hidinginmyhands

[hidinginmyhands]

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You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.

Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”

Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.

I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones. 

Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.

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My spidersona hehehr

She's a student and a part time graphic designer + secretly a hacker ;))

Her outfits color changing properties were inspired by an alexandrite gemstone I got irl btw

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I’m sorry but if there is one thing the Tumblr left needs crucially, it’s the ability to celebrate.

I remember when marriage equality was called and there were waves of rainbows and love wins posts. When we successfully defeated Donald Trump, there was lukewarm relief, a reminder that you were only allowed one or maybe two days to celebrate and then it was back to work. That is if you were even a good person for voting Biden. We never did settle if he was better than Trump. (We did.). We didn’t celebrate student loan debt relief or any of the accomplishments of the Biden administration, or any of the times Trump was blocked, or other countries succeeding in keeping fascists out of office. Who cares if we had successes? It’s not good enough. Back to work!

And this anti-celebratory attitude stretches back to the past. On the 100th anniversary of female suffrage in America, we were reminded that not all women had the vote and so we weren’t allowed to celebrate. The only post I saw about Juneteenth was reminding us that there were enslaved people who were killed instead of freed and therefore celebrating the end of chattel slavery was wrong, and besides, we have prison labor so nothing really changed or got better and there’s nothing to celebrate anyway. Trans Day of Visibility comes with Trans Day of Remembrance so that people don’t fill the tags with hate crimes and death. So on and so forth. Nothing gets better. Nothing changes. Back to work!

So of course when we have a major setback, we fall apart and have to start frantic damage control. Frantic discourse ensues over how much people are allowed to unplug before it becomes bad and selfish. Yes, maybe you can have this one day off Mr. Cratchit but you better be here and miserable early the next morning. Like abusive bosses always insisting you squeeze out more, more, more, and any achievement is just proof you were lazy the other times and impetus for more work.

If we are never allowed to acknowledge any of our victories, how are we supposed to survive our defeats?

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Made a new poster! :)

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the problem with mainstream fictional media today is it is predominantly made for people who don't like fictional media all that much

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One of my favorite things about the difference between Protestant denominations and Catholicism is that Protestants made their whole thing being So Fucking Boring(tm) and normal that if you were raised around Protestants with little to no connection to the Catholic Church when you find out about all the saints and rituals and bones and shit it genuinely comes off as a little like...pagan isn't the right word exactly but you know what I mean? Like for my entire life good Christians sat on folding chairs in a beige basement eating shitty donuts from Albertsons and told me liking Pokemon and Halloween made me a sinner and then I go to see an old Catholic church and there's just like. A fucking ancient corpse in the room?? That everyone is praying over??? Like????? And THIS is actually the religion all the "Pokemon normalizes devil worship" guys originally came from several hundred years ago??????

It's wild okay. It's just wild.

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There were probably some medieval asexuals that were absolutely insufferable on their moral high horse about it. Like "this modesty shit easy - I haven't lusted over any man ever in my life and only fuck my husband out of duty from God and only so that we have children. I am so much better than any of you hoes."

And some other local goodwife would get sick of this and go "well obviously you don't have time for cock, Maergaret, since you're always too fucking busy choking on your own vanity and pride!" and have a smackfight that progresses into a full-on two-woman brawl in the town square. People gather around to watch this until a clergyman shows up to remind everyone that not only is this kind of brawl between good christians definitely a sin, it's also a sin for everyone who's watching to place bets on who's going to win.

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"everybody hates me" factoid actually just a statistical error. The average person doesn't hate you, especially not your friends. You, a person who sits in your room experiencing self loathing every day, are an outlier adn should not have been counted.

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a lot of really annoying media discourse on tumblr comes down to people having a hard time accepting that both of the following are true at the same time:

for any work of fiction interesting enough to be worth talking about, there will be multiple equally plausible and valid interpretations that are possible - and by interpretations here i don't just mean headcanons about minor details, i mean how you read the core themes and character arcs. and very often some of those equally valid interpretations will directly contradict each other and that's ok

not EVERY interpretation is valid, some are genuinely just dumb as hell and unsupported by the text

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the tradwife movement is the same as it has always been - back in the kitchen, back to breeding - it just has better branding.

when i was younger, i hated pink. i was not like other girls. this is now something i'm embarrassed of - this was not me being a "girl's girl."

but it was expressing something many of us felt at the time: i literally wasn't what girlhood was supposed to be. this is a hard thing to explain, but you know when you're not performing girlhood correctly. it isn't as easy as "i liked x when girls liked y" - because there were other girls that liked x, too - but i never figured out exactly the correct way to like x, or to be interested in y.

now there is the divine feminine. this is the same rhetoric it has always been: women are biologically driven to like pink and ribbons and submitting to our husbands.

the problem is that the patriarchy found a better PR team. because yes, actually, i want every woman to have the choice to be a homemaker. i also want her taken seriously for her legitimate home-making labor. i want her to be recognized as also having a job, just unpaid. i want men to have this opportunity, too.

but it is no longer "i made this choice and I love it." instead it is a sixteen-paragraph rant about how selfish it is that my generation isn't having kids. instead it's long videos about how if you feed your children processed foods, you're going to kill them. instead it is "this is what womanhood is supposed to be. i feel bad for any other choices you're making."

the shame spiral is just prettier. it is large houses devoid of personality. it is the implication: if you don't have this, you aren't happy. the solid, everlasting assurance: women are actually supposed to be submitting. this is the default. this is the natural state of things. all other attempts inflict suffering.

but you can no longer say i'm not like other girls. you can no longer reject this image completely. you cannot find it revolting, even if you know that the underbelly is toxic and festering. sure, it is the same repackaged patriarchy. but the internet does not have shades of grey. you should support and reward other women! your disgust is actually internalized misogyny. not because you are seeing a vision of yourself the way they're trying to train you to be. not because you feel her ghost pass within an inch of your earlobe. not because your father will eventually ask you - why can't you be like her?

because they figured out how to make it beautiful: women will sell other women on this idea, and we will find the singular loophole in feminism. sure, she's shaming you in most of her videos. sure, she implies that a different life is obscene. but she just wants you to be happy! you'd be happier if you were listening!

and the whole time you're sitting there thinking: i'd actually just be happier if i had that kind of money.

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you there, adult! quickly! explain why children are a socially vulnerable class of people without defaulting to "they are stupid and their brains don't work"

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"but aces and aros can be in relationships"

Yes, I know that, but do YOU know that aces and aros in relationships are still aces and aros? Do you internalize that? Are you aware that we don't just suddenly turn straight, or gay or anything else?

Yes, even demis

Are you aware that a sex repulsed asexual will still be sex repulsed even in a relationship, and so, might never fuck you?

Are you aware that a romance repulsed aro will still be romance repulsed even in a seemingly normative relationship and might not like doing typical romantic gestures and activities?

Are you aware that a sex neutral or positive asexual might not actually be sexually attracted to you at all even if they do fuck you?

Are you aware that a romance neutral or positive aro might not actually be romantically into you even if they are comfortable with typical romantic gestures?

Are you aware that our identities are just as permanent as yours?

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i love how starfleet captains narrate their official logs in present tense even though they’re often recording it after the fact. starfleet command and future historians get to have a little immersive experience. as a treat

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“Gods never completely die. There’s always somewhere, she told herself. Inside some stone, perhaps, or the words of a song, or riding the mind of some animal, or maybe in a whisper on the wind. They never entirely go, they hang on to the world by the tip of a fingernail. always fighting to find a way back. Once a god, always a god. Dead, perhaps, but only like the world in winter.”

— Terry Pratchett, The Hogfather

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Remember, history was awful. Never trust the romantics.