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Things that should be obvious but it seems that to some people, they arent:

NON-FICTION books (example: mein kampf) ≠ fiction — using the former as an example of how fiction affects reality just makes you look dumb. Cmon now its literally in the name.

Propaganda/ads ≠ fiction — despite the two having similarities and even having the possibility of overlapping (example: book talking about characters going to Disney), one of them is used to control masses or convince you to spend your money on something (usually putting the thing advertised to be above your basic needs) the other holds much more limited psychological techniques to change the mind of an intelectual individual. Seeing an ad or signs made with the purpose of convincing you to act a certain way everywhere when going out is much more different than the act of sitting down in a silent place in order to read a book.

Representation of poc/queer/disabled people in media/fiction and using it to say how fiction affects reality — representation is necessary. It is crucial not just in fiction, but also in other areas - politics, advertisements, news, everything you could think of in which you see people doing mundane acts - when comparing how something so major and crucial impacts reality while talking about taboo fiction affecting reality, you're downplaying both the relevance of representation itself and the moral of humanity. Seeing a bad guy in a movie wont make lucid people commit bad acts because we have built this thing called common sense for centuries.

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everything else aside, i feel like *IF we want women to stop shipping so many gay male ships, maybe??? we should??? have an equal amount of substantial relatable female characters??? so they have women worth shipping???

oh the horror, a woman was emotionally invested in a male character's relationship with... another male character!!! D: how scandalous and always homophobic, and such a unique crime against cis gay men only. men rarely fetishize lesbians! oh wait-

"i was at the devil's sacrament the other day and there were so many devil worshipers there! it's because they're fetishizing the devil and everyone hates god!" i. w. why are you telling me this.

"why does this fandom ship [2 dudes] so much but not as much [2 chicks]?!?!?!" meanwhile, the story: it's about this awesome guy and this other cool guy and how they're best friends and do everything together and challenge each other to be their best selves and their character and relationship development and it's so human and it really gets into the fundamental philosophical questions of what it means to live, to love... oh and also they of course have the mandatory love interests ladies with nothing of note about their personality that they will have married in the epilog.

*i don't. i predict that if they stop associating lgbt with beloved characters, they will be more susceptible to being corrupted into thinking it's evil. the ships are the leash we can use to guide them with. that sounds creepy, i'm sorry. but anyways the point is that i think instead of decreasing gay guy ships, we should focus on increasing gay girl/other ships to have twice or more the amount of shipping happening. also i still think we can and should bitch and moan about whenever people are disproportionately weird about and offensive towards depictions of queerness in fandom, but that can be done without implying the gayness of the ship itself is what's making their behavior and ship problematic. that uh. can go badly.

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So any americans reading this, please call your reps. You do not need to call for each individual bill, just give them a list of bills you want them to say no to, which should be:

KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

IODA (Interstate Obscenity Definition Act)

SCREEN act

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"i'm uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh im. um i uh am c? caling uh about the uh. the uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh the uh thing? the- i'm quite concerned with the. uh"

and now on the other one i cant call bc none of the numbers the robot is suggesting are the "hello i would like to complain" numbers and i pressed 5 repeat that too many times and it told me goodbye but i didn't leave immediately so its like i SAID thank you for calling master card, GOODBYE! and the robot was more louder than before. did i make the robot angry? i'll try again after work i guess...

i'm so bad at doing the phone calls to all these places i verbally fumbled the shit out of mastercard fuck dude. thankfully i called the wrong one of their numbers first :( the online scrips suck btw no offence

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i'm so bad at doing the phone calls to all these places i verbally fumbled the shit out of mastercard fuck dude. thankfully i called the wrong one of their numbers first :( the online scrips suck btw no offence

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They're trying to bring back KOSA here in the States because OSA successfully passed in the UK. CALL YOUR REPS AND YOUR SENATORS. This would affect fandom. Fanfiction and fanart would no longer be as easily accessible. It's also most definitely going to affect queer people and shows, movies, books, and music that contain queer themes.

You would need to enter your ID to access any of these, which is obviously a horrible idea, considering what the government and world are like right now. They're saying its for the sake of children's safety online. It isn't. It's to monitor what you're doing while you're on the internet and to block you from accessing shit they dont want you to see. It's a mass censorship and surveillance bill.

It's so fucking important that you use your voices right now. Do not stay silent. Call, call, call. Call after business hours so you don't have to speak to anyone if you don't want to. Call frequently. Be as polite and well-spoken as you're able. Let them know how it makes you feel. Tell them how unnecessary it is. Write yourself a script and read it if you have to! JUST CALL.

A child's safety online is the responsibility of their guardian(s). It's not ours.

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decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega instead of google drive

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms

use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).

use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks

use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio

use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs

use mastodon instead of twitter

use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)

use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop

use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers

use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices

learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)

use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)

use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite

use google takeout to export the data on your google account

use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library

remove paywalls with removepaywalls

install the open-source adblocker ublock origin

install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos

use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks

learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school

edit photos with photopea

edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf

download music with doubledouble

take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian

for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)

change your OS to linux

changelog:

removed ground news (uses AI to summarize articles)

removed unroll.me (sells your data)

removed proton mail and drive (AI assistant feature, claims of CEO Andy Yen supporting Trump, please DM if you have proof I can add here)

removed NCH suite (only has very basic free features, puts watermark on anything saved)

notes:

this post blew up while I wasn’t looking (the end of my semester was hellish, and i recently came back from a 3-week family vacation). thanks so much for all the suggestions! <3

i included Ecosia because of their financial transparency. It’s physically impossible that they plant a tree for every search, but their profits still go towards projects including reforestation and solar energy. i view their actions as a net-positive

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: june 14th 2025

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i wish that- if we're gonna gender bs like this- it was the norm for women to be shirtless and for men to be arrested if they unclothe their chests. if i had to pick.

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uh oh this post requires the usage of the word tits! but i'm not very good at spelling so i should look it up first ;)

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i feel like "your tits are SOOOOOOOOO huge! i wish i had your boobs because of how much bigger they are than mine!" should be pretty obviously not an ok thing to say unprompted to transmasculine people in public in front of others. and yet.

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they call it bluegrass because it makes you feel blue and wanna smoke grass

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