Journiest

8 of the Most Overrated Instagram Destinations (And Where to Go Instead)

If you don't want the unfiltered reality to leave you disappointed, you might want to skip some of these spots.

You've probably been told at some point in your life that things are not always as they appear.

And it's generally a good idea to keep in mind how easily we can be fooled by appearances. But that lesson is never more needed than when we're scrolling through instagram.

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Billie Eilish

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Certain musicians are blessed with the ability to hear, see, feel, or taste music, a variant of the neurological condition known as synesthesia.

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Culture Feature

Complicity in the Age of Streaming

Is PewDiePie complicit in the New Zealand mosque shooting? Absolutely not.

Photo by Tech Daily on Unsplash

Before murdering 49 people across two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the unnamed shooter announced via live stream: "Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie."

In the aftermath of mass shootings, it's natural to want to assign blame. Of course, first and foremost people blame the shooter. But a man doesn't just massacre 49 people in a bubble, so for most, blaming the individual isn't a good enough response. After all the individual is a product of society. So then what parts of society influenced the shooter's actions? In what corners did his hatred grow? Sure, he did the shooting, but who else is complicit?

In this particular shooting, we have some leads. First, the shooter posted a 73-page manifesto full of racist, white nationalist, and anti-Muslim rhetoric on 8chan. This offers insight into his mindset and the potential source of his radicalization. Second, the shooter streamed 17-minutes of the massacre on Facebook, the footage of which then spread around Reddit, Twitter, and various -chans. This action suggests he planned around social media – in other words, would he have pursued the attack if he didn't believe his message would receive adequate reach? And finally, there's his mention of PewDiePie. Let's start there.

Regardless of your personal opinions on PewDiePie, he bears absolutely none of the responsibility for this shooting. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous. Regardless of any prior controversies due to racist jokes, regardless of any suggestions that PewDiePie harbors alt-right sentiments, his brand does not revolve around sewing racial discourse. Whatever his personal views may be, he has never once publicly spread anti-Muslim rhetoric. That's not to say that some of his more controversial jokes and statements shouldn't be taken seriously, but rather that even the worst of them couldn't possibly make PewDiePie responsible for one of his 89+ million subscribers going on a rampage.

This is also decidedly different from an agitator like Alex Jones being considered complicit (at least in the public eye) when one of his listeners invades a pizza parlor or harasses the parent of a school shooting victim. The difference, of course, is a solid link. When an Alex Jones listener targets the parent of a school shooting victim over lies Alex Jones publicly spread about that same parent, that is a clear link. PewDiePie has never suggested that Muslims should be targeted in any way, shape, or form. Regardless of this shooters name drop, there is no clear link.

If anything, the shooter's name drop of PewDiePie was most likely an attempt to distract, bait, and sew further social discord. The shooter's manifesto is not worth summarizing. The content of his ideas is not worth discussing. His name is not worth mentioning. Don't let him accomplish his goals by siding against another person who was not involved in any way, shape, or form. You may not like PewDiePie, but this is not on him.

But if PewDiePie isn't complicit, who is? 4chan? 8chan? Facebook? Reddit? Twitter? The answer here is murkier.

Social media allows anyone and everyone to share ideas and content on an unprecedented scale. This is a great boon in many ways, giving people the capacity to connect and share interests, no matter how niche, to an extent that would have been impossible at any other point in history.

At the same time, social media, especially the kind benefitting from anonymity, allows hatred to spread at an alarming rate. People with sick ideas nurture and spread that hatred to others, using the targets of their rage as scapegoats for problems both real and imagined.

This malfeasance breeds and replicates, largely unchecked, across corners of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the various -chans. The free market of ideas means that a lot of those ideas are poison, and all too often, ingesting poison results in death. So does that make social media complicit? Probably.

One potential solution is shutting down the spaces where hate speech breeds. There's a precedent here too, as Reddit banned a large number of hate subs on their platform in 2017 and, as a result, saw a decrease in hate speech on their platform as a whole. That being said, banning communities like these from congregating in one specific place doesn't necessarily mean they won't find each other somewhere else. Short of coordinated censorship across all major social media platforms, banning hate speech entirely would be impossible. Even then, what's to stop similar sites with like-minded admins from rising up as an alternative to mainstream platforms? And is censorship the road we want to go down, even when it comes to detestable speech and ideas? After all, who decides what is and isn't right?

In that same vein, good ideas are being spread through social media too – ideas about acceptance and tolerance, exposure to new ways of thinking that unite people instead of dividing them. But is that enough? Are terrorist attacks like this one inevitable in an age where white supremacy, racism, and racial tension seem to run rampant? I don't know.


Dan Kahan is a writer & screenwriter from Brooklyn, usually rocking a man bun. Find more at dankahanwriter.com



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Music Features

BAYNK On His First North American Headlining Tour

The EDM artist opens up about his personal life and professional journey.

BAYNK - go with u [Official Music Video]
Jock Nowell-Usticke, aka BAYNK, first made waves in the EDM community when he released "Sundae" on SoundCloud and headed off on a backpacking trip around Europe. When he came back from his trip, he was surprised to find out that the song had been picked up by popular music blog HillyDilly, and BAYNK had consequently been booked for several festival performances. He rode his surprise success to the creation of another 2016 single, "What You Need," that quickly rose to number one on Hype Machine, cementing his place among the biggest names in EDM.
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Music Features

NOURI: From Refugee to Superstar

The New Zealand singer opens up about her early life, musical inpsiration, and upcoming EP.

New Zealand based singer-songwriter and breakout star, NOURI, released her debut song, "Where Do We Go From Here" just two months ago and hasn't looked back since.

The music video has received over a million plays on YouTube and hundreds of thousands of streams across all platforms—and for good reason. The song is a classic pop song made unique by NOURI's rasping, infectious voice lamenting the loss of a love that comes at the wrong time. The production is exquisitely minimalistic, with soft guitars and a dance beat that perfectly complement the singer's emotionally charged performance.

In a phone conversation with NOURI, she shared that the song came to her in a single moment of inspiration. "I was sitting in one of my friends houses one day and we were just messing around with a beat, and in my notes I'd put down 'where do we go from here?' Later, when I was looking back through my notes, I was like I actually really like this line, I'm gonna try to use it when I start singing to the melody."

From there, the song reached its fruition in just one hour. "It's so relatable, and I just felt such a level of honesty in writing it, so when I say that I wrote it in the car, it literally took me about an hour to write, and then it was finished...It came from such a personal place, which is what I always want to aim for in my music, so that my fans can really feel me in the music."

The hit music video perfectly reflects this idea, following NOURI and actor Bennett Jonas through the story of a tumultuous love affair, featuring stunning desert scenery and sizzling moments of chemistry and conflict. NOURI confirmed that the on-screen connection was very real, saying, "The actual day of the shoot was just so much fun, everyone was great and happy to be there. Bennett and I just immediately had great chemistry. He made me so comfortable and made it so fun." The steamy performance wasn't the only part of the music video that can be attributed to NOURI's talent. She confessed, "Nobody really knows this but I edited and color corrected the whole music video myself. I edited for 48 hours straight."

The singer's control over her own work and drive for perfection is part of what has made her upcoming 2019 EP so widely anticipated by fans and critics alike. When asked what we can expect to hear on the EP, NOURI laughed and said that it'll be a collection of songs that "somehow make you want to dance and cry at the same time."

Despite what her infectious enthusiasm and optimism may lead one to believe, NOURI's road to the spotlight wasn't an easy one. She spent her early years in a Syrian refugee camp before immigrating to New Zealand, and she views that time as one of the most transformative periods in her life. "I feel like I've been put in this position to be able to be a voice for people who don't have one. I want to make sure I help make everyone aware of situations like the refugee crisis, something that affected me as a child but is still happening to this day all over the world. I want to inspire people to realize you really can make it out of bad situations, you can make a change, you can make your dreams a reality."

The singer hopes that, as her career progresses, she'll be able to use her voice for good, raising awareness for important issues, but also creating music that people can connect to and, of course, dance to.

For more from NOURI, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, or Spotify.


Brooke Ivey Johnson is a Brooklyn based writer, playwright, and human woman. To read more of her work visit her blog or follow her twitter @BrookeIJohnson.



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Lorde's reimagined performance of "Melodrama" for VEVO at New York's own Electric Lady Studios

LIVE | Watch this stripped-down reimagining of the New Zealand pop star's latest effort

In collaboration with VEVO, Lorde performed six reimagined songs off her latest Melodrama in New York's own Electric Lady Studios.

The performances are as raw and vulnerably bare as you'd expect from Lorde, who released an album that quickly and suddenly shocked us all into retrospect this past June. These alternate versions of "Hard Feelings/Loveless," "Writer in the Dark", "Supercut," "Sober," "Homemade Dynamite,", and "The Louvre" coherently flow and blend into each other as parallel lives of the tracks themselves. In a behind the scenes video, Lorde remarks, ""I don't really do, like, acoustic sessions or anything, but with this record, it had roots in acoustic instruments and live musicianship."

A lot of scenes amongst the video series include Lorde dancing on a rooftop, in a white breezy gown, with a choir's most moving performance. A piano inside the studio played a significant role in the making of Melodrama, having been the same one many songs were created on. "A lot of Melodrama is really about taking these kind of traditionally young female emotions – it was kind of interesting to me to take those, and amplify them and make them into something kind of transcendent," Lorde said in the backstage clip. "And so I feel like having the girls out on the roof and making a really beautiful multipart harmony and just getting to have a sing is kind of what should have always happened with Melodrama I think, what the DNA of it is for sure."

Pretty Much Amazing

In a recent interview with NME, Lorde shed some light on the process of recording the album. "Melodrama' is very much a personal statement. "The first record was 'we' and 'us'. And this record is 'I'," she said. "The focus does close in. I think that was necessary to get to the level of frankness that's in there." And yet the world's horrors seep in, mixing with the fevered feelings.It's about contrast: really big and grand, and really tiny and intimate. Going from the personal, emotional stuff to the headlines and the web. It goes from the world to my bedroom. You're talking about literal, out-there violence and, like, heart violence."

Melodrama has received much critical acclaim, with the New Zealand pop star having just performed (or danced to) "Dynamite" at the 2017 VMA Awards. It's hard to imagine what life's been like ever since "Royals" exploded on the charts back in 2013, but if there's one thing that holds up, it's that there's no place like home. "It's cool to have gone all over the world and to know that's [New Zealand] where I want to be," she tells NME. No matter how long you're away, home is always around once you realize there's no such thing as a perfect place, something timelessly encapsulated by Lorde with the final line of Melodrama: "What the f**k are perfect places anyway?"

Melodrama is out now. Get it!

Melodrama available on Amazon

Find Lorde on Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify.

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