#anti society

[diary-of-z]

Listen. We were all lied to. Unless you're part of a very lucky minority, you won't do a job you love and you won't get to retire either. Death is the only escape most people see, but suicide isn't the answer. Turn your back on society and give it a big "fuck you." You were made for more. Be a legend, and make sure the world knows your name

[connieaaa]

First quarter as a full time college student recap.

*Discussing what makes humans human*

Me: I don't think it's using tools, plenty of other animals use tools. I don't think it's speech, because that would mean people who are mute would be less human. I don't think it's bipedalism because then people who can't walk would be less than human. Same with brain size, are people with microcephaly less human - some would say yes.

Classmate: *visibly shaking* I never thought about it like that.

*Discussing indigenous people in science*

Me: Indigenous knowledge isn't merely ignored, it systematically repressed. Indigenous people knew malaria was caused by mosquitos, and warned British explorers about it. The explorers used that knowledge to portray the Indigenous people as superstitious. It's the same story with the Cascadia Fault.

Classmate: I had no idea. I need to look more into this.

*English Personal Essays*

Classmate: something you said made me realize that my experience of bigotry hasn't been universal, and I was being prejudiced in self-defense. I realized I can let that go now.

*Actual college class*

Me: so what I am hearing is that I am a master social deviant, bordering on sociopathic behavior.

*Teacher ignores me*

Me: So, yes. Ah, the textbook says I should do crime, too. Like "be gay, do crime"?

*crickets*

"Be gay, do crime", it is then. I am not really into any other types of crime.

My English teacher was terrific

[house-rat]

“Free market capitalism is the ideal model for meeting consumers’ needs” fuckers losing their minds when you point out that 67% of American women are plus-size but only 12% of the women’s clothing industry carries their sizes.

[proselles]

you know what i think is really cool about dungeon meshi? the fact that it really handles the whole 'how our food is made' so gracefully. in this day and age, we've become so disconnected from how our food is produced and distributed that the thought of how our food is obtained brings disgust to many people (and for the big industry farms, it honestly should! but im referring to our existence as omnivores in the food chain). marcille acted ridiculous whenever the thought of killing a monster for food is brought up, but honestly, she's a great model for how many people nowadays react whenever they have to truly think about what they are consuming/are brought to a meat farm.

senshi shows the characters (and us, the audience) about the process of making food in a respectful, genuine way to the creatures he has used to produce nourishing meals. by explaining the nutrition and benefits of each creature, he creates and healthy relationship between the consumers and the meal they have. the show really brings a new dimension of respect for each of our meals. truly the bob ross/marie kondo of cooking.

[miiju86]

[dailyanarchistposts]

Direct action, simply put, means cutting out the middleman: solving problems yourself rather than petitioning the authorities or relying on external institutions. Any action that sidesteps regulations and representation to accomplish goals directly is direct action—it includes everything from blockading airports to helping refugees escape to safety and organizing programs to liberate your community from reliance on capitalism. Here we present a step-by-step guide to organizing and carrying out direct action, from the first planning stages to the debrief at the end, including legal support, media strategy, and proper security.

There are countless scenarios in which you might want to employ direct action. Perhaps representatives of despicable multinational corporations are invading your town to hold a meeting, and you want to do more than simply hold a sign; perhaps they’ve been there a long time, operating franchises that exploit workers and ravage the environment, and you want to hinder their misdeeds; perhaps you want to organize a festive, community-oriented event such as a street party. Direct action can plant a public garden in an abandoned lot or defend it by paralyzing bulldozers; it can occupy empty buildings to house the homeless or shut down government offices. Whether you’re acting in secret with a trusted friend or in a mass action with thousands of people, the basic elements are the same.

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

the degree to which magic in bbc merlin is an allegory for queerness is insane. what do you mean people with magic hide in fear for their lives because it’s illegal. what do you mean merlin’s mother sent him away to the big city bc she was afraid of what would happen if their small town found out he had magic. what do you mean merlin is taken in by an unmarried old man who used to practice magic but can’t anymore. what do you mean morgana was morally on uther’s side until she realized who she was and that he was wrong for wanting people like her dead. what do you mean anti-magical propaganda spreads misinformation that all magic is evil and everyone who practices it is also evil and should be killed. what do you mean there’s a recurring underlying theme of magical being solidarity

[furiousgoldfish]

Does anyone else feel like the society is structured in a way that has people forced to obediently and submissively endure harassment and abuse from their bosses and people in authority, but they're allowed to take out their frustration on anyone who is powerless to inflict consequences on them? Like their own employees, service workers, their spouse, family, children. There's no consequences for hurting the powerless and loads of consequences for standing up to authority, even if you're standing up to them for a good reason. It's almost like things were designed to be this way.

Shouldn't it be the opposite though? We should focus on standing up to people in authority, because they're likely to abuse authority they have, so there should be no consequences for challenging this authority, it needs to be challenged. We should have severe consequences for hurting those who can't fight back, because they need that protection the most.

[celestiallyslimy]

watching wolfwalkers until you get tired and gnawing on those prosciutto mozzarella meat sticks is such caninekin-coded behaviour only weird bitches would do that (im weird bitches)

[danadiadea]

examples of stalker behaviour: - not being confident and extroverted enough to promptly approach other children as a 9 years old; - trying to prove your bullies do things that go beyond the school rules and the law (which is true) because you want to be able to study without them hurting you; - going to apologize to your friend because you've called her a foul name during a highly traumatic event and now you feel guilty; - being friends with a girl or having a crush on her overall. Soooo creepy.

examples of not stalker behaviour: - making a map that puts an unconsensual GPS on everyone at school, letting you monitor anyone you want 24/7 (two times less stalkerish if you also bring your invisibility cloak); - repeatedly asking out a girl who keeps saying she hates you, and telling her that if she agrees, you'll stop hurting her friend.

[pidgeyato]

I also need yall to know that Tetsutetsu canonically accompanies his female classmates when they go out at night, even if they're only traveling a short distance. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu the #1 protector of women, god fuckin bless.

[rainbowpopeworld]

[dailyanarchistposts]

Turbulent times are upon us. Already, blockades, demonstrations, riots, and clashes are occuring regularly. It’s past time to be organizing for the upheavals that are on the way.

But getting organized doesn’t mean joining a pre-existing institution and taking orders. It shouldn’t mean forfeiting your agency and intelligence to become a cog in a machine. From an anarchist perspective, organizational structure should maximize both freedom and voluntary coordination at every level of scale, from the smallest group up to society as a whole.

You and your friends already constitute an affinity group, the essential building block of this model. An affinity group is a circle of friends who understand themselves as an autonomous political force. The idea is that people who already know and trust each other should work together to respond immediately, intelligently, and flexibly to emerging situations.

This leaderless format has proven effective for guerrilla activities of all kinds, as well as what the RAND Corporation calls “swarming” tactics in which many unpredictable autonomous groups overwhelm a centralized adversary. You should go to every demonstration in an affinity group, with a shared sense of your goals and capabilities. If you are in an affinity group that has experience taking action together, you will be much better prepared to deal with emergencies and make the most of unexpected opportunities.

This guide is adapted from an earlier version that appeared in our Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook.

Affinity Groups are Powerful

Relative to their small size, affinity groups can achieve a disproportionately powerful impact. In contrast to traditional top-down structures, they are free to adapt to any situation, they need not pass their decisions through a complicated process of ratification, and all the participants can act and react instantly without waiting for orders—yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. The mutual admiration and inspiration on which they are founded make them very difficult to demoralize. In stark contrast to capitalist, fascist, and socialist structures, they function without any need of hierarchy or coercion. Participating in an affinity group can be fulfilling and fun as well as effective.

Most important of all, affinity groups are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction. Small wonder whole squads of riot police have been held at bay by affinity groups armed with only the tear gas canisters shot at them.

The Affinity Group is a Flexible Model

Some affinity groups are formal and immersive: the participants live together, sharing everything in common. But an affinity group need not be a permanent arrangement. It can serve as a structure of convenience, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project.

A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also break up into smaller affinity groups, participate in other affinity groups, or act outside the affinity group structure. Freedom to associate and organize as each person sees fit is a fundamental anarchist principle; this promotes redundancy, so no one person or group is essential to the functioning of the whole, and different groups can reconfigure as needed.

Pick the Scale That’s Right for You

An affinity group can range from two to perhaps as many as fifteen individuals, depending on your goals. However, no group should be so numerous that an informal conversation about pressing matters is impossible. You can always split up into two or more groups if need be. In actions that require driving, the easiest system is often to have one affinity group to each vehicle.

Get to Know Each Other Intimately

Learn each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities and backgrounds, so you know what you can count on each other for. Discuss your analyses of each situation you are entering and what is worth accomplishing in it—identify where they match, where they are complentary, and where they differ, so you’ll be ready to make split-second decisions.

One way to develop political intimacy is to read and discuss texts together, but nothing beats on-the-ground experience. Start out slow so you don’t overextend. Once you’ve established a common language and healthy internal dynamics, you’re ready to identify the objectives you want to accomplish, prepare a plan, and go into action.

Decide Your Appropriate Level of Security

Affinity groups are resistant to infiltration because all members share history and intimacy with each other, and no one outside the group need be informed of their plans or activities.

Once assembled, an affinity group should establish a shared set of security practices and stick to them. In some cases, you can afford to be public and transparent about your activities. in other cases, whatever goes on within the group should never be spoken of outside it, even after all its activities are long completed. In some cases, no one except the participants in the group should know that it exists at all. You and your comrades can discuss and prepare for actions without acknowledging to outsiders that you constitute an affinity group. Remember, it is easier to pass from a high security protocol to a low one than vice versa.

Make Decisions Together

Affinity groups generally operate on via consensus decision-making: decisions are made collectively according to the needs and desires of every individual involved. Democratic voting, in which the majority get their way and the minority must hold their tongues, is anathema to affinity groups—for if a group is to function smoothly and hold together under stress, every individual involved must be satisfied. Before any action, the members of a group should establish together what their personal and collective goals are, what risks they are comfortable taking, and what their expectations of each other are. These matters determined, they can formulate a plan.

Since action situations are always unpredictable and plans rarely come off as anticipated, it may help to employ a dual approach to preparing. On the one hand, you can make plans for different scenarios: If A happens, we’ll inform each other by X means and switch to plan B; if X means of communication is impossible, we’ll reconvene at site Z at Q o’clock. On the other hand, you can put structures in place that will be useful even if what happens is unlike any of the scenarios you imagined. This could mean preparing resources (such as banners, medical supplies, or offensive equipment), dividing up internal roles (for example, scouting, communications, medic, media liaison), establishing communication systems (such as burner phones or coded phrases that can be shouted out to convey information securely), preparing general strategies (for keeping sight of one another in confusing environments, for example), charting emergency escape routes, or readying legal support in case anyone is arrested.

After an action, a shrewd affinity group will meet (if necessary, in a secure location without any electronics) to discuss what went well, what could have gone better, and what comes next.

Tact and Tactics

An affinity group answers to itself alone—this is one of its strengths. Affinity groups are not burdened by the procedural protocol of other organizations, the difficulties of reaching agreement with strangers, or the limitations of answering to a body not immediately involved in the action.

At the same time, just as the members of an affinity group strive for consensus with each other, each affinity group should strive for a similarly considerate relationship with other individuals and groups—or at least to complement others’ approaches, even if others do not recognize the value of this contribution. Ideally, most people should be glad of your affinity group’s participation or intervention in a situation, rather than resenting or fearing you. They should come to recognize the value of the affinity group model, and so to employ it themselves, after seeing it succeed and benefiting from that success.

Organize With Other Affinity Groups

An affinity group can work together with other affinity groups in what is sometimes called a cluster. The cluster formation enables a larger number of individuals to act with the same advantages a single affinity group has. If speed or security is called for, representatives of each group can meet ahead of time, rather than the entirety of all groups; if coordination is of the essence, the groups or representatives can arrange methods for communicating through the heat of the action. Over years of collaborating together, different affinity groups can come to know each other as well as they know themselves, becoming accordingly more comfortable and capable together.

When several clusters of affinity groups need to coordinate especially massive actions—before a big demonstration, for example—they can hold a spokescouncil meeting at which different affinity groups and clusters can inform one another (to whatever extent is wise) of their intentions. Spokescouncils rarely produce seamless unanimity, but they can apprise the participants of the various desires and perspectives that are at play. The independence and spontaneity that decentralization provides are usually our greatest advantages in combat with a better equipped adversary.

Bottomlining

For affinity groups and larger structures based on consensus and cooperation to function, it is essential that everyone involved be able to rely on each other to come through on commitments. When a plan is agreed upon, each individual in a group and each group in a cluster should choose one or more critical aspects of the preparation and execution of the plan and offer to bottomline them. Bottomlining the supplying of a resource or the completion of a project means guaranteeing that it will be accomplished somehow, no matter what. If you’re operating the legal hotline for your group during a demonstration, you owe it to them to make sure someone can handle it even if you get sick; if your group promises to provide the banners for an action, make sure they’re ready, even if that means staying up all night the night before because the rest of your affinity group couldn’t show up. Over time, you’ll learn how to handle crises and who you can count on in them—just as others will learn how much they can count on you.

Go Into Action

Stop wondering what’s going to happen, or why nothing’s happening. Get together with your friends and start deciding what will happen. Don’t go through life in passive spectator mode, waiting to be told what to do. Get in the habit of discussing what you want to see happen—and making those ideas reality.

Without a structure that encourages ideas to flow into action, without comrades with whom to brainstorm and barnstorm and build up momentum, you are likely to be paralyzed, cut off from much of your own potential; with them, your potential can be multiplied by ten, or ten thousand. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” Margaret Mead wrote: “it’s the only thing that ever has.” She was referring, whether she knew it or not, to affinity groups. If every individual in every action against the state and status quo participated as part of a tight-knit, dedicated affinity group, the revolution would be accomplished in a few short years.

An affinity group could be a sewing circle or a bicycle maintenance collective; it could come together for the purpose of providing a meal at an occupation or forcing a multinational corporation out of business through a carefully orchestrated program of sabotage. Affinity groups have planted and defended community gardens, built and occupied and burned down buildings, organized neighborhood childcare programs and wildcat strikes; individual affinity groups routinely initiate revolutions in the visual arts and popular music. Your favorite band was an affinity group. An affinity group invented the airplane. Another one maintains this website.

Let five people meet who are resolved to the lightning of action rather than the agony of survival—from that moment, despair ends and tactics begin.

[mishtygirlcat]

Is it just me or the songs on The Tortured Poets Department sound the same? It's like they all blend together at some point....at first listen there is not one song stuck in my head. And this is coming from someone who genuinely enjoys her music ...Red is one of my faves. You could swap the songs from Midnights and TTPD and I wouldn't be able to tell. I think she should start working with a new producer. Although I stopped being a fan since the breakup, I was still looking forward to new music .... I was excited for what new sound she would explore but it was disappointing to hear the same old repetitive Jack Antonoff synth pop genre.

She probably needs a break .... all this hyper production in the past few years with so many albums and their multiple versions must have had an impact on her creativity and quality...also a lot of lyrics are just......eh I don't know the right words, but she can do better for an artist of her magnitude and caliber.

Also, I feel like the aesthetic for the album does not match the music...like the dark academia/old books thing doesn't really go with the songs for me. Again, they sound a lot like something from Midnights due to the production so probably that's why I feel like that.

Another thing, the album seems to be mostly about the 1975 dude, but the marketing pointed to Joe Alwyn which led to him being harassed by her fans and she did nothing. That was horrible of her. It's these kinds of things that led me to leave that fandom. Even Ariana put out a statement when she released her new album.

Overall, I expected a better album from her. She really needs to take a break. The overexposure and overproduction are not looking good.

[wanderingcritter]

"hey youve been kinda quiet what's on your mind?"

me: "oh nothing i was just zoning out"

my brain: therian commune therian commune therian commune therian commune therian commune therian commune therian commune therian commun tgerian conune terin coo