Within the last couple of days, I had a small poll on the Parlor's YouTube community tab: should the Parlor's open but not active Facebook group be made private or left public?
Those who took the time to give their answer said yes, make it private. So, on February 11, I started the process of converting the group to private.
Eh?
What I mean by "the process" is that basically, once you set a Facebook group to Private, Facebook gives a group owner a few days to change it back to Public if the owner changes their mind. When I put the group setting to Private, Facebook gave me the date the change will become permanent--February 14, 2024.
There have been a great deal of issues that have presented new challenges to social media platforms and people who use them. Privacy has always been a serious issue, but has taken on other dimensions. I don't just mean the deluge of links with disgusting thumbnails of po--oh, no, no. no, I just ate.
Anyway.
Until the group officially becomes private, I have deemed it necessary to put strict rules in place to protect group members, or, as the Parlor calls them, guests. Anonymous posts, I'm afraid, are not allowed. Participation approval is required and I will moderate every post. Again, this is for the safety and wellbeing of Parlor guests of the Facebook group.
Once the group has been private for a bit, and if it is fairly active, I might relax my grip a bit. For now, though, I want to take every precaution I can to keep Parlor guests safe and the group an enjoyable environment.
Since YouTube is the only other social media the Parlor is using for now, that content will remain there. I might at times set up a new upload in a way that it's only available to Parlor guests in the group, but not always.
Recently, a viewer suggested an idea for the kind of content my graphics would, in their humble opinion, be well-suited for. Ambience-type ASMR.
Funny how the Parlor gets a ton of recommendations of this type of video from YouTube, but it never occurred to me that my graphics might also be well suited to that! These are the videos that can be anywhere from, say, a half hour, but usually no less than one hour, to eight or ten hours long. The visuals, such as animations of water or mist or flickering lights, and sound effects to go along with the visual content create an ambience that many people find very soothing and relaxing.
There is no question that we can all use something like that to help us relax. I have my own ASMR triggers, and although they differ from the ones in videos like the ones I described, I still find those videos relaxing and mesmerizing. And just beautiful.
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| Sims 4 of the Mayfair Pool and Patio by Angerouge |
I decided to put a short test video together to see if I could make something like that effective. It is a shot of the pool and patio at First Street from a model built by another modeler named Angerouge using Mod the Sims (click the image above to see this on Sims 4 Update). I've always wanted to see if I could make some of the image animated, like the swimming pool. So, I decided I'd give it another whirl, and to my surprise, I did get a positive response to the video and encouragement to make more like it!
The test video I made is on YouTube now. It is, however, only about five minutes long since it was an initial test video. But who wants to have to hit replay every five minutes or set their device's app to a repeating loop? That's not relaxing.
I am in the process of putting together a much longer version. Those little fountains have been a challenge, though. I'm sure I've got more graphics I can make longer versions of. As the 3D model of the Mayfair house progresses, it can be used for that purpose as well. The garden is actually in the beginning stages now!
If a private group to discuss the topics of the Mayfair Witches, Anne Rice, Vampire Chronicles, and related sounds like something you might be interested in, I'll link the Facebook group below. The group is private and administered by the public community page, the Mayfair Parlor. And if you'd like to wait until February 14 or later to join in order to remain private, that is absolutely okay with me.
By the way, if you go to the public community page, there is a little something I've just shared to the feed from Anne Rice's Immortal Universe...
Come Into My Parlor on Facebook Private Group