I so identify with the linked blogger’s story. He spends years writing intelligent, well-argued posts but the only thing of his that goes viral is a tweet that pleases helicoptering parents:
I know the feeling and I can commiserate. It’s always the silliest little thing (like the infamous tree test) that will attract crowds while the really brilliant stuff will languish unnoticed. It would be so much more useful for people to read my posts on the collapse of the nation-state than to do the stupid tree test. But very few go for the smarter option.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well at least something he wrote and you wrote something else that is widely read. I am happy when my royalty statements come back and show four net sales for a book I wrote 15 years ago. I am quite sure that nothing I have ever written online has ever gotten that many hits. 😎
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I began to read your blog because of the posts on the end of the nation state and on the transition to fluidity, but I think it would be hard, almost impossible to make those posts viral. Quality never gets a big audience, that’s the main reason I quit my journalist career in my early twenties. I decided to quit when I had to write an article about Britney Spears’ ass (literally) – she was the coolest celebrity back then. I was originally hired for the foreign politics column as an economics student, but almost nobody wanted to read about foreign politics, so finally the whole column was eliminated along with the science column. Things are just worse since then. It’s a horrible thing, but something that can’t be solve. Gold is scarce, shit is abundant, that’s true for everything in life :-(.
I had to read this tweet 5 times to get what it was about, and how it pleased to helicoptering parents :-). Now I think finally I understand it. Firstly I thought it mocked young people because of their (supposed) poor hygiene. I was a little sad because of my poor English at first, but then I did the Big Tree Test. So now I’m happy again, as I get to know that I’m a generous and moral person who always works on self-improvement and has very high standards and also works on the improvement of the world, so who cares about the poor English any more?
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Students in American high schools have to ask for permission to use the toilet. And to some people this somehow works as evidence that even at a 18 they are not capable of making decisions about their lives.
The story of your journalistic career is just sad. But yeah, that’s what it means to be a journalist these days. 😦
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“Students in American high schools have to ask for permission to use the toilet.”
Oh, then that’s why I didn’t understand that tweet! It’s just the lack of cultural knowledge, not the lack of language knowledge. I feel much better now.
“The story of your journalistic career is just sad. But yeah, that’s what it means to be a journalist these days.”
This is a 12 years old story, but that’s what online journalism brought to the world. The saddest thing is that it’s not really the fault of the owners and the managers of the newspapers. They just have to make a living. The staff and the servers needs to be paid. The man who started the online newspaper I worked for was a phd graduate who wanted a (somewhat) quality newspaper, and left his academic career for starting this newspaper which had been his dream for a long time. It wasn’t his (or the staff’s) fault that people mainly clicked on the primitive articles. “Many clicks low quality, few clicks high quality”, the editor-in-chief always said this. He told me that making shit put food onto our table. More shit more food, no shit no food (and after a while no table). Anyway, the owner had to finance his business, and he financed it from the ad revenues. He had to adapt to the market trends. He went as low as it was possible but still went out of business after a while, however many years after I quit. The end was really really low, full of articles about the sexual life of celebrities and esoteric advices. I think these days only individual bloggers with other income sources can afford to write quality articles, and maybe technology and other professional sites.
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reminds me of theodore veblen quote, “work for the classes, live with the masses. work for the masses, live with the classes.”
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Brilliant quote.
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\\ It would be so much more useful for people to read my posts on the collapse of the nation-state than to do the stupid tree test. But very few go for the smarter option.
I don’t think it’s because people are stupid or wouldn’t be interested in reading your nation state posts. Why then?
I have one possible explanation, if you have a different one – would love to hear. There is so much stuff on the net and, partly because of the former, it’s hard to find something of real quality. I found your blog and a few other communities and blogs I loved by chance, after spending *significant* time sifting through sites and blogs. Now I don’t have time and energy to waste / invest so much time in the attempts to find a new good blog. May be, many people just stop trying to find a good blog and choose to use Internet for rest (tree tests, online games, etc) and, if they want to read analysis, stick to the big news sites and journals they like? F.e. “An American Interest,” “Commentary,” etc.
Btw, when you wrote about “Maybe I need to talk to this group about the nation-state before the semester ends and I never get such another opportunity”, I felt jealous. 🙂 If you would say something you haven’t written about here yet – would love to read.
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What a beautiful, hopeful comment! Let’s hope you are right.
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That’s also a problem for me. I’m aware that I can mainly find quality posts on smaller blogs, but I just don’t have the time and the motivation to search through the trillions of blogs. Once I tried to do that, but only became depressed because of the huge number of superficial or even primitive blogs. Maybe it would be a good idea to share the quality blogs we found by accident with each other, so the others don’t have to go through the painful and depressing process of quality-fishing in the shitsea. For example I would like to find a good blog about the immigrant-experience, but I just can’t. It’s either some nazi shit, or just practical advices (how to apply for the social security number and things like that). The latter is useful indeed, but I’d rather interested in how other people process the psychological effects of immigration and the identity crisis resulting from changing cultures and getting into a much lower social status than before. These questions interest me quite much recently, but I just can’t find anything sensible.
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@musteryou
That was an intriguing video, however the nature of my “migrant trauma” is profoundly different than yours. You had to learn to take things personally, and I have to do the opposite: to learn to not to take things personally. When the group I’m a member of is criticized (currently the group of EE immigrants), I always take it personally, and I always ardently defend myself – and therefore the whole group. I never take it as a group criticism, I always take it as a personal criticism. I never even feel that I’m a member of the group, however I feel like I’m responsible as an individual for the reputation of the group not on a group level, but on an individual level. It’s a cognitive dissonance that I just can’t get rid of. Maybe it’s because I was trained by my narcissistic mother that I was responsible for the feelings and the failures of other people (especially hers). Thanks for the video, because I never thought about my problem from this aspect. I mean I never drafted it in my head that the solution is to learn how not to take things always personally. By the way I was also grown up in a collectivist society (firstly in communism, then in post-communism), however I’ve always hated it and never could really fit in, and was an outsider. I’ve never felt as a member of any group included my own family. It’s been always just me. In fact even Britain is not individualistic enough for me.
Just to be sure: you talk about your migrating from Zimbabwe to Australia, right?
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“I’ve never felt as a member of any group included my own family. It’s been always just me. In fact even Britain is not individualistic enough for me.”
– Hello, sister. 🙂 I’m exactly like that, too.
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@musteryou
That was an intriguing video……Just to be sure: you talk about your migrating from Zimbabwe to Australia, right?
Yeah, I migrated after the regime change, when we went from far right to far left and my father’s income started to dwindle significantly.
Because I’ve seen so much, it’s very difficult for me to take small criticisms of my personality seriously, but apparently that is how it is nowadays. Everything is handled in small change and if you do not check your bank balance, everything will have been withdrawn before you know and you will have no social credibility. Or to put is differently, you have to perpetually swat the gnits that want to suck your blood and not ignore them by any means, because they are training each other to suck on your blood.
As for British people, my Colonial British playing card trumps theirs. They can be as aloof and full of it as they like, but I still trump them in stoicism, resolve, sheer capacity for ongoing warfare etc. Something I have discovered is that I have an eternal capacity for ongoing warfare. I can swallow my pride at any time, but I don’t forget. This alone gives me superiority because most people can and do forget their dominance ploys. I don’t forget them.
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“Yeah, I migrated after the regime change, when we went from far right to far left and my father’s income started to dwindle significantly.”
Was that in the early 80s? Sorry, my knowledge on African history is close to zero :-(. You must have been a kid then.
” I can swallow my pride at any time, but I don’t forget. This alone gives me superiority because most people can and do forget their dominance ploys. I don’t forget them.”
You are the proverbial dog who doesn’t bark but bites. (the proverb: A dog either barks or bites.) Unfortunately I’m the barking one.
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@clarissa
“- Hello, sister. 🙂 I’m exactly like that, too.”
Hi :-)! Do you think it’s a heritage of being the children of narcissistic mothers?
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“Do you think it’s a heritage of being the children of narcissistic mothers?”
– Goooood question. I always hated the forced collectivism of our socialist reality. All of those collective events, celebrations, communal spaces – I hate them with a passion. There was no privacy at home because of my mother but there was no privacy outside of home either because of these communal joys everybody else loved so much. So I think the public and the private conspired to make me hate collectivism because I perceived it as encroaching on my privacy.
And then I became a blogger who publishes every minute detail of her life online. Go figure. 🙂 🙂
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““Yeah, I migrated after the regime change, when we went from far right to far left and
Was that in the early 80s? Sorry, my knowledge on African history is close to zero :-(. You must have been a kid then.”
I was 15 — in 1984. Anyway not quite a kid. But I tell you there were a lot of differences and people had become quite petty in the new (old?) world, which was something I have never adjusted to. Also it was very hard to move from an objective basis for ethics to a subjective one. If I encapsulate it, I can say this was the core problem relating to all of my cultural and social difficulties. Because you can’t just point something out and say, “This is obviously a problem, so how about fixing it?” You have to emote really heavily, but not just in any way but in the expected way, or in a calculated way, so that others come to your rescue. I never could do this. it was never quite right. I didn’t have those ready-made culturally appropriate emotions to bring up to the surface at the right time. The verdicts kept going against me in every instance — and I do mean in single one. And now I’ve just given up. I can’t “do” Western culture with its requisite right balance of emotion to get things done. I can speak directly, like “This, A, B or C is a problem.” But I can’t make it SEEM a problem through my correct apportionment of emotion.
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“And then I became a blogger who publishes every minute detail of her life online. Go figure.”
🙂 I don’t know if blogging is the same type of collectivism as the communist events were. After all when you are blogging you are in fact alone in your own privacy. It can also be seen as a lonely experience from this point of view. People here are just character strings, and you can lock out anyone from your blog when you are really annoyed by them, or just don’t reply to boring or stupid comments. Neither of these would be an option in an IRL community.
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“I don’t know if blogging is the same type of collectivism as the communist events were. After all when you are blogging you are in fact alone in your own privacy. It can also be seen as a lonely experience from this point of view.”
– Yes, I know, there is a lot more control I have here over my privacy than I ever had in my childhood. Which doesn’t tell us anything cute and sunny about my childhood. 🙂
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“You have to emote really heavily, but not just in any way but in the expected way, or in a calculated way, so that others come to your rescue.”
Yeah, I also met this as a “poor” and “miserable” EE immigrant who is supposedly easy to exploit. Which is a great stereotype as if something goes south I can use it as a socially approved excuse. There is a certain kind of EE immigrant-behaviour which is just expected, and most immigrants try very hard to meet the requirements. After they do they are bullied for it and called benefit scroungers however most of them never see a penny of benefit, as the help usually comes in the form of comforting nice words, but of course the media usually forget to disclose it. I think this weird rescuing obsession is more about the covert narcissistic needs of the “rescuer”, than about the real needs of the “rescued” who maybe doesn’t even need to be rescued.
“I never could do this. it was never quite right. I didn’t have those ready-made culturally appropriate emotions to bring up to the surface at the right time.”
I like people who don’t just react like robots. However it’s strange for me that you say you can’t fit into individualism. Your mindset shows a really strong individuality that you actually worked for hard (not that unfounded fake individuality which is prevalent in the individualistic societies).
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“There is a certain kind of EE immigrant-behaviour which is just expected, and most immigrants try very hard to meet the requirements.”
– On my trips to Europe, I stopped answering the question of where I was from by saying “Ukraine,” because the response was ALWAYS, 100% TIMES, NO EXCEPTIONS, “Ah! There are two prostitutes living next door / on this block / in this street, etc. who are also from Ukraine!” I never figured out what my response to that piece of joyfully delivered news was supposed to be, so I switched to “I’m from Canada.”
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“Yeah, I also met this as a “poor” and “miserable” EE immigrant who is supposedly easy to exploit. Which is a great stereotype as if something goes south I can use it as a socially approved excuse. There is a certain kind of EE immigrant-behaviour which is just expected, and most immigrants try very hard to meet the requirements. After they do they are bullied for it and called benefit scroungers however most of them never see a penny of benefit, as the help usually comes in the form of comforting nice words, but of course the media usually forget to disclose it. I think this weird rescuing obsession is more about the covert narcissistic needs of the “rescuer”, than about the real needs of the “rescued” who maybe doesn’t even need to be rescued.”
There’s a video somewhere online as to how I am expected to be. Let me find it.
I believe this approximates the stereotype of the white African, although is you want to read what it is REALLY like, read my memoir, which is not available for e-book readers.
Certainly the aussies and the brits can be very good at stereotyping.
“I like people who don’t just react like robots. However it’s strange for me that you say you can’t fit into individualism. Your mindset shows a really strong individuality that you actually worked for hard (not that unfounded fake individuality which is prevalent in the individualistic societies).”
Thing is I work really well in a cooperative team. I’m also extremely individualistic as I have had a lot of initiatory experiences.
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@musteryou
The video about the stereotypes of the white African is hilarious. Your hairstyle is really really trendy, and the clothes you wear are simply perfect. I think the black guy you “saved” in the video will have some mental health issues thanks to the great “help”.
“I believe this approximates the stereotype of the white African, although is you want to read what it is REALLY like, read my memoir, which is not available for e-book readers.”
I would happily read it if it was available in e-format. However last year I pledged I would never buy a physical book again in my life, as I became heavily depressed when I had to sell my small home library before migration. I will never start to collect books again, I don’t want to go through the process again.
“Certainly the aussies and the brits can be very good at stereotyping.”
Recently I met a woman who asked me why I moved to the country. I opened my mouth and tried to reply, but she didn’t even wait for it, but began to explain to me my own reasons for immigration (which were obviously the supposed poverty and the lack of job opportunities). She also assumed I would want to stay in her country forever, and I wanted to grow old here. Neither of these were true to say the least, but I didn’t want to waste my time on her, so just politely left. Before that I also had the luck to get to know that Hungary, Poland and Romania are “almost the same”. Yes, of course. It’s exactly like saying France and Germany are almost the same.
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It is extremely hard to explain that not everyone emigrates because of poverty. People have an image of a stereotypical immigrant and get upset when one doesn’t confirm it.
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“the response was ALWAYS, 100% TIMES, NO EXCEPTIONS, “Ah! There are two prostitutes living next door / on this block / in this street, etc. who are also from Ukraine!”
To a complete stranger? How fucking rude. I can’t even imagine it, I never met anyone that primitive in my life. Maybe I’m still privileged.
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And when I say that I’m from Ukraine here in the US, the prostitutes don’t make an appearance, thank God, but I keep hearing, “I know somebody from Serbia! ” To which I’m forced to respond that I don’t know anybody from Serbia because Ukraine is an entirely different country.
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“Recently I met a woman who asked me why I moved to the country. I opened my mouth and tried to reply, but she didn’t even wait for it, but began to explain to me my own reasons for immigration (which were obviously the supposed poverty and the lack of job opportunities). She also assumed I would want to stay in her country forever, and I wanted to grow old here. Neither of these were true to say the least, but I didn’t want to waste my time on her, so just politely left. Before that I also had the luck to get to know that Hungary, Poland and Romania are “almost the same”. Yes, of course. It’s exactly like saying France and Germany are almost the same.”
Yes, whenever I said I came from Zimbabwe, people corrected me and said, “You mean South Africa”. Well the first was a very far left regime, which I had been inhabiting for three years (on fifth of my life at that point) and South Africa much much more industrialized, more modern and was still under a system of apartheid.
So, not the same thing. But if people want to have their stereotypes, nothing would please me more than to indulge them to the full. I even donned nazi psychological armor once, which was a riot.
Here’s a small e-book about migration, Christianity and psychopathology.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/jennifer-armstrong/no-escaping-christianity/ebook/product-21890960.html
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“So, not the same thing. But if people want to have their stereotypes, nothing would please me more than to indulge them to the full. I even donned nazi psychological armor once, which was a riot.”
I can understand the feeling. I was also tempted to persuade the poverty-obsessed woman to pay a coffee or a lunch for me, however finally I didn’t do it, not because it wouldn’t have been funny, but because I would just have harmed the reputation of those who actually really have difficulities with buying food for themselves. Thanks for the link, I will take a look at it tomorrow as it’s 2.30 am here. Since I read Clarissa’s blog, I always go to bed extremely late.
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Tweets are newfangled bumper stickers. If that crystallized tweet lead people to read his longer essays on the same subject, I don’t see the problem. Instead of blaming the nature of virality, maybe he should look at why people who came to the blog through the tweet didn’t return.
The tree test has nothing to do with anything you write, though.
The tree test is the social media equivalent of extrovert noise and small talk. Most people don’t have anything profound to say to each other most of the time but it’s incredibly important to be able to fill in this small talk, so people are always searching for this.
That tweet is the equivalent for people who want to project intelligence and to make a point. Longform essays read as lectures and homework to most people so an essay will always have a harder time going viral than a tweet. Someone sharing that tweet feels wise and validated in their views. Your nation state posts neither validate people’s worldviews nor do they give people the satisfaction of being contrarian, so it’s unlikely they will go viral.
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This is so true. People tend to react extremely well to hearing things they already heard. The joy people experience when they hear something they heard many times before is nothing short of scary. There are so few human beings who are receptive to new things.
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I’ve noticed people these days don’t like any message that says, “This will be extremely hard for you, but…” or, “This was a profoundly difficult experience for me…” Actually things were different in the past. For instance, Mike (my husband) joined what he took to be the most difficult section of the armed forces, just because it had that reputation for being so. Attitudes have shifted This also means that difficult texts (anything theoretical or academic) are disliked and treated with a passive hostility. Sweet is liked but sour is disliked. Fluffy is thrilling but scaly is awkward.
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Yes, it’s the idea that there should be no discomfort whatsoever in one’s life that we discussed recently. And it’s the same idea that fuels the obsession with pill-popping.
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People don’t want to hear anything even slightly bad about life or anything and if they start to have a sensation of any sort they freak. That’s an impression that has gorwn tremendously more convincing to me. In fact in the 90s that wasn’t so, but lots of males were bleating then that life was too hard and that compared to women they had it easy. The old system was on its way out, hence the bewailing of one’s lost place in the hierarchy, but now we have everything being treated as a product, and passive consumer hostility to anything a little bit sad, a little bit trying, a little bit intellectually difficult to grasp.
Therefore, having said “I divorce thee” three times, I am done with this society. I am no longer governed by any of its social considerations and will do as I please.
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No, people love love love hearing and telling scary stories. In the absence of any real hardship, they spice up the existence by inventing apocalyptic scenarios. The tendency to slip into apocalyptic preaching precludes any possibility of a serious discussion about actual problems. The moment you say, “There is a problem, let’s look for solutions, ” everybody goes into a full – on apocalyptic mode and begins to feel massively sorry for oneself. Maybe there is a way to knock people out of the enjoyable pastime of bemoaning and bewailing, but I haven’t found it.
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I always find any of this so hard to understand because my own culture was so fucking different — I mean looking back I guess it must have been tough or more sinewy or more roughage was in it or something. I am revisiting the site where these old timers talk and they scare the life out of me, for reasons I can’t quite describe, but I said to Mike last night, engaging there is like handling a bright colored snake — very, very pretty, but watch out for its venom. Those things know how to bite!
But on the softer side of things, I have noticed that Nietzsche noticed a similar thing, that people seemed to feel obliged to multiple their pains in the eyes of others as if it were impolite not to have a lot of pain and suffering. Nietzsche said that frankly he didn’t believe any of it, that there were more than enough psychological palliatives that people didn’t have to express themselves in that way. He said a lot of young people wanted to be attacked from the outside so that they could experience misery through some contrived circumstances, when the more honorable route would be to take on a very difficult project and construct one’s own misery.
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“I have noticed that Nietzsche noticed a similar thing, that people seemed to feel obliged to multiple their pains in the eyes of others as if it were impolite not to have a lot of pain and suffering”
– So very true. Never try to tell people that they are not as pathetic as they say they are. They will not react kindly to the news. 🙂
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Perhaps they want some darkness in their characters to give them gravitas. I think maybe youth, in particular, sense that they are light-weights and need gravitas, but you can’t just demand that others see that in you. You have to go through some rites of passage.
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By the way, I am still downvoting myself in protest of this tendency –and may even get into it more deeply to the point of giving negative reviews of myself here or there, pointing out that “math is hard” and “i want to play”.
Consider it my version of an intellectual hunger strike.
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“For instance, Mike (my husband) joined what he took to be the most difficult section of the armed forces, just because it had that reputation for being so. Attitudes have shifted”
– And I entered the Honors program of a discipline where I was, by definition, the worst because I wanted a challenge and wanted to rise from the worst to the best. I thought that tracing such an ascent would be enjoyable. And it was. So I get Mike’s reasoning.
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Of course Mike regretted his decision as it really was unpleasant, boring and hard. But the kind of guy he is today, with so much toughness and resilience, can be put down to that earlier choice AND perhaps the tendency he had to make that sort of choice. He takes risks and has the most resilient character. I am not dissimilar, due to my responses to my hardships.
And I am sure you will continue to beneft from what was in your character to begin with and how the troubles you experienced multiplied these original qualities.
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Oh, tellz me about it. I slaved for literally hours over my highlighter add-on, working out the bugs, adding features, whereas my Facebook ad blocker is literally something like 5 lines of code (which I wrote as a joke mainly) and is used by something like three times as many people.
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