#NO BECAUSE THATS WHAT IVE BEEN TRYING TO SAY

[softness-and-shattering]

If I may respond, because I think its important to address trauma. I think as a collective as Jews we need to address our collective and generational trauma. Im learning how to do that individually which is the only way I know how to make a start.

There is a difference between fear and danger. Fear is a warning that there may be danger. Fear has obviously kept us alive as our ancestors, with an additional huge amount of luck or providence, got the hell out of dodge before it was too late, probably many many times over the millenia which is why we are here at all.

And it is normal human pattern-seeking behaviour to see awfulness and death wishes from people who identify a certain way, and become afraid of everyone similar to them. When its nazis, and the hate and violence are inherently part of the ideology, theres nothing to be done except take precautions and stay away. Someone should try rescue them from the lies and misery they've bought into, but as the target of their hate thats emphatically not our job.

When it comes to pride flags and BLM and id definitely like to believe watermelons, Jew hatred *shouldnt* be a central part of the identity. And I think thats where we have to take a look at fear as a coping mechanism, and evaluate how useful it is. Because it isnt the same as danger. At this point maybe lets say its an orange-to-red flag. Its not inherently danger but its something to watch out for.

And its not an obligation, to interact with people. If you need to shut down and stay in small safe circles then do that.

Its just that you say that you dont like how distrustful youve become. Ive been there and I hate it too. Two things, I guess. One is that connecting to people, trusting anyone, is inherently risky. Theres a level of intimacy and vulnerability involved even if youre just joking around with someone. For me, I dont want to become a hateful mistrustful shell of myself. What that means for me is extending some trust and knowing I could ger hurt by it. Thats just being human. But its also having other support and other coping mechanisms in place so that if I am hurt, I know how to dress the wound, I know how to unwind and recover. A lot of that is DBT self-soothing skills, its having places I can vent and be myself without worrying about the worst version of someone twisting my words might be, where I know everyone present is either on the same page as me, or shares a level of understanding of complexity that even if I say something that sounds unkind or awful I will be kindly told "hey what the fuck we need to talk about this" in a way thats constructive and thoughtful with room for learning, instead of being publically dogpiled and cancelled for eternity over a mistake or a misconception or even unexamined bigotry because we all have it and its a process to unlearn for everyone. And we need to publically be better about that but I digress.

The second thing is differentiating fear and danger. This isnt mandatory but if youre up for it I think its a healthy skill to learn in general. In tumblr terms, investigate a little. You come across someone with a pride flag in bio, look at their top posts, skim their blog, maybe throw a couple terms into the search. Then look at what comes up. Is it straight up vitriol and antisemitism, block em. Is it something that makes you defensive, pause, take a few breaths, look again. Is it actually in tone or in words calling for or excusing violence, is it black-and-white villain and victim no nuance? Probably also block. Is it passionately upset about violence without any calls for revenge or retaliatory violence? That person might be safe. Its ok if your first reaction is fear, just let yourself have a second or third reaction and srr where it goes.

The last point I have is about levels of trust, and levels of safety, and levels of vulnerability. Because youre not determining if you can give someone your home address, and youre probably not determining if theyre safe to meet in person. So its not a full on black or white safe or not safe thing. Its more like, am I safe to have this interaction? Are we talkimg about how cute our pet cats are? Probably a safe conversation to have with most people. Are we talking about the ethics of war and the existence of nation-states, thats way dicier. I talk quite a lot on here, and there are always things I choose not to share, conversations I choose not to have, posts I writr and discard, for any number of reasons. Im getting better at seeing things I disagree with and recognise when Im super unlikely to change the persons mind, and just not engaging even if it makes me really angry. Sometimes its not worth it, sometimes its too close to home and even if it might be a productive discussion, im not in a place to be having that discussion rn. Some things just arent anyones business. Some I know will be misunderstood so I dont bother.

I think in general, with basically everything, is that it takes courage to be who we want to be. Its easier to say everyone who says x or believes x or identifies as x is dangerous and I hate all of them. Black and white thinking is always easier, and because youre listening to your fear it feels safer, until you look up and youre bitter and hateful and lonely. Fear is a warning signal but it flags false positivites, and it sometimes flags danger as more extreme than it is. Like any gut feeling, always pay attention, and also use your brain to evaluate how correct it is. And then make decisions based on your evaluation.

Because its not good or fun or helpful to be afraid of vast swathes of people. And people can hurt us, thats part of the human package and very much part of being Jewish. You gotta be careful, and brave, and vulnerable imo. And have a strong support system + soothing activities you can fall back on when you do get hurt. And be selective of who you trust with how much, so when the hurt comes itll hopefully be minimal. We cant avoid pain entirely, only learn how to minimise it and look after it.

Good luck! Its not easy out there. Be safe, be brave. ❤

one of the things I hate most about all this is how distrustful it’s made me. if I see a pride flag or BLM or a watermelon in someone’s bio, I immediately wonder if they want to kill us. if they deny rape. if they cheer massacres. I don’t see those things and think of tolerance or acceptance anymore. they just make me afraid. that’s what this movement has done. and I hate not trusting people, being scared of people, but what else can I be when they’ve shown us how much they’d like to see us dead?

.

[coldblooded-angel]

Tashi Duncan:

[ratatatastic]

Vanha Kauppahalli date: en full, a 2 minute 50 second masterpiece...

Primetime Panthers | 11.6.24 (x)

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Still very wild to me when people try to gotcha Jason with the whole "if you can kill other people for being evil why can't they kill you" when jason is like. One of the most passively suicidal characters I've ever seen. What if man

[22bananapudding]

we need to team up and beat him to death with hammers

[sandinmybed]

can i be fr for a minute?? sending abuse to people online for holding different views than you is not activism and in fact actively hurts your cause. most people are not extreme in their viewpoints, you can give them a new perspective if you're willing to spend some time explaining shit. if someone is saying something you disagree with and you rush in there to condescend to them and call them disgusting and subhuman and dont even TRY to explain calmly why their views are harmful, they're going to shut you out instantly and double down on their views.

most people are simply genuinely ignorant to the issues they're talking about - they just pick their views up from the news and the world around them and express opinions because that's what every person does. if you run in there and tell them they're scum for it, what then? if someone does that to you, are you going to think "maybe i should do some research" or are you going to think "this person is an asshole, im blocking them." a lot of you think you're activists and then refuse to do any kind of actual WORK to support your cause.

[edgyh3dgy]

ohmygod I was going to post some of my art and i get all ready to do a massive doodle dump AND THEN THE QUALITY IS SOOOO BADDD

I didnt know my resolution on clip studio had to be so HIGH in order to get decent quality 😭

anyways im just gonna put this zukka drawing here…even tho its like 420hp 💀

HELPP ITS SOO BAD IM CAKCLINF

[elliebell77]

sorry i havent been posting i think im burnt out rn

[thebirdandhersong]

Lol

[arckiaym]

what if hyper light drifter? what then?

[gibbearish]

every time i see discourse about fundraisers go by on here im just fully struck with the realization that not a single one of you people have either taken a cybersecurity fraud prevention course or bothered to take one singular second to consider the website youre on. this is the broke bitches website. none of us can afford to fund our mutuals' grocery bills, much less entire evacuation funds, and CERTAINLY not FAKE evacuation funds taking advantage of genocide victims. all this shit abt how people are deliberately choosing not to fund every post that passes their dash because they hate palestinians literally just does the work of actual scammers for them by laying the high-pressure sales tactics groundwork, and the "do you guys have any idea how hard it is to keep coming up with new attention-grabbing fundraiser posts?" ones just ring EXTREMELY hollow because YEAH! YEAH I DO! and so does everyone i follow! and everyone they follow! because all of us are FUCKING BROKE and surviving on crumbs! i just saw one that said "i make sure to keep $40 in my wallet at all times so i can give $20 to any panhandlers i see, this is the same" and its like!! good for you, thats very nice, but like!!! you need need NEED to take a step back and realize that /being able to do that/ is a position of privilege, not the default setting to be a good person. i wont discount that some people do ignore fundraisers specifically because of racism because Of Course, but like. a) yelling at them isnt gonna make them stop, or more accurately yelling at /everyone else/ isnt gonna make those people stop, and b) trying to apply that as a blanket motivation for everyone just. realistically doesnt work. not donating is a nonaction, it is the literal default status, and while in specific situations you can use CONSISTENT absence of SPECIFIC actions to track a person's motivations SOMETIMES, broadly speaking that just. doesnt work.

there are 8 billion people on this planet. most of them will never know you exist. of the ones that do, most will not be able to help you. of the ones that can, most will not be on the broke bitches website passing the same communal $20 around. consider your audience and stop shitting on fellow poor people for having the gall to need to be careful with their money. and if you are genuinely only posting your fundraiser to tumblr, like. im sorry, but you need to anticipate not reaching your goal and prepare accordingly. theres a reason the last big scam scandal people talk about actually getting the money is like. all-or-nothing era, as a website none of us have the funds to make that kind of thing happen anymore or the security to risk it. a fundraiser not meeting its goal on here is not a personal sleight against whoever made it, its just how life goes sometimes. and it's unfair and it sucks and we should help however we can, but. sometimes you just arent able to help someone else, and continuing to feel responsible serves only to torture yourself. and blaming OTHERS serves only to move that guilt from yourself off onto another person. i imagine that has to be where a lot of the vitriol comes from, is people who cant afford to donate more getting pissed at people they see as having the funds but choosing not to share them, but again, sometimes you just are not able to achieve the goals you set out towards, through no fault of the specific parties involved.

people on tumblr choosing to buy groceries rather than potentially donate to a scam are not your enemy and are not the ones facilitating a genocide. we're all victims of the same horrific system, the question is just how that system manifests its influence on each of us. poverty kills just as thoroughly as a bomb. everyone is just doing their best to survive, and as much as we like to pretend that everyone should be a perfect selfless angel that puts others before themselves no matter what, humans are by default a selfish species, and it is a lot easier to say what youd do in theory than actually do it. and there's a reason you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping the person beside you, youre of no help to anyone if youre too dead to do anything.

[skunkes]

Drop that 0.01% fic that’s got the right vibe on silco because I’ve YET to find it & keep getting the ick trying to dig through some… creative… fics. NOT TO BE AN ASSHOLE like everyone has different tastes you can write what you want that’s what I do I get it but. I have to go back to the show to see The Truth. Which is that if I put myself within 10 feet of this man I’d be under the heel of his boot before a spec of drool could leave my wanting mouth. I wanna feel the arthritis creaking his knuckles while he tries to see how many times an airway can collapse

So ive been having several thoughts on this both specific to him and also as a whole

how i don't like that every single character (across all fandoms...) manages to get reduced to the same stereotypical lovey (or secretly so) romantic lead archetype, but also how I do love, from the outside, that it exists. especially in the reader ones... like theres something very Cute about people being like no, this character WOULD love me and drop guard for ME only. Less cute when everybody does it the exact same way for every character, the universal template.

Anyway I've actually yet to find any 😭 sometimes I'll think a fic is going good then they whip out the pet names every other sentence, the therapy speak explanation of Feelings, immediate resolution of decades of issues (<- this is present in all fandoms, and extra grating when it comes to characters like This Guy)...which i guess is fair depending on the piece (obvs a 1 chapter work isnt going to have time for all this. It doesnt have to be perfect like that! Actually none of these ppl are doing anything bad, ppl can write whatever they want, but it rly does feel like everyones just copying each other nonstop and sameifying every character vs actually thinking about...the character's personality...its all at the expense of the characters personality...)

Anyway maybe u should write something bc you've put much better imagery in my mind and piqued my incherest with those few sentences alone 😭 LMAO

[kiddokori]

guys i caught a mouse at work today

[riiviir]

hey guys so I just started reading Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott and OMG AHSBNSBSBSNSNBSHZHSHDBFHGGHFHGRJ2KSHSBSNSK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE THINKING ABOUT THE RELATIVITY BETWEEN DIMENSIONS!!!!!!

[genekies]

tag vent

[ourtalechara]

Don't tell me they're not about to kiss. DON'T TELL ME THEY'RE NOT ABOUT TO KISS