#because this is the piss on the poor website

[netscapenavigator-official]

I want you to point to the part of this post where I said there had NEVER been media manipulation about Mangione. What I said was

This isn't a case of media manipulation.

"This," as in the very scenario I laid out in the very first sentence, and the only scenario this post addresses because this is the scenario that inspired me to make this post about this scenario.

YOU made the choice to insert your own biases and interpret this post as about Mangione in general, and then YOU chose to pretend like you know MY opinion of him without checking a single other thing on my blog or internet existence. Pissing on the poor reading comprehension. This website never seems to disappoint on that front.

Also, I'm sorry you find the reality-checking POV cringe, but it's not my problem you prefer to live in a deluded pseudo-reality. We, as a society and species, have nothing to gain from rejecting reality and embracing impulsive and biased fantasies that only serve to distract us. By keeping ourselves oriented with the reality of situations, we better prepare ourselves to work with reality and change it in more effective and desirable ways, rather than constantly being disappointed and ill-prepared when it doesn't match up with our wish list.

I, personally, very much have a favorable opinion of Mangione, and I very much wish his alleged actions would've sparked copycats. However, you hadn't even considered someone could like Mangione while also wanting to have a realistic perception of his public image. I hope Mangione goes free. I hope there still are copycats brewing. However, I gain nothing but an inevitable disappointment if I try to convince myself that he's more popular than he actually is.

If further data comes out showcasing YouGov's poll to be incorrect, then I will adjust my opinion and mentality correctly. However, until then, I am not going to base my opinions and thought processes on a superstitious hunch when we have well-researched facts at our disposal. As much as I want Mangione and his alleged actions to be universally beloved, the data simply says they are not. Being conscious and aware of that hurts no one, and it doesn't change my personal opinion of Mangione in the slightest.

Also, might I add, your short-sighted, conservative-propagandized mentality of distrusting and wanting to invalidate polls & surveys is very alarming. Being distrustful of certain "facts" can be an extremely important tool when utilized properly. However, if you whip it out in such an extreme, declarative, full-force manner every time you so much as get a hunch, then you aren't radical and ahead of the curve. You're a conservative. Blindly trusting everything is bad, but blindly distrusting everything isn't any better.

“Luigi Mangione disappeared from headlines once the media realized people loved him.”

Bitch, his trial got delayed until mid-February because Prosecutors requested it, and his lawyer accepted. That’s it. That’s why there haven’t been any updates: There aren’t any updates. It’s not that deep.

Also, thinking Mangione was universally beloved is very much a Tumblr echo chamber thing. According to a survey done by YouGov, the ONLY demographics which “majority” support Mangione are people aged 18-29, and people who self described their politics as “Very Liberal.” That’s it.

39% of under 30s agreed. 32% were indifferent, and 29% disagreed. Every other age demographic saw disagreement surpass agreement.

47% of “Very Liberal” individuals agreed. 22% were indifferent, and 31% disagreed. Every other political leaning category (including “Liberal” and “Moderate”) had their Indifference and Disagreement exceed their Agreement.

For the average U.S. Adult, the survey concluded that 21% agree with what Mangione did, 37% were indifferent, and 43% disagreed.

So no. This isn’t a case of media manipulation. This is a case A: There quite literally being nothing new to report on, and B: Mangione not being as bipartisan-ly popular as most of you think.

[sixth-light]

Not adding this onto the post that keeps crossing my dash because it's not really relevant to that discussion, but: anytime the phrase 'nobody was living there' comes up as a form of justification for something or other, it is worth keeping in mind that in literally the last ten thousand years or so the only major areas of the world to have been settled by humans for the first time are Greenland, Iceland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Madagascar. (We shall not count Antarctica on the grounds that nobody lives there permanently or is ever likely to.) Everywhere else has been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years. Even when Homo sapiens left Africa our ancestors were encountering (checks notes) our other ancestors, Neanderthals and Denisovans, not to mention other human species now extinct.

The myth of the unpopulated frontier, open for expansion, is just that: a myth, and one that generally serves a specific purpose in terms of justifying settler-colonialism. The question the phrase 'nobody was living there' demands is - who are you calling 'nobody'?

[flashhwing]

people who view all of dragon age through a solas lens are wrong and bad. they should be like me and view all of dragon age through an anders lens

[mylordshesacactus]

Anyway, for $100 I will come to Thanksgiving dinner, sit down with your family, wait for a lull in the conversation, and then I will loudly say "I HATE no-kill shelters! There is NEVER an excuse to TURN AWAY a healthy animal. I think it's just evil to pick and choose which innocent animals are worth trying to save, instead of giving every life an equal chance!" and then I will shove an entire apple pie into my bag and leave.

[panictimesfour]

i really, really hate to break it to you guys, but the people who say shit like this genuinely believe that trans men oppress trans women. they think transandrophobia/transmisandry implies trans women oppress trans men because they also think transmisogyny implies trans men oppress trans women (which is okay, because it's true). it isn't really any deeper than that. they just took patriarchy and radical feminism and added "trans" in front of it to make it progressive.

WHAT????????????

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??????

HUH??????????????????????

[thenamesapollo]

i got reminded of an old post I made saying that nightmare can't be a capitalist and I'm just realizing now that I WAS WOOBIFYING HIM

[furry-homestar]

doesnt homestar get straight up beaten and hit with multiple gardening tools by strong bad in hremail 3184 and his injuries are so bad they have to censor his bleeding face? i dont think that sounds like love to me, thats like physical abuse

Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such as saws and ladders.

- Wikipedia

(in other words, it's a fucking comedy series it's not that serious you just want an excuse to be an asshole)

[estraven-ai-2022]

At this rate I fully expect tumblr users to start advocating to bring back the whaling industry to power our lights because according to them animal products good, petroleum bad.

[fanby-fckry]

Op, this is misinformation. Dihydrogen monoxide is deadly, and kills an estimated 236,000 a year, worldwide. It’s super dangerous if inhaled, and toxic in high doses.

"water doesn't have hydrogen in it" sentence of a year thank you youtube algorithm for letting me know about whats going on in tiktok i guess

[zeroducks-2]

People hating evil characters is weird to me. I guess the only characters I actually hate are annoying ones cause usually that’s not a point of their character in the story, they just happen to be infuriating. Like Slade being a bad guy is cause he’s a bad guy, that’s like his whole point as a character. Yeah he can be nuanced and worse at times but he exists to be an antagonist. It completely makes sense to me that the Tara thing makes people uncomfortable but he’s still a fictional antagonist, it’s not really a moral failing on the part of the creators.

Tbh if you've experienced these characters in any way (read TJC or watched the more recent animated movie or read Deathstroke 2016 or watched Teen Titans 2003, or whatever else features their interaction) and you don't like Slade, that's fair enough.

Loving and hating characters (and every other emotion) happens all the time and it's part of the experience. HOWEVER, I do take issues when it's people who do not know the character, who have barely ever seen them and just heard "stuff" from other fandom people, who go on crusades against said character because "they did bad stuff".

You see it in people who hate Tarantula "because she raped Dick" and they have not read one single comic in which she appears - they have no idea what she even looks like or what's her real name, but they "hate her" because they read a post in which the sexual assault was mentioned and since she "did a bad thing" they "hate her now". This has to be the most shallow fucking thing, but it's convenient because if you hate on the "bad guy" it must mean you're morally pure and upstanding and you're one of the good ones.

Back to your point, hating on a character without any kind of reasoning or nuance only because they did "bad things" is the death of critical thinking. But people out there act like characters who do shit that's even vaguely considered unethical or morally reprehensible irl need to be hated, and like their existence is some sort of moral failing from the writer's part, and it's so fucking annoying and childish.

Which leads me to my second point which is a tad more controversial, but hey I'm a bitch with insufferable opinions so here we go I guess.

I'm bothered by people who pick a character and use them as their scapegoat, and I mean collectively as a fandom. It kind of is the case with Slade but he isn't the perfect example, however the principle is the same: hating on the villain, especially when the villain is very human and makes very human mistakes, using them as the only person who is capable of doing evil and therefore acquitting every other character of anything they ever did.

With Slade it becomes that Slade is the only bad guy of his story, who hurt Grant and hurt Adeline and hurt Joseph and raped Tara and killed and maimed and tortured, and therefore Grant has no blame in what he did to himself, and Adeline is just a poor innocent woman who was hurt by her unfaithful husband, and Joey did nothing wrong and everything that happened to him is solely Slade's fault, and Tara wasn't already a mercenary hitwoman for hire who lied and cheated and killed - rather she was just a poor innocent girl who was manipulated and corrupted by the Big Bad Guy.

I don't know if you see what I mean with this, but it's very much a thing in a lot of fandoms, especially when it comes to horror media where there is a cast of controversial, "imperfect" characters. One example of this is Mouthwashing, in which (spoilers ahead of course) there is a cast composed of people who range from being downright horrible to having very human but very noticeable flaws - every single one of them is "guilty" of something, and the protagonist in particular is also the one with the most prominent antisocial behaviors. But he's not benefiting from them - Jimmy isn't someone whose life is made better by his piece of shit behavior, rather this is a person with issues and who struggles with mental health (he's suicidal and has very strong delusions), giving him a very hard time keeping his life in order. Which of course doesn't make any of the horrible shit he does less horrible, but I think it's interesting how he's (mostly) not acting out of convenience, rather he's acting out his own demons. And what the fandom did was deciding that this guy is the only one to blame, and that his shitty behavior absolves everyone else of their sins. He's effectively the scapegoat and everyone else - it doesn't matter if they act selfishly, childishly, violently, cowardly or anything really - is guileless and has never done anything wrong in their lives. Jimmy is the only one who's to blame, and the rest of the cast is made of pure perfect angels.

I've seen this happen in many many cases. And it sort of turns into a mob of people whose only fandom personality is to hate on this one guy and gather Upstanding Morality Points, and of course the natural consequence of this is bothering or even outright harassing people who instead are fans of such flawed characters.

I hate it. I'm not saying anyone should have to like a character in particular, but the way people hate on the "easy to hate" guy instead of trying to understand them, especially when it's a complex character whose action make them suffer as much as the people they're hurting, distances me from fandom spaces. People will see a feral beast of a character with their leg caught in a bear trap hissing and growling while in the process of chewing their own limb off, and will toss stones at them and call them disgusting and weird. It's so unkind and I hate it so much.

[shitty-proendo-blackout-posts]

Anonymous asked: what is a person?

A person :)

[faustiandevil]

I never could get into The Maltese Falcon, because of the homophobia. It’s kind of hard to watch the canonically confirmed gay character played by the guy that I like-like get repeatedly punched especially as a queer myself. Anyway I’m battling the home of phobia and putting the gay gangsters into Gerard P. Donelan comics. I can fix it, I can turn The Maltese Falcon into The Gay Falcon… no wait that movie series already exists…

If I feel up to it I might do one with Joel/Wilmer as well this week. I need to start an agenda to get them to be more popular than Joel/Spade.

[thevioletcaptain]

remember how a few years ago a bunch of terfs on tumblr admitted to making secret non-terf sideblogs where they'd participate in fandoms and slowly frogboil their mutuals by starting out with statements that everyone would agree with, like "women shouldn't have to share space with abusers!" but then shift their definitions and shift and shift and shift over time, and keep their mutuals nodding along until suddenly they were agreeing with and spreading straight up terf bullshit, oblivious to the fact that they'd even been manipulated?

and then the terf bloggers openly laughed on their main blogs about the fact that they'd done this, and how it was so easy?

and then those posts were found and circulated and we all said, "man, i'd better keep an eye out for stuff like that because it truly goes to show that none of us are immune to propaganda!"

also, remember how this platform, like twitter, has a well documented and much discussed nazi problem which has never fully gone away?

well, this is just me saying be mindful of that. because i've now seen three posts this week -- thankfully only in the for you feed, so far -- that have absolutely reeked of antisemites trying the frogboiling tactic on well-meaning people who are horrified by the actions of the israeli government and military.

posts that were 98% something that anyone who wants the violence to stop would agree with, but then had a sentence or two wedged in halfway through that set off enough red flags to decorate a car dealership.

i'd include the most recent one i saw as an example, but naturally when i tried to take a screenshot i accidentally clicked wrong and the page refreshed and i lost it forever.

i don't really have a good summing up thing to say here, just... be mindful. don't forget that none of us are immune to propaganda, and that the shittiest people on earth will go out of their way to use your outrage over one form of violence to try and drag you into agreeing with another.

[captainjonnitkessler]

If I could create a law of the internet it would be this: There is no word so specific or so well-defined that people online won't misuse it until it is absolutely meaningless.

That shelf is going to buckle under the weight of all the words we've had to put up on it and we are still finding new words to redefine into oblivion every single day

[rlyehtaxidermist]

so I’ve seen some posting about oil fire going around and as one of the people sitting in the eye of that particular hurricane i have a couple thoughts. keep in mind that I obviously can’t speak for every single Poster etc etc, obviously this is just my view on things. in particular don’t quote Twitter at me because the only time I was ever active on there was back when “have a visible professional social media account” was considered important for the job hunt. I know nothing of Touhou Twitter or Touhou Reddit and I am content in my ignorance

Anyway there’s three major points of criticism I’ve seen, and one of them as basically “it’s just a nothingburger that came out of nowhere” and even ignoring the history of that in Touhou in general, I’m going to set it aside because I don’t think it needs a more specific rebuttal than the length of this post. so on to the two more substantial complaints I’ve seen:

“it’s just a sex ship”: look, I won’t deny that there’s been a lot of sexposting. i’ve probably posted more about cock in the last 48 hours than in the last five years combined. almost certainly more than i will in the next five too. but there’s a subtext to it that often gets missed (not just by critics but also by a lot of sexposters).

these are two characters who have had... a bit of a history with being sexualised by the fandom. i shouldn’t need to recite all the “slut sanae” memes, those who know know and honestly they were never funny, but they existed. tsukasa meanwhile was stuck with “sex fox” pretty much from the beginning due to some kuda-gitsune legends specifically involving their rapid reproduction.

obviously this is going to go more into the personal view and i reiterate that i’m not speaking for Everyone’s posts, but I’m asexual. the whole emphasis people put on sex as a cultural thing, not just in terms of Posting about it but also in terms of Not Posting about it is funny to me. people dance around it like they’re waltzing with the demon core but also are baffled when i say i’m just not into it.

the oil fire sexposting isn’t about “lol they’re fucking”. there was already plenty of that. the joke is that it’s not a big deal that they’re fucking - it’s not dramatic or cathartic or even erotic. they’re bad at it, they get distracted, they’re not really thinking things through; fail sex with her cringe wife. it’s sexual in the way that a Tom and Jerry sketch is violent - stepping back from the artifice around it to say “you know, whatever else this is, it’s pretty goofy”. to me at least, that’s more of a repudiation of horny character exaggeration than simply ignoring it is.

(there’s also a false equivalence to me in the general notion of “it’s just hornyposting”, between hornyposting by straight men and that of queer women and/or the gender blender, when the characters involved are both women - especially in light of the reasonably consistent depiction of one or both as transgender in oil fire posting. there’s better people than me and my none gender with leftist beef to effortpost on that side of things.)

“tsukasa is manipulating sanae” I’d add a single phrase here - she’s trying to. The big thing with a lot of how I look at Sanae and this is no exception is that while she can be naive, she’s not stupid. There’s a difference between being trusting and being easily deceived. She’s not a master manipulator, but she lives with Kanako, she knows a bit of how the game is played.

I think this kind of echoes the last bit of the last segment, in that how the characters are portrayed in the context matters a lot. Oil Fire Sanae is, at least within the spheres I see here, heavily coded as if not explicitly autistic. A lot of the content is being written by autistic people, myself included.

Autistic adults are, in my anecdotal experience, pretty conscious of being manipulative or manipulated, because we have to learn deliberately where that line is drawn and how to act around it.

To get into explicitly personal experiences, I often think of myself as being “manipulative” because I have to deliberately strategise a lot of social cues and how I present myself and information I know, and still haven’t really shook that perspective internally despite the intellectual knowledge of several therapists and psychiatrists that no, that’s just an autism thing, most people do all that stuff without thinking about it.

Now obviously simply Being Autistic is not an unassailable fortress against manipulation, nor does it prevent you from being actually manipulative in your own right, but it does tilt the pinball table a bit, again especially in terms of awareness. And that awareness helps control a response - again, even if you’re not always quite sure how to respond.

Sanae’s way of cutting that Gordian knot is what a friend of mine calls the Bishop Myriel Method: how can someone steal what is freely given? She has her lines, but the stuff Tsukasa is leaning on her to get - protection, shelter, and an in-group - are all things Sanae doesn’t see an issue with giving to her. Tsukasa for her part doesn’t really understand this, being more used to dealing with power-broker types where everything has a quid-pro-quo, and from a position of pretty notable inferiority (just look at how any of the stronger youkai talk to her in UDoALG) at that - so she looks at all the leverage that Sanae now has over her (leverage which Sanae doesn’t really understand she has), and doubles down on trying to be manipulative because she doesn’t understand that she doesn’t have to.

in conclusion obviously I’m not thinking about all this wall of text every time I post something, for the same reason that I’m not thinking about how my house’s foundations are designed every time I go up or down the stairs - the general idea is there in the background and actually needing to go check it out usually means that I won’t be doing whatever I was going up the stairs for in the first place. but these are The Thoughts, upon which the lower effort thoughts stand as they heckle each other. there are many like them but these are mine

[hindulivesmatter]

Big words from people who support genocide and think drinking piss is okay 💀

help the hamas supporters found me again whatever shall I do

get your head out of your ass anon