#also the way people use the word media literacy makes me furious

[famouswolflamppaper]

I am so tired of checking the Gale tag on Tumblr and stumbling over some comments demeaning Gale and long-ass rehashed rants about whether Mystra groomed Gale. I don't want these. I just want to see Gale kissing other people's beautiful tavs and origin characters.

[helixtheman]

Dear Yu-Gi-Oh fans, Nobody Cares

Who even cares what you have to say anymore?

We can't stand your inflated egos and the stereotypes you embody. We hate your egos.

You want all Yu-Gi-Oh! shows to have ups and downs but still be united under one regime, like some kind of North Korean dictatorship you admire.

This is what happens when you use mental gymnastics to avoid basic critical thinking. Most fans are right about your egos—you just can’t let one show have its spotlight.

You say Zexal is peak, but what happened to 5D's or GX? You can’t allow them their due respect because, just like assholes, you can’t stand anyone else getting attention.

You blame everything on 4Kids just to justify your own bias and make yourself feel relevant in today’s world. Just admit it—it’s a localized company, for crying out loud!

You prefer the card game over the anime, the same way Hollywood prefers to appear "woke" rather than make smart decisions, especially in the 2024 election.

You like to call Yu-Gi-Oh! silly and stupid as a card game anime, yet every single word you've said is even sillier and stupider. People are clearly fed up with this nonsense.

You want to gatekeep the fandom and make it a constant "happy place," but when the sledgehammer of truth breaks it down, it will ensure it never gets reconstructed again.

You say Yu-Gi-Oh! girls were mistreated in the Gallop anime, and you demand that they be strong and independent. But the moment you see the Rush girls in the current era, you get furious—like a woke liberal losing it over a Trump tweet about why America failed.

It’s almost as ridiculous as laughing at the Los Angeles fires while claiming you hate God, only to turn around and give Him zero points at the Emmys.

You claim you can’t watch Yu-Gi-Oh! on Netflix but refuse to use pirate websites because it would make you look weak or because you think it’s supporting illegal activity. Meanwhile, there’s no other alternative. Do you also hate European fans who have their own way of watching and chilling with Yu-Gi-Oh! just because you can’t stand their egos either?

Show some humility before trying to make me feel like I’m the victim here. I’ve been happily watching Yu-Gi-Oh! without being a negative Nancy like MangaClown was to 5D’s and GX in the past. That guy is just another American obsessed with media and literacy instead of being a casual fan like the rest of us.

Nobody cares about media or literacy; we just want to chill. But Yu-Gi-Oh! fans love to act like dirty pigs, tearing everything apart. If Trump had created Yu-Gi-Oh!, you fans would shred him until the end of time. Let’s face it: Yu-Gi-Oh! fans are some of the most toxic and negative towards each other. And yes, I’m no exception. I’m not standing out—I’m just pointing out the truth.

I’ve always been smarter and more advanced because I never cared about fandom purity groups. I’m more macho than you because I don’t need a textbook to tell me how to watch the anime or play the card game. I’ve always been my own person.

YouTube fans of Yu-Gi-Oh! love to analyze what made the game broken or bad, but they forget the bigger picture. What really bugs me is that people still think Yu-Gi-Oh! is just about the cards and not about the story. You pigs forgot to even read it. The whole "Yu-Gi-Oh! fans can’t read" joke feels symbolic of how behind this community is—not by 20 years, but maybe even 5,000 years. We can’t evolve when new things come and go.

I won’t bend the knee or ask for forgiveness for something like this. Back in 2015, people sent me death threats just because I bashed Zexal. I hated Yuma and called Zexal II a living nightmare of bad writing. But that’s on you, not me.

I’ve always hated Zexal because it felt more like a mixed bag than a true anime or original product. People keep trying to mislead others by lumping Zexal in with the original trilogy (DM, GX, and 5D’s), but it’s not part of that legacy. Zexal was just a modern Duel Monsters knockoff that nobody liked.

Meanwhile, fans of Arc-V, VRAINS, and the Rush era are still furious their shows don’t get the same hype in America, even though Japan loves them. Honestly, it’s no loss for Americans, who just care more about action movies than watching a good cartoon once in a while.

And if fans claim I have divided opinions about an anime, it just means they’re triggered—just like how Trump triggered the Democratic Party back in 2015.

If you prefer mainstream media in America over quality shows in my world, then you’re just an average consumer more focused on binge-watching than actually learning anything.

You claim the humility in Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal is peak writing, but that show is entirely based on cringe and LGBTQ+ propaganda. And when you tell people to stop overanalyzing and not call The Dark Side of Dimensions bad, that’s exactly why I’m here to roast this fandom.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say.

[potaosoup]

Alright, so I think this might be the next misinformation/anti-trans talking point and it's got me furious, cause it's just blatant misinterpretation of science.

So the BBC just published this article, with similar headlines echoed by several explicitly right-wing news outlets, including The Daily Signal, The Telegraph, and Hot Air (Red flag #1: absolutely no coverage from any scientific media orgs. or typically reputable sources). In it, Hannah Barnes, who - it should be noted - has based her entire recent career on peddling transphobic gender-critical rhetoric, writes:

"The original study of 44 children, who all took the controversial drugs for a year or more, found no mental health impact - neither benefits nor harm. But a re-analysis of that data now suggests 34% saw their mental health deteriorate, while 29% improved."

(Red flag #2: note the use of the word controversial, framing puberty blockers as a fairly debated topic when, in reality, are widely accepted by scientific and medical groups as a way to help trans youth work through the extremely hard time that is puberty along with proper medical treatment.)

The article continues by casting further doubt on the safety, usefulness, and necessity of puberty blockers, really nothing new as far as what we've seen before.

But if I know anything, it's that bigots of any kind just love having a little number that they can brandish, which makes sense, given that they almost never have any actual facts in their favour. So let's take a quick look at this groundbreaking new analysis they're referring to.

First and foremost, this analysis is not peer reviewed, and the disclaimer at the very top even says the following:

This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

So any claims that this could directly cause serious reconsideration of well-established clinical guidelines are false. (People are making up untrue science to back anti-trans policies, yes, but medical organizations are absolutely not going to see this as a reason to change practices.)

Now, I am not in a position to make any substantive judgments on the numbers or how they were analyzed, but I would like to demonstrate how it is completely feasible to, with a basic level of scientific literacy, to just read the works that these people cite and actually understand what's being said here. All the following stuff is what I took straight from this analysis and the authors' own conclusions.

This is not a study casting doubt on the effects of puberty blockers.

What it is, is a look at some faulty data and possibly sloppy analysis. It's basically saying that when the original study used the average of all their results as their main conclusion from the data, they failed to highlight the range of both positive and negative experiences reported by participants (yes, think Spiders Georg)

The original study had an extremely small sample group of only 44, and by the end, only had 15 respondents. They also didn't have any control group, adding to the limited scope of the study. The 2023 re-analysis specifically says that these flaws in the methods are exactly why it shouldn't be used to draw broad conclusions about the effectiveness or safety of puberty blockers, and that we should really be looking at the different factors that could lead to either improvement or deterioration of trans kids' mental health.

Given the relatively low proportion of the sample in the clinical or borderline range, the rates of clinically significant change should be treated with caution. [...] Using the reliable and clinically significant change approach to analysis of clinical study data provides an opportunity for research teams in this field to conduct fuller analysis of their data to ascertain whether there are any variables which might predict which children with GD are most likely to benefit psychologically and which are most likely to deteriorate, rather than considering the group as uniform in likely response to treatment.

So, no, this isn't some earth-shattering evidence that puberty blockers are actually making kids more depressed. I don't think that we should be surprised that transphobes will try to twist the narrative in their favour - it's what they've always done. But I'd rather treat this as a moment to show how scientific literacy and the ability to spend even a few minutes digging into the headlines you see is one of the best ways to counter misinformation and to see the ways that the people trying to strip us of our rights use the articles and studies that people won't actually read to bolster their bigotry.

Of course, simply pointing out the flaws of their logic or misinterpretations of fact will not stop them from pursuing their hateful ideology, but it can equip you to see the rhetoric they're using and possibly keep yourself and others from falling down pipelines of disinformation in good faith.

Science and solidarity,

-Your local trans nerd