#We do not actually want you correcting people for us

[osakanone]

Speaking as someone with a traumatic brain injury, I'm not sure that PSAs alone will never be enough. I do have an idea, and I am curious about your thoughts.

If you want effective change you have to reach out to the people either do not remember PSAs or more likely, don't read PSAs, who think they are good people but are actually terrible in ways they cannot accept and thus cannot grow from -- who chase respectability as social clout instead of making babysteps needed to get things done.

So here it is:

Your alternatives don't work for sociolinguistic reasons

Your chosen word of interest is an adjective form of a verb.

R-word can be used easily, interchangably and with little effort when someone is stressed because every form of it is grammatically correct and socially incorrect, which is what is usually craved in an insult.

Language is an ecology: A space of predator words and prey words based on which words replace each in their fashionableness.

As with any ecology, there are niches: pockets of success where a need exists and a word slips into the gap to fill it.

In Europe we didn't get your word of interest until the mid 2000's, and it was occupied by a form of the word spastic (the medical condition) shortened to the slur "spaz" (which I've been on the recieving end of many times).

Consequences create martyrs and those seeking to differentiate themselves will adopt waning or discouraged language to differentiate themselves (PSA culture got us edgelord culture).

When a word goes out of popularity is when another word which is significantly cleverer takes its place, which is more biting and more cutting.

A great example is how "the slur beginning in F ending in T" in many progressive circles is front-loaded with the expectation of one word, and then instead people say "fascist" and everybody smiles.

It is one of the ways of controlling language:

You take the second-association added to an instrinsic thing eg, the "other" meaning of gay used on xbox live) and you attach it to something else

You outsource sentiment to a different target.

You retire one word, and inject another which better aligns with your sentiment and intentionality.

You MUST do this in a way which punches up instead of down, or you risk watering down the perception of a word -- and you must likewise be able to answer the question "how is that <other word>?" on the spot with a single sentence and shut down a conversation.

Back to this context, I genuinely use

"mentally redacted",

This replaced my previous go-to

"mentally retired",

which I felt licked of ageism and made me uncomfortable.

Meaning, that something was censored or removed or deleted intentionally. I make this about thoughtless intentionality of action, not intrinsic nature of a person or their situation or whatever has happened to them.

It shifts from medicalism to mentality.

The imperfectionism of it is the scar-tissue of culture as words fall out of favour.

Maybe that's not good enough for Americans? I don't know!

Does it just read of hiding the word and playing slight of hand instead? Does it have some third other reason? There's no good answer here, I feel.

But it makes me personally feel one hell of a lot better about my slowness instead of slipping up when talking about myself and throwing a slur at the person I'm talking to.

I'd genuinely like to know your thoughts!

e:

There's a great bit in the notes by op about how swearing disrupts civility; disruption is the only way to make any protest get noticed. I will say, a slur is often just a culturally acceptable swearword, which again is miserable. I hate to say it but we do need to get meaner if we're gonna survive. We do need to invent our own words about the people who oppress us that are robust descriptors with ride recognition.

e2:

I came very close to using dysthymic as an insult to describe "I need more" greedy "more lanes bro" VC/corpo-brain types before realizing good people would be caught in the cross-fire despite the fact dysthymia is one of the major medical roots of their behavior and damn that is a hard one for me to figure out. The great thing about medicine is it gives us lots of great complex descriptors that are easy to look up. The downside is when we use medicalization as a callout or attack there is always friendly fire. An oppressor will never care about friendly fire, which means we are always stuck playing defense and its fucking bullshit and makes me so mad.

e3:

I really wish there was a way to make words which disrupted civility without... disrupting... civility... okay that's a paradox. Fine, then are there words which can disrupt anti-civility? I want those.

e4:

Found one. The crushing response. "human pet guy"

Since the r-slur is making a comeback (you know, the word that starts with R, has six letters, and ends in D), I'm gonna make a little PSA:

Yes, it's an ableist slur.

Terms like "asshat," "head-up-ass," "up their own ass," and "high on their own farts" exist. There's also words like crap, dogshit, half-assed, assclown, and chucklefuck. And on the less vulgar side, there are terms like ridiculous, nonsense, train wreck, pointless, insipid, self-absorbed, pretentious, annoying, boring, contemptible, vile, and disgusting.

Substituting words like restarted, poptarted, brain damaged, smoothbrain, etc. is still ableist, because either 1. you obviously still mean the r-word, or 2. you're still using disability as an insult.

[alexanderwales]

I finished rewatching Death Note. I always forget how short anime is, with episodes that aren't much more than 20 minutes when you skip the intro/outro.

I hadn't remembered how much of a sniveling wreck LIght was at the end of the show. There's something about the ending that makes it feel like it was written and directed by a different person, not that Light wasn't always a little weird and pathetic, and not that the show didn't consistently go out of its way to let us know what a piece of shit he was (particularly his absolute lack of loyalty or empathy to anyone, even aside from the megalomania). But he takes the loss like a loser, snot dripping from his nose, voice cracking, begging, and it's so pathetic that I almost felt a little sorry for him.

I've always found the Death Note to be a very interesting prompt, one of those hooks that's so good I'd want to watch it even if it was bad. But in writing something like Death Note, the author has to make decisions about what to show and what not to show, and also make decisions about how they're going to portray the public at large.

There are two big things that stand out for me.

One is that we never get someone arguing against Kira. We get people who are actively trying to hunt him down, but they're mostly not stopping to say "this is why what he's doing is wrong" except a few lines about how he has a childish sense of justice, which is never expounded upon. Kira, on the other hand, we hear a lot from, not just the megalomaniac stuff, but the notion that criminals must be punished, that this is what people desire in their hearts. I get the strong sense that L does not actually care and just views this as an interesting puzzle for him to solve, but for everyone else it's largely left as an exercise to the viewer, and even then, there are moments when some of our task force members come dangerously close to endorsement.

To the extent the show has an answer, it's that (to quote Kanye West) no one man should have all that power, or that Kira has crossed a lot of lines, but no one argues in favor of rehabilitation or clemency or just fundamental humanity. Kira seems to largely be killing prisoners, who have already been sentenced, and are wards of the state, and he says "this is what people want deep down, they will give you the politically correct answer but they actually want the criminal class to be obliterate", which ... there's no character who actually voices any opposition to through the whole series. And I find that weird, because yes, the show has its own answers in terms of how it plays out, but in a show filled with people possessed of immense conviction, most of the people in opposition to Kira are just intellectuals who don't actually give a shit about the ideological question.

(The one big moment when it comes to a head, IMO, is when Soichiro Yagami refuses to write Mello's name entirely because of his principled objection to killing someone. I thought this was great, and I wish the show had more of it.)

The other big thing is that we don't really get a viewpoint of the criminals, with a few exceptions. One is the is Yotsuba group, who are killing people with the Death Note, and the second is the (somehow still functional) mafia that Mello hangs out with. There's also one other scene somewhere after L's death where we see a criminal begging with the police not to have his name written down, and that's about it.

The naive view here is that the show really does believe in Criminals as being a part The Other, a different sort of human being who walk among us. The criminal class are described as rotten and evil, they're shown as grotesque and with exaggerated features or bestial characteristics, and they're generally leering and impulsive. There is no consideration of their humanity.

There's a more nuanced take here, which is that we have a criminal as one of our main cast, Light Yagami, along with everyone else who takes on the Kira mantle. So what is the show saying about criminality through how it portrays them? And here ... I don't know. I kind of don't think that it views them as criminals in the same way? When we look at the ways that Light kills, I genuinely do think that the show thinks that this is different from the way that a capital-C Criminals kill. It's reactionary rather than criminal in and of itself, a response to the injustices of the world rather than being in the same class as those injustices. Light is narratively exempted, and Misa is to. Which isn't to say that I think the show thinks highly of Light, it clearly doesn't, especially in its ending, but I almost think that in the end it Others him too (and also has Teru Mikami drawn in particularly 'evil' style, like a creepy deviant gremlin).

So I enjoyed the rewatch, but there are things that sit a little oddly with me as far as the central themes go. There's probably some discourse I should read that's come out since I first watched it in ... 2010 or whenever, but I think I'll give that a skip.

[utilitycaster]

this may seem needlessly finicky but I do actually believe it's important: calling Verin a himbo is just one of many examples where like, one of the cast says something off the cuff and it's not exactly the right word or it is highly contextual, and that is fine because no one is perfect especially in improv, but then it gets repeated ad infinitum within the fandom when it never really fit in the first place. We have Verin's stats and he's decently more intelligent than average with a 13 (smarter than most of Bells Hells for one; as smart as Pike); it's just he's the guy with a bachelor's degree with good grades followed by military service in a family where everyone has two PhDs - Matt said "himbo of the family" the way in a family where most people are exceptionally tall you'd call the 5'11" child the short one. In Call of the Netherdeep he appears as thoughtful and competent and promoted to a difficult position at a very young age, and in the campaign his appearance is simultaneously as a leader of troops in a dangerous mission, and someone who cares enough about poetry from a completely foreign and distant culture to have tried to learn more about it. I'm sorry, but if you're using the word "himbo" I don't think you're processing a thing about the character yourself; you're just the latest repetition in a game of telephone that's been going on since mid-2021.

And that's not deeply bad on the surface, and I'm using Verin not because he is the character most wronged by this sort of thing but because he's recent and it's really clear where the word came from and that it's not a good assessment, but something I happen to have a decent knack for is pattern recognition in language. I usually find it really easy to pick up on when someone's plagiarized because of the language and pattern shifts. I tend to remember urls and out of place words well. So I do tend to notice when everyone suddenly starts using a single turn of phrase and I tend to flag it. Sometimes that's not bad; sometimes it means everyone came to a similar conclusion and that's the best way to express that conclusion. But like, when Taliesin called the Yios episode a gas-leak episode and the entire fandom started parroting it? The line "bone-dry takes"? The fact that a lot of ship defenses I see were phrased precisely as "I have eyes"? without actually talking about the ship itself? the fact that I've seen a spike in the use of the term "ontologically evil" including in myself and not all uses are actually correct? And extending this beyond strictly language but consider any headcanon with minimal textual support that catches like wildfire (sidebar: remember how we make, or made fun of the SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE tendency on Tumblr a decade ago? same concept of repetition of a specific turn of phrase without internalizing) all sort of ping this.

And it's fine, truly, to come to fandom and turn off your brain. I know this will sound sarcastic from me, and that's because I don't personally agree, but I do strongly agree that you can do what you want in fandom and you don't have to listen to my opinions so in the end, yeah, it's fine because I am not the arbiter of "fine". But I think critical thought is a vital exercise and I think precision with language is part of it and so if you find yourself using the same exact words and thoughts as everyone else, that should, ideally, trigger a process of "but are these the right words? what do I see when I see this character and how would I describe them? do I agree with this assessment?" Fandom is an interesting and easier microcosm than reality in which to start doing that.

[fight-nights-at-freddys]

back at it on r/antiship. for the hell of it, let's go thru why these are strawman arguments at best, stupid at worst, or why what they're saying is objectively true!

TL;DR, half of the things they say are correct, but are framed as being bad things, and the other half is just misinterpreting what proshippers actually say. also they don't know what "normalization" or "romanticization" mean.

hiding under the cut so y'all don't gotta scroll for years

-first pic- that isn't the reason conservatives think lgbt ppl are pedos. they'd think that regardless of what fiction they like, because no matter what, they'd see us as predators/pedos/whatever bad thing. q art will always be inherently problematic to conservatives.

the reason WHY people equate "problematic" fanfic/art to q art is because they both deserve to be protected, they both are often called "degenerate", and that if they censor one, they'll censor both, because to the people that want to censor it, they're both one and the same. it's always "too sexual", or "what if kids see it", or "it promotes the Bad Thing", and just because they're pointing the gun at "problematic" fiction rn, doesn't mean they won't turn the gun on YOU.

-second pic- 1. fiction doesn't affect reality! at least not on a 1:1 basis! correct! 2. that is also correct! i can be interested in violent, gory movies, but i don't like OR condone violence or gore irl! correct! 3. if it walks, talks, and acts like a puritan, it's probably a puritan. stop advocating for censorship and puritanism and we won't call you that. 4. correct again! it isn't mine or anyone else's job to monitor what other people's kids do on the internet. the internet is not for children. 5. hate to say it, because i don't wanna say ANYONE protects predators, but antis do tend to create spaces where preds can sneak around undetected as long as they say The Right Thing™. 6. if you're allowing your 6 yr old to watch videos that say "fluttershy supports MAPs!", then you need to take away the ipad, not start banning shit. 7. gonna keep it real, idk what this means. stop using these words, i guarantee you they don't mean what you think they mean. 8. same as above 9. what 10. okay great, good for you that you only know ONE predator that's an anti. what about the hundreds of others that lurk in the shadows because they say the right thing, and pretend not to like problematic stuff? what about Kyle Carrozza, ya know, the anti that was arrested not too long ago? feel like we're ignoring some stuff here for the sake of pretending your side's good, and ours is bad.

-third pic- 1. well, antis are, aren't they? if you think csem should be criminalized (and it should), and you equate fanart to actual csem, then yes, you ARE trying to criminalize fantasy. 2. two things. for one, it's not always a sexual thing. hell, half the time it isn't. and two, fetishes DON'T hurt anyone (unless the whole point is to hurt someone, but there's always consent!) 3. correct! fictional characters don't have rights. are you advocating for them to? 4. you can't act like porn abolition isn't a cornerstone argument for A LOT of antis. if you agree that fictional smut is bad, chances are you think porn's bad, too. (which also overlaps with radfem beliefs too!) 5. they're not blood related because they're NOT REAL. it doesn't matter if they say they're blood related, because they're fictional. 6. are you insinuating you need to get consent from these fictional characters before you ship them? 7. why should i care? does it hurt anyone? no. does it do any damage? no. is there any downside whatsoever? no? then what does it matter. let people do what they want forever.

[illiath-the-fae]

So... as a Psychologist, I'd like to weigh in on these...

"Love Languages".... hmm... yeah... I only ever hear this said in terms of pop psychology (which is like the difference between Astrology and Astronomy to me), so skipping. If you care about relationship advice, I recommend looking up work from The Gottman Institute, decades of research into relationships out of those people, and while the initially studies were focused on male-female married couples, more modern works from them have been more generalized. They provide "free" information about their research on their website and other places.

MBTI... ah yes... the "four letter words" of things... amusing, but otherwise pointless. My partner (non-psychologist) has taken enough of those over the years for employment he can get any result he wants from it.

BMI... This falls outside my area of expertise, but as someone whose fat, and having worked extensively with one of the founders of "Health At Every Size"... BMI is janky as all heck. It's coming close to being MBTI levels of scam at this point.

Brain development ends at 25... I agree, it doesn't. Your brain is constantly developing and changing. It's called "learning". However, there are certain core aspects of your brain that develop to a specific point and then stop. For instance, your occipital lobes basically "stops development" in early childhood (it's major structures stop changing, but linkages between neurons continue and shift throughout your life). That said, most of the major structures do "stop developing" around 25-30 years of age, but in sort of the same way your skeletal structure stops developing around then... in that you're a living creature so you are ALWAYS changing.

Okay... and now for the bit I really wanted to weigh in on... the IQ stuff. A few things of note. IQ was initially developed to determine what sort of educational class a child should be placed into, as the French public school system wanted to properly place young children in classes for their age. As it was French initially, this is why 100 is an important number, as 100 was to be considered "the correct amount of academic intelligence for someone of this case", and they didn't look "above" that, as it wasn't considered important, and so it was seen as "percentage of correct grade level". Fast forward through a rascist at Stanford (skipping as the previous poster actually explained the reasons for it being shit pretty well) and we move on to more modern IQ testing. Today's IQ testing is primarily used in two main places, education placement (wooo! Full circle!), and to assist with diagnosing some of the more difficult to diagnose conditions. I cannot discuss much of what is used to determine an IQ score (each of the five main tests I am trained in use different aspects and testing methodology so no two tests are equivalent) as knowledge of what is in the test and how they work affects the test results (I'm not allowed to be IQ tested anymore, for instance, as I know how they generate the outcomes... sort of like how my partner can get any MBTI, I can mess with IQ score results). However, I can tell you that the primary test I use, tests mathematical skills, memory, problem solving, and spatial awareness. There are ways to adjust the test if someone has physical disabilities that would impair their ability to do the tests as well. That said, I wouldn't even consider doing IQ testing on someone unless it was part of a more wide-spread diagnostic screening. I'd be using the test to determine things like potential learning disorders, ADHD, ASD, and more. However, for most I wouldn't even do IQ testing for those, it'd only if it was needed for some reason, or the results from other tests suggested I should see what the outcomes are for certain specific portions of the IQ testing methodology.

So... IQ testing... not useful for figuring out "how intelligent" someone is, but very useful for determining "this person's ability to do <x> combined with all these other things the person does shows they most likely have disorder <y>".

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

[vengeancemoths]

ok. yay! let's talk about jason todd autopsy scars.

WARNING: pretty thorough description of an autopsy ahead. if you don't like cut up bodies this one isn't for you.

prefacing this by saying i am not in any way a field expert in any of this, just a guy with really morbid autism and a pretty objectively concerning collection of nonfiction on the subject. i may be wrong about things! i did not crack open the books for my stupid little tumblr post (this time). people with actual experience feel free to correct me.

if jason had had a thorough autopsy performed on him, he would not come back to life* and also probably bruce wayne would go to jail.

*or at least come back with scars from it. more on that later!

if an autopsy was performed it would have to be by someone who knew about batman because robin's scars are pretty difficult to explain. it would be pretty easy to bypass an official autopsy, jason was blown up, his cause of death is not exactly a mystery.

bruce wayne might be the kind of guy who's so obsessive he needs to know exactly which event actually killed jason (if the crowbar killed him, batman couldn't have gotten there in time. if the smoke killed him....). but maybe he also wouldn't want to know for the same reason.

the most important thing is that we know jason had massive head trauma. if you were trying to figure out which of the many terrible things that happened to him was the one that killed him, you'd want to take a look at the brain.

and guys, i don't know if you know this, but the brain only holds its shape because it's inside your skull. the human brain is the consistency of silken tofu. once it's out of your head, it's not going back in.

this is inconvenient for coroners, so they'll probably spend several days soaking jason's brain in a chemical concoction designed to make it firm up. once they do that, it's time to dissect it.

but the fun doesn't end there! once they're done, if they don't just dispose of the brain separately, they're still not going to go through the trouble if wrangling it back into jason's cranium (now open on top, like an egg cup). it goes in the organ bag!

did i forget to mention the organ bag? look, they're not going to put all of his wet organs back into his chest cavity. he's already rapidly decaying. if bruce wayne gets his son back and he's leaking there'll be hell to pay.

so all the organs, which at this point have also been cut into little pieces to study, get jumbled together in a plastic bag. that they do stick back into the kind of gaping hole that the organs vacated. then they stick the ribs back in place (they were sawed off, at the beginning, to gain entry to the organs).

and honestly? without the brain in the mix i can almost believe it. i guess if jason had a really shitty autopsy courtesy of gotham's overcrowded underfunded mortuary? i mean more people who write jason resurrection fic should have to think about the organ bag, and what happens to it. would it just sort of glorp out of him while his organs wiggle themselves back into place? one day i will write my funeral industry accurate jason todd resurrection fic and it will make everyone sad and uncomfortable.

but i guess my thesis statement is that i think it would be really hard to come back to life if your brain was in 7-14 pieces inside a plastic bag where your stomach used to be.

the most likely way for the resurrection to work, in that case, would be to restore his body to its state directly before death, which does unfortunately predate his autopsy.

so what this post is saying is that jason probably wouldn't have had an autopsy, but even if he did, he wouldn't have the scars to show for it.

now, the idea that they're vivisection scars and ra's al ghul was poking around in there? i like that a lot

[ashanimus]

white people shut the everloving fuck up about what appropriating peoples culture means challenge and just enjoy your goddamn sparkle dragons

[butwhatifidothis]

(regarding the Fort Merceus scene)

"Claude doesn't know as much about the Seiros faith because he's an outsider" thanks for ignoring the entire point of Claude's route just to insist he doesn't grow as a character

Ohhh wait, no, it's not that he's not knowledgeable, it's just him definitely lying! Because disagreements? Regarding tenets of a religion? Impossible! Claude must be feigning ignorance and lying because that's all he does as a character! He's tricking the diligent Lorenz into thinking things that aren't true, because Church Bad and Claude would never tell the truth!

[eroticcannibal]

It's still a minority view (plenty of varied viewpoints do get conflated with those things though, by people who have also grown up with the criticism of men = man hate line and internalised it in the other direction). It's still heavily exagruated by bad actors. Have you not actually talked to these people? Have you not looked at what they feel is man hate? Have you seen the examples the radicalised will list? Evil radfems saying all men are scum on twitter is a *tiny* fraction of what they feel attacked by and is almost never what they feel *most* attacked by.

I saw an intelligent, reasonable, compassionate, previously explicitly feminist man become *violently* (and I do mean violently, I was the target) antifeminist overnight because I expressed on Facebook I was having a trauma response (wariness of men) after an assault. And you know what else? Not a single man in that room defended me from *actual violence* because to them, fear looked like hate. Anything that made them uncomfortable looked like hate. This was during a time where publically discussing online your experiences with sexual assault was first becoming a Big Thing, the original #MeToo (interesting that it had to happen twice), and there really wasn't anyone going all men evil, just all men can be scary because we don't know who will hurt us. There was SO MUCH EFFORT to add nuance to the discussion, to let men know hey! We aren't saying *youre* bad! And they would not listen. Why? Because they'd rather listen to other men saying we are man hating feminists who are calling them all rapists even when we explicitly say the opposite! And that got me assaulted by a friend. The same shit fucking led to elevatorgate ffs. How dare a woman say she is uncomfortable, that's man hate, ignore all evidence to the contrary.

And yknow I did see an uptick in *performative* man hate at the time, but it was purely reactionary and it was a *test* (and a lot of current supposed "man hate" is still a relic of this era). Since you can make clear you don't hate men all you want and they will still say you do, "yes all men" became a sort of password. If you could here that without being a little bitch about it, if you knew the context because you actually bothered to listen, then you were cool. You knew no one actually meant that because you bothered to listen to them instead of people lying for political gain.

This is a tactic that has been going on since *before feminism even existed* and it is effective! It relies more upon the constructed belief that feminism is anti man which has become very well established over the years than it does the actual behaviour of feminists. I would strongly encourage you to look at anti-feminist sentiment throughout and predating the history of feminism (starting with the votes for women movement, that's the earliest I am personally aware of, there may be earlier examples) and see how we got to this point. Convincing every feminist to never again say "men are evil" will not create any change. (Which is not to say people *should* do it, but just that it's not the true root of this kind of radicalisation). Actual examples of it are *convenient* but not necessary for this tactic.

I would never *entirely* discredit the viewpoints of someone who has escaped cults and cult tactic using groups (I've been through that, I get it), but I would encourage caution with how much you trust the narrative of the *whys* from someone who has escaped. Leaving is quicker than undoing the thinking, and I really do believe that user isn't quite there yet. Best case scenario, that user is right about *them*, but it is not correct of radicalised men in general.

Because you can be as gentle as you like to these people getting radicalised, you can have all the nuance in the world, you could make it so that no one, not even as a joke, says anything about hating men, and you know what will happen? Just like has always happened, they will listen to who they want to listen to. They will listen to the people promising them superiority, they will listen to the people giving them a reason for their economic suffering (we must remember how much economics plays into radicalisation), that reason being evil feminists. They will see the man hate regardless of if it is there or not. Because they have been told to. Because it is convenient for them. And even if you convince them that we don't hate *men*, now you've got to convince them we don't hate them for being *white*. The point is not the hate they perceive but the superiority they seek and the power they desperately want.

Radicalisation and cult tactics do not rely on facts.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[statementlou]

Maya went on The Internet Is Dead podcast to be interviewed about her relationship with Liam and it's interesting; I recommend it for people who were curious about untangling the details in her book from real life (they talk about this in a number of different places with some detail), people who think she's making everything up, and anyone else sending hostile asks about her- we know she is following the fandom talk and responding to it but I have to say it's very satisfying to listen to her rattle through the exact arguments anons on here are sending around and answer every one of them.

some detail below the cut:

The experience was kind of grating at times; maybe it's just me but I never find it enjoyable to listen to people outside of fandom or casual 1D fans talk about us, and I cringe and bristle literally every time someone says "these people" or "they think", plus the hosts are not super useful; they refer to her tiktoks and book repeatedly without actually giving context for the discussion, like I could do with the occasional "in the book you say…" rather than just chatting about it and leaving us to figure out what they are talking about (they don't even say the name of the book), but whatever. There's interesting stuff in there so it was worth it for me and if you prefer you can just get my highlights, here ya go-

-Her making the point that the media training all of the 1D guys have done from such a young age not only impacts how they talk to the press but also how they talk to people in their lives, the tools it gives them for communicating with (and in this case, manipulating) people was fascinating to me, I hadn't thought about that but I will be in the future with regard to all of them, it's just very interesting to have in mind

-she says she had the book read by lawyers before publishing because it was about someone real and real events, and provided proof for things they asked about

-she points out that she has nothing to gain from making this up, and that as someone who works in a law office and is planning to go to legal school, that the fact that bringing false accusations against someone is illegal would be a huge deterrent to lying

-she says that one of the reasons she initially soft pedaled in terms of outright saying that the book was about Liam was that podcasts and such she went on didn't want her to say it, didn't want the liability, and that when she did say it that part would not get printed or would be edited out (hey speaking of this what are all these interviews she did about the book why am I just now hearing about it... when you guys see stuff like this let me know! I am interested and will maybe recap for you even!)

-she mentions Liam's silence on the whole thing more than once; "if someone wrote that about me and it wasn't true I would not just say nothing!"

-she says that her and Liam went to see After not knowing it was a 1D fanfic and then, after finding that out, he joked that she should write a book about them, and that it was where the seed of the idea came from

[royalberryriku]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[btbonescanon]

you seriously cannot make this up: you have people reblogging fic featuring a racist character as half of the main ship in the morning then trying to give morality lessons in the evening by calling others homophobic over a joke.

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE, BABES.

[northwest-cryptid]

With the amount of notes this has I'm sure someone has already explained something like this but probably in a much better way than I can. However I'll try to explain it as best I can. I want to emphasize here that this information is based on conversations and discussions that I have had, with people who openly refer to themselves as Right Wingers (or who were previously Right Wingers) on forums and websites. While I am a Leftist and can't speak to how the Right operates from personal experience, I can speak as someone who has spoke to individuals who do know from personal experience.

The general gist is that the thing you need to keep in mind is that, so many of us on the Left have an understanding of what the problem really is. We get that the problem isn't that someone happens to be a man because of how they were born of because of their gender identity. However as someone with far less (if any) understanding of those societal issues they do not. They see the Left as saying "men are inherently bad." It gives them no recourse to not be a problem, they may not even actively be part of the problem yet but they don't know that the problem is larger than "you're a man, and I don't like that."

Meanwhile that meanspo you speak of, gives them direction. It gives them a direct out from being a person who is looked down on; and promises them that if they can just do these things on a checklist, they'll be respected, they'll live a good life; they'll be an "Alpha" or whatever. It's an easy decision when you feel like one side is telling you not to be what you are, because what you are is somehow inherently a problem; and they (the loud majority) hate you too much to explain how. While the other side is saying you're just not as good of a man as you should be, you're just a beta male because you don't do X, Y, Z.

As someone who is a Leftist who spends a lot more time than I probably should; actually talking to Right Wingers online. This is literally something people have told/asked me outright.

"Do you expect anyone in their right mind, to side with people who say they're wrong for just being a man; when the other side would offer them a ladder to be on top?"

If you notice, this statement neglects the actual problems, it summarizes the issue down to "you're wrong for just being a man." Which isn't what many of us are saying at all, but is what the Right, and individuals who would be converted to it; are hearing.

You are correct in saying it's objectively worse, in that yes; the Right are horrible people. They thrive on treating others on their side poorly to stay "above" them. However they always hold the promise over others that if you make enough money, if you work out, if you have enough sex; then you can also be on the top. The top doesn't seem that great when the bottom is comfortable enough. They have to ensure you feel like garbage but make sure you also have a clear understanding that it's only because you're not doing enough to climb the ladder.

Leftists don't really offer any similar ladder. Our issues with sexism, inequality, the patriarchy as a whole; etc. are a lot harder to break down. Not to mention that a good man isn't really given any reprieve from these problems, he's simply aware of them. A good man, no matter how good; can't just end racism or sexism himself. We don't do a lot to actually give men a proper course of action, we don't give them an easy to follow guide on how to be a good man by just doing quantifiable things, it's not that simple. We just tell them they're bad because the culture they grow up in is predisposed to turn young men into sexist, racist, bigots.

Obviously we're not all actually just saying "men are bad, fuck men; fuck you if you are a man." Some of us, I'd argue a lot of us, are actually trying to educate people as to the wider issues around "being a man" so to speak. I think that's sort of what leads to this question of "how could anyone in their right mind willingly side with the Right?" It's really no different than how cults recruit depressed and desperate people. The Right isn't watching for people to sort of react poorly once to a Leftist and then immediately jump in like "hey kid come join the Right!" It's more that they prey on dejected men who don't feel like they have direction. The Right gives them direction, it's awful; but it's something quantifiable. Last week they were a "beta male" this week they're going to the gym, they're talking to women; they're applying to jobs that pay more or whatever. Because some "Alpha male" made a video, blog post, podcast; etc. that told them that these things will make them successful, get them out of the rut they're in; and fix their problems.

It's a problem that can't be simplified down to a singular answer unfortunately, it's obviously much larger than that. This isn't meant to be a catch all "I've solve the grand mystery of why people are bigots!" Rather I'm just trying to offer some insight into one such potential cause.

the idea that reactionary spaces are attractive to men because they treat them kindly unlike The Left is so odd because whenever I come across that content it's essentially the same dynamic as pro ana "meanspo". if you don't know what that is, it's "motivation" based on degrading the viewer to the point where they can't "make excuses" and not become anorexic, or in this case a true Alpha Male. I feel like thisis objectively worse for someone's mental health than The Left

[batemanofficial]

last thing and then ill shut up about it but it pisses me off so bad when people say shit like...that on my lighthearted little poll and then reblog the "activated charcoal will flush all medication from your system and you will get pregnant and be forcibly detransitioned and die all before the next time you have to take a shit" post with full faith. 99% of the users on this website truly have no medical literacy and im starting to think thats on purpose so they can continue to say they have eighty five rare diseases all comorbidly

[viciouslyrobotic]

Except it isn't! Shockingly, the internet doesn't revolve around just what you specific come across! That literally isn't whats being discussed here and no one said you have to tolerate bigotry AT ALL. You are injecting what you want to into a discussion that is not about cowtowing to people who feel entitled to their misogyny and bigotry without facing consequence. Also, the screenshot you're showing is some rando admitting that yes, equality is the morally correct choice, and he also has to reconcile that he's seen as scum of the earth regardless.

Are you knew here? Do you know what rehabilitation is? Because I damn well don't think people that claim to be reformed but have no action to show for it have actually been "reformed" and have argued with plenty "reformed" alt righters who curiously still attack all the same marginalized people they were already attacking but now (mis)use feminist language to do so now so this screenshot proves nothing to me beyond what it says. He went down the pipeline and also is admitting he's contending with being seen as scum for "immutable traits" while course correcting himself. What immutable traits? You don't have to unpack his feelings of guilt for him, but you also don't need to weaponize them to feel justified in your actions.

You're defensive for a reason, I get it, been there. At the same time that man needs a therapist and community so he doesn't go back to fascism and we, AND ESPECIALLY HIMSELF, can hold him accountable for his past actions while, again, course correcting as we would for any other ally. There are plenty of legitimately reformed alt righters, stop weaponizing the ones that aren't to justify yourself. Stop weaponizing peoples genders to justify yourself.

Idk I feel like "Men are responsible for their own actions, women aren't to blame for men being misogynistic" and "You do not have to tolerate bigotry from others, call them out on that shit" and "People may be less likely to become radicalized if they receive kindness and compassion" don't have to contradict each other

[bisexualamy]

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