#about my online friends judging me for it

[uncle-fruity]

Also, like... I get that there is a lot of anxiety about being seen as morally good & fighting for everyone at every turn, but! Crucially, the people who try to guilt trip you or judge you off your Tumblr presence don't fucking know you. They don't know what you do off Tumblr. They may not know any other social media that you DO use for your politics and heavy posting. And, tbh, at a certain level of offline activism & direct action, it is actively dangerous for you to be posting about what you do online, so a perceived lack of interest or dedication online does not necessarily translate to the efforts you put in to causes you care about.

Fact of the matter is, YOU are the only one who knows what you get up to. If it's not as much as you think you should be doing, that's for you to assess and change. If you feel like you're doing enough, or if you feel like taking on more responsibility in activism would overwhelm you or burn you out, that's okay! You know your limits better than anyone else. You get to set your priorities. And if you really want to help with social justice causes, you HAVE to take care of yourself. Anger, fear, and guilt are not sustainable motivations to drive a movement. You NEED places to relax and have fun and not think about how bleak things can get. You NEED to have places to retreat, enjoy yourself, and remind yourself that it's all worth fighting for.

I know this, because I'm in my 30s now. When I was in my early 20s, I was friends with a lot of folks who went hard during the Ferguson protests, and while many of them are still active in their activism, almost none of them are operating on the same level as they used to. All of them are burnt out & depressed. I spend a lot of my energy urging them to take care of their most basic needs. We also have a problem with a lot of older activists being too broken & traumatized to continue organizing. And part of the problem is people within the movement encouraging people to push past their limits until they have nothing left to give. Or just having no support systems in place to help people recover while actively judging people who need them & can't continue without them.

And, like, it's hard, because it's easy to start feeling like no one cares about the stuff you care about when you're out there trying to make change -- especially true if all your activism is online posting & raising awareness. It can feel like you're talking to a void or a brick wall. The idea that you are so stressed & strung out & never let yourself take a break from the harsh reality of the world while there are people who have the audacity to make time to enjoy their lives and put their efforts into other activities that aren't directly related to The Cause -- well, that's why a lot of people resort to guilt trips. I know I did, too, when I was younger and freshly angry. And I know that those guilt trips did nothing to convince anyone of anything. In fact, it was the constant guilt trips that made me retreat from those online groups. Where they might have had any and all skills I could offer, they instead made me feel like shit for doing what I could handle at the time. And even though I knew guilt tripping was a major manipulation & abuse tactic, I still resorted to it and, in doing so, I felt wrong. Like I betrayed some of my core values by trying to make people feel so bad that they would suddenly realize that they should be ashamed & join the movement headfirst. It just... doesn't work that way. A guilt trip will turn people off. If you want people to join a movement or be more active in a movement they are already part of, it is so much better to encourage them to come with you to organized events or give them something tangible to do that they can actually accomplish. And if you're just talking about posting online, well... that is not the most important thing to focus on, and is a really bad measure to judge someone's morality.

All that to say, a guilt trip is usually a manifestation of the desperation folks are feeling. It's not right to guilt trip folks, and if you're at that point that you feel like that's the only thing that will get people to change and care, then I'm sorry to say you are probably on the verge of your own burnout and you need to take a break. Please don't let people make you feel bad for not being angry or on your activism shit 24/7. And don't judge yourself harshly when you need to have boundaries online. The best tactic will always be community building and working with people & their various skills on their level. Compassion and encouragement go so much farther than guilt.

No matter what a post on tumblr tries to tell you, your moral and ethical stances will never be determined by what you reblog and what you scroll past. Don’t let manipulation tactics force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.

[transmechanicus]

Kind of hard to ask as anon

But you doing ok?

Need to vent?

Hi very kind and thoughtful of you to ask, i am doing mmmmm suboptimal but i do not need to vent to a person per se, so much as i need to say absolutely insane shit in my tags and have everyone pretend not to see <3

[anghraine]

Aww, Ash admitted to me when we were discussing Star Wars opinions that she's not only thought about these things before, she's actually really feeling like using her advanced creative writing degree to write ...................... fanfiction, and has actually done so in the past.

me, shoving my 67 SW fanfics on AO3 under the bed: Oh hey, awesome! That sounds really interesting.

[thetisming]

im actually really worried that im not that interested in &j anymore like ivd been having a hard time writing about it and talking about it online and i mean i talk about it a lot irl but idk like people have been knowing more than me and im starting to feel so incredibly inferior that it's hard for me to enjoy it

[eternal-reverie]

got the posting anxiety bad tonight

[koka-mi]

bffhsvnkjs I kinda.don't see the point in waking up anymore

[aurosoul]

life continues to be stranger than fiction lately

(top pics are me having an augmented reality game night with my BF, bottom pics are from an AR party held in the same warehouse where they filmed Saw. I was there giving demos with the Magic Leap 2!)

[handern]

torn between "I want to commission someone to draw my ocs" and "what if they think I'm so so cringe"

[starlightwielded]

shout out to my friend who gasped when we went to cinderella’s castle and the fairy queen first said she was going to craft ella’s gift out of trappings of starlight promptly gasped and held my hand

[glass-expanse]

I think one thing God is trying to teach me rn is my own powerlessness and dependence.

[sweet-milky-tea705]

Been feeling lonely :(

[cryptid-on-a-string]

Occasionally I see people in real life who happen to look just like one of my ocs and I’m like 😳😳😳 ☝️☝️☝️☝️ HOLY SHIT ??

[twintailed-anyu]

if you're close with someone who has social anxiety, PLEASE.

what we crave more than anything is validation. when you agree with us in conversation or casually compliment or casual compliments, it means so much.

social anxiety likes to convince us everyone hates us and that everyone judges what we do, how we look, the way we speak, and it especially likes to do that with people we're close to.

so as someone who's friends with someone who has social anxiety, just remind them that you care, that you dont hate them, that you dont find their every move annoying and that you value them. it can help, so much more than you'd imagine.

[viovio]

i once had someone ask me what my intrusive thoughts were and I'm gonna be honest patrick i am not telling you that

[hotvillianapologist]

im taking my tumblr to THE GRAVE😭

people who only use conventional social media are so funny bc they’ll casually be like “can I see your tumblr??” are you Insane. this is no instagram or twitter. this is my vault of secrets

[deprivedofbraincellsandsleep]

idk how this happened but atp I'm just afraid to speak to friends