#Media and Cultural Influence

[martyrbat]

theyre trying to dehydrate our beautiful bears and make them have a six pack.... i feel sick.

[odinsblog]

And you know that there are many journalists who are very concerned about the pressure that's being applied about the sensitivities of this conflict.

And let's just be very clear here. We have the Israeli government, has a lot of supporters in Congress, has a lot of supporters in the media, has a lot of supporters in activist groups on K Street. There is a, quote unquote, pro-Israel lobby which does apply pressure on media organizations.

If you've worked like I have, both in American media and British media, you've seen the emails from honestreporting .com, and Kamera. And some of these groups your listeners may never have heard of. But I'll tell you what, every newsroom has heard of these groups; “Why is your headline this,” and “Why is your reporter showing bias?”And, “Why do they tweet this?” In this recent case, it's Louisa Lovelock, who is a British journalist at the Washington Post. It's a fantastic Middle East correspondence. Covered Syria, covered Iraq, covered Gaza, covered a bunch of things.

It's so absurd, the dossier they've produced against her. One of the things they go after is she took part in student protests at university in England against tuition fees. And..? A) that's a bad thing? B) that means she can't cover Israel's bombing of Gaza? It's so absurd. The stuff that they pull with me. Of course, I've had stuff going back 20 or 30 years that they've thrown at me. And it's a real problem where people get intimidated into not saying, not speaking what they want to speak about.

And we live in a world where the right is obsessed about cancel culture and free speech when, let's be very clear, the greatest victims of, quote unquote, cancel culture in this country have always been Palestinian activists, both on campus, in the media, and in politics.

I mean, let's just be clear, we have a Congress filled with white supremacists. We have a guy, I think, Andy Ogles from Tennessee, this week who was caught on tape saying, “Kill them all.” Alright? None of these guys get any attention. No votes of censure. Who is the only member of Congress who's been censured since October the 7th? The one Palestinian woman.

So let's just be very clear who the victims of, quote unquote, cancel culture and suppression and intimidation are. It tends to be people who speak out on behalf of Palestinians. And that's the case with reporters who aren't even taking positions. They're just reporting what they're seeing, and what they're seeing of course, is not favorable to the Israeli narrative, because what they're seeing is mass starvation. What they're seeing are mass killings. What they're seeing are kids being pulled out from the rubble. And, of course, that doesn't help the Israeli narratives.

—Mehdi Hasan, on ‘cancel culture’ and how journalists and reporters are attacked for simply reporting the truth about Gaza 🇵🇸

[hussyknee]

I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

[artist-issues]

yes I'm a Christian writer. Yes I'm a Christian artist. Yes I'm a Christian whatever--I'm so tired of people being like "I'm not a Christian ___, I'm actually a ______ who is Christian" what?!? No! Say the "Christian" part of my identification louder, it's the only part that matters.

I have been crucified with Christ, therefore it is no longer I who live! No longer I who put pen to paper! No longer I who type! No longer I who thinks and plans and practices and works and communicates--it's Christ who lives in me! He must increase! I must decrease!

If you're a Christian, knock that bogus worldly self-centered crap about "no I'm not part of the 'Christian genre' so I'm not a 'Christian whatever,' because I want to be taken seriously," off. Knock it off, shut up, get out of here with that.

Who cares if you're taken seriously? Who are you doing this for? For others? For Christ? Or just for you and your own credit and your own status? Get away from me with that. Ugh.

Anything you do in your life is supposed to be for Christ. You died. You said He was in charge of you from now on--You said He was the sum total of your identity, from now on. Did you mean it? Or did you mean, "everything except my special interests and career?" Of course not.

Anything you do in your life is supposed to be for Christ. That includes your art, your music, your hobby, your writing, your job. You should be so fortunate, so favored, to be called a "Christian" anything. You're not identifying with the "Christian genre," you're identifying with Christ. The word Christian doesn't mean "little Skillet" or "little Frank Peretti" or "little Dallas Jenkins." The word Christian means "little Christ."

You should be so fortunate to be called "Christian" anything, like the disciples were beside themselves with joy to be called "Christian" prisoners and "Christian" slaves. Because they got to be associated with Christ.

Get out of here. Honestly.

[skeletonvintage]

These are the same people who keep saying that the voice actors don’t need to look like their characters.

Like is there any actual critiques about this show or are there a pandemic of people needing to go outside and socialize?

Also how desperate are you for views that you need a photoshop version of the actress’ breasts to get attention.

[beingatoaster]

I'm constantly torn between "a private internet life their parents don't know about is good and even life-saving for a lot of kids" and "kids should not be exposed to the modern internet unsupervised" and the only answer I can think of is to bring back Voyforums

[hechose]

'lestat crossed an ocean to save claudia and louis from the paris coven!!!'

..... im gonna hold your hand while i bash you over the head when i tell you this,,, that mans went to paris to be healed by armand,,, that mans went to paris to punish the people he abused for daring to fight back,,,

[jacks-weird-world]

*✧・ﾟ:* *:・ﾟ✧*:・ﾟ✧ .・゜゜・. ・Jackuno:influencer. LOL

💫

[thenegativitypit]

Not putting it in the tags of that post because it's only tangentially related but the notes of the moral panic post made me FINALLY realize why exactly it always feels wrong when people go, "You either disown Harry Potter OR you're a transphobe".

Like imagine if it was the satanic panic. "You either quit being a Christian OR you're personally responsible for this shit."

The Muslim panic (which is still going on btw)? "You either renounce your American (or British!) citizenship OR you're an Islamophobe."

Gay panic? Watch out, citizens of basically every country prior to just a few years ago and members of most religions even now. You're obligated to give it up.

Now far be it from me to say a piece of media is as important as a religion or citizenship, but... if you can see the problem with the extreme examples, you can hopefully see what's troublesome about the idea in general.

"This thing is tainted and therefore you must NEVER touch, lest you be BAD," is just... it's practically the definition of purity culture, isn't it? "Some vocal Christians are horribly homophobic, therefore Christianity ITSELF is evil." Like we can understand and express why it doesn't work like that, right?

So in the same way, we can see that, "The author who wrote this very popular book series became a horrible TERF years after the books were complete, therefore you have to renounce the series in its entirety even if it was incredibly formative for you," is... messed up. It's not good.

We shouldn't create moral panic or police people like this. If we do, we're no better than the people who are creating moral panic about and policing us.

[cator99]

I always get detained at da border because PROFUNC never ended but basically I'm like if a targeted individual didn't even care

[itspileofgoodthings]

when will Catholic Instagram influencers realize they can’t “sis you are infinitely worthy” their way out of everything

[pruzan]

i’m over it. i’m over calorie deficits. i’m over counting calories at all. i’m over “guilt free snacks” and “clean desserts”. i’m over numbers and stats. i’m over restriction. i’m over the fear mongering around food. i’m over it. i will eat protein and carbs and sugar, i will give myself calories. i will eat salads and pasta and brownies and everything in between, not as a punishment and not as a reward but because i genuinely enjoy them, and i will acknowledge the goodness in all of them. i’m not listening to diet culture anymore. i’m over it.

[netscapenavigator-official]

I honestly couldn’t handle being an influencer. I’m already on Tumblr, the place where nothing matters, and I’m like “wait I can’t post this. 😰 What if the mutuals think it’s cringe and unfollow me.” If there were actually stakes and money involved I’d have imploded a long time ago.

[skateintoawall]

Every time a bsd chapter comes out I see everyone posting about asagiri killing characters or the wild things that are happening and I’m just over here kicking my feet back and forth waiting to see a character have a mental breakdown on the battlefield

[doyouknowthisdragartist]

I take a liberal approach to what qualifies as drag, but the tl;dr of it is that my criteria for whether a performance is drag are: queerness (the essential ingredient!), performativity, emphasis on visual cohesion, a strong sense of irony/affinity for the deviant (from queer to queer y'know) and last but not least if it would be really funny to categorize them as a drag artist