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“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior.” — Kenneth L. Pike

The web has accents. So should our design systems.

Design Systems as Living Languages

Design systems aren’t component libraries—they’re living languages. Tokens are phonemes, components are words, patterns are phrases, layouts are sentences. The conversations we build with users become the stories our products tell.

But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving core meaning. This couldn’t be more obvious to me, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who learned English with an American accent, and lives in Sydney.

Our design systems must work the same way. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.

Consistency becomes a prison

The promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would accelerate development and unify experiences. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has become a prison. Teams file “exception” requests by the hundreds. Products launch with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than solving user problems.

Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.

A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.

When Perfect Consistency Fails

At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. We A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a professional with a graphic design education and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.  

The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI; solved problems are.

At Shopify. Polaris () was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfect for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment, as we faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited levels of English understanding.

Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.

Every component that worked beautifully for merchants failed completely for pickers. White backgrounds created glare. 44px tap targets were invisible to gloved fingers. Sentence-case labels took too long to parse. Multi-step flows confused non-native speakers.

We faced a choice: abandon Polaris entirely, or teach it to speak warehouse.

The Birth of a Dialect

We chose evolution over revolution. Working within Polaris’s core principles—clarity, efficiency, consistency—we developed what we now call a design dialect:

Result: Task completion jumped from 0% to 100%. Onboarding time dropped from three weeks to one shift.

This wasn’t customization or theming—this was a dialect: a systematic adaptation that maintained Polaris’s core grammar while developing new vocabulary for a specific context. Polaris hadn’t failed; it had learned to speak warehouse.

The Flexibility Framework

At Atlassian, working on the Jira platform—itself a system within the larger Atlassian system—I pushed for formalizing this insight. With dozens of products sharing a design language across different codebases, we needed systematic flexibility so we built directly into our ways of working. The old model—exception requests and special approvals—was failing at scale.

We developed the Flexibility Framework to help designers define how flexible they wanted their components to be:

During a navigation redesign, we tiered every element. Logo and global search stayed Consistent. Breadcrumbs and contextual actions became Flexible. Product teams could immediately see where innovation was welcome and where consistency mattered.

The Decision Ladder

Flexibility needs boundaries. We created a simple ladder for evaluating when rules should bend:

Good: Ship with existing system components. Fast, consistent, proven.

Better: Stretch a component slightly. Document the change. Contribute improvements back to the system for all to use.

Best: Prototype the ideal experience first. If user testing validates the benefit, update the system to support it.

The key question: “Which option lets users succeed fastest?”

Rules are tools, not relics.

Unity Beats Uniformity

Gmail, Drive, and Maps are unmistakably Google—yet each speaks with its own accent. They achieve unity through shared principles, not cloned components. One extra week of debate over button color costs roughly $30K in engineer time.

Unity is a brand outcome; fluency is a user outcome. When the two clash, side with the user.

Governance Without Gates

How do you maintain coherence while enabling dialects? Treat your system like a living vocabulary:

Document every deviation – e.g., dialects/warehouse.md with before/after screenshots and rationale.

Promote shared patterns – when three teams adopt a dialect independently, review it for core inclusion.

Deprecate with context – retire old idioms via flags and migration notes, never a big-bang purge.

A living dictionary scales better than a frozen rulebook.

Start Small: Your First Dialect

Ready to introduce dialects? Start with one broken experience:

This week: Find one user flow where perfect consistency blocks task completion. Could be mobile users struggling with desktop-sized components, or accessibility needs your standard patterns don’t address.

Document the context: What makes standard patterns fail here? Environmental constraints? User capabilities? Task urgency?

Design one systematic change: Focus on behavior over aesthetics. If gloves are the problem, bigger targets aren’t “”breaking the system””—they’re serving the user. Earn the variations and make them intentional.

Test and measure: Does the change improve task completion? Time to productivity? User satisfaction?

Show the savings: If that dialect frees even half a sprint, fluency has paid for itself.

Beyond the Component Library

We’re not managing design systems anymore—we’re cultivating design languages. Languages that grow with their speakers. Languages that develop accents without losing meaning. Languages that serve human needs over aesthetic ideals.

The warehouse workers who went from 0% to 100% task completion didn’t care that our buttons broke the style guide. They cared that the buttons finally worked.

Your users feel the same way. Give your system permission to speak their language.

Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.  

These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome. 

In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934)  for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.

The Vienna Circle

Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna.  The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language? 

The core ideas were worked out in the weekly meetings (Thursdays at 6) of a group remembered as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. The intersection of physics and philosophy had long been a specialty of this Vienna department, and this work had placed them among the world leaders.  Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Other frequent participants included philosopher Rudolf Carnap, psychologist Karl Popper, economist Ludwig von Mises (brought by his brother Frederick, a physicist),  graphic designer Otto Neurath (inventor of infographics), and architect Josef Frank (brought by his physicist brother, Phillip).  Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

When Schlick’s office grew too dim, participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger circle of participants.  This convivial circle was far from unique.  An intersecting circle–Neurath, von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern–established the Austrian School of free-market economics. There were theatrical circles (Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt), and literary circles. The café was where things happened.

The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were often a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Architect Josef Frank depended on contracts for public housing, which Mises opposed as wasteful. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath was eager to detect muddled thinking and would interrupt a speaker with a shouted “Metaphysics!” The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.

In the Café

The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. Built to serve an imperial capital, the cafés found themselves with too much space and too few customers now that the Empire was gone. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. Perhaps they would order another coffee, or one of their friends might drop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was invariably served with a glass of purified spring water, still a novelty in an era in which most water was still unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely. 

In the basement of one café, the poet Jura Soyfer staged “The End Of The World,” a musical comedy in which Professor Peep has discovered a comet heading for earth.

Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!

Hitler:  Destroying everybody is my business.

Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. This extensive customization, with correspondingly esoteric conventions of service, established the café as a comfortable and personal third space, a neutral ground in which anyone who could afford a coffee would be welcome. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters greeted regular customers with titles too, but were careful to address their patrons with titles a notch or two greater than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor.  This assurance mattered all the more because so many members of the Circle (and so many other Viennese) came from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. Your friends wouldn’t be bothered by the pram in the hall. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.

The amiability of the café circle was enhanced by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops made a useful surface for pencil sketches, serving all as an improvised and accessible blackboard.

Comedies like “The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that, if one got carried away, a parody of one’s remarks might shortly appear in Neue Freie Presse surely helped Professor Schlick keep matters in hand.

The End Of Red Vienna

Though Austria’s government drifted to the right after the War, Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and embracing  ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Most members of the Circle fled within months: von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, Carnap to Chicago. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews.  Jura Soyfer, who wrote “The End Of The World,” died in Buchenwald.

In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay large fines to emigrate. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career; his name was Eichmann.

Design for Amiability

An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we design for amiability?  This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I believe we may identify eight distinct issues that exert design forces in usefully amiable directions.

Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. They were concerned with consequential problems, not merely scoring points for debating. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels—help promote amity.

Empiricism: The characteristic approach of the Vienna Circle demanded that knowledge be grounded either in direct observation or in rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither seemed ready to hand, the matter could not be settled. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.

Abstraction: Disputes grow worse when losing the argument entails lost face or lost jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Without seriousness, abstraction could have been merely academic, but the limits of reason and the consistency of mathematics were clearly serious.

Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This stands in contrast to the contemptuous sneer that now dominates social media.  

Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. Still, this was Vienna, at the margins of Europe: old-fashioned, frumpy, and dingy. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. Most or all harbored the suspicion that they were really schleppers, and a tinge of the ridiculous helped to moderate tempers. The director of “The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.

Openness: All sorts of people were involved in discussion, anyone might join in. Each week would bring different participants. Fluid borders reduce tension, and provide opportunities to broaden the range of discussion and the terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to defuse awkward moments, and Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.

Parody: The environs of the Circle—the university office and the café—were unmistakably public. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The prospect that one’s bad taste or bad behavior might be ridiculed in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction; even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Engagement: The subject matter was important to the participants, but it was esoteric: it did not matter very much to their mothers or their siblings. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.

I believe it is notable that this environment was designed to promote amiability through several different voices.  The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schlick and other regulars kept discussion moving and on track. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous.  Crucially, each of these voices were human: you could reason with them. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. The café circles had no central authority or Moderator against whom everyone’s resentments might be focused. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.

I want to discuss accessibility because it is the most important thing for making websites. Other A List Apart articles give you innovation and insight. This article will give you homework. These are just my personal views, but they’re pretty good.

I want to start off with a couple of statements, and you will agree:

1. Designers are good people. I have never heard a designer say, “I don’t care if somebody can’t read this text”, “Not my fault if somebody can’t use this device”, or “Who cares if this is confusing?”
2. Some designs exclude people. You have seen people unable to read the text on a website or app that somebody designed. You’ve seen people unable to use a physical device that somebody has designed. You’ve seen people utterly bamboozled while trying to use a service that somebody designed.

So what?

The first question is, “Is this life-or-death stuff?” The answer is, “Yes.” In my favorite essay, This Is All There Is, Aral Balkan makes the point that pretty much everything that we design can affect life events and death events. Aral gives the example of how even a straightforward bus timetable app can affect life and death events, if we design it badly:

• somebody might miss a life event, such as their daughter’s fifth birthday party; or
• somebody might miss a death event, such as the chance to say goodbye to a dying grandmother.

The next—and frustrating—question is, “Why do some designs still exclude people?” After all, we know that:

• not everybody can see perfectly;
• not everybody can hear perfectly;
• not everybody thinks the same way; and
• not everybody moves the same way.

I think the answer is that there’s too much to recall. Consider, if you will, the wide variety of topics that A List Apart articles cover. Designers are expected to remember all of that guidance, plus all of the accessibility guidance, plus so much more. It is too much.

Recognizing accessibility issues while designing

I’d like to point toward one possible solution, starting from Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. These are from the mid-1990s, and—although there’s a good chance that you, gentle reader, are a lot younger than that—please bear with me. 

Seeing as the problem is that there’s too much to recall, I want to look at heuristic № 6, “Recognition rather than Recall.” Jakob Nielsen said that for users, information required to use the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. I suggest we tweak that to make life easier for designers. Let’s say that the information required to produce the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. In other words, let’s make it easier to recognise accessibility issues while we’re designing.

How are we going to do that? I really like the book A Web for Everyone—Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. I really like this book not only because it includes a quote from me—actually two quotes, but I don’t like to boast—but because it includes personas that are perfect for helping us to recognise accessibility issues. That’s the good news. The even better news is that these personas are available now for free on the companion website to the book What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility, again by Sarah Horton, with David Sloan this time.

Meet your users

I’m going to introduce you to these personas now:

• Vishnu, an engineer and global citizen with low vision says, “I want to be on the same level as everyone else”, “If I can adjust my screen, I can read comfortably”, and, “Translating in my head is easier with simpler sentences.”
• Trevor, a high school student with autism, says, “I like consistent, familiar places on the web”, “When I can learn the pattern, I can find my way”, and, “Reading is hard for me”.
• Steven, a deaf graphic artist and American Sign Language speaker, says, “My only disability is that everyone doesn’t sign”, and, “Without captions, it’s meaningless to me”.
• Maria, a bilingual community health worker, says, “I love this. It’s all here … when I can find it”, “When a site is confusing, I just leave”—fair enough, Maria!—and, “When I hear and see it, health information makes more sense”.
• Lea, an editor living with fatigue and pain, says, “No one gets that this really is a disability”, “Don’t make me work so hard”—please do not bombard this lady with drop-down lists—and, “Links at the top of the page make navigation easier for me”.
• Jacob, a blind paralegal and a bit of a geek, says, “The right technology lets me do anything”, and “This makes it possible to do my job”.
• Emily, who has cerebral palsy and is living independently, says, “I want to do everything for myself”, “Simpler screens are easier screens”—hell yeah, Emily!—and, “Tell me what I need in advance”.
• Carol, a grandmother with macular degeneration which affects her sight, says, “My grandkids are dragging me into the world of technology”, “I don’t understand what the screen is saying”, and, “Why can’t the text be just a little bit larger?”

I want to throw one more persona at you now, because, well, A List Apart readers are overachievers. One of my favorite authors, Cennydd Bowles—who literally wrote the book on Future Ethics—says to create Personas Non Grata. In other words, every time we design something, we have to think about what a bad guy could do with that thing, and whom that might affect.

To actually use these personas while designing, I like what Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher in Design for Real Life call the Designated Dissenter: for each project that you work on, one of your teams should be responsible for asking, “Will this work for Vishnu?”, “How’s Trevor going to get on with this?”, and so on. 

Then, once you’ve used the personas to recognise the accessibility issues, you can look up the guidelines for whichever platforms you’re designing for: 

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
• Accessibility designing — Material Design 3
• Accessibility — Windows apps
• Accessibility | Apple Developer Documentation
• Check your interface for accessibility (Ubuntu)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

I told you in the introduction of this article that I would give you homework. You thought I was joking. So, here’s your homework: I want you to grab the personas from the Know About Accessibility website, and use them throughout every design project to help you recognise accessibility issues while you work—and reclaim design for everyone.

NOTE: This article is based on “Recognise,” my five-minute presentation from Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Dublin’s Defuse (Design for Use) event in 2025.

Your Marketing Doesn’t End When Someone Buys | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 6 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode Overview In step 6 of the 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success, John Jantsch makes the case for the part of marketing most founders quietly neglect: the customers they already have. The typical business pours close to 90 percent of its budget into winning new customers and only about 10 […]

Why Video Marketing Builds Customer Trust in the Age of AI written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Eisode:

Overview

Automation is everywhere in small business right now, from chatbots to email sequences to review requests. The question Doug Dibert Jr. raises on this episode is a pointed one: as you add more AI to your customer communication, are you accidentally making people trust you less? Dibert, founder and CEO of the white label video platform Magnfi, makes the case that video is the human layer that keeps automated systems from feeling cold, and that businesses adding short, personal video to their everyday communication are standing out and closing deals faster.

John Jantsch and Dibert get practical fast. They cover where video belongs after the sale, how to turn a four or five star review into a video testimonial that doubles as marketing content, and why a simple recorded reply on a form-confirmation page still surprises people. Dibert shares his Thank You Thursday habit, breaks down how AI video production now rivals shoots that once cost a fortune, and explains how agencies are packaging video as recurring revenue.

This one is for small business owners, marketers, and agency operators who already use automation and want it to feel more human without adding hours to the week. If you have wondered where video actually fits in a tech stack built on AI, you will leave with a short list of places to start.

Guest Bio

Doug Dibert Jr. is the founder and CEO of Magnfi, a white label video platform that helps marketing agencies and businesses add video to AI chat, email automation, and reputation marketing systems. With a background in filmmaking and years running a video production and marketing agency, He built Magnfi to give businesses video testimonial capture, branded video clips, video email, and AI-delivered video replies without the editing overhead. He works closely with agencies that resell the platform to their own clients.

Key Takeaways

• Video is becoming the human layer over AI-driven communication. A short clip in a welcome email, a chatbot reply, or an SMS keeps a real person present as you automate.
• Video chatbot replies work best as pre-recorded clips delivered by AI from a knowledge base at the right moment, not glitchy on-screen avatars.
• Reviews can become a content engine. After a four or five star review or a high NPS score, invite a quick video testimonial and offer a small thank-you, turning happy customers into micro-influencers.
• A personal video on your form-confirmation page still stands out, because so few businesses bother to confirm a submission like a human would.
• Thank You Thursday: pick a random customer each week and record a short thank-you. It often reopens conversations and surfaces new needs.
• Your current customers are your best audience for additional products. Social media nurtures buyers, it does not only attract new ones.
• LinkedIn is a strong place for video right now if you want to be seen as an expert in your field.
• AI video production has matured fast. Doug’s team produced a cinematic ad for an automotive repair shop that drew over 7,000 plays in two weeks.
• For agencies, white label video slots in as an add-on to reputation, social, and web services, commonly at $250 to $750 a month in recurring revenue.

Great Moments

• [00:02] John opens with the question behind the episode: is your new AI quietly eroding customer trust?
• [00:51] The story behind the name Magnfi, including why dropping a single letter saved $5,000.
• [02:06] How video shifted from “just content” to humanizing AI-driven communication.
• [03:18] Why video outperforms text: nonverbal cues build know, like, and trust.
• [05:54] Where video belongs after the sale, from welcome emails to chatbots to onboarding.
• [08:31] Turning four and five star reviews into video testimonials with a simple incentive.
• [11:47] Thank You Thursday, and how a weekly thank-you video reopens client conversations.
• [16:22] The cinematic AI video example: a Mad Max style ad built around an air freshener.
• [20:08] The first 90 days for a white label agency, plus why YouTube is the number two search engine.

Memorable Quotes

“What if every AI tool your business just adopted is quietly making customers trust you less?” — John Jantsch

“Video is a fantastic conduit for know, like, and trust in a digital-first world.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

“Your social media is also for continuing to sell to your current customers.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

“Your current customer base is the best base to sell additional products and services to, because they already know, like, and trust you.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

“That person took the time to record a video. You have no excuse.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

Why Video Marketing Builds Customer Trust in the Age of AI written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Eisode: Overview Automation is everywhere in small business right now, from chatbots to email sequences to review requests. The question Doug Dibert Jr. raises on this episode is a pointed one: as you add more AI to your customer communication, are you accidentally making people trust you less? Dibert, founder and CEO […]

Why Video Marketing Builds Customer Trust in the Age of AI written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Eisode:

Overview

Automation is everywhere in small business right now, from chatbots to email sequences to review requests. The question Doug Dibert Jr. raises on this episode is a pointed one: as you add more AI to your customer communication, are you accidentally making people trust you less? Dibert, founder and CEO of the white label video platform Magnfi, makes the case that video is the human layer that keeps automated systems from feeling cold, and that businesses adding short, personal video to their everyday communication are standing out and closing deals faster.

John Jantsch and Dibert get practical fast. They cover where video belongs after the sale, how to turn a four or five star review into a video testimonial that doubles as marketing content, and why a simple recorded reply on a form-confirmation page still surprises people. Dibert shares his Thank You Thursday habit, breaks down how AI video production now rivals shoots that once cost a fortune, and explains how agencies are packaging video as recurring revenue.

This one is for small business owners, marketers, and agency operators who already use automation and want it to feel more human without adding hours to the week. If you have wondered where video actually fits in a tech stack built on AI, you will leave with a short list of places to start.

Guest Bio

Doug Dibert Jr. is the founder and CEO of Magnfi, a white label video platform that helps marketing agencies and businesses add video to AI chat, email automation, and reputation marketing systems. With a background in filmmaking and years running a video production and marketing agency, He built Magnfi to give businesses video testimonial capture, branded video clips, video email, and AI-delivered video replies without the editing overhead. He works closely with agencies that resell the platform to their own clients.

Key Takeaways

• Video is becoming the human layer over AI-driven communication. A short clip in a welcome email, a chatbot reply, or an SMS keeps a real person present as you automate.
• Video chatbot replies work best as pre-recorded clips delivered by AI from a knowledge base at the right moment, not glitchy on-screen avatars.
• Reviews can become a content engine. After a four or five star review or a high NPS score, invite a quick video testimonial and offer a small thank-you, turning happy customers into micro-influencers.
• A personal video on your form-confirmation page still stands out, because so few businesses bother to confirm a submission like a human would.
• Thank You Thursday: pick a random customer each week and record a short thank-you. It often reopens conversations and surfaces new needs.
• Your current customers are your best audience for additional products. Social media nurtures buyers, it does not only attract new ones.
• LinkedIn is a strong place for video right now if you want to be seen as an expert in your field.
• AI video production has matured fast. Doug’s team produced a cinematic ad for an automotive repair shop that drew over 7,000 plays in two weeks.
• For agencies, white label video slots in as an add-on to reputation, social, and web services, commonly at $250 to $750 a month in recurring revenue.

Great Moments

• [00:02] John opens with the question behind the episode: is your new AI quietly eroding customer trust?
• [00:51] The story behind the name Magnfi, including why dropping a single letter saved $5,000.
• [02:06] How video shifted from “just content” to humanizing AI-driven communication.
• [03:18] Why video outperforms text: nonverbal cues build know, like, and trust.
• [05:54] Where video belongs after the sale, from welcome emails to chatbots to onboarding.
• [08:31] Turning four and five star reviews into video testimonials with a simple incentive.
• [11:47] Thank You Thursday, and how a weekly thank-you video reopens client conversations.
• [16:22] The cinematic AI video example: a Mad Max style ad built around an air freshener.
• [20:08] The first 90 days for a white label agency, plus why YouTube is the number two search engine.

Memorable Quotes

“What if every AI tool your business just adopted is quietly making customers trust you less?” — John Jantsch

“Video is a fantastic conduit for know, like, and trust in a digital-first world.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

“Your social media is also for continuing to sell to your current customers.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

“Your current customer base is the best base to sell additional products and services to, because they already know, like, and trust you.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

“That person took the time to record a video. You have no excuse.” — Doug Dibert Jr.

For many celebrities, public life is built around appearances, premieres, and performances, which can make personal battles easy to miss. While some stars spoke openly about their diagnosis, others kept it private until much later, surprising fans who never knew what they were facing behind the scenes. Cancer has touched countless lives, including many of the most recognizable names in entertainment. Some fought and recovered, others used their platform to raise awareness, and a few kept working through it all. These are fifteen celebrities whose cancer journeys many people never realized happened.

The post 15 Celebrities You Didn’t Realize Had Cancer appeared first on Den of Geek.

The first Silent Hill movie adaptation is far from perfect; shoddy acting and a bloated storyline keep it from achieving its ambitions. But its gruesome practical effects, tense atmosphere, and grim aesthetic, alongside the cultural relevance of its source material, have kept people rewatching the film since its 2006 premiere.

However, there are more layers of critique beneath the surface level themes of the film that also play a role in preserving its status as a movie worth seeing over and over. Under the crust of cult psychology and revenge lies an intersection of environmental, political, and feminist values present in few mainstream horror movies. 

Silent Hill follows Rose (Radha Mitchell), a mother who is trying to uncover the reasons for Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), her adopted daughter, having nightmares about the town Silent Hill. After doing intense research, Rose discovers the titular town where the majority of the film takes place was abandoned due to a reported coal-seam fire — a real world phenomenon of extremely long-lasting blazes that are often caused by mining activity. She decides to take her daughter there, where things inevitably go wrong; she wakes up in a foggy alternate reality of the town she was looking for, and Sharon is missing. It’s up to Rose and police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden) to find Sharon in the twisted Silent Hill dimension.

While the original Silent Hill video game is set in an American town, with no specifics provided on which state it is in or what environmental catastrophe that led to the town’s abandonment, the film’s Silent Hill is in West Virginia, a state often defined by its economic reliance on the coal industry. This Appalachian setting encapsulates the fear its creators want audiences to feel. Horror filmmakers have used Appalachia as a setting to elicit a fear response from viewers for years, capitalizing on the long history of media misrepresentation and cultural othering the region has faced. 

Silent Hill instead highlights a real life problem faced by West Virginia and many other parts of Appalachia without relying on stereotypical representations of Appalachian people. Where stereotypes have depicted uncivilized godless violence (Deliverance is a prime example), the local residents of Silent Hill are middle class fundamentalists, each of them devoted members of a cult called the Brethren. 

This subversive depiction is further expounded on in flashbacks to before the disaster that made the town uninhabitable and created the alternate hellish reality. The residents of Silent Hill are economically comfortable, with lofty ideals of social compliance and snuffing out perceived abnormal behavior in cruel ways more in line with a critique of suburbia than Appalachia. This representation is a major departure from the traditional reliance on the imagery of scattered, violent hillbillies that has dominated depictions of Appalachian antagonists across mediums. 

Although there is still a depiction of a violent populace, it’s a violence not rooted in the degradation of Appalachians as ignorant and uncultured but rather a more translatable depiction of conformity that could happen anywhere. The use of West Virginia as the setting highlights the real contemporary issues of environmental destruction caused by the extractive industries that have plagued the region for centuries.

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The disaster that ultimately caused the supernatural creation of the Silent Hill dimension deepens the thematic strata of Silent Hill. Alessa (also played by Jodelle Ferland), a young girl from the days before the dimension opened, was ridiculed and villainized by the pious residents of Silent Hill for being born out of wedlock. Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger), Alessa’s mother, allows Christabella (Alice Krige), the high priestess of the Brethren, to try a “purifying” ritual on Alessa after she is raped by her school’s janitor. Christabella and her followers then attempt to burn Alessa alive in an immolation ritual which is stopped by Dahlia and police officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates), but only after Alessa is horribly disfigured by the fire (this fire is ultimately what causes the coal-seam disaster that forced residents to abandon the town). 

Torn apart by her hatred, Alessa creates the constantly-shifting nightmarish dark Silent Hill dimension, trapping a guilt-ridden Dahlia and members of the Brethren in her ashen, monster-laden hellscape. Alessa is thus split between Dark Alessa, a demonic entity feeding off her hatred, and Sharon, her innocence incarnate.

It is not a stretch to describe Silent Hill as an ecofeminist piece of media. Ecofeminism is defined as “both political activism and intellectual critique” by ScienceDirect. It is a framework that argues the harm done to women and the harm done to the environment mirror each other and manifest in a number of parallel ways societally and politically. 

The coal-seam fire ignites after the residents of Silent Hill torture a girl who was the victim of an unspeakable crime. The primarily female cast showcases women fighting who, knowingly or not, are fighting environmental catastrophe alongside attempting to save a girl from an awful fate at the hands of conservative zealots. Alessa’s scarring by the fiery violence of the Brethren mirrors the scarring of West Virginia, her home state, done by mining and extraction. Violence against women and violence against the land, as well as women-led political action, are inseparable in Silent Hill.

At a time when human-driven climate change and rising fascism are joining hands and taking humanity into the sunset of doomsday, Silent Hill presents a surprising, yet poignant vessel for environmental and social critique that can only age better as time goes on.

The post 2006’s Silent Hill Contains Surprisingly Relevant Environmental and Political Themes appeared first on Den of Geek.

Horror films often go through major changes before they reach audiences, and some of the most interesting shifts happen when studios tone things down. Scripts that once leaned heavily into brutality, psychological intensity, or extreme imagery are often reworked to make them more commercially acceptable. What ends up on screen can still be scary, but sometimes it is a softened version of something far more disturbing. Deleted scenes, alternate cuts, and early drafts reveal just how different these films could have been. These are fifteen horror movies that were originally planned to be much darker than what audiences ultimately saw.

The post Horror Movies That Were Supposed to Be Way More Disturbing Than What We Got appeared first on Den of Geek.

The first Silent Hill movie adaptation is far from perfect; shoddy acting and a bloated storyline keep it from achieving its ambitions. But its gruesome practical effects, tense atmosphere, and grim aesthetic, alongside the cultural relevance of its source material, have kept people rewatching the film since its 2006 premiere.

However, there are more layers of critique beneath the surface level themes of the film that also play a role in preserving its status as a movie worth seeing over and over. Under the crust of cult psychology and revenge lies an intersection of environmental, political, and feminist values present in few mainstream horror movies. 

Silent Hill follows Rose (Radha Mitchell), a mother who is trying to uncover the reasons for Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), her adopted daughter, having nightmares about the town Silent Hill. After doing intense research, Rose discovers the titular town where the majority of the film takes place was abandoned due to a reported coal-seam fire — a real world phenomenon of extremely long-lasting blazes that are often caused by mining activity. She decides to take her daughter there, where things inevitably go wrong; she wakes up in a foggy alternate reality of the town she was looking for, and Sharon is missing. It’s up to Rose and police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden) to find Sharon in the twisted Silent Hill dimension.

While the original Silent Hill video game is set in an American town, with no specifics provided on which state it is in or what environmental catastrophe that led to the town’s abandonment, the film’s Silent Hill is in West Virginia, a state often defined by its economic reliance on the coal industry. This Appalachian setting encapsulates the fear its creators want audiences to feel. Horror filmmakers have used Appalachia as a setting to elicit a fear response from viewers for years, capitalizing on the long history of media misrepresentation and cultural othering the region has faced. 

Silent Hill instead highlights a real life problem faced by West Virginia and many other parts of Appalachia without relying on stereotypical representations of Appalachian people. Where stereotypes have depicted uncivilized godless violence (Deliverance is a prime example), the local residents of Silent Hill are middle class fundamentalists, each of them devoted members of a cult called the Brethren. 

This subversive depiction is further expounded on in flashbacks to before the disaster that made the town uninhabitable and created the alternate hellish reality. The residents of Silent Hill are economically comfortable, with lofty ideals of social compliance and snuffing out perceived abnormal behavior in cruel ways more in line with a critique of suburbia than Appalachia. This representation is a major departure from the traditional reliance on the imagery of scattered, violent hillbillies that has dominated depictions of Appalachian antagonists across mediums. 

Although there is still a depiction of a violent populace, it’s a violence not rooted in the degradation of Appalachians as ignorant and uncultured but rather a more translatable depiction of conformity that could happen anywhere. The use of West Virginia as the setting highlights the real contemporary issues of environmental destruction caused by the extractive industries that have plagued the region for centuries.

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Amazon Video

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Apple TV Store

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Source:

The disaster that ultimately caused the supernatural creation of the Silent Hill dimension deepens the thematic strata of Silent Hill. Alessa (also played by Jodelle Ferland), a young girl from the days before the dimension opened, was ridiculed and villainized by the pious residents of Silent Hill for being born out of wedlock. Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger), Alessa’s mother, allows Christabella (Alice Krige), the high priestess of the Brethren, to try a “purifying” ritual on Alessa after she is raped by her school’s janitor. Christabella and her followers then attempt to burn Alessa alive in an immolation ritual which is stopped by Dahlia and police officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates), but only after Alessa is horribly disfigured by the fire (this fire is ultimately what causes the coal-seam disaster that forced residents to abandon the town). 

Torn apart by her hatred, Alessa creates the constantly-shifting nightmarish dark Silent Hill dimension, trapping a guilt-ridden Dahlia and members of the Brethren in her ashen, monster-laden hellscape. Alessa is thus split between Dark Alessa, a demonic entity feeding off her hatred, and Sharon, her innocence incarnate.

It is not a stretch to describe Silent Hill as an ecofeminist piece of media. Ecofeminism is defined as “both political activism and intellectual critique” by ScienceDirect. It is a framework that argues the harm done to women and the harm done to the environment mirror each other and manifest in a number of parallel ways societally and politically. 

The coal-seam fire ignites after the residents of Silent Hill torture a girl who was the victim of an unspeakable crime. The primarily female cast showcases women fighting who, knowingly or not, are fighting environmental catastrophe alongside attempting to save a girl from an awful fate at the hands of conservative zealots. Alessa’s scarring by the fiery violence of the Brethren mirrors the scarring of West Virginia, her home state, done by mining and extraction. Violence against women and violence against the land, as well as women-led political action, are inseparable in Silent Hill.

At a time when human-driven climate change and rising fascism are joining hands and taking humanity into the sunset of doomsday, Silent Hill presents a surprising, yet poignant vessel for environmental and social critique that can only age better as time goes on.

The post 2006’s Silent Hill Contains Surprisingly Relevant Environmental and Political Themes appeared first on Den of Geek.

Few entertainers have ever matched Frank Sinatra’s combination of charisma, talent, and screen presence. Long before celebrities were called heartthrobs, “Ol’ Blue Eyes” captivated audiences in both concert halls and movie theaters, building a film career that stretched from lavish musicals to gripping crime dramas and wartime thrillers.

He even earned an Academy Award for his acting, proving he was far more than just a legendary singer. We’ve gathered some photos of him throughout his career to remember what a legend he was. These showcase why Hollywood couldn’t get enough of its original heartthrob.

The post 15 Candid Photos of Hollywood’s Original Heartthrob appeared first on Den of Geek.

The first Silent Hill movie adaptation is far from perfect; shoddy acting and a bloated storyline keep it from achieving its ambitions. But its gruesome practical effects, tense atmosphere, and grim aesthetic, alongside the cultural relevance of its source material, have kept people rewatching the film since its 2006 premiere.

However, there are more layers of critique beneath the surface level themes of the film that also play a role in preserving its status as a movie worth seeing over and over. Under the crust of cult psychology and revenge lies an intersection of environmental, political, and feminist values present in few mainstream horror movies. 

Silent Hill follows Rose (Radha Mitchell), a mother who is trying to uncover the reasons for Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), her adopted daughter, having nightmares about the town Silent Hill. After doing intense research, Rose discovers the titular town where the majority of the film takes place was abandoned due to a reported coal-seam fire — a real world phenomenon of extremely long-lasting blazes that are often caused by mining activity. She decides to take her daughter there, where things inevitably go wrong; she wakes up in a foggy alternate reality of the town she was looking for, and Sharon is missing. It’s up to Rose and police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden) to find Sharon in the twisted Silent Hill dimension.

While the original Silent Hill video game is set in an American town, with no specifics provided on which state it is in or what environmental catastrophe that led to the town’s abandonment, the film’s Silent Hill is in West Virginia, a state often defined by its economic reliance on the coal industry. This Appalachian setting encapsulates the fear its creators want audiences to feel. Horror filmmakers have used Appalachia as a setting to elicit a fear response from viewers for years, capitalizing on the long history of media misrepresentation and cultural othering the region has faced. 

Silent Hill instead highlights a real life problem faced by West Virginia and many other parts of Appalachia without relying on stereotypical representations of Appalachian people. Where stereotypes have depicted uncivilized godless violence (Deliverance is a prime example), the local residents of Silent Hill are middle class fundamentalists, each of them devoted members of a cult called the Brethren. 

This subversive depiction is further expounded on in flashbacks to before the disaster that made the town uninhabitable and created the alternate hellish reality. The residents of Silent Hill are economically comfortable, with lofty ideals of social compliance and snuffing out perceived abnormal behavior in cruel ways more in line with a critique of suburbia than Appalachia. This representation is a major departure from the traditional reliance on the imagery of scattered, violent hillbillies that has dominated depictions of Appalachian antagonists across mediums. 

Although there is still a depiction of a violent populace, it’s a violence not rooted in the degradation of Appalachians as ignorant and uncultured but rather a more translatable depiction of conformity that could happen anywhere. The use of West Virginia as the setting highlights the real contemporary issues of environmental destruction caused by the extractive industries that have plagued the region for centuries.

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Tubi TV

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Amazon Video

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Apple TV Store

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Source:

The disaster that ultimately caused the supernatural creation of the Silent Hill dimension deepens the thematic strata of Silent Hill. Alessa (also played by Jodelle Ferland), a young girl from the days before the dimension opened, was ridiculed and villainized by the pious residents of Silent Hill for being born out of wedlock. Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger), Alessa’s mother, allows Christabella (Alice Krige), the high priestess of the Brethren, to try a “purifying” ritual on Alessa after she is raped by her school’s janitor. Christabella and her followers then attempt to burn Alessa alive in an immolation ritual which is stopped by Dahlia and police officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates), but only after Alessa is horribly disfigured by the fire (this fire is ultimately what causes the coal-seam disaster that forced residents to abandon the town). 

Torn apart by her hatred, Alessa creates the constantly-shifting nightmarish dark Silent Hill dimension, trapping a guilt-ridden Dahlia and members of the Brethren in her ashen, monster-laden hellscape. Alessa is thus split between Dark Alessa, a demonic entity feeding off her hatred, and Sharon, her innocence incarnate.

It is not a stretch to describe Silent Hill as an ecofeminist piece of media. Ecofeminism is defined as “both political activism and intellectual critique” by ScienceDirect. It is a framework that argues the harm done to women and the harm done to the environment mirror each other and manifest in a number of parallel ways societally and politically. 

The coal-seam fire ignites after the residents of Silent Hill torture a girl who was the victim of an unspeakable crime. The primarily female cast showcases women fighting who, knowingly or not, are fighting environmental catastrophe alongside attempting to save a girl from an awful fate at the hands of conservative zealots. Alessa’s scarring by the fiery violence of the Brethren mirrors the scarring of West Virginia, her home state, done by mining and extraction. Violence against women and violence against the land, as well as women-led political action, are inseparable in Silent Hill.

At a time when human-driven climate change and rising fascism are joining hands and taking humanity into the sunset of doomsday, Silent Hill presents a surprising, yet poignant vessel for environmental and social critique that can only age better as time goes on.

The post 2006’s Silent Hill Contains Surprisingly Relevant Environmental and Political Themes appeared first on Den of Geek.

Television and movies have always loved giving characters dream apartments that make audiences wonder how they could possibly afford them. Granted, sometimes the apartments need to be the size of a filming set for logistical reasons, but they don’t stop being jarring.

Sometimes there’s an in-universe explanation, but even then, the math rarely adds up. After all, there’s only so much money an average salary can bring in. These iconic apartments became almost as memorable as the characters themselves, even if their square footage and locations belong firmly in the realm of fantasy rather than reality.

The post 15 Characters With Unrealistically Luxurious Apartments appeared first on Den of Geek.

The first Silent Hill movie adaptation is far from perfect; shoddy acting and a bloated storyline keep it from achieving its ambitions. But its gruesome practical effects, tense atmosphere, and grim aesthetic, alongside the cultural relevance of its source material, have kept people rewatching the film since its 2006 premiere.

However, there are more layers of critique beneath the surface level themes of the film that also play a role in preserving its status as a movie worth seeing over and over. Under the crust of cult psychology and revenge lies an intersection of environmental, political, and feminist values present in few mainstream horror movies. 

Silent Hill follows Rose (Radha Mitchell), a mother who is trying to uncover the reasons for Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), her adopted daughter, having nightmares about the town Silent Hill. After doing intense research, Rose discovers the titular town where the majority of the film takes place was abandoned due to a reported coal-seam fire — a real world phenomenon of extremely long-lasting blazes that are often caused by mining activity. She decides to take her daughter there, where things inevitably go wrong; she wakes up in a foggy alternate reality of the town she was looking for, and Sharon is missing. It’s up to Rose and police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden) to find Sharon in the twisted Silent Hill dimension.

While the original Silent Hill video game is set in an American town, with no specifics provided on which state it is in or what environmental catastrophe that led to the town’s abandonment, the film’s Silent Hill is in West Virginia, a state often defined by its economic reliance on the coal industry. This Appalachian setting encapsulates the fear its creators want audiences to feel. Horror filmmakers have used Appalachia as a setting to elicit a fear response from viewers for years, capitalizing on the long history of media misrepresentation and cultural othering the region has faced. 

Silent Hill instead highlights a real life problem faced by West Virginia and many other parts of Appalachia without relying on stereotypical representations of Appalachian people. Where stereotypes have depicted uncivilized godless violence (Deliverance is a prime example), the local residents of Silent Hill are middle class fundamentalists, each of them devoted members of a cult called the Brethren. 

This subversive depiction is further expounded on in flashbacks to before the disaster that made the town uninhabitable and created the alternate hellish reality. The residents of Silent Hill are economically comfortable, with lofty ideals of social compliance and snuffing out perceived abnormal behavior in cruel ways more in line with a critique of suburbia than Appalachia. This representation is a major departure from the traditional reliance on the imagery of scattered, violent hillbillies that has dominated depictions of Appalachian antagonists across mediums. 

Although there is still a depiction of a violent populace, it’s a violence not rooted in the degradation of Appalachians as ignorant and uncultured but rather a more translatable depiction of conformity that could happen anywhere. The use of West Virginia as the setting highlights the real contemporary issues of environmental destruction caused by the extractive industries that have plagued the region for centuries.

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Tubi TV

Ads

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Amazon Video

$ 3.99

hd

Fandango At Home

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hd

Apple TV Store

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Source:

The disaster that ultimately caused the supernatural creation of the Silent Hill dimension deepens the thematic strata of Silent Hill. Alessa (also played by Jodelle Ferland), a young girl from the days before the dimension opened, was ridiculed and villainized by the pious residents of Silent Hill for being born out of wedlock. Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger), Alessa’s mother, allows Christabella (Alice Krige), the high priestess of the Brethren, to try a “purifying” ritual on Alessa after she is raped by her school’s janitor. Christabella and her followers then attempt to burn Alessa alive in an immolation ritual which is stopped by Dahlia and police officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates), but only after Alessa is horribly disfigured by the fire (this fire is ultimately what causes the coal-seam disaster that forced residents to abandon the town). 

Torn apart by her hatred, Alessa creates the constantly-shifting nightmarish dark Silent Hill dimension, trapping a guilt-ridden Dahlia and members of the Brethren in her ashen, monster-laden hellscape. Alessa is thus split between Dark Alessa, a demonic entity feeding off her hatred, and Sharon, her innocence incarnate.

It is not a stretch to describe Silent Hill as an ecofeminist piece of media. Ecofeminism is defined as “both political activism and intellectual critique” by ScienceDirect. It is a framework that argues the harm done to women and the harm done to the environment mirror each other and manifest in a number of parallel ways societally and politically. 

The coal-seam fire ignites after the residents of Silent Hill torture a girl who was the victim of an unspeakable crime. The primarily female cast showcases women fighting who, knowingly or not, are fighting environmental catastrophe alongside attempting to save a girl from an awful fate at the hands of conservative zealots. Alessa’s scarring by the fiery violence of the Brethren mirrors the scarring of West Virginia, her home state, done by mining and extraction. Violence against women and violence against the land, as well as women-led political action, are inseparable in Silent Hill.

At a time when human-driven climate change and rising fascism are joining hands and taking humanity into the sunset of doomsday, Silent Hill presents a surprising, yet poignant vessel for environmental and social critique that can only age better as time goes on.

The post 2006’s Silent Hill Contains Surprisingly Relevant Environmental and Political Themes appeared first on Den of Geek.

Movies, television, and video games are filled with memorable fictional companies that somehow keep the lights on despite endless lawsuits, catastrophic accidents, or spectacularly incompetent management. In the real world, many of these businesses would be bankrupt after their first major incident, buried under regulatory fines, insurance claims, or public outrage.

Others survive only because stories need them to. These companies have become iconic precisely because they operate by fictional rules instead of real-world business realities. Here are a few we’ve chosen that probably wouldn’t last a year outside fiction.

The post 15 Fictional Companies That Could Never Stay in Business in the Real World appeared first on Den of Geek.

The first Silent Hill movie adaptation is far from perfect; shoddy acting and a bloated storyline keep it from achieving its ambitions. But its gruesome practical effects, tense atmosphere, and grim aesthetic, alongside the cultural relevance of its source material, have kept people rewatching the film since its 2006 premiere.

However, there are more layers of critique beneath the surface level themes of the film that also play a role in preserving its status as a movie worth seeing over and over. Under the crust of cult psychology and revenge lies an intersection of environmental, political, and feminist values present in few mainstream horror movies. 

Silent Hill follows Rose (Radha Mitchell), a mother who is trying to uncover the reasons for Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), her adopted daughter, having nightmares about the town Silent Hill. After doing intense research, Rose discovers the titular town where the majority of the film takes place was abandoned due to a reported coal-seam fire — a real world phenomenon of extremely long-lasting blazes that are often caused by mining activity. She decides to take her daughter there, where things inevitably go wrong; she wakes up in a foggy alternate reality of the town she was looking for, and Sharon is missing. It’s up to Rose and police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden) to find Sharon in the twisted Silent Hill dimension.

While the original Silent Hill video game is set in an American town, with no specifics provided on which state it is in or what environmental catastrophe that led to the town’s abandonment, the film’s Silent Hill is in West Virginia, a state often defined by its economic reliance on the coal industry. This Appalachian setting encapsulates the fear its creators want audiences to feel. Horror filmmakers have used Appalachia as a setting to elicit a fear response from viewers for years, capitalizing on the long history of media misrepresentation and cultural othering the region has faced. 

Silent Hill instead highlights a real life problem faced by West Virginia and many other parts of Appalachia without relying on stereotypical representations of Appalachian people. Where stereotypes have depicted uncivilized godless violence (Deliverance is a prime example), the local residents of Silent Hill are middle class fundamentalists, each of them devoted members of a cult called the Brethren. 

This subversive depiction is further expounded on in flashbacks to before the disaster that made the town uninhabitable and created the alternate hellish reality. The residents of Silent Hill are economically comfortable, with lofty ideals of social compliance and snuffing out perceived abnormal behavior in cruel ways more in line with a critique of suburbia than Appalachia. This representation is a major departure from the traditional reliance on the imagery of scattered, violent hillbillies that has dominated depictions of Appalachian antagonists across mediums. 

Although there is still a depiction of a violent populace, it’s a violence not rooted in the degradation of Appalachians as ignorant and uncultured but rather a more translatable depiction of conformity that could happen anywhere. The use of West Virginia as the setting highlights the real contemporary issues of environmental destruction caused by the extractive industries that have plagued the region for centuries.

sd

Tubi TV

Ads

hd

Amazon Video

$ 3.99

hd

Fandango At Home

$ 3.99

hd

Apple TV Store

$ 3.99

Source:

The disaster that ultimately caused the supernatural creation of the Silent Hill dimension deepens the thematic strata of Silent Hill. Alessa (also played by Jodelle Ferland), a young girl from the days before the dimension opened, was ridiculed and villainized by the pious residents of Silent Hill for being born out of wedlock. Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger), Alessa’s mother, allows Christabella (Alice Krige), the high priestess of the Brethren, to try a “purifying” ritual on Alessa after she is raped by her school’s janitor. Christabella and her followers then attempt to burn Alessa alive in an immolation ritual which is stopped by Dahlia and police officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates), but only after Alessa is horribly disfigured by the fire (this fire is ultimately what causes the coal-seam disaster that forced residents to abandon the town). 

Torn apart by her hatred, Alessa creates the constantly-shifting nightmarish dark Silent Hill dimension, trapping a guilt-ridden Dahlia and members of the Brethren in her ashen, monster-laden hellscape. Alessa is thus split between Dark Alessa, a demonic entity feeding off her hatred, and Sharon, her innocence incarnate.

It is not a stretch to describe Silent Hill as an ecofeminist piece of media. Ecofeminism is defined as “both political activism and intellectual critique” by ScienceDirect. It is a framework that argues the harm done to women and the harm done to the environment mirror each other and manifest in a number of parallel ways societally and politically. 

The coal-seam fire ignites after the residents of Silent Hill torture a girl who was the victim of an unspeakable crime. The primarily female cast showcases women fighting who, knowingly or not, are fighting environmental catastrophe alongside attempting to save a girl from an awful fate at the hands of conservative zealots. Alessa’s scarring by the fiery violence of the Brethren mirrors the scarring of West Virginia, her home state, done by mining and extraction. Violence against women and violence against the land, as well as women-led political action, are inseparable in Silent Hill.

At a time when human-driven climate change and rising fascism are joining hands and taking humanity into the sunset of doomsday, Silent Hill presents a surprising, yet poignant vessel for environmental and social critique that can only age better as time goes on.

The post 2006’s Silent Hill Contains Surprisingly Relevant Environmental and Political Themes appeared first on Den of Geek.