Links and a rare promotion/giveaway

~ JenniferP
Indieflix logo
Credit: Indieflix

Thankfully, Here’s That Bad Advice You Were Hoping For took on the WTF? Dear Prudence penis question. I suspect many of you will enjoy everything about that blog. For instance, this post about a creepily over-involved parent. (h/t @j_zimms)

And here is my favorite recent take on the whole question of “Zones”: Why Do Men Keep Putting Me In The Girlfriend Zone? (Thanks to SweetMachine & @autistliam, among many others,  for linking me to this, you were correct!)

And during a Twitter discussion of Jane Eyre last night (we’re all hoping Rochester died soon and left her a rich widow, so she could run off and live an awesome single life while giving exactly zero fucks, right?) someone linked me to this great piece about storytelling and stereotypes and why it matters: “We have always fought”: Changing Women, Cattle, and Slaves Narrative by Kameron Hurley. (h/t @JunebugBecky)

And now for the promotion. Running a much-visited site, I get many wack offers for “free” guest-posting services by content mills and giveaways of things you don’t want. But I think this one will be actually cool and is close to my own interests, so here it is below the jump for folks who are interested in indie film, online streaming platforms, documentaries, and/or documentaries about bullying.

Indieflix is a streaming subscription service for indie films. From their site:

For far too long, filmmakers have been forced to either sell out or starve. Thousands of brilliant, creative minds submit their works to festivals, hoping to find meaningful distribution yet fewer than 1% actually do.  We’re here to level the playing field. Founded by filmmakers, IndieFlix is part champion, part curator; our mission is to democratize distribution and provide significant revenue for filmmakers.

IndieFlix is a community of independent filmmakers and fans. Through its membership-based streaming service, IndieFlix helps filmmakers translate artistic vision into commercial success, and gives film lovers access to high quality independent films not otherwise available. IndieFlix’s mission is to champion filmmakers, rethink traditional approaches to distribution, and celebrate the artistry and impact of independent film.

They want to promote a film, Finding Kind, on the subject of girl-on-girl bullying. A description:

Filmmakers Lauren Parsekian and Molly Thompson, who met while in school at Pepperdine University, set out in a cross country journey of discovery and education.  Interviewing women and girls along the way about their lives and experiences, Parsekian and Thompson find, among all of the unique personal stories, some universal truths about growing up as girls.

Finding Kind is a document of that journey, and of the filmmakers’ quest to take these experiences and find a common ground of kindness and mutual respect.  In addition to all of the individual girls and women who share their personal experiences about girl on girl bullying with the filmmakers, Parsekian and Thompson include interviews with respected experts and authors in the fields of psychology, education, and the interrelationships of women and girls.

The film led to the Kind Campaign, which is an educational program to stop bullying in schools.

Disclosures:

  • I have not tried out Indieflix yet or watched Finding Kind. I cannot tell you anything this minute about the platform or the movie. My endorsement is: It seems cool, I think they actually did research about our audience and whether we’d like this sort of thing and presented it in a thoughtful and not-pushy way.
  • Must disclose: I am totally getting a free trial subscription to IndieFlix in exchange for telling you about this.
  • Excited to disclose: I am also getting 10 free two-month trial IndieFlix subscriptions to give away to you. You will not have to supply credit card information to sign up. In her direct emailed words: “We will not require anyone to enter their credit card number or otherwise obligate themselves to continue after their trial period is up.”

If you’d like one of the trials, post a comment here by noon, Central Daylight Time, Wednesday, May 22nd. If more than 10 people want the memberships, I’ll use a random number generator and hand them out.

In exchange for using your eyeballs for promotional stuff so that I can use my summer to watch independent movies, feel free to use the comments of this thread to promote your own creative work/blog/Etsy shop/Kickstarter campaign.

Parameters:

  • Please be a regular reader of the site.
  • Please post a brief description of what it is we’ll be looking at, and use content warnings if it will be NSFW or NSFEyes in some  way. I’ve just started watching Hannibal, sucked in by Cleolinda’s awesome recaps, and the whole “NSFEyes” thing is coming back for me in a big, big way.
  • Please keep it to one project.

71 thoughts on “Links and a rare promotion/giveaway”

  1. This is so totally up my alley – both the service and the doc in question!

  3. IndieFlix sounds really cool! I would love one of the free trials.

    Self-promotion time–here are a few things I’ve written about recently on my blog, Tutus and Tiny Hats:
    -I went to a steampunk festival, and took lots of pictures of the awesome costumes.
    -There are two fat-related events coming up in the Boston area, one of which is a picnic/frolicking thing that I’m planning.
    -Celebrating International No Diet Day, and some tasty food pictures. (Also, pink sushi!)
    –How I feel about the threat of climate change. Relatedly, check out Elodie’s great comments on a climate-change-related quote of the day that I posted.

      1. I am reading comments on the Girlfriend Zone post.

        Oh. My.

        It’s just… How do people miss the satire… what…

        Entitled jerks are really good about making it all about them. It’s just amazing. The comment section is like performance art.

        1. I have to say, I kind of admire the complete and total lack of self-awareness it takes to respond to that post by saying “Why aren’t you dating these nice guys? You must be looking for a jerk who doesn’t care about you at all, just like all women. Ugh, bitches.”

          Although my actual favorite part is the debate about the true meaning of “friendzone,” with one guy citing examples of popular usage and a few other guys going “Popular usage means nothing! Urbandictionary is a terrible resource! Lots of people think ‘nonplussed’ means ‘unimpressed’, that doesn’t make it the proper meaning!”

          … except, all descriptivism vs. prescriptivism debates aside, “friendzone” is a slang term. It’s not in the OED, dudes. It has no meaning aside from what popular usage ascribes to it.

  5. Me! Me! Me! I’m so disappointed by Netflix. I’d love to give IndieFlix a try (as long as they do subscriptions in the UK)

  7. Thanks for the opportunity! I’d like to promote an opera I’m involved with this autumn. It’s Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor”, it will be performed at the RNCM in Manchester, and we’re trying to get some crowdfunding to help with scenery, costumes and so on. If anyone can help out, the link is here: http://wefund.com/project/lucia-di-lammermoor/p56563/ and we’ll all love you for ever, muah!

  8. Oh man, I would LOVE a indie movies subscription. The worst thing is when I get a recommendation for an awesome film and the makers haven’t/can’t put it online and because it never got general release and so no one bothered to pirate it.

    I haven’t been blogging too much lately due to life, but I am always happy to direct people to a thing I did about Cosmo sex-tips which is extremely NSFW.

    1. You know boyfriend and I are working on a thing about Cosmo Sex Tips, right? Because: They are the worst. 🙂

      1. I do know that! I nearly shared the donut thing with you when I first mentioned it, but then I had a weird moment of thinking maybe you wouldn’t want to see my partners junk? I got over that though 😛

  9. This looks fantastic! Who doesn’t love indie films? (Besides major media and other buttheads of that sort).

  11. Ooh how very cool! I’m on a kick of watching documentaries about artists and the creative process, and I bet there are some great indies in that category. I would love to try it out!

  13. I’d be delighted to try Indieflix. I really like the little option to search by length, so if I’m in the mood for a long sit I can exclude shorter stuff or I can cap it at 15m if I want a quick hit, as it were.

    As far as self-promotion? We’re going to start year 5 soon at We Love DC, a locally-focused blog for the Washington DC area. No (federal) political stuff here; we’re all about living in or visiting the city. Get your congressional hand-wringing somewhere else – the only extent to which we cover the fed is to the extent they meddle in our business while not giving us any representation in Congress.

    We’re about the arts, entertainment, food and everything else that relates to living in a place. Let other people talk about working in it.

  14. I would adore getting that free trial! The movie Finding Kind sounds right up my alley.

    And thank you for the opportunity for sharing our work!
    I’ve been dying to share the Mama’s Comfort Camp here, but wasn’t sure it would be appropriate in the recent parenting thread. I’m so grateful to be able to do it today.
    This is my baby:
    https://www.facebook.com/mamas.comfort.camp

    Mama’s Comfort Camp is a loving judgment-free facebook* mothering community where no one is dishing unsolicited advice. (Yes, a safe haven from the mommy wars so common on the internet!). Hundreds of moms from around the world (with a core from the Ithaca, NY area) offer love, support, validation, and whenever possible, mutual assistance in real life.
    Free and open to moms of kids of any age, from moms of newborns to grandmothers and every stage in between.

    Our guidelines are very much inspired by the spirit of Captain Awkward, and I often ask myself “what would JenniferP do?” as I navigate being the founder and keeper of the group.

    I’m a postpartum depression surviver and advocate, trying to spread self-kindness for mothers (and others, of course).
    Here’s what I mean by self-Kindness:
    http://www.mamascomfortcamp.com/the-self-kindness-pause/

    I started the facebook group in March 2012, and since then we’ve grown to over 800 members, sharing our motherhood struggles and our joys.
    We talk about anything from postpartum depression to disarming mama-guilt, to helping kids navigate socially, to getting partners to play less computer games and into bathing the kids more, to not being in the mood for sex… The discussions are varied, respectful, and kind.

    Together with a group of mama friends called the Den Mothers we monitor the space for respectful communications and our group culture is uniquely nurturing, which I consider our biggest accomplishment.

    In the Ithaca, NY area, I host a monthly in person PPD support group, and we also have various playdates and mom’s night’s out.

    I would adore having Captain Awkward readers join us at the Mama’s Comfort Camp.

    Disclosures:
    * Mama’s Comfort Camp facebook group has the privacy setting of “closed”. This means people outside the group can find the group and see who’s in it, but only members can read what’s posted inside the group.

    **To be able to keep the group free for member while putting much of my time into closely monitoring the safe-space, I’ve asked some business to support the Mama’s Comfort Camp and we have sidebar ads on the website and there is a weekly thread inside the group in which I mention the names and URLs of our backers. There is no other promotional activity inside the Mama’s Comfort Camp.

    I’m looking forward to connecting with Captain Awkward readers on facebook:
    https://www.facebook.com/mamas.comfort.camp

    1. Hi Yael, thanks, this sounds so great! Sometimes comments get caught in the spam trap, so I fish them out as I can.

  16. Wow, that sounds fantastic! I’ll be sure to look it up, both as a consumer and as a filmmaker. Getting a free trial would be rad!

  17. That sounds like an excellent service — and I’d love a free trial subscription.

  18. Oooh, I would love a trial subscription. I’m doing my thesis on relational aggression/social bullying, so it’s kind of near to my heart.

  19. Indieflix sounds like a great service, and one I wish I knew about earlier! I’m a fan of independently produced stuff, and a since-the-beginning subscriber of Netflix so I’ll be checking this out.
    Re: bullying – I’m having my usual interior conversation on this, which goes “I’m so glad I’m not growing up now when I’d have to deal with cyber-bullying along with the regular physical and emotional beatings I got way back when. But wouldn’t it be better or easier these days? The Internet makes it easier to connect with other weirdos like you, and it would be better if you knew that other people like you were out there. No, because each new layer of communication media adds another way of people to be mean to each other, and nowadays it can be done anonymously and with no consequences.” So, yeah, bullying is still bad. I don’t think we’ll ever get away from it, as long as human nature doesn’t evolve..

    And now the shameless self-promotion: Ask Mama Mary. Got one of those questions you wish you could ask your mother, but there’s no way – she’d either freak out, ignore you, look at you funny, or change the subject? You can ask Mama Mary. She will give you answers. Or you can just see what she told other people. No subject is too banal, too weird, or too stupid. And there’s a book, too, “Mama Mary’s Rules for Daughters: A Guide to Being a Responsible Adult” , in both electronic or paper form.
    Website: askmamamary.com

  20. I can see that a lot of other people already commented, but IndieFlix sounds awesome, and if it works well and has as good variety as they say, then it’s something I could totally see myself paying for.

  23. Ooh! Yes please, I’d love to try it! (And would be down for paying for it if its as dope as it sounds).

  24. Someone asked already it works outside the US, but I have another question: does it work on Linux?? If it does, I’d love a chance to try it out!

    (That was my beef with Netflix while I was in the US, it didn’t work on my computer!)

    2. I was looking at their FAQs trying to answer a different question, and I came across a partial answer to yours. You need to have flash installed and javascript enabled. They don’t mention linux specifically, and they just say “the most recent version of flash”, which is a bit problematic since adobe isn’t releasing new versions for linux anymore. But maybe the most recent linux version will work?

      I’m on Ubuntu and I’m able to use some sites that require “a recent version of flash” but not others, so it’s a tossup. Hopefully it’ll work for you.

  25. !!! I am a long-time (albeit mostly lurk-y) reader of this blog, and I am also the author of the Girlfriend Zone post. Thank you for linking it! I’m really flattered that you like it.

      1. Yeah, irony-impaired commenters are a sad fact of life on the internet. I was reading the comments for a while, but I’m trying to avoid it now–there’s only so much misogyny (both general and specifically directed at me) that I can take before I start to hate everything.

    2. I loved your post! I stay out of the comments, as you do, but I’m glad you popped in here so I could tell you. I think it should be required reading.

      (Captain, this Indieflix thing sounds awesome; our “Netflix recommends” categories are all “Cerebral documentaries about gaming” and “TED talks” and the like. I suspect that will be right up our alley.)

  26. Wow, IndieFlix sounds really cool and I’d love to get a subscription! Thanks, CA.

  28. I don’t have a project to promote, but I’d be happy to try out Indieflix!

  34. Thanks for the chance to self-promote!

    I’ve been volunteering for Scarleteen, a fantastic resource providing sexuality/sex ed information for teens and young adults, since the start of this year. I mostly do direct service with users on the message boards and live chat, but I’ve written two advice columns so far and hope to continue that when I have the chance.
    The first is about relationship issues between a trans guy and his lesbian-identified partner, and the second, which just went up yesterday, is about that magical place called the FRIENDZONE. So it’s particularly appropriate to share here, I think. =)

  35. Thanks for the chance to self-promote!

    Since early this year, I’ve been volunteering for Scarleteen, a great sex ed resource for teens/young adults. I’m mostly doing direct service on the messageboards and live chat, but I’ve written some advice columns and hope to continue to do that!

    The first one is about relationship issues between a trans guy and his lesbian-identified partner: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/advice/my_girlfriend_says_she_loves_me_but_doesnt_want_to_be_sexual_with_me_now_that_im_tran

    And the second, which just went up yesterday, is about the dreaded FRIENDZONE, so I figured it’s particularly appropriate to share! http://www.scarleteen.com/article/advice/i_was_friendzoned_by_a_girl_i_like_what_do_i_do_now

  37. Wow – I’m glad to hear that the Awkward Army is getting a good offer.

    I wanted to promote my recently-stated project. It’s called Carbon Corpus, (http://carboncorpus.blogspot.com/) and it’s a project that explores environmental issues, food, and alternative economies. For the project, I am selling the animal-based carbon credits to my own body to “investors,” and in return, I will eat a vegan diet for the amount of time they purchase. The project will also incorporate a series of interviews, that will be documented by video, by myself of the investors, to discuss what sort of permissions they feel they have granted themselves through the act of purchasing my carbon credits. I’m not sure what the response will be, it’s a bit of an experiment. The project is also being documented on the blog, and I want all members of the AA to feel welcome to stop by and drop some wisdom in the comments. Thanks Captain!

  38. Are the films captioned? If they’re not, or if a sizeable portion of them are not, then if I win give it to someone else because I won’t be able to watch them without captions.

    I have a website that I made recently: http://www.goal-fish.org

    It is a smart to-do list that understands that we can’t always do all the things. It only gives you one task at a time. If you’re in a lot of pain (you can change it to spoons or stamina in your account settings) it will give you easier tasks, such as clearing off a desk instead of picking things up off the floor. If you’re in even more pain, it’ll direct you towards self care tasks instead (eating, staying hydrated, having a bath or a nap). It recognises that things have to be done at different times of the day, so if you tell it’s nighttime it won’t tell you to vacuum.

    You can hide tasks when you’re done with them, so it won’t prompt you to redo something before enough time has passed. You start out with some generic tasks but you can add your own or edit the default tasks.

    Goal-Fish is free, useable even without an account (though more useful with an account because you can personalise it). Donations let you add more tasks and categories.

    1. I can’t answer the captioning thing definitively, sorry! You’re welcome to investigate it more on the IndieFlix site.

      That site that you created is a really, really neat idea.

      1. I checked through their FAQ and couldn’t find anything about captions or accessibility. On the search page, which lets you choose different parameters, there isn’t a way to search for films with captions, which means either all do or none do. I guess the answer is none, because most sites that think about accessibility want people to know that they’ve done so. On my own webpage, a large proportion of the help page is dedicated to explaining the choices I’ve made with various disabilities in mind.

        Anyway, it’s okay, count me out on the giveaway. 🙂

        1. Anonymus, I’m going to pass your comment onto them and get captions/accessibility on their radar. Thanks for doing the research, sorry about the giveaway.

  39. In the self-promotion department, I’m drawing and giving away ten thousand flowers. I can’t really draw, but I don’t let that stop me. Mail me a SASE and I’ll mail you a flower. Think of it as a Kickstarter where everybody gets a prize for the cost of a stamp.

    http://www.wonderbink.com/10kflowers

    Thanks!

  42. I’d love to get a trial subscription.

    (I’d want to gift it to a good friend of mine, whose an aspiring filmmaker. Either way, it’s good that I know this site exists, I might gift a subscription to him as a birthday present)

  46. I would love to be included in the giveaway. If I were to imagine all of the help you’ve given me in the last six months as delicious, delicious cake, then naturally this would be the delicious, delicious icing. Thanks, Captain and friends! You’ve been instrumental in helping me turn my life around.

    My best to everyone 🙂

  48. HOT DOG I MISSED THIS? What do I win for relentlessly checking the site, but deciding to cook dinner instead of treating my sick husband like a child? Ohhh that was some sweet me-time. I guess I got that. Hey, how nice! I feel like a winner!

  49. Pingback: IndieFlix Giveaway Winners | CaptainAwkward.com

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