Updates and Milestones: May 9, 2020

Just a few quick updates.

This past month, April, was another record month for Troy Stories, with 2,493 views. Wow! That's the first time we have had a 2k+ month in terms of page views. Needless to say, it was a huge improvement over the previous record of 1908.

Also, last week sometime, the Numenera 2 Character Generator itself passed a big milestone: 10,000 page views since publication, right now sitting at 10,192. For perspective, it was about this time last year that the generator passed the 2,000 cumulative page-view mark, and it was around this time in 2017 that the generator first saw the light of day. Pretty neat, eh?

Additionally, as mentioned yesterday, Love in the Ruins is now available for purchase.

And lastly, a PSA: the mask goes over your nose and mouth. Both nose and mouth. Yes, nose included! I know, I know... it's hot and uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as being intubated by a ventilator, if I had to guess. Also, if you pull the mask down to talk to someone, you are defeating the purpose of having the mask at all -- may as well just lick that person's eyeball while you're at it. A mask is not a magical talisman. It will not block your sputum getting on other people or their cooties getting on you if it isn't between you and them, capisce?

That's all for now. Don't let the 'rona getcha.

PSA: "Po" and "Te" Are Now Real Words

At some point recently, the words "po" and "te" were made into official Words With Friends words, in case there was any doubt as to whether WWF has been cribbing from the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (which added both of those with the publication of the OSPD5 back in 2014). Guess I will need to go back and edit my Scrabble/WWF guides.

I only found this out by accident when the computer allowed "te" in one of my Solo Challenge games. (So far as I know, WWF does not maintain an official, publicly searchable word list anywhere. Their initial stock is said to have came from the ENABLE list, but they long ago split off onto their own proprietary list). When I realized "te" was now legal, I immediately tried "po" and found it to be legal as well. These two words were, until recently, the only two two-letter words recognized by Scrabble that were not recognized by Words With Friends. When this change was made exactly is hard to say, but I would guess probably some time this year (I periodically check words that I think might be possible candidates for being made legal, but don't keep a log of this. Po and te have been near the top of my list for a long time, but I don't know when exactly I checked them last.)

If you are wondering what they mean, "po" is slang for "chamber-pot" in some benighted English dialect or other, and I believe "te" is an alternate spelling of "ti" (as in, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do).

Edited to add: in regards to plurals, "pos" is now a word also-- it was not before-- a rare instance of Words With Friends actually remembering to include the plural inflection when adding a new word. "Tes", however, is still not a word. I guess they forgot on that one.

Edited again to add further: as of this writing, PO and TE work only on the desktop version of Words With Friends, not mobile. (The fact that WWF has different word lists for desktop and mobile is a well-known bug that has existed for years. It seems to me that they tend to update the desktop word list first, and the mobile word list is updated weeks or months later, whenever they get around to it. That's just my own observation, of course; it might not work exactly that way. If you are playing a game on mobile and would like to play Po or Te but it won't let you, you can log into that game via Facebook and play it there. Yes, that is seriously messed up, but it does work.)

Edited again again to add even more: "Ja" is now accepted by Words With Friends as a word also. This word does not appear in OSPD6, TWL, or any other word-game word authority. I assume it is from German (where "ja" means "yes"), but is "ja" really used commonly enough in English to be considered an English word? It would seem so, according to some...

PSA: The Momo Challenge is Not Real

This is a public service announcement. Momo is not real. The so-called "Momo Challenge" is a hoax. Tabloid "news" articles linking various teen suicides to the "Momo Challenge" are fake-news clickbait garbage written by garbage human beings who eke out a living selling obvious lies to frightened simple folk. Don't let that be you.

Again, there is no Momo. There is no bird-faced demon on WhatsApp tryna slide into your DMs in order to trick you into turning on your oven in the middle of the night. (The legend sounds kinda dumb when I put it that way, doesn't it? Hold on; it gets even dumber.) The aforesaid bird-faced demon, which I note again does not exist, has also not hacked into Peppa the Pig's YouTube channel, nor into the popular video game Fortnite, nor can she invade your dreams and kill you Freddie Kreuger-style. So, if you could stop blowing up my social media feeds with breathless (and baseless) fake-news "reports" that state otherwise, that'd be great-- thanks in advance.

"But Troy," someone always says, "I've seen pictures of Momo on YouTube. Kids are scared! That proves everything!"

It proves horse feathers. But before I discuss the many pictures of Momo cropping up all over YouTube, allow me to briefly delve into the history this legend, as detailed on KnowYourMemes, Mashable, and other respectable sites. Long ago, in 2014, a Japanese special-effects company named Link Factory created a grotesque sculpture of a harpy-like creature named "Bird Mother" for an exhibit of monstrous special effects. Bird Mother has taloned bird-feet, a human female torso, and a distorted, vaguely bird-like (but mostly human) face with stringy black hair, freaky bulging eyes, and an oversized mouth that smiles disquietingly. Bird Mother is quite the work of art, if you are into that sort of thing (i.e., if you are into the nightmare-inducing sort of things). Its creators posted pictures of the sculpture from various angles on Instagram.

(Note: I'm not going to post a picture of Bird Mother because I'm tired of seeing it, but it is not hard to find.)

Fast-forward to the summer of 2018. A rumor starts spreading in Spanish-language social media circles of a mysterious telephone number which, if you add it on WhatsApp, will start sending you messages urging you to do increasingly dangerous challenges such as taking your parents' pills or turning on the oven in the middle of the night, before ultimately telling you that you can "win the game" by killing yourself. (In other words, a rehash of the equally fake "Blue Whale Challenge", but in a different part of the world and under a different name.) This supposed WhatsApp account used a picture of Bird Mother's face as its avatar and "MOMO" was its user name. In July of that year, a YouTuber named Al3xeitor attempted, unsuccessfully, to call Momo live on his YouTube channel. As of this writing, that video has racked up well over five million views. Al3xeitor's video either caused, or is coincident with, the first wave of the Great Momo Panic.

It is important to note, again, that Momo is entirely legendary. There is no part of the Momo legend that has any basis in reality. No one has ever been able to get in contact with Momo using any of the supposed mysterious telephone numbers. (The telephone number, of course, varies wildly with whoever is telling the story.) Nor has anyone contacted Momo via the supposed WhatsApp account (which most likely never existed in the first place, and certainly doesn't exist now). People claiming to have successfully FaceTimed or called the Momo creature are attention-seeking liars. No documented suicide or injury has ever been linked to Momo or the non-existent Momo Challenge. Tabloid reports that state otherwise are, as I said above, irresponsible clickbait garbage. Momo has never contacted anyone for the same reason that Slenderman has never contacted anyone: they aren't real.

"But what about the pictures on YouTube!?"

I'm getting to that. In February of 2019, round two of the Great Momo Panic began as the (note) entirely unfounded rumor of Momo suddenly spread to English-language social media. As the hysteria spread online, unscrupulous quasi-journalistic outfits such as the Daily Mail cashed in, adding fake news to the fire. As well, jokers and pranksters on YouTube started jumping on the Momo bandwagon with hoaxes of varying degrees of sophistication. Very quickly, Momo's beatifically smiling face became ubiquitous, but it's important to note that all pictures of Momo on YouTube or other social media fall into one of the following contexts, in order of most common to least common:

1. Gullible folks breathlessly and uncritically repeating unfounded "warnings" about the "dangers" of sinister Momo, thus feeding the frenzy and frightening the weak-minded 
2. Pranksters making fake (but scary) videos that attempt to conform to the legend in some ways (while carefully avoiding doing anything that would run afoul of YouTube's terms of service, such as actually telling a kid to kill themselves), as a joke at the expense of the aforesaid gullible folks who believe in Momo, or otherwise just having fun with the ghost story
3. Rational people documenting the truth about Momo and trying fruitlessly to get the aforesaid gullible folks to check Snopes or whatever before forwarding obviously fake crap 
4. Content related to the original Bird Mother sculpture 

Note that "actual" Momo is nowhere to be found on YouTube. (And in any event, even according to the legend, Momo haunts WhatsApp, not YouTube; surely demons can only haunt one social media platform at a time, yes?) Indeed, YouTube issued an official statement on February 27: "Contrary to press reports, we’ve not received any recent evidence of videos showing or promoting the Momo challenge on YouTube. Content of this kind would be in violation of our policies and removed immediately."

Note that they are not saying that there are no pictures of Momo on YouTube. Momo pictures are all over YouTube these days, as YouTube is doubtless aware. But mere pictures of Momo, however disturbing, do not break YouTube's terms of service, nor do they prove that the so-called "Momo Challenge" is a real thing that any real person has ever attempted to undertake or induce anyone else to undertake.

"But what about the six-year-old girl who was contacted by Momo on YouTube!? Checkmate, skeptic!"

Yes, about that. Here is said girl's statement in her own words. Momo is "like an app, and you can call and text her," and "she could be in your dreams or she could kill you."

Well, there you go. Seems legit. Just like Freddie Krueger, who is also definitely real, right? Definitely not a case of a six y/o mind being exposed to too many scary movies at too early of an age and losing track of the difference between make-believe and reality, or of being put up to some disgraceful shenanigans by an irresponsible attention-seeking parent. No sir, definitely not that. It's just a shame that there isn't any corroborating evidence for this delusional load of horse-apples completely rock-solid, certified-gold, hundred-percent-proven factual account.

(In all seriousness, I will not give out the name of the six-year-old girl who says Momo can be in your dreams and kill you, even though the media-- of course-- has. She's six. She was put up to this nonsense by some adult, I think it's safe to say-- and I don't mean Momo. She doesn't deserve to be piled on.)

"But my kids are scared!"

Kids are not scared because Momo the WhatsApp Demon is hacking their Fortnite game and supernaturally invading their dreams. Kids are scared because mommy is having a frantic meltdown, snatching the phone out of their hand and deleting YouTube Kids off of it, and/or because they have friends at school whose parents are also giving in to the hysterical overreaction, deleting Fortnite off the family computer. No doubt, many kids are confused as to what's going on. But it's the overreaction to the hoax that is both (a) scaring kids, and (b) inducing jokers and trolls to jump in on the hoax action. Stop feeding the frenzy. By doing so, you are only playing into Momo's wickedly sharp talons. (That last was figuratively speaking, of course. I'm sure Momo keeps her talons neatly trimmed.)

"But YouTube Kids has lots of scary and disturbing content!"

This last bit, unfortunately, is true, but it has nothing to do with Momo. In fact, there's extremely disturbing, blood-curdling stuff that has made it onto YouTube Kids that would make Momo the WhatsApp Demon look like Anne of Green Gables by comparison. (And no, I will not link to it.)

It is important to note that neither YouTube Kids, nor YouTube more generally, are curated by a flesh-and-blood person. Machine-learning algorithms decide what is appropriate for the "Kids" platform, decide what appears on "Trending", and decide what appears as related or recommended videos for you to watch next. Sometimes the machines make decisions that are, ahem, "interesting". YouTube has employees that do look into reports/complaints, but it is well-known that the main priority for such policing is tracking down violations of copyrighted music and movies. Policing adult content that is deceptively (or accidentally) tagged as children's content seems to be a much lower priority, I am sad to say.

And moreover, as noted above, the mere fact that content is "disturbing", does not, in and of itself, break YouTube's rules. If you see a "Screamer" with Momo's face in it, for example, and you report it, it's likely that it will not even be removed (from YouTube, at least-- hopefully such content would get removed from YouTube Kids, if it ended up there).

But here's the good news. If you, the parent, personally vet each video you allow your kid to watch, that should be fine. The idea that Momo can "hack into" any video when the parents are not watching is one of the many supernatural powers attributed to Momo that has zero basis in reality. It is possible to configure the YouTube Kids app so that the search bar is disabled, and the user (i.e., the kid) is limited to watching playlists that you have set up yourself. Do it that way. Or-- and here's a crazy thought-- maybe watch videos together with your kids, answering any questions they may have, instead of using YouTube as your babysitter while you go off and do something else.

(But of course, that would take work-- much easier to simply fly off the handle, delete everything, and spew out a tweet-storm consisting of 50% exclamation points announcing your ignorance to the world.)

The bottom line: if you let your kids watch whatever they want on YouTube-- even so-called YouTube Kids-- without supervision, then you are taking a huge risk that they will see something truly upsetting, even traumatizing. That was true long before Momo came along, and isn't likely to change anytime soon. And if you let your kids contact random strangers via WhatsApp (or any other kind of way), then, well, a bird-faced, Fortnite-hacking, dream-walking demon is likely going to be the least of your worries.

tl;dr... Stop with the Momo crap, I beg you.