figure out how to start this story. The beginning was all he needed now. The rest would fall into place later.

Getting the explanation right would be the most important part. Clues would need to be laid carefully throughout the story, so that when he finally comes out and says why only Lisa remembers the romance, it all immediately comes together. To ready some of that foundation with the first words would be a genius move. He thought hard about how to make that happen.

The story was too surreal for him. He enjoyed reading fantasy, but never wrote any himself. Clovis had written several works of fiction, but they were always grounded firmly in reality. The farthest he’d ever gotten from reality had been a couple of science fiction novels he had completed while attending college. They were his only real accomplishments from that time in his life, even though they were never published. Science fiction, while perhaps far-fetched, was not necessarily pure fantasy. Magic was made possible through technology, not supernatural forces. That minor distinction was enough to make Clovis comfortable writing the genre.

The supernatural element was what made Lisa’s story so difficult for Clovis. He had told himself that it would be a good step for him. He needed to learn to write within a looser reality. It would release his creativity, free it from the confines of Newtonian mechanics. He reviewed the notes again, this time focusing on the ones that explained the magic behind the plot.

More details were in the backstory than he’d remembered. One note, titled “Magic Stuff”, had eight paragraphs of information. He winced at the realization almost none of this would actually appear in the book. It was all background notes, designed to give him a better understanding of the story. The readers were never meant to know these details. In truth, they served more to settle his own uneasiness over the aspects of the story that were incongruous to the natural order of his world. That was the reason he created the gods. He named them Era and Schick. Like the strong and weak nuclear forces, they were fundamental to the Universe’s design. Through these two immortal lovers Clovis found the motivation for his heroine’s predicament.

In the kitchen, Clovis searched his cabinets for food. He was thinking that he should have just gone to bed, but a feeling of anticipation kept him awake. An important thought was slowly developing inside him. Rather than calling it quits, he had decided to hunt down a small snack. He looked over several unappetizing non-perishables that he didn’t even remember buying.

During his search, he went over the argument between his two gods. It happened every few billion years, he imagined. Though they clearly loved each other, disagreements would be unavoidable. This one, however, was notably bad. Era began to wonder eons ago whether her companion would love her had he others to choose from. It was a doubt she had ignored, nearly forever. Clovis decided on vienna sausages.

He didn’t know why he had them. They were not a food he particularly enjoyed. However, the small size and easy-open can made them an appealing answer to his pressing hunger.

The backstory remained his focus as the toothpick pressed into the salty meat blend. It gave Clovis the leverage to lift the sausage out of the can. Not consulting his notes, he remembered how the confrontation resulted in emotional turmoil. That turmoil was embodied in the giant electrical storm that engulfed the Universe. Schick tried to console Era by assuring her that their love was genuine. That wasn’t the only problem, though. It was merely the catalyst that unleashed an eternity of questions and grievances. After the emotions calmed, a decision was reached. Despite the bickering over trivial matters, the initial point was valid. Schick and Era both needed to know. Would they love each other if they had other options? A new solar system was born that night, and the gods vanished.

With his stomach satisfied, Clovis felt doubly inclined to create the first words of his epic tale. It was unfortunate, he thought, that Era and Schick would be left out of it. Only Clovis would know that they were actually the main characters. Though Lisa has a rush of memories when she’s hit by a bolt of lightning, it doesn’t bring complete awareness. In fact, the only awareness it gives her is the awareness of truly being in love. So, when she and Louis Avery kiss for the first time, neither they nor the readers would realize their identities. Even if another storm were to arouse their complete memories, Clovis knew the couple would choose to stay and live with the true love that can’t be found in Eternity.

And then he had it!

Clovis set his fingers on the keys. He repeated it in his head a few times, checking to see that the pacing was correct. It seemed right to him, better than right. The cold air blew over his shoulders and onto his hands, but Clovis didn’t notice. His thoughts were focused. The entire story was playing out in his mind, all deriving from the initial words. Lisa’s life was pulling the emotion from within him, and it felt incredible. Smiling and confident, Clovis Galt typed out the perfect first sentence.

A republic functions on the principle that elected officials represent the people. There are and always have been threats to that representation. However, it’s particularly disappointing when one of our defenses against those threats becomes one of our biggest obstacles to honest representation. I’m talking about the Free Press. Meant to be a powerful champion of the public, it has grown into a corrupt manipulator of public thought.

A recent example of media infringement on our true and free representation is the GOP debate that took place last night at Dartmouth. In this instance, Bloomberg and Washington Post chose to filter the message by excluding specific candidates.

As a strong supporter of Governor Gary Johnson, I was upset. But as a patriot, I was furious. How can Bloomberg and the Washington Post get away with this? We let them. That’s how. I didn’t want to let them, so I did what I could to inject another voice into the discussion. I ran Promoted Tweets during the debate.

I wasn’t the only one. Mitt Romney was fortunate enough to have the spare change to throw at Twitter, as if locking down the mainstream media’s support wasn’t enough.

I was very happy to see Governor Gary Johnson turn to Reddit to answer questions during the debate. He was also active on Twitter. And the first time he was excluded from a debate, he answered all the debate questions via YouTube. This is a guy that doesn’t have a problem with transparency!

Also excluded was Fred Karger and Buddy Roemer.

It’s often said that freedom isn’t free. I can tell you that it costs $92. Of course, that only bought me a small voice against the deafening shroud of the Entertainment Media. If we all worked together our voice can’t be muted.

On Occupy Wall Street:

On Ron Paul:

On Potential Senate Run:

On Vetoes:

On Gay Rights:

On the War on Drugs:

On His First Action in Office:

As of this posting, the AMA thread received 9,087 up votes and 7,602 down votes. It has 4328 comments. Governor Johnson made 31 comments so far, with an average of 225 up votes each. The Gary Johnson specific subreddit received an increase of 240 subscribers.

View his user page here and the entire AMA thread here.

At first, I blamed Steve Carell. However, it soon became apparent that there was more than a lack of time due to surprise guests preventing Mr. Zampanides from appearing. The show’s star Conan O’Brien himself seems to be a part of the Steve Zampindes bumping conspiracy. In what would have been the debut of Zampanides not only did announcer Andy Richter mispronounce his name during the opening, but O’Brien left him out of the guest lineup following the monologue. There was clear disrespect for the multi-talented professional from the start. After the musical performance, O’Brien apologized to Steve Zampanides. In following shows, O’Brien would attempt to rush through announcing Steve Zampanides without giving the audience time to applaud. If they managed to get some claps in, he would laugh it off and sarcastically say, “Oh, I know you’re excited for him.” Night after night, O’Brien would half-heartedly apologize to Steve Zampanides at the end of the show.

I wasn’t alone in noticing this curious treatment of an aspiring guest. The YouTube and Facebook lit up with “Fan Correction” videos and status updates asking about Zampanides and accusing O’Brien of trickery and deception.

Well, we finally have some answers. A website popped up at www.stevezampanides.com. As of now, the site is suffering server problems and is inaccessible (probably being moved off of tumblr?). The Google cache shows us what was there:

Coming soon? Not if Conan has his way.

The website links to his Twitter account. With less than 700 followers and no verification from Twitter, we can’t be certain this is our man. The tweets, though, seem real.

Are these the tweets of an imaginary man?

Now, this is where things get awfully suspicious. Despite having a website coming soon and a seemingly real Twitter account, a little Web forensics reveals the very man behind Steve Zampanides is the same man behind Team Coco’s online presence. The whois information for the domain has it registered to a John Wooden on the Warner lot.

www.TeamCoco.com

Either Steve Zampanides isn’t real or Conan had him murdered in order to usurp his fame for personal gain.

Let’s go back for a moment to the Google Cache of the Zampanides website. You’ll notice there is a Twitter bird image linking to his Twitter profile. The URL of this bird is http://diekipper.com/steve/twit_bird.png and the URL of the Zampanides’s signature is http://diekipper.com/steve/sig.png. Sure, this could be simple hotlinking, but why would diekipper.com have a subfolder called “steve”? The owner of this website isn’t John Wooden. It’s Matthew Kipper!

He also works for Team Coco. And what exactly does Matt Kipper do for them? He’s not just on robot patrol. It’s far more sinister.

He’s the Manager of Social Media & Integrated Marketing. You know what that means? Steve Zampanides is nothing but a social media tool designed to integrate marketing into us.

More Conan goodness:

Is Conan Gay?
Don’t Blame Us for Not Watching

The product came in a box inside a box four times its size and packed with pink packing peanuts. So far, exceeding expectations, it brought me the double joy of pink “ghost turds” (hours of fun) and of knowing that I’m pulling my weight in this global warming effort.

After hours of playing with the shipping protection, it was finally time to use the camera. Yet I didn’t actually need the slightest bit of security. Who would want to harm me? So, I had to let my paranoia take over, if only to offer a fair review. They were out there. They were after me. They would stop at nothing, except the threat of being recorded and put up on the YouTube.

I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of stealing my property, identity or worse!

My bacon.

Thirty-six hours later, and my bacon is still untouched.

It proved itself in the field, and that’s what you want in a surveillance companion. You can’t take a chance on some green piece of equipment, not when you have bacon on the line.

Of course, there is more to any good security system than just taking a bunch of pictures. You want some degree of cinematography. We’re not filming a Best Picture winner here, but color would be nice. This way I can tell if being robbed was a hate crime or not.

Unfortunately, the cables were confusing. Apparently, a power supply is sold separately, or I need a special DVR unit, or something. So, I couldn’t actually try out the camera. The good news is bad guys don’t know that (unless they’re reading my blog). Even non-functioning security cameras can deter crime. The mere presence of this bad boy sends a shiver up the spines of would be criminals. “Yikes!” they scream, fleeing from the metaphorical spotlight. Publicity is a thief’s worst enemy. That’s why they always wear those eye masks.

This clown didn't have a non-functioning camera.

The best part, though, is that now I can finally build my own Pearl station, like the one from LOST. Just imagine what great scientific experiences I could run! There was a reason I majored in psychology. Maybe now I can finally get an honorary degree by violating the privacy of others for science.

All in all, it’s exactly what I want in a security camera. It secures my bacon. It let’s me feel like John Locke. And it didn’t cost me anything. This is indeed a super awesome camera. Now, I can finally sit back and literally watch the crime not happen to me, thanks to the protection this little guy offers me and mine.

Product Information

AP-LIRD1B – Sony 1/3” CCD White Plastic IR Dome Camera

DIMENSION: 94 x 68.5(H) mm
WEIGHT: 200g
POWER SOURCE: DC12V 250mA
WHITE BALANCE: Auto
GAMMA CORRECTION: 0.45
VIDEO OUT: Composite Signal (1.0Vp-p, 75 Ω)
SCANNING SYSTEM: NTSC:525 Lines, 60 Field/Sec
IMAGE SENSOR: Sony 1/3” CCD
HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION: 420 TV Line
IR LED: 23 PCS
IR SERIES DISTANCE: 65 Ft.
LENS: Board Lens 3.6mm

“Weren’t you the one who said that I would be nothing? Well, I’m about to prove you wrong.”

And she already did that. The amount of fame she got, whether it lasts or not, makes about 99% of the world’s population insignificant by comparison. How many people know your name? Exactly. But she’s not rubbing that point in your face, though she’d be entitled to. Her new song focuses on a celebration of herself. Regardless of how the world receives her, this is her moment, something she’s always wanted. Everyone dreams of being famous, but few make it.

As a lifelong cynic, I’d love to have heard a more bitter song from her. She had a lot of harsh criticism, and still does. If it were me, I’d want to tell the world, “Screw you. Hate me all you want, but you’ll never experience anything like what I have.” Her new song has that message, but in a subtle and more positive way. While the song acknowledges haters, particularly calling them out in the bridge (“haters…can’t talk to you right now…I’m doing big things, things you never dreamed of”), it focuses primarily on the uplifting and self-affirming message of “this is my moment”.

You have to feel the honesty in this song because it’s there. This is her moment, and she knows it. Win or lose, she got to play the game, and that’s more than any peon could hope for. I’m hoping she does “blow up”, despite the arbitrary hatred she’s received. A quick reminder: musical taste is subjective. In my opinion, she’s a lovely girl who deserves this shot and is handling her fortunate opportunity with classy optimism. While normally classy optimism would be something I’d despise, I’m willing to overlook it because I also love her music.