jazzybot4

[jazzybot4]

Dog whistles and you: why the words you use matter.

You've probably heard of them, but you have definitely heard them. Dog whistles are a problem in the modern internet, with our hyper focus on respectability politics and social media's aggressive push to simplify all concepts and erode all sort of nuance.

When people use them and when people point it out, people get really fucking angry, both ways, and it can be a little hard to understand why and what people are actually angry about. So let's try and untangle that a bit.

Content warnings! We're gonna be talking about Nazis and other genocidal groups, so that's always fun. We're also gonna tangentially discuss misogyny, antiblackness, antisemitism and sexual assault, sexual abuse, pedophilia and zoophilia. The tangential warnings are only applicable to non-explicit discussions of dog whistles in section 3. Sections 1 and 2 do not go into detail about specific dog whistles. I will reiterate the content warnings in section 3.

1. What are dog whistles?

Dog whistles are not actual, literal dog whistles, but it does help to know what an actual, literal dog whistle is, to understand the metaphor. A dog whistle is a whistle designed to be heard by a dog, but crucially and most importantly, not by a person. When you toot on the thing, it makes a quiet, almost imperceptible sound, but if you've trained a dog with it, the dog will go fucking bonkers. The science of it is actually really cool and has to do with the range of intensity of stimuli that different animals can perceive. You know how dogs have an infinitely better smelling sense than you or me? Their hearing is different. That whistle you and I can't really hear, they hear loud and clear.

So what are the metaphorical dog whistles about then? They follow the same principle. Metaphorical dog whistles (I'm gonna call them just dog whistles for the rest of this thing, because I'm lazy, but you're smart and we already defined the terms, so I trust you to keep up) are words with different meanings depending on the audience. That's not inherently malicious, or unique to dog whistles. 99% of the crude humor of humanity comes from that sort of thing: cock is a male bird of a domestic fowl species, and also a bad word that will get you demonetized from Corporate controlled internet if you say/type it anywhere a payment processor can see. So there has to be more to them, than having multiple meanings.

Specifically, dog whistles have "Jekill and Hyde" style meanings. One of them is pretty harmless, benign even. Completely innocent and not at all suspicious. The meaning equivalent of that scene in Snow White with the forest animals being all cute and soft and nice. But then there's the other meaning, and that meaning is not so nice. It can be a shorthand for a slur, or one of the highlights of a conspiracy theory, or represent a shorthand for something genocidal in nature. I'll go in more detail in the next section.

This is where most people stop talking about dog whistles, but I'm not gonna do that, because I think the next two things, that are also required for a dog whistle to be a dog whistle, are actually the most important. And the fact most people never stop to think about them is why dog whistles are so effective. So let's say the quiet part out loud now.

The third characteristic of dog whistles is that their nefarious meaning is in fact a nefarious secret meaning. That means this meaning is part of a closed system of belief. It's like the secret wizard password to enter the forbidden tree house club, except the wizards are Nazis, members of the KKK and other assorted genocidal fucktwits. It's not a nice club to be in, is what I'm trying to say, and the people in that club are generally acknowledged to be not very nice themselves. You might think I'm being glib here, but this is the important bit. Socially speaking, these clubs for genocidal dickheads are considered bad to some degree. There's at least a modicum of societal pressure to discourage people from belonging to these groups. If you're a Nazi and your boss finds out, they will fire you. If you're a Nazi and you walk into a bar, you're likely to get beaten up and told to never come back. Blatant, open membership to these groups is discouraged*, and therefore they need to come up with language and symbols that they understand to be supporting their ideology, but which might not get immediately recognized by outsiders, thus prompting that social retribution they're trying to avoid.

*This is why people are really freaked out by the rise of extremist social and political movements in today's world, because every time an alt-right dudebro feels comfortable just spouting the N word or beating a random trans person in the subway, and they're not immediately and swiftly punished by anyone from bystanders to the actual legal system, those social pressures start letting up and the scum starts to float up into the surface. This is why the punching Nazis rhetoric works. It's a 0 tolerance policy that keeps genocidal ideologies marginalized and out of public consideration.

And let me just say this on its own, yes, genocidal ideologies should be marginalized and kept out of public consideration. Because they're genocidal. There is nothing of value to be found in genocidal ideologies, and extending them any kind of consideration makes you complicit in the very real, actual genocide they're working towards. Yes, really.

The last characteristic of a dog whistle is also the most important and the one people get tripped by the most: It refers to a dog whistle's ability to launder the philosophy of the group that created it, planting the seeds of it in the public sphere and priming people to be radicalized. One of the most common, and frankly distressing, reactions I see whenever someone gets called out for using dog whistles is "it's okay, I'm not a [insert relevant genocidal group here], it's okay if I use it, because the idea behind the word is actually useful!" Intent does not change the nature of a dog whistle. Dog whistles are in fact designed to trick you into doing their work for them. Dog whistles are bad, because when you use them, you lend your credibility to them. So the next time your friends/family/followers see an actual Nazi use them, they will use you as a frame of reference, and give the Nazi a pass. "My friend/relative/fave uses this word all the time, and THEY aren't a Nazi, so what are the chances that this guy is? Besides, all Nazis wear swastikas and like, shaved heads or something. Nah." Congratulations, you have become complicit in the breakdown of the system that's supposed to keep those Nazis out and allowed one of them to walk in and make themselves at home in your community.

Hearing people constantly use dog whistles desensitizes people and erodes their ability to see them for what they are. It makes it normal to use loaded language - and all dog whistles are loaded language - and makes it hard to police and expel those who use that loaded language for its actual nefarious intent.

It's also important to know a lot of dog whistles are "ship of Theseus"'d into sounding reasonable, for the purpose of making people more receptive to extremist ideas and concepts. By that I mean, they start from their very obviously genocidal talking point, and then slowly replace bits and pieces, laundering it until it sounds... you know, reasonable. Understandable. Most of the time they achieve this by targeting strong emotional responses and priming people to accept concepts that are fundamentally against their best interests, but presented in a way that appeals to emotionality and discourages thinking through the implications.

2. "If you hear the whistle, you're the dog" and other bad takes that need to go die in a fire.

So now that we're all on the same page about what dog whistles are and what purpose they serve, we need to talk about what to do about them. Yes, I'm gonna go into that before going into a not extensive and definitely not exhaustive list of dog whistles, because I love you and also because this is tumblr and you guys have a habit of trying to turn everything into a fucking standard rule to then beat up people with. No-nuance, all-outrage mentality in social media is the thing dog whistles are designed to exploit. So let's do our part to not... you know. Do that.

My least favorite rule that people have come up with to try and deal with dog whistles while doing the least amount of critical thinking ever is the infamous witticism "if you hear the whistle, you're the dog." This means that if you understand the dog whistle, you must be its target audience (you know, the Nazi one) and therefore you're a bad person. This is extremely stupid if you spend two seconds thinking about it, so let's do that: if the ideal is for people to "not be the dog", ie, "not hear the whistle" and therefore not understand the second, hidden meaning of the dog whistle, that would mean the ideal is for the dog whistle to work just as intended. Which is a bad thing, need I remind you, since the thing dog whistles are working towards is normalizing and encouraging the acceptance of explicitly genocidal ideologies. Which are bad! And you know they're bad! Because they're explicitly aiming for genocide! But this stupid nugget of stupidity goes one step further and also penalizes those who are being targeted by the dog whistle's users. Remember, genocides target people. Groups of people, to be precise, that the genocide promoters have built an entire ideology to justify why they get to commit genocide against this specific group of people. The justifications and reasons don't have to be very good - they can't, in fact, be good at all, because genocide is never okay, and if you find yourself trying to argue, you might want to take a few steps back and figure out when you got poisoned by genocide ideologies - in the sense that they don't need to be logical or reasonable. They just fill in a gap in the thought process. Whenever people do something, someone will ask them why, and genocide is surprisingly no different in that regard. So the justifications and reasonings are all salad dressing. They're all bad and meaningless and stupid, because they're being used to justify genocide, and genocide is unjustifiable by definition. The point is don't try to argue about the reasons, the reasons are fake and don't matter and they're there only to trap people into perpetual argumentative sinkholes which often only create more net harm by virtue of putting all that genocidal rhetoric in your public space. Incidentally, this is why deplatforming and denying the space to defend/argue/discuss genocidal ideologies is the preferred method to deal with them, exposure to them is in itself inherently harmful and there's nothing productive to come with allowing them the chance to explain why they think genocide is actually a good idea.

ANYWAY, the point is: if you're a group that has been targeted by these genocidal ideologies, you need to be able to decode and understand the secret, hidden meaning behind those dog whistles. You have to. Otherwise you're gonna end up a gruesome statistic some dipshit politician will try to use to two-side the issue on Fox News. You can then see how it's incredibly stupid, not to mention unspeakably offensive, to tell people who are being targeted by genocidal dipshits, that if they understand what the genocidal dipshits are really trying to say (remember, that THEY specifically should be genocided), they might in fact be the genocidal dipshits themselves.

Yes, "if you hear the whistle, you're the dog" is a very witty, very snappy, very catchy phrase. It's also incredibly fucking stupid and also goddamn insulting. Stop using it. Stop rewarding people who use it. Be fucking better.

Okay, so. What now? What to do if you catch someone using a dog whistle? Well, the most important thing to do is to not immediately accuse them of being a Nazi or belonging to the assorted genocidal dipshit group of choice. Super not do that in public. I know, it sounds counterintuitive, specially since we just affirmed that "punch the Nazi" is a perfectly valid and effective rhetorical device to get rid of Nazis. But the thing with dog whistles is that they're also bait. They're juicy, tender bait almost lab designed to get normal people - you know, people who don't hold genocidal beliefs and in fact think genocide is super bad and forever unjustifiable - frothing mad. Remember that dog whistles have two meanings, and that allows the genocidal dipshits to go "see? These people are mad! They're insane! They are the real reactionaries, they see malicious evil in every little thing!" and they will use every single dogpile to punctuate their statement and justify themselves. That's what dog whistles are designed to do, remember? They condition people to find genocidal ideology acceptable even when they rationally would not.

Ideally, if you know this person and you have the emotional and psychological bandwidth to do some education, you should reach out in private and offer to explain why the seemingly innocent thing the person posted is actually super bad. And I do mean explain. You need to explain on the history of the dog whistle, the purpose of the dog whistle, and emphasize that it's not an indictment of their character or an attempt to imply they're nefarious or malicious themselves, but rather that they've fallen prey to a scam by literal genocidal dipshits. This is... a lot. It's hard. People are very defensive at the smallest insinuation that they might be spewing Nazi talking points. It's often demeaning and exasperating work, and while it does work, it's just a sinkhole of resources that could be better spent in other, more pressing causes that also need attention because we have a bit of an epidemic and these genocidal dipshits keep popping up everywhere. It's also very exhausting for actual targets of the genocidal dipshits to have to argue with people that "that thing you said is used to call for the genocide of people like me, no really, please stop" and have to spend time pampering and reassuring people who go into literal hysterics trying to prove THEY are not the bad ones, how DARE you.

So what DO you do? Realistically? No one knows for sure. There isn't a wide-spread, peer-reviewed, fits-all-sizes solution. This is exactly the kind of thing dog whistles are designed to get around: there's no dogmatic, stringent rule that will make it so you can always tell if something is a dog whistle and how to make people stop using them. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. You can be critical and thoughtful about the content you consume and platform in your spaces*. You can prioritize the voices of those being targeted by the openly genocidal dipshits and listen and pay attention when they tell you "hey, this thing? this thing is BAD." Encourage self-reflection in yourself and your social circle. When you foster a culture that welcomes people making mistakes and being corrected/nudged into being better about things, the emotional tax of finding out you've been platforming hate speech in disguise is significantly less.

*Being critical and thoughtful about the content you consume doesn't mean falling into purity culture rabbit holes where you must only consume and platform THE PUREST AND MOST UNPROBLEMATIC OF THINGS, but rather understand that the framing of content is important and you can do your part to minimize harm by extending simple courtesies like adding trigger or content warnings, and being critical about the sort of thing you platform and put in your followers' feed. Sometimes the Nazis are being obtuse on purpose, hoping you will get angry enough to dunk on them in public and therefore grant them and their toxic rhetoric access to your entire platform. Their bait is very tempting, but you're better than that.

And when private/polite/off-screen attempts to get someone to stop using a dog whistle inevitably fail, stop engaging with that person entirely, and instead platform the fact the dog whistle is a dog whistle and why. I don't mean "cut that person off your life entirely", though you might have to, if you eventually realize that not only did they knew they were using a dog whistle, they were doing so purposefully all this time. And that's heartbreaking and awful, because no one likes to find out someone in their social circle is a literal genocidal dipshit. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about larger scale education that robs the dog whistle of its most valuable asset: plausible deniability. When you make a post explaining that a certain word or a certain phrase is a dog whistle, and explain the history and weight of it, you break the dog whistle. The more people know to recognize it, the less it works for its intended purpose. And the most effective way of doing this is by focusing on the dog whistle itself, and not the people who use them. Don't single out individuals, because then your informative post has become a call out and be dismissed as drama or grudge wank. Focus on the fact that it's not the people who say these words that are the problem, it's the people who keep insisting they should use those words.

See, the thing about fighting genocidal ideologies is that you're not targeting individual people. Or even groups of people. This is not about starting a morality crusade against X or Y. It's about dismantling the tools of genocide. It's about reinforcing those societal pressures that keep them hidden in the corners and denies them power and influence to actually enact their genocidal goals.

They are a fucking fringe minority at the very edges of society, is the point, and they should never be allowed to forget it.

3. What are some dog whistles you should keep an eye out for?

So there's a lot of them and there's not enough time in the actual universe to cover all of them. That's the shitty thing about genocidal dipshits and their dog whistles. As soon as you demystify one, they've come up with another one. Any list will by necessity be incomplete. Resist the urge to turn this urge to categorize things into your personal white whale, and remember a dogmatic, rigid approach of "acceptable vs unacceptable words" is precisely the kind of system dog whistles are designed to get around.

I will not be covering anti-black or antisemitic dog whistles. Because I'm neither black nor Jewish, and as we just discussed, you should be listening and platforming THOSE voices whenever attacks at them come up. I'm going to focus on the dog whistles in this post, which is what sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place. I replied to that post to comment on an unrelated situation but I made a point to mention the dog whistles and several people came back and asked me about it.

I'm linking to my own reblog chain of it, because OP has deleted the original post. I wanna make clear this is not an accusation or an attack on OP. I don't know OP from Adam and I don't feel qualified to say if they're using these dog whistles in any harmful way, beyond the inherent harm that comes with giving credibility to dog whistles at all. I can't believe I have to say this explicitly in this year of our lord 2022, but please do not harass, abuse or otherwise inconvenience OP. We literally just went over how that doesn't work when it comes to deplatforming dog whistles. I'm just giving context and full disclosure, okay?

Okay.

Let's go.

Content warnings! Again! We're gonna be talking about Nazis and other genocidal groups, so that's always fun. We're also gonna tangentially discuss misogyny, antiblackness, antisemitism and sexual assault, sexual abuse, pedophilia and zoophilia.

"Cancel Culture." Cancel culture began - and this is extremely common - as a term within the black community to refer to the tactic of using social pressure to force racist bigots to face consequences for their racist bigotry. It was also in use within the #MeToo movement, to sort of crowdfund consequences for people with too much social, political or financial capital, which allowed them to just... not face consequences for their behavior. And yeah, ostracizing bigots is an excellent way to get rid of bigots or at least minimize the effects of their bigotry. It's so effective that's what dog whistles are for. The thing is, Cancel Culture has now been appropriated by the very people it was meant to be used again. Racist white people decry Cancel Culture when they are faced with the consequences of their actions, labeling them instead as abusive or unwarranted. The term has been thoroughly poisoned and the only people you hear talking about it seriously, phrasing it as this big, evil thing that must be stopped, are the right wing pundits who make their money out of making people feel threatened by changing social mores. Most people think that "less net bigotry in the world" is a good thing. But if your entire grift is based on bigotry, then this is a personal attack on you. Cancel culture is being used now as a short hand to express how very obvious consequences to one's actions are in fact malicious targeted abuse. This prioritizes the bigots over their victims, makes it nearly impossible to have conversations about actual reparations and presents the notion of "hey, if you're a bigot people won't like you" as if it were an outlandish, unnatural position to take. You can tell OP is actually using the dog whistle version of this in their post, because they're not talking about consequences to someone's actions, but explicitly framing a disproportionate, malicious and unwarranted harassment campaign as "Cancel Culture." OP themselves defines "Cancel Culture" in their post, and this is actually a huge problem when it comes to the proliferation of dog whistles. When you assume you know the root of an idiom and you define it in the context of your own usage, you may be inadvertently mainstreaming something that you shouldn't. Maybe you heard this from a trusted youtuber or a friend, and you understand the way THEY use it, and you use it THAT way, you don't mean it in the weirdo way. But you should make a habit to track down the history of idioms before you use them. For one, because everyone could stand to use their words more precisely and make sure that the words they're using actually mean what they want them to mean. But for another, because understanding the history of idioms is a very good way of avoiding boot in mouth syndrome.

"Purity Culture." This is also a dog whistle! And I used it in the text of this post! Except not really. In this post I'm using the original sense of the phrase, OP is using the dog whistle version. (Are you starting to see why if you look too hard at dog whistles you're gonna end up going a little bit insane?) Purity culture originally refers to misguided, reactionary rejection of the slippery slope fallacy that "nothing is pure, therefore, there's no point." Purity culture refers to this idea of treating every single slight, infraction or "taint" equally across the board, without any space for nuance or context. There's two dog whistles around this term, actually! One of them is from the pro-censorship camp, who treats purity culture as an ideal and dresses it up in "responsible media consumption" and "child-appropriate spaces" to try and gloss over the fact they're pro-fascist censorship tools and restrictions, they just think the problem is they're not targeting the right people and concepts. You can identify this lot very quickly because they love to use the word "freak" in a derogatory fashion. They're also real bad at nuance and super fond of historical revisionism. The other dog whistle is, hilariously, the exact opposite of this. This is coming from the actual, no joke, pro-sexual abuse corner of the internet (think, pedophilia, zoophilia, incest, etc, anything that it's reasonably considered indefensible because it's predicated on forcing sexual concepts and acts upon people and living creatures who do not and cannot consent to it). Their version of purity culture is framing any negative criticism of their actions and interests as an attempt to censor and unjustly ostracize them. I need to be very clear here that I'm definitely not talking about fiction here. We're not talking about people who like to read stories about this sort of content. We're talking about people who are actually committing these acts in real life, to real people, children and animals. We need to make that distinction, because that's what the dog whistle is arguing. They infiltrate groups that are staunchly anti-censorship and frame themselves as victims of prosecution but the things they're being prosecuted for are not art, text or other materials rooted in trasgressive fiction. They're really annoying and really detrimental to the fight against censorship, because every time one of these idiots is outed for the miserable fucking monster they are, pro-censorship folk immediately rush in to reframe the conversation as if anti-censorship groups are unquestionably supporting and defending the indefensible.

"Virtue Signaling." I unironically love this dog whistle, personally, because it betrays the massive chasm within the worldview of the people who use it. Virtue signaling is the concept of doing good things, for the sake of other people thinking you're good. It's the cry of alt-right pseudointellectuals who posit that people don't actually care about racism and sexism and transphobia and homophobia and xenophobia and religious intolerance and any of the other social evils they've decided they want to champion instead. No! People secretly support these things, it's just that it's socially unacceptable to do so, so they must pretend. They must play their part in the social farce, and make sure everybody knows they have done so, waving a flag that signals all who see it that they are one of them. I genuinely love this one because they always use "virtue signaling" as a derogatory term, it is always framed in a negative way, like this is evidence of the social contract falling to pieces. The thing is, this is a feature, not a bug. Yeah, you have to publicly decry bigotry and fall in step with the social mores of your community, and yeah, we want communities that see bigotry as some sort of social suicide. Society should actually ostracize and push out bigoted, disruptive individuals, because bigotry itself is a betrayal of the social contract. If you refuse to participate in society by abiding its rules, yeah, you don't get to be part of society. And yeah, we don't care about thought crime. Be a bigot in your head all you want, I want a society that punishes you severely if you ever decide to ACT on those thoughts, tho. That's a functional society. That's a good thing. The people who use "virtue signaling" unironically are trying to grapple with their own hypocrisy, with the fact they spew out hateful, genocidal nonsense but they know damn well they would be utterly destroyed if they tried to act out on it, so instead they've come up with a way to say "society decries and rejects everything I stand for, and I refuse to be a martyr to my ideals so I'm just going to be a cowardly, hateful idiot and pretend that makes me better than everyone else."

The post itself is pushing a fairly reasonable message: harassment = bad. The problem is that in utilizing dog whistles the message is muddled, and a pretty straightforward message becomes twisted enough to allow spaces for the beneficiaries of those dog whistles to misappropriate and excuse their actions. That's literally what @jabberwockypie and myself were doing in that post, in response to Flamethrower's reply.

Notice how Flamethrower conveniently used the definition of "cancel culture" that matches the dog whistle, in an attempt to shield herself from criticism and then frame the consequences of her actions as abuse and harassment. THAT is why dog whistles matter and why it's important not to engage with them. Because they open the door for bad actors to justify themselves and skirt responsibility for their actions.

Don't let them.

4. Yeah, okay, Rie, but that's like 5K worth of words, do you have any sources for all that?

I'm so fucking glad you asked!

What’s wrong with dogwhistles

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/21/racist-roots-dog-whistle/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26529439

@innuendostudios's The Alt-Right Playbook is an excellent resource in identifying the tools of radicalization, but most importantly his sources are an excellent way to familiarize yourself with all this nonsense.

5. Now what?

IDK, do your best. Keep trying. Forgive yourself for fucking up and commit to learning from it.

Mostly, be kind. To yourself and to others, but specially those who are being targeted by genocidal dipshits.

And remember, if someone tells you the solution to your problems is the complete extermination of a group of people... that person is not your friend, that's an asshole looking for an alibi. You deserve better than that.

[jazzybot4]

[jazzybot4]

@kemregik Good points to bring to your debates.

Since the OP made their post unrebloggable (and blocked me. Both actions they are well in with their right to do)

I'm going to make my response it's own post because I think the point is important

-

As someone who is autistic and has BPD and CPTSD and loads of trauma yes you sometimes need to change how you interact with others to keep people around

When I was 13 I hit the few friends I had when I was angry

I had to change that in order to keep those friendships

When I was in my early 20s if I was losing an disagreement with my husband I would threaten to kill myself. My husband told me it hurt him and was cruel and manipulative behaviour, because it was.

So I worked hard to change that to keep my relationship

It's easy to say "I shouldn't have to change for others" and that's true to an extent. You shouldn't change your interests or passions or dim your light. And you should have space to be imperfect and flawed and not have to pretend your ugly bits aren't real. But if something you are doing it causing other people harm you kinda need to change that.

That's called "living in a society"

People adapt to each other and make space for each other in their lives. You adapt to them and they adapt to you

You start being more diligent about throwing away the empty toilet roll because it really bothers them. They start warning you before they run the blender because you hate loud noises

I stopped threatening to kill myself because I was mad I was losing an argument and my husband stopped being so vocally judgemental amount media he personally dislikes

There is a certain type of person who heard the phrase "your emotions are valid" and took that to mean "my emotional reactions and my behaviour are always objectively correct because my emotions are valid and if you have an emotional response or react to what I'm doing negatively then you are wrong and you can't be hurt because my emotions are valid"

And that's a recipe for disaster

Your emotions are valid to feel. They are how you feel and there are reasons you feel the way you do

However, your reactions and behaviour are something you can learn to control and can be irrational

We live in a society and we as people change each other as we interact and that isn't necessarily a bad thing

[jazzybot4]

smth smth fandom hierarchy needs to die

[jazzybot4]

hey if anyone has any art on furaffinity, it might be a good idea to back it up. one of the hosts just passed away and its unclear where the site will go from here

[jazzybot4]

HR 9495 is going back up for voting. All non-profit orgs are in danger.

The Committee on Rules is meeting at 1600 EST on 18 Nov 2024. The agenda includes HR 9495.

If this bill passes, the Secretary of the Treasury would have the power to strip any non-profit group of it's tax-exempt status with no due process.

If you are part of the fandom community and you are in America, please contact your reps and ask them to vote NO on HR 9495.

[jazzybot4]

hi, i’m your local laid off discord employee, here to talk about exactly how safe it may or may not be to talk about Political Activism on discord. my credentials here are that i was a senior member of discord’s trust & safety team, which is the team that handles bans, legal investigations, and legal compliance. (my speciality was in child safety, anti-grooming, and taking down CSAM, but i also worked occasionally in low level terrorism issues and assisted that team in investigations.) i also know most of the people still working there in these capacities.

the tldr and most important thing to know is: i do not recommend you plan, discuss plans, or use any kind of hyperbolic (or not) language about violence to government officials or anyone in that vicinity on discord. please use signal instead.

a discord trust & safety employee is technically able to see any message you’ve sent under your account, going all the way back to the beginning of your account. unless you have manually deleted a message, it is viewable to a tns employee. now: it is a tremendous part of being on a tns team that we did NOT invade user privacy without cause. cause was usually: another user reported something you said, and we thought the reported message indicated you might be doing something elsewhere that was illegal (for example: a user says “i’m talking to this girl but she’s in high school lol.” i would then try to find evidence as to whether or not there was a child safety issue there. in this example, we’d require clear admission of age from both the user and the alleged high school girl, and then clear evidence of sexual talk between them, and go from there.) finding evidence required looking though all of that user’s messages.

most of the tns team, as i know them, are pretty resolute about not going further in looking than would be needed for action. most of the tns team that i still speak to is very much on the side of blue. your general conversations are probably perfectly safe, and we were very good at figuring out quickly if someone has reported you maliciously. i don’t believe you need to worry too much about your porn and fanfic and all that.

HOWEVER: reported content must be investigated, and discord can, and has been, legally subpoenaed to turn over user information. again, this has nominally been in Very Evil cases (CSAM and grooming, school shooting threats, murder admissions, etc.) but that could change, either at the federal level, or at the discord policy level. discord, like any social media company, could easily be pressured or forced into taking on different internal policies that could get you in serious trouble if you are organizing violent or “illegal” resistance. if that happens, there is a scenario where this incoming administration is given access to your messages.

again: please do not organize your political or social resistance on discord from now on. please use signal to ensure your maximum safety. do not panic if you have already talks about things on discord: you can easily delete your messages, and that WILL remove from an employee’s view. do that and use signal from now on.

stay safe. i love you. 💕

[jazzybot4]

Philcon 2024!

Do you love Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror? Are you a Writer, a Gamer, a Costumer, or a Filker? Are you looking for a weekend of distraction in your life? If you’re in the vicinity of Philadelphia- or more specifically, Cherry Hill, New Jersey- there’s an event coming up on November 22 – 24, 2024 that we’d love for you to come check out. If you aren’t already familiar with PHILCON, here’s what you should know: * We started out as a literary-centric SF convention in 1936, but have grown to embrace all mediums of storytelling (movies, television, comics, podcasts, etc) as well as expanding to cover the Fantasy and Horror genres. Most of our participants are authors, and there will be Readings by them and Autograph sessions all throughout the weekend, in addition to their participation on discussion panels. * While many of our Literary panels are about SF, Fantasy, or Horror topics in general, we also have an emphasis on panels discussing the craft side and business sides of writing, for those looking to develop as authors. * One of our content tracks for the weekend is dedicated to Science & Technology itself, not just how it is used in fiction. * We will be screening several movies over the weekend, and Anime will also be shown in our Anime & Animation room at certain times. * There will be Workshops and Demos for Costuming (including "Fabric Manipulation", "How to Make Foam Armor", "Make-up for The Stage", and "A Pox on Patterns!") and Art (including "Using Alcohol Inks", "Block Printing With Your Own Designs", "How to Make A Controlled Color Palette", and "Making Wire-Wrapped Jewelry"), and if you’ve got an outfit you made that you’d like to show off on stage, we’ve got a yearly Costume Contest. * If you are a Filker- or just enjoy listening to other people sing and play music- Philcon has a room dedicated Filk room, and this year’s Musical Guest of Honor is Cecilia Eng. As Cecilia is not often on the east coast, if you’d like to see her play in person, now is an excellent change to do so without flying to the other side of the country. Lynn Gold, another west-coast Filker, will also be joining us this year. There are also Concerts scheduled for Sirens & Liars, Half a Slime Devil, Brenda and Chuck Shaffer-Shiring, and Sara Henya. * Since the Gaming track moved from an upstairs suite to the “Gallery” room on the first floor, it’s had the literal room to expand the number of games it can run, and we’ve got a bevy of them on the schedule for 2024, as well as a bank of games for you to choose from during Open Gaming hours. There's also a LARP Workshop Series being run by Spectacle INK. * Our Artist Guests of Honor for 2024 are Gina Matarazzo and Matthew Stewart. Each will be giving a presentation on our Main Stage on Saturday afternoon, as well as having their art displayed in our Art Show. * Our Principal Speaker for 2024 is MAX GLADSTONE, and we also have Nghi Vo as our Special Guest. Both will be doing Readings, Autograph Sessions, panels, and a main stage Q&A session. An interactive version of our schedule can be found HERE. While a simplified, static overview, organized by track, can be found HERE. Our LinkTree can be found HERE. We would especially value your support this year, as Philcon’s Covid-19 policy in previous years (which required both mandatory masking and proof of vaccination in an attempt to avoid becoming a super-spreader event as several other conventions had) has led to a slow but noticeable decline in attendance. While masking in public spaces is still heavily encouraged, neither proof of vaccination nor masking are required to attend the convention in 2024. We’d love your help in making this year a success, so that we’re in a good position to bring you all something really fantastic for our upcoming 90th anniversary. We’d also love to give you a great weekend right now, for reasons I doubt we need to explain. Here’s to surviving the next few years! ~ Lynati Head of Programming, Philcon 2024

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Late night conversations

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Urgent: Please Save Hani and His Family!!!

Hani Alanqar (@hanifamilys-blog) and his family lived happily in North Gaza before their home was destroyed by Israeli forces, forcing them to leave behind everything they’ve ever known and flee south through the ongoing conflict, fearing for their lives the entire journey. At this moment, they are taking shelter in an abandoned school with five other families and have no reliable access to food, water, or adequate shelter. Hani has younger siblings who are starving, his father is ill, and his mother suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes which she is unable to afford treatment for. They are all suffering greatly, and are in desperate need of help.

When he reached out to me, he asked not for money or donations, just for an answer. Just for someone to ask him how he was doing so he could at least know that somebody heard him and saw him as human. These are not just statistics, these are REAL PEOPLE who are enduring unimaginable hardship alongside the rest of their fellow Gazans.

Please, if you even have a few dollars to spare, don’t let Hani lose hope. He and his family are in very real danger of dying if their goal isn’t met. He is only 16% of the way there despite the moderate attention his original post got, and needs money as quickly as possible.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-help-hani-yasser-to-rebuild-his-life-in-gaza

€3921/€25000

vetted here and here

Tagging people for more reach, please dm me if you’d like to be removed

@thunderlina @it-is-i-zim @snobgoblin @bleedingfromtheclosetdoor @im-pok

@cuddlingcatfish @nyancrimew @were--ralph @official-boob-posts @grubbylilgoblin

@thestealerofsouls @certifiedsexed @todaysbird @dee-deyes @hellsite-hall-of-fame

@heritageposts @vile-corvid @anti-terf-posts @punkitt-is-here @snapscube

@lulubunn @beemovieerotica @sulphurfangz @allthecanadianpolitics @gooseworx

@nauticaltyranny @owlispls @catchymemes @worldheritagepostorganization @tiktoks-for-tired-tots

@tiktoksthataregood-ish @twistcmyk @azar-rosethorn @pissjesus @girlballs

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the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

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Holy fucking shit of all the possibilities I did not see that one coming.

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Guys we have NGHI VO this year! And I guess Max Gladstone is cool too/jk. I'd really love to see her draw a small crowd, because she's a great writer and also because Lynati has been *shoving* this Con into diversity inclusion for YEARS now, and this would be a great moment for us to get a win. If you're a Slime fan, I'm running a Slime Workshop that is going to basically be 'play with the pretty colors' and talking about art and design as intersections of science.

I also want to draw attention to our Masquerade, which is going to have a group of genuinely amazing crafters walking the stage, and our half-time show is going to be *hysterically funny*. @thefoundationproject @caparrucia @gallusrostromegalus Maybe we can get the signal out to all the folks in the 'verse who would want a weekend of creative joy, comfortable vibes, and a cast of genuine Characters.

Philcon 2024!

Do you love Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror? Are you a Writer, a Gamer, a Costumer, or a Filker? Are you looking for a weekend of distraction in your life? If you’re in the vicinity of Philadelphia- or more specifically, Cherry Hill, New Jersey- there’s an event coming up on November 22 – 24, 2024 that we’d love for you to come check out. If you aren’t already familiar with PHILCON, here’s what you should know: * We started out as a literary-centric SF convention in 1936, but have grown to embrace all mediums of storytelling (movies, television, comics, podcasts, etc) as well as expanding to cover the Fantasy and Horror genres. Most of our participants are authors, and there will be Readings by them and Autograph sessions all throughout the weekend, in addition to their participation on discussion panels. * While many of our Literary panels are about SF, Fantasy, or Horror topics in general, we also have an emphasis on panels discussing the craft side and business sides of writing, for those looking to develop as authors. * One of our content tracks for the weekend is dedicated to Science & Technology itself, not just how it is used in fiction. * We will be screening several movies over the weekend, and Anime will also be shown in our Anime & Animation room at certain times. * There will be Workshops and Demos for Costuming (including "Fabric Manipulation", "How to Make Foam Armor", "Make-up for The Stage", and "A Pox on Patterns!") and Art (including "Using Alcohol Inks", "Block Printing With Your Own Designs", "How to Make A Controlled Color Palette", and "Making Wire-Wrapped Jewelry"), and if you’ve got an outfit you made that you’d like to show off on stage, we’ve got a yearly Costume Contest. * If you are a Filker- or just enjoy listening to other people sing and play music- Philcon has a room dedicated Filk room, and this year’s Musical Guest of Honor is Cecilia Eng. As Cecilia is not often on the east coast, if you’d like to see her play in person, now is an excellent change to do so without flying to the other side of the country. Lynn Gold, another west-coast Filker, will also be joining us this year. There are also Concerts scheduled for Sirens & Liars, Half a Slime Devil, Brenda and Chuck Shaffer-Shiring, and Sara Henya. * Since the Gaming track moved from an upstairs suite to the “Gallery” room on the first floor, it’s had the literal room to expand the number of games it can run, and we’ve got a bevy of them on the schedule for 2024, as well as a bank of games for you to choose from during Open Gaming hours. There's also a LARP Workshop Series being run by Spectacle INK. * Our Artist Guests of Honor for 2024 are Gina Matarazzo and Matthew Stewart. Each will be giving a presentation on our Main Stage on Saturday afternoon, as well as having their art displayed in our Art Show. * Our Principal Speaker for 2024 is MAX GLADSTONE, and we also have Nghi Vo as our Special Guest. Both will be doing Readings, Autograph Sessions, panels, and a main stage Q&A session. An interactive version of our schedule can be found HERE. While a simplified, static overview, organized by track, can be found HERE. Our LinkTree can be found HERE. We would especially value your support this year, as Philcon’s Covid-19 policy in previous years (which required both mandatory masking and proof of vaccination in an attempt to avoid becoming a super-spreader event as several other conventions had) has led to a slow but noticeable decline in attendance. While masking in public spaces is still heavily encouraged, neither proof of vaccination nor masking are required to attend the convention in 2024. We’d love your help in making this year a success, so that we’re in a good position to bring you all something really fantastic for our upcoming 90th anniversary. We’d also love to give you a great weekend right now, for reasons I doubt we need to explain. Here’s to surviving the next few years! ~ Lynati Head of Programming, Philcon 2024

[jazzybot4]

my least favourite turn based strategy game is email

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I love pop rocks, can I have some more [x]

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shipping two characters not in a romantic way and not in a platonic way but in a secret third way

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everyone says join your local mutual aid groups and build community, but uh, what do you do if a lot of them seem to have dissolved and the other ones don't have consistent recurring meetings.