#but justifiably complaining about media I care about? I have a degree in complaining about media. I can do that.

[forcedhesitation]

I'm actually still pretty disappointed about the changes that were made to implicate a canon relationship between gortash and the dark urge. you are given so much choice in this game! so it feels shitty that they took away your choice to interpret that dynamic how you'd like.

I had a dark urge campaign that I started and no longer will finish because I don't want that to sully my character's romance with wyll. it angers me enough how wyll is given barely any material for not just his story, but also his romance. like it's so unfair that rather than new material added to wyll's romance, all I was going to get was lines about how my character had a relationship with a fucking fascist. load of shit that is.

[losthomunculus]

Online Safety Relevant to the Current State of the Internet

On twitter I made a tweet about how online safety lessons in school can be very out of touch but that the advice of people who are familiar with the current internet shouldn't be disregarded. So here's my informal collection of online safety tips

Sources: unrestricted internet access since elementary school (not recommended), being a formerly involuntarily home bound person for several years that amassed way too much online experience

This could possibly hold upsetting reminders to people who had bad experiences online including mentions of grooming and emotional manipulation so please proceed with caution!

Information Sharing

Make an online pseudonym for public profiles and websites.

Don’t feel like you have to list everything about you for the world to see.

Sometimes it’s not a question of “can this information be used to locate and identify me irl?”, but simply “do I want this information publicly available and linked to my online persona?”

Unlike offline, being online leaves a constant trail of who you were accessible at all times. People are constantly growing and changing. Try to limit the information you share so you can ditch that trail and start over if need be.

Sharing information with people you make friends with and trust is a judgement call on your part, but always be on the safe side and be protective of your information.

Start as cautious as possible with online safety. Any risks or judgement calls can come later when you are 1. aware of the risks, 2. ready to address them if they occur, and 3. have gathered plenty of information instead of doing something blindly and hoping for the best.

Do not share your triggers publicly, they can very easily be used against you. Instead use websites with a large amount of filtering options to curate your online experience. If you are going to share them, only do it privately with people you trust.

Importance of Boundaries

It doesn’t matter how mature you are, don’t enter age limited spaces you don’t qualify for. It’s disrespectful to the boundaries of the people who made that space. Boundaries like this exist for the comfort of both sides involved.

Just because you can “handle it” doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Desensitization is not something to brag about.

Venting or making r18 posts as a minor on a public account is VERY dangerous. Intense emotional vulnerability is something manipulators will look for as a way to get to you. The same with sexual jokes to develop your comfort talking about those topics casually and eventually escalating the situation. If you are going to talk about such things please keep that in private conversations with people you trust in your age group.

Note the difference between public and private online space. Tweeting something on a public account is not the same as having a conversation in the cafeteria with your friends.

If an adult tries talking to you about r18, run the other way. Doesn’t matter how cool you are, it says something weird about THEM if they’re willing to talk to a minor about that stuff.

If someone( like 3+ years, honestly depends on how old you are) older than you wouldn't be comfortable saying what they're saying to you in front of other people (like a teacher or guardian), that's suspicious as hell. Run in the other direction.

The younger you are, the more age gaps matter. There's a bigger difference in development between a 13 year old and a 17 year old than there is between a 20 year old and a 24 year old. It helps to try to contextualize it with real people instead of numbers. Instead of thinking "oh just 4 years? that's not that weird" consider "oh. that would be like a freshman (13/14) dating a senior (17/18). yikes."

Be just as wary of people your own age talking about things that make you uncomfortable. Just like irl, sometimes you’ll meet people your age that are hurtful.

Friends complain to each other and talk about their issues, that alone is fine. But when people are doing it without permission, draw a line. When people are making it feel like you’re responsible for maintaining their mental health, you need to draw a line. When it starts to effect your mental health, PLEASE DRAW A LINE! I know it feels like your responsibility sometimes, but it’s not. You cannot be there for others if you’re not taking care of yourself first and foremost.

Don’t be afraid to block people. Even for petty reasons. It’s good to block people. Don’t force yourself to see stuff you don’t want to see.

Being Constantly Online

The 24 hour news cycle is not a good thing to follow 24/7. Taking social responsibility is a good thing, but your brain is NOT built to worry about every issue in the world at once. One strategy I use for staying sane is I try to only check the news once a day, and if something needs more attention to set aside an amount of time I’m going to focus on it before I need to take time to step back.

Touch grass. Not literally, unless you can in which case I highly suggest it, sometimes it’s just good to lay in a field. What I mean is you need to dedicate a good portion of your time to being offline (sleep does not count). What your offline time looks like is going to differ depending on your level of ability, but even if you are house bound it’s important to build some hobbies that don’t rely on the internet. Talking to people offline is also a good goal if possible, even just to your housemates.

Social etiquette greatly differs online and offline and sometimes the reminder that were all just Some People gets lost behind the numbers and the fabricated personas. Keep in mind the difference in how information is shared without forgetting that the fact we are all people remains the same.

Be generous with your etiquette. You will avoid a lot of stress if you conduct yourself with the same politeness you would have in an offline interaction. Master the art of "minding your own business" for your own sake.

Arguments and Competition

As soon as you can, you need to internalize the fact that leaving an argument is not losing.

It is inevitable you will be exposed to many people who disagree with you. Some people only want to argue to rile you up. Sometimes that’s not their intention, but it’s what they’re doing. You do not have to remain in conversation with people, especially if they’re not interested in actually coming to an understanding. Even if they are interested, sometimes they just suck!! Leave!! You can leave!!

On that note, sometimes you are going to get valid criticism and it’s going to hurt. That is part of learning. If someone says you messed up and did something hurtful, take a second to step back from your defensiveness and consider: intent ≠ effect. Apologize, repair what you can, and move forward with the ability to do better in the future. You’re going to mess up every once in awhile, it’s inevitable.

To summarize the past two points: don't waste your time on unnecessary hostility but don't close yourself into an echo chamber either. Debates should be about learning.

Sometimes people are not going to like you. This happens offline too but people tend to be a lot more blunt online. Sometimes people dislike you for no reason or for really petty reasons. That’s not your problem, move on.

Don’t actively seek out people you don’t like or who don’t like you to argue with. Whether or not your side is the “right side” doesn’t matter, it’s going to cause you so much unnecessary stress. Feel free to keep posting your opinions on your own profile but don’t seek out unnecessary conflict.

This is a different type of competition than previously mentioned, but be aware of the danger of comparing yourself to other people. Especially if you’re a creative or student, DO NOT GET SWEPT UP IN THE GRIND CULTURE. It’s more subtle in some places than others, but anytime you see the notion that you should be working yourself to the bone be VERY critical. Also be critical of any online cultures (such as gaming and art communities) that brag about unhealthy habits or act like it’s ~part of the culture~ (ex: all nighters, not taking breaks, getting hurt. Any activity that neglects health to work toward a goal).

Not just grind culture, any community of subculture that shares anti recovery sentiments is a huge red flag. Even if they're joking, it's not worth the risk of internalizing those statements.

Everyone’s social media presence is to some degree doctored because it’s a purposefully selected collection of what they allow you to see. It’s fine to like the persona you see being displayed, but never forget that it is not reflective of the entire person. Everyone online is JUST SOME PERSON. Do not forget that and start holding yourself to a standard you can’t even see every side of.

By posting online you are opening yourself to criticism. Whether or not it’s justified can vary, but either way it’s going to happen. Mute stuff, go private, disable comments, etc if you need to.

Misc Tidbits

these are technically just general info that is also good for offline but I have seen things that make me think people online need the extra reminder.

Learn what cults are, how they recruit, and what they do to their members. I'm not kidding. This is particularly relevant at the moment because of current societal unrest and widespread loneliness. No one is immune to cult propaganda, and not every cult is based on pre established religion or family. Many exist ONLINE and are able to manipulate people without ever meeting face to face. (learn more: Loneliness as a Pandemic: The Dangers of Online Cult

Familiarize yourself with the concept of pseudoscience. Please familiarize yourself with the concept of pseudoscience and then learn how to identify pseudoscience. (learn more: Karl Popper, Science, & Pseudoscience: Crash Course Philosophy #8)

Q. How do I know if a source is reliable?

Final Thoughts

It's important people of ALL ages learn these lessons, because the internet is constantly changing and we are all vulnerable when in the presence of other people.

Be cautious and stay safe

[mostly-mundane-atla]

i realize you probably dont care about the upcoming netflix adaptation but the cast pretty much got confirmed and people are talking about it again so, whats your take? are you lookin forward to it or dont care for it?

Usually I wouldn't care about this, and I have said before to please not involve me in discourse i haven't already talked about, but I was going to make this post anyway so

*cracks knuckles*

Alright children, it's come to my attention that some people don't know their etiquette regarding Indigenous peoples and are making themselves look a fool.

First: you are not entitled to anyone's family history under any circumstances, save perhaps them paying you to do a family tree.

There is an aspect of this specific to Native people. I don't know how it works for Native folks in Canada but in the United States, when you are born Native your parents do some paperwork and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs gives you a Certificate of Indian Blood, stating exactly how Native you can be proven to be based on how Native your parents can be proven to be. The Certificate of Indian Blood is often called a pedigree with bitter irony because in essence, that's what it is. We come with papers like fancy show dogs, just instead of it qualifying our "breed" it's qualifying our right to be enrolled in tribal membership.

I keep my pedigree with all my other important documents, like tax information, birth certificate, social security card, that sort of thing. I inherited a total blood degree of 1/4 Eskimo from my mom and thus qualify for tribal membership. Past a certain point, I wouldn't be considered "Native Enough" based on blood alone and i'd have to get a special dispensation to be legally recognized as an Indigenous descendant. It doesn't matter what my tribe or nation's traditional customs regarding kinship and identity were, by United States law, I could be declared "Not Native Enough" no matter my connection to my culture, no matter how accepted I was by my Native family. Kinda fucked up, isn't it?

Oh, and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs is part of the US government. They ran the schools where kids got beat for not speaking English. We have to tell them we are members of this marginalized group that seems to keep demanding safe drinking water and the right to not be kicked out of our homes at the expense of oil companies if we want access to healthcare and scholarships we may not otherwise have access to because of our "unique situation" (systemic disadvantage). This marginalized group that faces police brutality and wrongful arrests for peacefully protesting our right to live in the few places we have been allowed to live. So if the US government decides Native people are a problem, they have a registry of us. Kinda fucked up, don't you think?

So with that all in mind, do you see how uncouth and just plain nasty it is to demand proof of someone being "Native Enough" or "The Right Kind of Native"? If some freak tries to dig up this info and he's more mixed than some have deemed acceptable (so 1/4 or less) or god forbid doesn't even have his papers or tribal membership for any reason (justified paranoia, clerical error, any degree of negligence on the parents' part) he gets to look forward to being treated even more like a pretendian than the fans have already seen fit to treat him as. How fun.

Every day I wake up I am made to remember that I'll never look "Native Enough" to a huge swath of people who may not have even talked to one of us face-to-face. And it's only a matter of time before one of them sends me a message, written to sound like they're crawling on their belly because they have nothing but respect for "Real Natives" but if they saw me in the regalia my older cousin in Nome made for me so I could graduate high school in regalia, they'd throw a fit. If they saw me after I eventually get my tavlaģun, all pale skinned and blue-eyed, they'd treat me as a study in cultural appropriation, as if i'm not trying to learn whatever variation of my ancestral tongue I can get my hands on.

I can totally understand why he or anyone else might have thought it was better not to specify. Like my first reaction (and this isn't necessarily correct nor something i'm proud of, just the first thing that came to my mind) to seeing Katara was cast as that Mohawk girl from Anne with an E was "they couldn't even get a real eskimo?" I'm guessing others felt similarly. If he didn't wanna deal with that, I can't blame him.

If you think he doesn't look brown enough to convincingly play someone native to the tundra, i recommend the following: go on youtube, look up "inupiaq" and watch at least five of the videos that come up to see how varied we are.

Don't watch this live action adaptation if you don't want to, but if you refuse on the grounds of "the actor's not native enough :/" and go on to ignore actual Native media, that's some performative shit if I've ever seen it. Seriously, how many of the people complaining have watched Smoke Signals? Dance Me Outside? On the Ice? How many were hyped over Reservation Dogs (first two episodes are on Hulu as I'm writing this post)?

Anyway, I'm tired. I'm probably not gonna watch the live action series, but that has nothing to do with Sokka's actor not being "brown enough" to be seen as one of the red and brown. I'll finish off this post with a 1491s video so everyone can get a taste of Native media and maybe elevate it more than discourse over who gets to play a Fantasy Eskimo who was originally written and played by white guys with no Actual Eskimo input:

[sisterssafespace]

Salam alaykum sister,

I want to talk about modesty and ask for your view on this and that of other sisters.

I am a single muslim woman and i've been looking for a spouse for a long time.

I try to please Allah with my modesty in clothes, speech and behaviour but sometimes it feels like it makes me so unattractive that no prospective spouses notice me.

I've had meetings with good religious men wanting to marry but who told me that although I am interesting, nice, religious etc. They are not attracted to me.

I don't blame them. They have access to women on social media and real life who both display and flaunt their beauty and profess piety. Although, men are commanded to lower their gaze, aren't they?

I try to look nice but in a modest way.

I know I could be more attractive if I wore certain clothes, more makeup and behaved in a more seductive or flirty way. But it would go against what Allah has ordained us. We can only do this for our husband.

Of course, it's better to please Allah than human beings.

It's just so disheartening. I know my worth (good and bad) but I don't know why no men see it. Or if they do, they only see me as a good person but not a woman they'd want to marry.

I don't understand what muslim men want. I know that we are told that men are more visual. But what is a modest pious woman to do about this?

I don't want to complain too much as we all have different type of struggles and this is nothing.

I just wanted to know if other sisters felt the same and how they find the right balance.

We practice modesty for God... but we do have or want to get married. How do we go about this?

Being ourseleves? But there's only a certain degree of our natural behaviour that we can display to non maharram men.

What do you think?

و عليكم السلام و رحمة اللّٰه و بركاته،

I finally found the time and the energy to reply to this between falling sick and everything that's going on outside of my tumblr life, thank you for being so patient 🤍

بسم اللّٰه الرحمان الرحيم 🤍

And here is what I have for you:

" This is, sadly, the struggle of almost every woman I know. Although men are ordered to lower their gaze, they're exposed to higher unrealistic standards. They, not all, unable to notice the modest or pious women, and if they do, they might think (she's unapproachable, or better than us) so they withdraw.

Keep doing what you're doing, stay modest and thoughtful of Allah. Seeking to obtain something halal in a way that is not so halal, will corrupt the end goal. I can't say end will the justify the means.

On the other hand, being modest doesn't mean looking ugly or unattractive. Part of being a muslim is to be composed in a presentful way. It's Sunnah to take care of our clothing and wear what's appropriate.

I loved how connected you're to your self-worth and know the positive and yet to be positive aspects. Guard this mentality and strive to be a better person of your previous self.

You don't need to compete to get men's attention. You only need one pious man to appreciate the woman who is taking care of herself and maintaining herself in a way that pleases Allah swt.

Be yourself but also guard yourself. Not everyone is worth to get to know what you have. In this day, women are pressured to show what they have in the name of being free to present/express herself. But do you really need every and anyone to know who you really are? You can be as kind, nice, funny, smart as possible but without showing these qualities in unsuitable way. It's about the boundaries you set. Know how to act and react around men. Firm, caring, assertive, kind, and confident can combine together. Find the balance, don't alter yourself to please others so they notice you.

Now to get to a core point. As a woman, what can you do to find the man. You can't just wait for him to notice/find you! You have to know yourself first and then put yourself out there. Get to know yourself, really know yourself; then, look for what's compatible with you. Know what you have and what you want/need/wish; what you lack/need to improve on or can't change (and make peace with it); what kind of relationship goals and boundaries you want; what qualities/personality you think is compatible with your personality; what not so positive qualities you can put up with (this is very important since we all have flaws)? That being said, make the expectations realistic, not Hollywoody or Bollywoody ones, please 😂

Then, put word out and don't be shy about it. Let people around you know that you're looking for these xyz qualities. Talk to a masjid imam in your community, your brother, father and aunties 😅. They can look for you and help you. But also, they have to be smart about it 😬

Also, you can attend lectures and workshops about marriage and maybe your guy is just there to meet you 😅

In addition to that, do your share of dua’a and supplications. Check your neyiah نيّة (intentions), make in the sake of Allah (to follow the sunnah, to help each other to love Allah and obey his commands, to find halal way of expressing love and desire etc..). Read Quran in general and those surahs in particular "طه Taha" and "يس Yaseen" are said to have a positive outcome. Read surah "Al-Baqarah", if there're obstacles of hasad (evil eye) or sihir (magic) they'll be voided بإذن الله. Give sadaqat (charity) and have tawakkul upon the One who had decreed everything, Allah swt.

Finally, remember that what has been written for you won't pass you by. All those who didn't find you attractive enough or to their standards are not meant for you. You only need one man to do so and İnşallah that one will be who is destined for you.

If you are meant to be married, you and your husband will find each other.

May Allah make it easy for you and all those seeking to find the pious man that'll be the coolness to your eye and your companion to Jannah. "

--------------------------------- All the above has been thought of, detailed and conceptualized by my amazing sister @3ayyn Allahuma barik laha ✨🤍 her reply was so thorough and so nicely detailed I couldn't have said it any better! So I humbly copy-pasted it :') I felt that it was so kind and so satisfying, I hope you feel the same about it my dear.

I will only add this one verse that I want you to hold on to and to remember whenever you start feeling doubtful or upset:

وَمَنْ يَتَّقِ اللَّهَ يَجْعَلْ لَهُ مَخْرَجًا وَيَرْزُقْهُ مِنْ حَيْثُ لَا يَحْتَسِبُ ۚ وَمَنْ يَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَى اللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسْبُهُ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ بَالِغُ أَمْرِهِ ۚ قَدْ جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدْرًا.

And he who takes Allâh as (his) shield, He will always make a way out (of his ordeals) for him. And He will provide him sustenance from where he least expects. And he who puts his trust in Allâh, He is sufficient for him (to fulfill his needs). Allâh is sure to accomplish His purpose. Allâh has set a measure for everything.

So take Allah swt as your shield my dear, and the outcomes will blow your mind 🤍

I pray that Allah swt keep you firm on His path, and fills your heart with strength and patience to stand your ground in this fight. This is your jihad. Everything you are feeling is never going unnoticed by Allah swt as-samie al-aleem. May He swt reward you immensely 🤍

Allahu al mustaān 🤍

- A.Z. 🍃

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

Hi could you talk more about why youd recommend not watching ww84?

Sure!

warnings for under the cut: spoilers for WW84 and a bit of the first wonder woman; i only saw WW84 once a few days ago + it’s been a hot sec since i saw the original so if i get a few details wrong i apologize

tl;dr with no spoilers: WW84 is a poorly executed movie that insults its viewer with its messy and self-proud plot, bad character/relationship portrayals, and offers a personal slap in the face to a majority of its audience in their various discriminations, generalizations, and plot points.

the first point is the racism, made well by the post i reblogged here, (edit: found a second post that goes more in depth here) so i’d just suggest looking at that for that matter

next is just How they portray wonder woman in this one

i really appreciated the way the first movie portrayed diana because they did very well in keeping true to her Amazonian raising and life while still clearly showing she was a woman

when i say this i mean that a lot of media has a tendency to either make women who are very fem and keep to traditional gender roles or women who more or less shun femininity and attempt to largely fulfill only male gender roles

diana in the original is a warrior, strong and fierce, but still a woman, not trying to shun that or anything. she wears styles that suit her while still being woman’s styles (she doesn’t force her way into a suit), she talks of and addresses her womanhood proudly and without issue, etc

i want to note here i have no issue with female characters who act extremely masc and reject femininity- i love them tbh- but it’s important to remember that it’s not inherently against womanhood or anything to be a strong fighter who doesn’t stick to every stereotypical social gender norm

and the first wonder woman movie shows this very well

WW84... oh boy

first of all, wonder woman’s changing outfits every other scene. even between scenes where it makes no sense! i’m not saying she can only wear one set of clothes but Geez this was too much

not to mention an entire scene dedicated to her helping steve pick a fashion look? i understand this was to highlight the ‘80-ness of the movie, and it would’ve been fine if it seemed diana was helping him pick a period appropriate look, but it was clear she was trying to help him pick a ‘fashionable’ look which. wonder woman? from the island without a sense of popular outfits or fashion? what?

and the amount of focus on her wearing high heels.... ugh

i’m not saying you can’t have a badass woman who also likes social gender norm fem things but it felt clear that wasn’t what they were going for

wonder woman in the first movie liked practical fashion and not only were many of her outfits not that, her high heels? one hundred percent not practical

it didn’t fit her character and felt horribly out of place, clearly just the producers / directors / whoever going ‘oh, wonder woman is a woman how can we show this? fashion! high heels!’ and i hated it

(warning: imma be jumping from thought to thought as they bump into each so uh... enjoy the train-of-thought style of flaw informing)

and starting at the beginning like.... wow that scene had no purpose

wonder woman cheats in a competition and is punished for this by losing it in the end. except. this is stupid for two reasons

as the audience is shown she didn’t cheat on purpose. she made a mistake, lost her horse, and made a strategy to get back into the race despite this. honestly? i thought the story was going to be a lesson in ingenuity in the worst looking situations. but it wasn’t, which is bad storytelling, because the lesson is then based on a point that isn’t even that true

it is literally Never important again later. unless you count what was going on with the wishstone as ‘cheating to victory’ which i dont. that’s not even what the villain did. he wanted to take over the world. there’s no victory there you get without cheating. wtf. why did that message even happen

going into the actual story we meet the cheetah pretty quick, when she’s still whatever-her-civilian-name-is

and the cheetah... she’s such a bad villain

she doesn’t have the same backstory as she does in the comics

in this one, she uses the wishstone- which is a whole ‘nother thing in and of itself- to wish to be like diana, because ig being smart as hell but social awkward as hell too is so bad you need to desperately wish to be someone else? i hate that trope, but onwards-

she gets that, but in exchange for not only diana’s likable personality she also gets her wonder woman powers (and she loses her glasses, because pretty and cool means no glasses, right? /s), she loses her kindness bc of the rules of the wishstone- in exchange for your wish, it takes smth u care about a lot from you; for her, it was her kindness

this makes her villain! just because she lost her kindness. yep. honestly not a good look regarding all those people out there who are low/no empathy and can still be wonderful nice people but i digress

at one point she complains about why she needs to keep her power rather than go back to being just Her and i fucking wanted to scream

she has like. half a dozen degrees, clearly a couple of friends even if she’s awkward, and she’s got a life that was perfectly okay before she made the wish. as someone who is also socially awkward as hell, it infuriated me to here her acting like it was the fucking end of the world she couldn’t be more extroverted or whatever. there are ways to work on that!!! the movie trying to convince the audience she had a legit reason to not un-wish her wish (for the good of the entire world) was stupid and insulting

also her transformation between ‘looks human, wearing cheetah-pattern clothing‘ to ‘humanoid with cheetah fur/skin/appearance’ literally just. happened. for no reason. that was stupid

y’know what else is stupid? the wishstone. it was clearly just a plot device, and a poorly executed one at that. it isn’t even consistent in how it works

and they did a whole side thing with like. how it had the language of the gods written on part of it and it appeared in random locations across history around the time of great tragedies and,,, that was it???

they never explored the divine connection??? who planted it or why??? how it location traveled or anything????

like i said. poor plot device

i move on now to steve

oh boy steve

he’s brought back to life by diana’s wish on the wishstone, but... it causes him to come back in someone else’s body, quantum leap style. this is. weird. and is never ever addressed by him or wonder woman except once in a throw away comment. like. diana and steve kiss and are implied to have sex while steve is in someone else’s body and neither of them seem to care. this is not good!!

and then his relationship with diana? HORRIBLE

in the first movie they were barely starting to fall in love, only barely a couple even if that. more importantly they were friends, and that night he died diana didn’t lose a potential lover so much as she lost her first non-Amazonian friend

but WW84 portrays their relationship as if they were not only already a couple, but one close enough that even after forty years since steve’s death diana is still completely and hopelessly in love with him to the point that she’s literally hanging off his arm as soon as he’s back and making love that very night

it plays again once more into the misrepresentation of wonder woman’s character (how stereotypically hollywood female to fall over herself at the sight of her love interest) and it wrecks their relationship, which had been a lovely friends-who-could-be-more

what they should’ve done was focus on that friendship, build it back up after the long gap for wonder woman, and then started to rebuild that possible romance (and tear it down at the perfect moment... right when steve had to go again... ah that would’ve been lovely)

but they wanted to go in full-haul on the romance and it just felt. wrong and weak to me. diana’s refusal to consider giving up her wish (to get her powers back and save the world) is bc she doesn’t want to let steve go again, which makes more sense in the context of a first and true friend rather than a hastily slapped together love interest

steve’s character was generally good tbh but the way he played into the story? bad

moving on... the main villain of the movie? sucks. he’s just. fucking awful

despite a motivation being given that he wants to have money, he launches into wanting to take over the world for no real reason. he takes advantage of people for this and almost destroys the world he wants to rule for it. the main reason he stops this is for his son, who up until now he largely ignored and didn’t seem to care that much for outside of basic obligations. and the movie dares try to make him sympathetic by throwing in the fact he grew up poor and was bullied and not liked which i HATE

lots of people are/have been poor. lots of people are/have been bullied (myself included). that does NOT justify them DESTROYING THE WORLD TRYING TO TAKE IT OVER. can it be used to show the audience why he does what he does? yes. but to use it and clearly try to make it a reason to hand-wave-away what he did? NO. FUCK NO

also fucking. y’know how wonder woman took down this villain? she talked to him and the world. she gave a stirring speech while she laid slumped against a wall, not injured, just too weak to beat a bit of wind. she talked and she looped her lasso around his leg so she could talk to the world to to convince them to give up their wishes

once again... the mischaracterization

in the first movie, wonder woman gives a stirring speech while fighting Areas. it’s done in her battle, beating the god of war up while reminding him of what she stood for, who she was, why she would keep fighting for a broken world

it was BEAUTIFUL. it was MEANINGFUL. it was BADASS but SINCERE

this was weak. and it clearly wanted to be more than it was

the whole movie wants to be more than it is- it wants to have an important meaningful message like the first movie, about wishes for the self and war and the world and whatever. and it wants it so badly it does it horribly

the message is ham-handed yet messy and unclear and not right. it doesn’t make sense, and it feels poorly plotted. the movie thinks it’s more than it is and that makes it very hard to watch

and to finish my rant off... WW84 lied to its audience

did you see any ads for WW84? i did. they were bright, vibrant, funky music, stunning moments, action and intrigue. i was thrilled for a movie like it

the actual movie isn’t that

it’s not nearly as action filled, it’s not as ‘80s-focused as it leads you to believe, some of the most prominently featured moments barely matter

the lightning swing? pointless, as at that point in the movie wonder woman’s learned how to fly and does it for no reason but the trailers

and that cool suit? introduced in a random myth for no reason halfway through the movie, brought in at random with no explanation, only there for show and the trailers

WW84 is not the movie is lead people to believe it was, and the movie it is is poorly executed and insulting to a variety of peopler/minorities

if you’re gonna watch it, pirate it. i can give you a link. just don’t give dc your money or your legit views for it

[lareinemarie]

The Madonna/Magdalene Ideology in how society view victims of serial murder in America

The iconography of Mary and Magdalene, stereotypically depicted as the "madonna/magdalene by Italian Renaissance artists, Fra Filippo Lippi and Carlo Crivelli.  Most men and women have dualistic view toward women, then and now.  Today, we use the terms good women and bad women. Or, to be precise,  good mother/girl next door and loose woman/party girl

In the 1990s media depiction of serial murder victims, the media used photos of serial murder victims.  The media used such photos either to elicit sympathy and compassion or that of sensation, shock, and scornful judgment.  The Madonna/whore complex is used in such depictions of women, victim or not.

Miss Betty Jean Baucom, beautiful young lady victim of serial killer Henry Louis Wallace.  Her graduation photo is used to evoke sympathy and compassion.  She's depicted in blue, the traditional color of the Madonna.

Miss Jenny Soto, very beautiful Black Latina victim of serial killer Joel Rifkin.  Mainstream media relentlessly used her picture to disparage her reputation.  Margarita Gonzalez, Jenny Soto’s mother, was angry with the media’s depiction of her daughter and complained about the sensational headline in the media after Joel's confession in June 1993.

American society have a Madonna/whore ideology when it comes to women. From historic times, societies in general always label women as either good, chaste women, wives, mothers, nuns or they're loose women, prostitutes, and mistresses/courtesans.  Renaissance artists reflected societal views of women through the Madonna paintings by famous artists Lippi, Botticelli, Raphael, etc., or nude paintings such as the Venus of Urbino by Titian.   In American society, the Madonna/whore ideology is strong, tinged with class and race components.  White and other non black women, especially East Asian women are considered the "sacred Madonna" while Black, Native American, and Latinas, especially Caribbean Latinas are labeled as "bad women" deserving of their fate.  This view is far more widespread as the lack of coverage, the disparaging remarks in and out of cyberspace, and general indifference on the part of law enforcement to solve murders of Black women in America and Indigenous women in Canada. The Madonna/whore mythology were used in how the public reacted to murders of Black women, the Heidnik, the Larry Bright, Gary Ridgeway, the Sowell case and the Henry Louis Wallace cases in particular. For example, the Cleveland convenience store owner showed sympathy to Anthony Sowell, whom he said in the Unseen interview that "he took out the garbage".  That's a blatantly hateful remark.  He saw the victims, living and dead, of Anthony Sowell as being "worthless" and "undeserving" to him. He labelled the victims as worthless drug addicted and prostitutes. Sowell himself justified the murders by labelling the women as being less than perfect. Again using the Madonna/whore ideology was at work in connection to the inaction on the part of Charlotte police in connection with the Henry Louis Wallace serial murder case, a concerned young woman named Angala Grooms in East Charlotte stated that the police did not care because they viewed the pretty young Black female murder victims of Henry Louis Wallace:  "I feel like they wrote us all off as some fast little black girls who didn't really matter." During the 1996 Wallace capital murder trial, the defense lawyers tried to taint the young womens' reputation but the witnesses, friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, and the prosecutor vigorously countered the defense by bolstering the virtues and even saintliness of the young victims of Wallace.  The jury didn't buy the defense and voted for the death penalty for the nine first-degree murders and rapes of young Black women.  

[gettothestabbing]

Personal: Rona Season

I’m so frustrated. I am trying not to be a complaining person, and I am very grateful for what I do have right now. I still have a job, a place to live, supportive family, sweet cats that I have the means to care for, a car, and so on. But, that being said, I’m really losing my mind over the ‘new normal’ at work.

During our shift, we got another ‘Updates” email. They extended all these new policies (including the one that requires me to self-isolate, meaning I can’t go to a store or anywhere besides work, and I may exercise outside as long as I don’t enter any buildings) until June 30th. Which means I am going to have to give in and buy food from my employer because they won’t LET me go to stores and I can’t afford to get food delivered (aside from occasionally).

The option to buy food from them has been present since the start of lockdown, but I resisted. I had enough meat and rice to be okay. If they had lifted this policy on June 7th, the previous deadline, I would have made it. It was my one way to resist what increasingly feels like authoritarian measures from both my employer and New Jersey’s government. And now I can’t, and it makes me so furious it’s been all I can think about since I got the email. 

The food at work is alright - it’s certainly not rotten or badly made - but I cherish my independence and my practice of cooking. I’ve been buying higher and higher quality food since living on my own, and this feels like a forcible downgrade back to being a child who doesn’t get to make her own decisions.

It’s bad enough that, despite us being a Christian Scientist facility, no one seems to think or talk of anything but the virus. I grew up in this church/movement, and I have NEVER seen behavior like this about ANY disease, injury, or physical threat. Christian Scientists are very prayerful people, generally calm, polite, even unflappable in their demeanor. It’s something I admire and have to some degree myself. But only a facade of it remains.

And it’s not that the people I work with are paralyzed by fear of the virus - although perhaps some secretly are, after all the fear around them for months now - but there’s a self-defensive fear that won’t go away. Over and over, both the church and my employer justify their strict new policies as following our founder’s command to obey the letter of the law and Jesus’ call to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. 

I feel that the spirit of their obedience is really based in fear: fear that if we didn’t abide by every single regulation, we would be shamed and shunned, seen as anti-science and anti-health. It’s a big fear in our church, one that’s at least partially justified by the 1990s cases of parents whose children passed on in CS care. We seek exemptions, religious freedom, freedom to practice our system of prayer and healing, yet if we can’t obtain these exemptions, the line is, “We don’t need to fear vaccines. They can’t harm us. So just get them if there’s no way to avoid them.” I don’t disagree with the theological logic behind that, but as a conservative, it makes me so frustrated and upset to see my church roll over for anything the state says. 

And I can’t talk to almost anyone about the intersection of my politics and faith because there is so little overlap between them. The few conservatives/Republicans I’ve known at work, I can’t meet with anymore, because we all work in different buildings and different times! (Naturally, they’re also all a few decades older than me and so have my principles but no understanding of conservative media/Internet beyond watching Fox. But they were better than nothing!) The only person I’ve really been able to discuss such things with is my sister, who I’m trying not to burden right now because this is just so much worse for her, who just graduated and lost all her job prospects to the Rona, possibly for the next few years too, and because frankly she’s heard it all from me before.

My hope at the end of a tunnel is finishing this online training, doing the in-person stuff (which will be very difficult and scary for me, but it’s important), and moving back to Michigan. Even though Rona has made Whitmer turn Michigan into some strange authoritarian hell, it’s still where my dad lives, where my cats can go outside into a safe yard, and where I can get a job that doesn’t confine me to two buildings and the sidewalks of my neighborhood. It’s also the place I can start building my life, like buying a house and resuming my attempts to date, because I couldn’t do either of those things effectively here even if I wanted to make a life in New Jersey. But it seems so far away, and the class has no set schedule anymore because my classmate’s schedule is chaos, and I wish I could do something to make some of this pressure go away.

[sciencespies]

Fake accounts are constantly manipulating what you see on social media. Here's how

https://sciencespies.com/tech/fake-accounts-are-constantly-manipulating-what-you-see-on-social-media-heres-how/

Fake accounts are constantly manipulating what you see on social media. Here's how

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram started out as a way to connect with friends, family and people of interest. But anyone on social media these days knows it’s increasingly a divisive landscape.

Undoubtedly you’ve heard reports that hackers and even foreign governments are using social media to manipulate and attack you. You may wonder how that is possible. As a professor of computer science who researches social media and security, I can explain – and offer some ideas for what you can do about it.

Bots and sock puppets

Social media platforms don’t simply feed you the posts from the accounts you follow. They use algorithms to curate what you see based in part on “likes” or “votes.”

A post is shown to some users, and the more those people react – positively or negatively – the more it will be highlighted to others. Sadly, lies and extreme content often garner more reactions and so spread quickly and widely.

But who is doing this “voting”? Often it’s an army of accounts, called bots, that do not correspond to real people. In fact, they’re controlled by hackers, often on the other side of the world. For example, researchers have reported that more than half of the Twitter accounts discussing COVID-19 are bots.

As a social media researcher, I’ve seen thousands of accounts with the same profile picture “like” posts in unison. I’ve seen accounts post hundreds of times per day, far more than a human being could. I’ve seen an account claiming to be an “All-American patriotic army wife” from Florida post obsessively about immigrants in English, but whose account history showed it used to post in Ukranian.

Fake accounts like this are called “sock puppets” – suggesting a hidden hand speaking through another identity. In many cases, this deception can easily be revealed with a look at the account history. But in some cases, there is a big investment in making sock puppet accounts seem real.

For example, Jenna Abrams, an account with 70,000 followers, was quoted by mainstream media outlets like The New York Times for her xenophobic and far-right opinions, but was actually an invention controlled by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian government-funded troll farm and not a living, breathing person.

Sowing chaos

Trolls often don’t care about the issues as much as they care about creating division and distrust. For example, researchers in 2018 concluded that some of the most influential accounts on both sides of divisive issues, like Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, were controlled by troll farms.

More than just fanning disagreement, trolls want to encourage a belief that truth no longer exists. Divide and conquer. Distrust anyone who might serve as a leader or trusted voice. Cut off the head. Demoralize. Confuse. Each of these is a devastating attack strategy.

Even as a social media researcher, I underestimate the degree to which my opinion is shaped by these attacks. I think I am smart enough to read what I want, discard the rest and step away unscathed.

Still, when I see a post that has millions of likes, part of me thinks it must reflect public opinion. The social media feeds I see are affected by it and, what’s more, I am affected by the opinions of my real friends, who are also influenced.

The entire society is being subtly manipulated to believe they are on opposite sides of many issues when legitimate common ground exists.

I have focused primarily on US-based examples, but the same types of attacks are playing out around the world. By turning the voices of democracies against each other, authoritarian regimes may begin to look preferable to chaos.

Platforms have been slow to act. Sadly, misinformation and disinformation drives usage and is good for business.

Failure to act has often been justified with concerns about freedom of speech. Does freedom of speech include the right to create 100,000 fake accounts with the express purpose of spreading lies, division and chaos?

Taking control

So what can you do about it? You probably already know to check the sources and dates of what you read and forward, but common-sense media literacy advice is not enough.

First, use social media more deliberately. Choose to catch up with someone in particular, rather than consuming only the default feed.

You might be amazed to see what you’ve been missing. Help your friends and family find your posts by using features like pinning key messages to the top of your feed.

Second, pressure social media platforms to remove accounts with clear signs of automation. Ask for more controls to manage what you see and which posts are amplified. Ask for more transparency in how posts are promoted and who is placing ads. For example, complain directly about the Facebook news feed here or tell legislators about your concerns.

Third, be aware of the trolls’ favorite issues and be skeptical of them. They may be most interested in creating chaos, but they also show clear preferences on some issues.

For example, trolls want to reopen economies quickly without real management to flatten the COVID-19 curve. They also clearly supported one of the 2016 US presidential candidates over the other. It’s worth asking yourself how these positions might be good for Russian trolls, but bad for you and your family.

Perhaps most importantly, use social media sparingly, like any other addictive, toxic substance, and invest in more real-life community building conversations. Listen to real people, real stories and real opinions, and build from there.

Jeanna Matthews, Full Professor, Computer Science, Clarkson University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Tech

[qqueenofhades]

bruh those are the ancestors to white people in europe anyway, it really doesn't change a damn thing to the whites lmao

Hi there. I’m guessing this is about my post from a couple days ago, about the ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge? That has unexpectedly gotten pretty popular, which is cool. I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at here, tbh, but I’m guessing that you mean it doesn’t matter if the people/culture of prehistoric/BC Europe was multi-coloured/multi-racial/nonwhite, because the white supremacists still won’t care or notice or change their beliefs about Europe Being White ™ to start with. And to some degree, you’re right. People who are absolutely convinced that Europe was always white are not going to change their minds because of one article on the internet. I’m not even going to try. But also, there’s still value to be had in knowing this, circulating it, and pointing it out.

First of all, Stonehenge (as I noted in the post) is a famous symbol of “Englishness” or “British culture” and so forth, one of the most visited monuments in England, and every year, it’s a major gathering place for nu-pagan and druidic and New Age rituals and so forth. There are elements of that culture which are right-wing and white supremacist and neo-Nazi, and discovering that Stonehenge was in fact built by the descendants of people who came to England as Mediterranean and Middle Eastern migrants is… fitting, even if it won’t be acknowledged by said white supremacists. But the thing is, as Sirius Black would say, the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. There are plenty of people who aren’t active white supremacists, who aren’t even necessarily right-wing – ordinary mainstream, non-evil, next-door-neighbor kinds of people, whose basic and underlying belief is that Europe is/was historically white, that people of colour “don’t have a history” or have never made lasting contributions to civilisation, so on and so forth. This is obviously nonsense. But the level of historical education is so low that it is passed on, especially in Western school systems and their attendant racial and imperial roots, as received wisdom. Making information that contradicts that belief available is not going to solve that problem by itself. But (as is noted on my blog) I’m a historian. This is the kind of thing I do.

Next, there’s the case of Derek Black, the son of the founder of Stormfront and godson of David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK. He was the heir of the entire modern American white nationalism movement, and was prepared to succeed as its leadership. Then he went to college, started studying medieval history in order to support said white nationalism, and he… couldn’t find anything he had been taught, about what was supposedly present to justify a historically white Europe. Derek eventually fully renounced his family’s hateful belief system and became a left-wing activist (and is a PhD student working on medieval Islam). You can read more about that entire saga. What it came down to was that even the most indoctrinated white supremacist was able to encounter information that challenged and eventually deconstructed his beliefs, and while that is not going to happen with everyone, the need for historical education remains central. It might be tempting to just throw up our hands and figure there’s nothing anyone can do, and as I said, I am not expecting that to happen in all or even most cases. But the narrative has to be established. We have to make the information available and to engage in this kind of work anyway. Derek Black’s father complained that he was exposed to so much “multiculturalism” at his liberal college that he finally “succumbed.” Medievalists have recently engaged in all kinds of wrestling with our social and moral responsibilities and the fact that the discipline has in fact often been used to produce similar white-supremacist narratives. And we still have a lot of work to do, trust me.

There’s also what I call the “misogyny crutch” in well-meant liberal media, TV, and film (especially historically themed ones). How many times have we seen a character quickly and lazily coded evil because they mistreat women and/or are racist? This isn’t in dispute; we know these things are bad. But it also means that if we’re allowed to think that sexism and racism and misogyny and homophobia and so forth only exist in obvious and irredeemable villains, we are spared the need to wonder if it exists in ourselves. In that same vein, most people, and even most white people, aren’t Nazis. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t hold the same kind of inherently or passively racist beliefs. So if they look at my dashed-off Tumblr post and see the faces of Whitehawk Woman and Cheddar Man, the ancient Britons who are decidedly not white, maybe they notice that, and it makes them think. It is not going to Fix All Racism, but hey. It’s there.

Basically, there is never a bad or wrong time to destroy “Europe Was Always White!!!” It needs to be demonstrated as a lie often and loudly, especially by people (such as me) who are white themselves. People of colour should not be the only ones who have to say it. We should never assume that it’s obvious or that it’s unimportant or that it can just be assumed. We have to talk about race, especially in terms of a political and social environment that is re-weaponizing white supremacy and translating that to the government of Western countries (as it has for most of post-Columbus history). So no, maybe it doesn’t change a damn thing. But at least we will have started the conversation and not let toxic lies pass unchallenged. And that, if nothing else, is all we can do.

So yes.

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

1. I am an INTP 5w6 female and I want to know how to meet new people, it didn't bother me before but I had a boyfriend.of 1.5years and I now miss having someone in my life, don't remember exactly what I wrote but I thought I had made a good choice and was really hopeful about that relationship and I tried hard to make it work but I couldn't deal with his bs anymore, I did for a while cause I thought he was worth it, I've been trying to build deeper relationships but didn't care before so imbehnd

2. My ex wasn't extremely manipulative but he lied and hid things from me and got angry when I complained when his stories made no sense, I left We knew each other for so long and I couldn't deal with him not apologizing for his bs and blaming me for what he was doing, I just couldn't justify the relationship even if I still loved him This lead me to believe my strategy was wrong since I thought I knew him and that he was more mature than that, no matter how high the filter this could happen..

3. It's just so disappointing, you know? That people can be such assholes after managing to present themselves as the opposite of that for so long I've never really had close friendships except for my ex, and a few friends (I guess?) I didn't care much for this before since I'm alright on my own, but I found that I really liked having someone, so I'm trying to meet new people now that I'm more or less healing, but idk how to do it, acquaintances used to fall in my lap before but not anymore

4. I'm 23 yo, about to get my degree. I do have a crush on a classmate but when I try to picture us going out it feels awkward and weird since I don't know him very well, I need to know people well before considering dating... I'm just very lost and I feel kind of behind from everyone else since I'm super inexperienced (only that one bf, and it was long distance...) and idk how to correct that at this point. I've been dressing better so people treat me better (haven't noticed, makes sense tho)

5. People do seem to like me well enough but I guess everyone already has their group of friends and is too busy to invite me places often enough that I become part of the core group, but I'm getting there, a bit (I think) I've been going everywhere I've been invited with my classmates lately but they don't really bring anyone new, I've managed to be a step up from acquaintance with a girl friend, which is nice, with older friends the same thing happens, even if we come across their friends...

6. I've always had a hard time fitting in very well, romantically I'd love to have someone at a similar experience level because I feel like I missed out on being a crucial relationship for the other person, but my ex had several gfs before and I didn't care too much then but now I do because afterwards certain things made me feel bad, but I guess I could manage anyway.I also get paranoid when I read what other bs some people manage to do like marrying someone but loving their bestfriend instead

7. I apologize for making it so long but I thought it'd be necessary to give a bit of info on myself and my thoughts, my age, what I've been trying etc I just wanna meet good people at this point in my life and want some tips on how to do that without taking extremely long only for them to be assholes anyways... I think I've managed to make some more acquaintances but I've only clicked with two girls I talk to outside of the classroom when we're not hanging out, gonna focus on them rn-----------------------

(very long response ahead)

I know this is not what you asked nor is it necessarily going to be helpful or relevant but: I would strongly rethink your type. Ti-doms and 5s are both vanishingly unlikely to drop seven asks worth of highly personal and emotionally open information in the inboxes of total strangers.

With regards to the actual question, this is really not an MBTI question (more on this at the end) and not entirely something I’d consider myself an expert on. I very much hope I am not the only person you can go to on this because I personally wouldn’t want me to be my only source of advice on this. With those caveats, see below.

I think Tumblr (and to be fair some forms of media) portray friendships and relationships as an attraction at first sight/immediate connection.

This is fucking stupid.

Because I tie everything back to my personal soapbox causes: this is why I have such disdain for the anti-small talk crowd, or people who think they’re special because they crave a deep, below-the-surface human connection. Nearly everyone wants deep connection. It’s normal and healthy. It’s also an ongoing process that nearly always involves some period of time during which you and the other potential friend are awkward acquaintances who don’t entirely understand each other and have to talk about surface-level things. You can’t speedrun intimacy.

This is particularly true in adulthood. Children do make friends more quickly, but also children are weird and fickle and a friendship can be based on little more than sharing crayons (not to knock that, plenty of great friendships started that way) while adults have a much better sense of who they are and also typically a much more narrow definition of who they want as a friend and all kinds of emotional baggage to boot.

Essentially, if you want a friendship that matches the depth of a relationship of 1.5 years it’s probably going to take close to 1.5 years to get there, and from what you said you’d known each other even longer before the romantic relationship, so add that time too. Which might not be what you want to hear, but it’s important to manage the expectation. Basically all relationships (and by this I mean romantic or platonic) start out with little connection, and you become friends through building that connection, and you can’t really rush it.

I believe in “clicking” in the sense of there being an immediate mutual interest in getting to know each other better, but speaking practically, regardless of the initial chemistry you are still basically intrigued strangers at that point. All clicking does is provide additional motivation for that process of getting to know each other. And speaking from experience, deep friendships in the long term don’t always have an initial “click”. I’ve had relationships that were initially quite intense fade away, and others slowly grow from acquaintanceship into lasting intimate friendship even if we didn’t expect it on first meeting. The myth of clicking is confirmation bias - unless there was a serious fallout, you’ll probably forget the people who you thought you clicked with if it didn’t just work out, and conversely it’s not hard to look back through the lenses of memory and nostalgia and find a single moment when a friendship or love crystalized, even though the reality is that it was merely the tipping point after considerable energy had already been invested on both sides.

In terms of practical advice, finishing up a degree is a uniquely awkward time, especially if all your classmates are in the same boat, because there’s often a mentality of “we’re all going to leave soon, let’s stick with the friendships we have.” Others in your class may not have that motivation to make a close connection, and it sucks but it’s temporary. The good news is that the larger world doesn’t feel that way. It is a bit more difficult to make friends as an adult, just because you’re not spending time with people naturally the same way as you do in school, but meetups and clubs and social organizations all exist for this reason and are explicitly there for people who want to make friends. And again, it’s going to be a slow process. I respect that it’s frustrating having to start from what feels like square one, but it’s unavoidable.

As for dating, you don’t need to do apps if you don’t want to! But you’re right. It’s going to be comparatively inefficient. Particularly if you prefer to date people you already know socially, you’ll have to put in a lot of effort going to social things and building those acquaintanceships over time and you might need to ask someone out face to face. Inexperience is fine. Everyone has to start somewhere. The tradeoff is more that you can’t screen people as well if you’re on apps, and they can be kind of impersonal but you do get to interact with many people quickly on your own terms without having to go outside and with the luxury of being able to think up witty comebacks instead of having to chat in real time.

(I do want to counter the idea that people who use apps are any less deep or anything like that. Some people are comfortable with casual hookups and some aren’t, but many people use apps to set up a date first and see if they have enough of an interest to keep things going. As with all of the above, everything has to start somewhere and if you think of the app as a way to facilitate meeting people, rather than “I must make a romantic connection with this person tonight”, and steer towards dating vs. hookup apps/make it clear you’re looking for long-term relationships, you might have more luck. The point of the first date for most people isn’t to find a partner, though sometimes that happens; it’s to find someone you enjoy enough to go on a second date with and slowly get to know).

One final thought: all this advice applies universally but I actually think considering it in the context of MBTI is more harmful than helpful, or at best misleading. For example, you say that being a 5 you take too long to check if people are safe, which whether or not you actually are a 5 also has absolutely nothing to do with being a 5, and even if you are a 5 and this is a 5 thing, you’re aware of this behavior! You can stop doing that then! MBTI is not destiny!

Regardless of type, no one automatically knows what to say in every situation, no one can read minds, and no one has discovered the secret to always being liked and never being rejected. Type can convey talent or inclination but skill requires time. Extroverts are often better with people because they have to be - they aren’t as okay with just being alone, especially when younger, so they go out and deal with people and through that process learn to make friends. But they weren’t born with it. Sites that favor introverts and/or intuitives are terrible for a lot of reasons but I find they perpetuate the ideas I disagreed with above, that friendships for introverts and intuitives must always be with people who Click and Already Get It. This is wrong and it’s limiting. Obviously don’t pursue a friendship or relationship if you don’t like the person, but don’t write someone off just because you didn’t feel a magical spark right away. That’s not being deep and sensitive - that’s being closed off to new experiences. Anything worth doing involves real-world effort and some amount of risk, and usually it involves patience and time and awkwardness and uncertainty as well.

[hanzi83]

Probably The Best Blog I Have Ever Written But Then Again Probably Not... so fuck my life

I have debated writing a blog instead of writing one irrationally and calm down a bit. I am sure the same results will occur, where people read this with their group chat and dissect it, while completely ignoring it on the surface since I can have limited praise, and to further illustrate that no one cares about me, even though people are clearly monitoring me write this shit, and moving my cursor and even post it on sub reddits before I even posted it onto the site, so that is why I have this delusion grandeur. You know what else I am bound to think? That people within industries are secret fans of mine and pay attention to every meltdown, every stutter, every grotesque noise that comes from my horrendously shaped body.

I tend to try and practice writing just to see if I have the skill to construct jokes. The mistake I made was I have absorbed everything with all this consumption of television, podcast, movies, news, etc just because you have to know what is going on and always figured my mind was the best aspect but I have so much coming at me, that I am barely able to retain anything anymore, and barely even able to come up with any witty comebacks and because of my limited vernacular I go for the meanest comebacks back at people who I presume have been paid to troll me, since everyone online is practically some sort of agent, whether it is for a good side or an evil side, but either way the narratives are limited, at least that is what I like to tell myself.  

So I have to jot down thoughts to write about and have some opinion on it and I have coasted by compiling a huge list that goes back a week or so that I have not gotten out of my head, so it is a lot more aggressive with my mind because I have not gotten old thoughts out of my fucked up brain, and more keep piling up and I have no structure to how I think. I am afraid of going out because the social anxiety reaches another level, also if I go out with friends, and it always seems they let me out for a limited event so it is like they are doing me a favor, even though they make it seem like it is another event that is casual, everything is timed out, and if I ask questions and try to have some discussion with it, maybe because my friends and others know I write down what is on my mind to get it off my chest so I can’t know about certain things, but it feels like the socializing is pretentious, and even if things go well with people I don’t know too well, I wonder if they expect me to be more social, and then I have to worry about being on and not going into my conspiracy territory because that is all on my mind.

People in my life don’t want to hear about how I am being fucked with potentially and it feels because they are guilty in helping with it, potentially they would rather not talk to me if I am going to complain and since they know what I write, they know how to act based off what I write. Even people who I have loose affiliation with, through the show or something. Either way I am afraid of even being creative or even criticizing because the world is being censored, like if you don’t agree with the collective of something in the system or a personality/celebrity it feels like people are employed to talk about them at parties or on certain shows you can notice the disdain they have for your opinion, even not liking something online.

I already had something structured just to get this off my mind but I am unsure if I want to post this blog up because I don’t know if it is good enough to be out there, and if it is good enough did I just give away more creativity for free that people with no souls will take and use it for themselves and then I have to continue to look like a fucking crazy asshole proclaiming myself importance onto the world that no one will ever care about. Why do you think I feel the need to drop that I was on the Stern Show because that is where I peaked essentially and I never thought I would be alive this long because I will never belong, I will piss people off and people have control over my life and then I have to hear pretentious pep talk from people in higher level of notoriety give a limited answer of hard work but never ever specifying what exactly is the hard work because it is more than just doing what you are told and hoping you go up in the ranks, there is severe initiations and politics that go into all of this

See I made the mistake of doing the worst thing for people who have complete hatred for me. I can write this blog and no one will care or at least pretend not to care so why not just say it right. The horrible thing I made the mistake of doing was actually going out to have a fun time because being happy for a time being is a big no in my existence. Whenever you suspect that, you have to work extra hard to bring me down and make me feel like shit and this is why these paid trolls are assholes, and then when I become a little aggressive and become offensive, they reverse it like they are the victim like they weren’t purposely instilling more paranoia in my head. They use my mental illness to dismiss me from having credibility and then when I point out why these people would try to fuck with someone who is a manic asshole, because they want me to reply irrationally so I can then get in trouble in the future because we will take it out of context, even though the system already watches everything you do and know when you write some fucked up shit, but part of that initiation is getting in trouble,

I had an amazing time at the Impact tapings and the PPV itself and met with so many cool fans there. I don’t know if I can do this often but apparently being happy that RVD heard of me or that I fist bumped Don Callis, that was enough to anger anyone who wants me to feel miserable so of course there had to be news that I supported ISIS because they have to go with the hacky stereotype and intellectualize it like I support what happened on 9/11. These trolls know that people will search this stuff one day and seeing this without any knowledge of who I am, people will just pretend to be offended by this and as I wrote this, the cursor moved once again.

I personally think because I have this knack to speak up for people I feel are being piled up on has something to do with it as well. I don’t know if it is a work but speaking out about WWE’s treatment of talent and what kind of stuff they would exploit the last several months has gotten them to punish me and even using people in my life to do it a bit too since everyone behind the scenes are connected. I still suspect these people to push me further so I self destruct, I just welcome them to try and murder me because they will do that eventually. They have to, and again this is all hypothetical, no one will care anyways, because I am just a deranged shit head in his mother’s basement, where they purposely put me because the powers that be control that and have limited me so much that it has to humiliate me for not fully committing to selling my soul. So When I see talent within industries being fucked with, and sometimes it could be a marketing tool or maybe it represents something, I just lose it because so many token minorities are going along with the system’s narrative and the sick part is that sometimes they will call out limited things about racism out but still going to bat with more systemic type of racism that continues to go on. It can go beyond that too, but defending Lio Rush has left people to fuck with me more and because Mark Henry and Booker T have sided with the system, now the WWE shills will use that as an excuse why those guys could be wrong because they are black and they are the nicest people, but here is the thing, as much as I respect those guys, they are still being employed by a company that has been doing deals for blood money and also partly responsible for normalizing Trump to some degree and also being in his cabinet, so I think they have to be limited. Maybe Mark would have given Lio advice legit, but I also can’t blame Lio for not trusting Mark because he is in the inner circle to some extent after having to deal with paying his dues. Even though the tasks did not seem horrible, you’re a billion dollar company where the top office has jets, you can afford someone to hand out water and carry bags if you need that. Lio pays his dues by wrestling and working his way up the ranks and still being respectful, he is not contracted to do people’s tasks and if you are going to justify it with “Everyone has to do it” then maybe you should have spoken up because you were conned. Don’t act like the punishment wouldn’t result into some horrific shit based on the past in what this company has covered up, and what they are capable of. I have a problem with how it is portrayed in the media as well, because at most it just comes off like it is just petty control freaks that are incapable of writing good television. So when you have had a business that has been built on people doing scum bag things, someone not wanting to hand out water or carry bags is not on my top 50 list of offensive shit that a performer has done.

There is other ways to do team building and trying to organize some teachable moments for people who are on the come up so these hidden rules these people are expected to know and if they don’t, the company will fuck with them and make them miserable, It does not just pertain to what happens in that place of employment but I also suspect that in social media era, the company can have interns or paid trolls go online and get their alternate accounts to fuck with these people, and then it becomes bestowed upon the fans for being cruel, and I am not denying there aren’t asshole fans (Is it denying there are or aren’t I am confused and too lazy to check, ah fuck it) but I think the way these corporations and institutions organize it, it comes across like more of the shills are tearing down these people and then you are not supposed to feel bad for them because they make it seem like the celebrity life is this amazing dream of a existence and really easy, and while it might seem easier than what the oppressed face, due to them having money, people in these industries have to go through fucked up shit where they eventually self destruct, that is why I hate when they present it like celebrities or public figures are just like regular people, and they aren’t because they play by entirely different rules, doesn’t mean they aren’t oppressed in their own way and not being able to have the freedom to explain the rules, and having to talk in code.

I have been afraid to sell my soul because I know they will put it in the script for me to have to rape someone or do some domestic type of violence, or do something that discredits me, and then my career continues, and then when it is finally supposed to be put to an end, then something else will happen where you correlate with what has happened in the past when I initially get in trouble. I could never do that to someone, and you wonder why all these celebrities become scumbags, and they don’t even give you the proper context of what the entire system is, maybe you can call it out to some extent but not fully and even someone like me I am not taken seriously so who is going to pay attention to this blog. Most people act like I don’t exist. So when I see talent piling up on someone who might have an attitude but they collectively say nothing about what their employers are doing and who they sold their soul to, then it comes across a little pretentious. Maybe if these bosses would legit let their people have freedom and not put a hindrance in their lives, like they have done to me while letting everyone else make the connects and then never take accountability for everything they have done that is bad and expect me to take the full blame. Sorry I don’t play by your fucked up rules.

I would rather die than ever do that, and maybe I should be gone because I am tempted to wanting to be part of the club so badly and I know it is not what I want because I am just irrational of never getting  what I deserved for the work I did put in behind the scenes, and stuff I will never get credit for so when I state it, it just comes across as someone being delusional and have to be reminded that “Imran Khan lives with his dad and mom” like it is supposed to fucking trigger me. If I don’t call into certain shows or if I call out people from certain shows, the trolls show up to instill paranoia and try to get me to snap, so much so I don’t have people in a group chat helping me out with witty comments, and don’t have the presumed illuminati microchip that most people must have, and I can assume that because if there is steroids for the body to get stronger, there has to be some kind of advancement in pill form to make you become a sharp thinker and I think people would have that. I don’t and I have to be a regular human being with no gift and no will to live. People have to accept this is a game we are playing and at least be transparent of the rules instead of presenting the system like it is this innocent place, and the most evil thing they do is just become negligent over matters instead of explaining how they have fucked up shit going on, allegedly.

So I knew when I had a good time, and felt kind of cool that I got to speak to RVD or fist bump Don Callis, that it would anger trolls because me being any kind of happy is not good. I call into Busted Open to support Lio Rush, and then Mark Henry explains why I am wrong about it, then suddenly military vets who are white are tagging me and saying the most clichéd type of shit, and I lose it and as soon as you try to come for me and say I was not good enough to be a whack packer based off an opinion that racism might exist, I assume there is an agenda and I will snap and say whatever mean thing comes to my fucking head and make you feel like shit. I will pay for it when someone brings it up but I am already black balled and I really don’t intend on going anywhere.

It could be wrestling trolls, Stern Show trolls, people in my life personally who will try to insinuate they are watching me and misrepresent everything I say and then be expected to have a conversation with them. I see this pep talk of talking to people face to face about these things, but what is the point when these people will never take accountability and make me have to humble myself when I have already taken my lumps and paid dues by being mentally tortured from one of the most powerful people in showbiz. I have contributed more than enough, while also being denied any type of credit or any type of advancement when I was a fucking loyal soldier. I used to be dumb idiot, probably still am but I was naïve and went a long with neoliberalism and some form of conservatism in my life and did not realize I was being brainwashed because I was too afraid to think for myself and went with whoever sounded cooler whether it was saying ignorant shit, or saying some preachy shit to some extent and now I had to retain myself and how to think because I never knew how to use my brain. I waste these thoughts on blogs but maybe if others read them, secretly, maybe it helps someone else, maybe it will help another wrestler to barrow from my blog and then I can claim it, while there being no confirmation on it. Who gives a fuck?

So I get defensive when this shit because I don’t know what people in my life had to do to become part of the elite and then lie to my face and am I being associated with people who are scummy and I have no idea, and if I let certain people into  my life will they try to take over and try to take from me if I am ever vindicated and sometimes it seems I am supposed to be with how obvious people are with wanting to be part of my life but then still continue to lie to me, and think because I am not going to be confrontational at that moment, that I will suddenly stop thinking about it.

I feel loved ones in my life have set me up and have gotten what they needed and just sacrificed me to be prostituted while people profit off appearances I make at places since this entire game is run like an exploitation camp and people have no idea they are part of some larger game while they get all the fucking perks for that and only reason they need me is for some kind of secret social points you can cash in underground  and this will eventually make its way to the surface and we will act like “ERMA GURD ISNT IT LIKE BLACK MIRROR” when Black Mirror was essentially showing us what has been going on for a while, and I am one of the people in the game you have to interact with. No one will admit it though. I will never see any of the money I helped people make.

They won’t even give me the satisfaction of dying because these sick soulless human want me to endure this and be fucked with until I find the urge to kill myself eventually. They needed me to fucking do that and they will continue to lie and keep secrets from me and I am sure when they do it one more time they are trying to get me to snap even more because I am supposed to self destruct when they could just destroy me. No one of importance will ever truly investigate any of this because the excuse will be “Why would people be after you? LOL YOU’RE NOT THAT IMPORTANT BRO” when these same people saying that have been monitored willingly or unwillingly.

I want to say this is probably my best blog but I am still unsure if I am going to post this shit and if I do I will then regret it because no one will care I wrote this and maybe it is middle school drivel and it is just not good, fine I am a mediocre piece of shit. Okay you happy? You don’t need to get in a discord chat and come up with more gimmicks to fuck with me and try to make me uncomfortable.

[arcticdementor]

Every striver who ever slipped the rank of their birth to ascend to a higher order has shared the capacity to ingratiate themselves with their betters. What the truly exceptional ones have in common is the ability to connect not only with their superiors but also with their peers and inferiors. And only the rarest talents among them can bond authentically—not just transactionally—with the people who will help them be who they want to be in the world. It’s a preternatural, almost Promethean gift if you have it, and Amy Chua does.

Thus begins the scandal dubbed “dinner-party-gate,” the latest in the annals of Amy Chua, Yale Law’s very own Tiger Mom, whose infamous defense of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the “dinner-party-gate” of its day approximately three years ago. Then, as now, Chua’s differences with some denizens of her milieu played out in the press, vituperations, allegations, insinuations, and all.

…

The reporting left open a pair of related questions: What, exactly, had happened? And, perhaps more salient, if what took place really was something on the order of a minor violation of an ad hoc agreement between Chua and the Yale Law School dean, Heather Gerken, why had the news spilled into the nation’s most prominent news outlets rather than fading below the fold of a campus daily?

It appears to me that what transpired amounts to a skirmish between a notorious professor and an administration that seemed so eager to relieve itself of her presence that it lunged at an opportunity to weaken her position at the expense of two students who were left to deal with the consequences of the ultimately aborted campaign. Still, the answer to the latter question is more revealing than any single aspect of the whole affair. It has to do with the culture of elite institutions, where putatively righteous ends justify an array of troubling means, and noble public virtues like fairness and safety cloak more prosaic motives—the kind of vulgar envy and resentment that people with the best manners deny.

Everyone is just trying to get ahead, after all; this is no less true, and perhaps even more true, at a place like Yale Law School. It just comes more naturally to some than others. In that case one must take matters into one’s own hands.

The proximate drama begins with a trio of second-year law students, friends and acquaintances for a time. There was a person I’ll call the Guest—all three students asked not to be named, and, believing young people should have a chance at carrying on after having their reputation destroyed or destroying the reputation of others, I agreed—who was born and raised in California. He’d arrived at Yale Law School optimistic and younger than most, having come directly from UCLA. During his first semester, he’d befriended the Visitor, a young woman from a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, who had arrived on campus from Emory. The two made a happy pair: the Guest dreamier and prone to touches of poetry, occasionally drawn to Byzantine history and Christian theology; the Visitor shrewd, practical, and levelheaded, with a keen focus on the concrete facts of policies, problems, current affairs. After working together on a major project that fall, they became and remained close.

And then there was the Archivist, a young man whom the Guest had also befriended early in his time at Yale. The two young men bonded after meeting in their contracts class, after which they would find one another at bars and parties to chat about history, politics, and other shared interests. They met up in New York City for a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Guest eventually gave the Archivist a key to his apartment, where the latter would often stop by to visit or do his laundry. In the second semester of their second year, things seemed placid.

And they may have remained that way, had it not been for a minor snag in the Guest’s academic year that put him on a path that would eventually lead him to Amy Chua’s doorstep.

…

Not that the Guest had any reason to contemplate any of this when, early in the spring semester of 2021, he decided to step down as an executive editor at the Yale Law Journal. The Guest, who describes himself as half-Korean, had misgivings about the way the journal’s staff had responded to his questions about the lack of racial diversity in its ranks, and his suggestions for addressing it. Still, even after making his decision, the Guest felt uncertain and unsettled. He confided this to the Visitor, who as a Black student at Yale Law had wrestled with similar questions, and she took it upon herself to bring them up with Chua during a Zoom meeting that served in place of the professor’s usual office hours. At that point, the Visitor recalls, Chua casually offered to talk with the two of them about the Journal affair at her home in New Haven, and the Visitor called the Guest to pass the invitation along.

Unfortunately for the Guest, the Archivist happened to be doing his laundry at his friend’s apartment when the call came, and he overheard the conversation, later documenting it as follows:

Feb. 18. I go over to [the Guest’s] to do my laundry. While at his apartment, I hear him call [the Visitor], who explains to him that Chua has just invited them over for dinner tomorrow. They discuss what to wear and what they should bring (ultimately deciding to bring a bottle of wine). [The Guest] makes zero mention of going over because of any personal crisis. After the phone call, he says that he’s been invited to a dinner party at Chua’s. [The Guest] implores me not to tell anybody so that Chua doesn’t get in trouble.

Despite his gumshoe efforts, the Archivist seemed to come away with a vastly different impression of the meeting than Chua, the Guest, or the Visitor.

…

By March, the Journal imbroglio was boiling over into the public sphere. Several of the school’s affinity groups had released statements, and the Journal had released information about the racial makeup of its editors—then the conflict came to the attention of conservative media outlets. Once more, the Guest had a series of questions for someone familiar with bad press.

…

When i was a little girl growing up in suburban North Texas not so very long ago, my grandmother, a housewife of the ’60s, would turn my cousins and me outside to play in the summer so she could sit at her kitchen table and chain-smoke her way through her library of paperback bodice-rippers. And when one of us would inevitably bolt back inside to complain about being annihilated with a Super Soaker at close range or nailed with a Nerf dart to the eye, she would always eject us with the same dismissal: Don’t be a tattletale. As far as childhood admonishments go, it was an interesting one—she wasn’t telling us not to do something, but rather not to be something.

I don’t credit homespun wisdom with any special salience. But the suggestion that it may be useful to morally evaluate oneself before volunteering to monitor everyone else’s conduct isn’t a ridiculous one. It’s wise to be careful that, in one’s zeal for justice or fairness or the more prosaic things that ride beneath those banners, one doesn’t lose sight of one’s own moral obligations or aspirations. And it’s decent, if you have a problem with someone, to take it up with them before running it up the nearest flagpole. But this is something people with the right views and the best degrees, it seems, simply do not do; just as the distinction between tattling and whistleblowing—resting, as it does, on a sober evaluation of one’s own motives and the stakes at hand—is one they often fail to make.

…

Up to that point, the Archivist had managed to gather only the flimsiest written evidence that the Guest and the Visitor had been to Chua’s home. Eventually, he composed a roughly 20-page PDF narrating the timeline of his private campaign to turn proof of his friends’ wrongdoing over to the administration—complete with screenshots of text messages, summaries of conversations, a reference to a secretly recorded phone call, and some offhanded musings on his peers’ moral laxity. The document would achieve campus infamy as “the dossier.”

…

Yale did provide the Guest and the Visitor with information on how to file a complaint against the Archivist and also took additional steps to protect them, including trying to prevent their names from circulating online. But neither the Guest nor the Visitor ever filed any kind of complaint against Chua, who, they still maintain, did nothing worth complaining about. And yet both of them have suffered—not in the jaws of the tigress herself, but in the subtler and more brutal back channels of the Ivy League, where every regal edifice hides a charnel house of human spirits. In the end, they were collateral forfeited in a cold war that began long before they arrived on campus, and that will continue long after it has spit out their bones.

[priboltao]

So.

I just saw a random video where Brendon Urie casually makes a rape joke.

I mean, I’m not even that surprised. All white males I ever admired always did something that was disappointed, in varying degrees - the less disappointing was Tom H., whose worst “crime” was to play Fitzgerald in a Woody Allen movie - Fitzgerald was abusive, Allen is a rapist and pedophile.

But, Brendon.... a rape joke? Seriously?

I get it. It was 7 years ago. But I have found no record of him ever apologizing.

Then a friend told me to look it up - cause I don’t know, there’s probably more to the story - and all I got was a lot more reasons why he’s problematic.

(Jokingly asking girls for nudes, joking about marriage as his wife hands him a beer, claiming to be the main writer for AFYCSO, and of a lot of songs writen by Ryan, keeping the band with Spencer when Ryan and Jon left without telling them, blocking Ryan on social media after a stalker hacked him and tried to make them get closer - that is actually a hot mess - unfollowing dallon after being an asshole to him when his wife and kids were attacked online, being an asshole to a fan who wanted to hand him a fanart, making a vine mocking a girl in sandals in a plane, complaining about a girl who had an anxiety attack in a plane cause, oh lord, it made him late, making fatphobic jokes, reinforcing gay stereotypes, making transphobic jokes, saying girls/girls/boys is about a threesome  - even though he always says it is about loving whoever you want - among others. I literally read about all of these.)

The thing is, I get it, people say stupid things. He’s in a privileged position so chances are he’s gonna fuck up without realizing it. But that’s not a good enough reason to just let these things slide - cause I’m sure people tell him when he fucks up.

I mean, how to deal with it? Cause the internet is telling me  Brendon Urie is problematic as fuck and if I love him and/or his music I am an idiot, Actually, people have actually said, and I quote “if you’re still his fan you’re evil and should get away from me”.

But the fandom.... ah, the fandom. The fandom tells me i should let EVERYTHING slide cause he’s Brendon Urie - with his beautiful voice and beautiful face and OF COURSE everything is out of context and he has a beautiful soul and - you get it. Everything has an excuse - and that includes the rape joke he’s never apologized for.

(“He was obviously drunk and it was seven years ago” is no excuse by the way. “I was drunk and it didn’t mean a thing” sounds great in a song, not so great in real life.)

So, can I get some middle ground, for fuck’s sake, before I lose my goddamn mind?

I’ve been alive this past few months BECAUSE of Brendon Urie. Because of his music, and my belief that some people are actually great and the world is still worth something. And tonight I felt like I lost it.

Someone, PLEASE, tell me it’s ok. Tell me I’m not a horrible person for still being his fan. PLEASE tell me he’s grown and apologized (links are very much appreciated). Please find me some way to believe in him again. That I can like his music and still acknowledge he’s fucked shit up. That he is actually a good person who deserves my love. That I’m justified for the last two tattoos i got. That he’s not a privileged - yet talented - little fucker who hates or mocks everything I am - fat, poor, bisexual, neuroatypical. And a woman who was assaulted and is actually writing this sentence for the first time, since she can’t for the love of god to use the “R” word to describe what happened.

(The guy who did it didn’t care I didn’t want it. See where I’m getting at? That was not just disappointing. It was triggering as fuck.)

I don’t wanna feel this way. I don’t wanna stop loving and admiing him. But this? This fucked my head up real bad.

[chamerionwrites]

I basically agree with this. But also, as an American, talking to my fellow US-Americans? Can we all be real with each other here?

How often do people actually suggest that we ought to know “everything that’s happening everywhere else always”? How often do people literally claim that you, as an individual, are responsible for knowing about every ill in the world or else you’re a bad person who doesn’t care?

It may feel that way to you, when you come across a post expressing frustration (and maybe expressing it without a whole lot of nuance; one of the tough things about social media is that venting and discourse, which are two separate kinds of communication, often get tangled up and confused) over the lack of attention paid to a particular news story. And that’s okay; it’s not your job to control every thought and feeling that crosses your neurons, and it’s unhealthy - and usually actively unhelpful - to try. But it is your job as a reasonable and responsible adult to control how you react to your feelings. It is your job, as a person who wants to learn and grow as a compassionate human being, to figure out how to deal gracefully with criticism.

You know that thing? The thing where brown folks vent about white people as a group, and a million white folks take massive personal offense and show up furiously missing the point and protesting how dare you say such a thing, how dare you generalize us like this, you don’t know me as an individual, #notallwhitepeople? The white fragility thing?

This is exactly what first-worlders - imo Americans in particular - do to third-worlders (and to a lesser degree non-Americans in general) regularly and relentlessly, every single time this particular criticism comes up. 

You know that other thing? The thing where someone gets called to the carpet for doing something not-so-great, and then compounds the problem a hundredfold by lying or making really half-assed excuses or, in the worst cases, running around hiding evidence and hurting people to make sure the truth doesn’t come out? The thing for which the phrase “the cover-up is worse than the crime” was invented?

Be really, really honest with yourselves for a moment, and ask whether this critique is usually centered on Americans being uninformed about every little thing that happens everywhere, or centered on Americans being uninformed about big, breaking news stories (fires in Greece, bombings in Yemen, protests in Nicaragua, etc). And then consider that if you respond to that critique by complaining that people expect you to know Everything Happening In the World All the Time - when in reality they just think that Americans as a group should be better-informed about major international news - you are at best making a straw man argument, and at worst proving the accusations of self-centered arrogance absolutely justified by implying that serious international issues, often involving the deaths of a lot of human beings, are little things that no reasonable person would expect you to know about. And that’s...honestly a whole lot more offensive than a simple failure to be informed in the first place, whether that’s the way you intended it or not.

You’re not a bad person because you can’t keep up with all the news all the time (that’s physically impossible). You’re not a bad person if you have to disengage sometimes (there’s a difference between burying one’s head in the sand, and striking a balance between responsible citizenship and your emotional health). But the question of whether you’re a bad person is honestly beside the point, and it is, again, kinda self-centered to make it the point. The point is to draw attention to a particular pattern in the way people engage with the news, illustrating a particular systemic problem and imbalance of power between the U.S. and the rest of the world. (And does anyone honestly...not see that the United States wields an outsize amount of power on the world stage? Does anyone honestly not see that Americans as a collective tend to be less informed about the rest of the world than the rest of the world is about us? Is this controversial somehow?) If the accusation of apathy doesn’t apply to you, there’s no need to be offended. And if it does apply to you, don’t double down and add insult to injury because you feel defensive. Don’t make your guilty feelings everyone else’s problem, especially not when it draws attention away from the real issues they’re trying to discuss. Sit with your discomfort for a minute, learn something, and move on. 

Easier said than done, yes! Dealing gracefully with criticism is hard. Learning to sit with discomfort is hard. I’m not for a second claiming that it isn’t. I’m not for a second claiming I’ve got it all figured out; anything remotely valuable that I have to say here is because sensitivity to criticism and an overactive tendency to internalize guilt are two of my own major personal flaws, and I’ve spent 28 years living with them and learning (in fits and starts) how to manage them. And please note that I didn’t say accept any and all criticism blindly; I said learn to deal with criticism gracefully. On occasion criticism is overblown. On occasion it’s expressed poorly. It’s still a really valuable life skill, and a sign of a stand-up human being, to learn to listen to it with an open mind - especially when it comes from people over whom you have power. Take a breath and recognize that people’s frustration stems from not having the option to ignore U.S. news, because if the United States throws a political shit fit it could very well ruin their lives. Take a breath and think about what a privilege it is to be uninformed. 

It’s not your sole personal responsibility to solve that problem, but it is your responsibility to try not to perpetuate it. 

americans, months ago: hey we just discovered that local news stations are actually being turned into state sponsored propaganda tools with terrorist alert desks and biased information about the fascist president which would influence public perception of him for those who trust their local stations. and we’d love to see more international news but apparently we’re not even getting accurate reports from our own backyards so for a lot of us common everyday folk we have to go out of our way to get news that’s not us-centric AND accurate

y'all, for some inexplicable reason: why don’t y'all know everything that’s happening everywhere else always? you must not care, that’s the only reason

[musesmilk]

OLIVIA PEACE

Olivia Peace graduated Northwestern University with a degree in radio/television/film, and during that time she took on an ambitious and beautiful thesis called Pangea. Pangaea is currently cruising through the festival circuit, screening in significant programs like Hollywood Black Film Festival, NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth), Citizen Jane, and even got picked up by PBS! 

“I made my film Pangaea as a critique of tragedy voyeurism and live-streamed pain. I think that for my generation, Hurricane Katrina was a prominent example of the media frenzy exoticizing people’s suffering- many times creating a numbing effect on spectators. Childhood trauma is just as real and devastating as experiencing trauma as an adult and often because it is so overlooked and underestimated, it goes untreated.”

Muse’s Milk: Tell us your story.

Olivia Peace: I’ve been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. I used to go to art shows and win blue ribbons for my pencil and charcoal pieces, and became pretty comfortable doing that. As I got older, I only became more passionate about visual art.  I worked hard to expand my skills further to graphic design, fashion design, photography, etc.

Later in high school though, I had some great English teachers who inspired me to begin writing. I moved away from visual art as I became more engrossed in the written word. Soon I was planning book ideas and writing short stories in my spare time. I always laugh and justify myself by telling people that I’m a Capricorn, and by that I mean that I make up my mind quickly, and I then I run hard in that direction. So by the time I began applying to colleges, I was fully planning to pursue a career in creative writing. I went to Northwestern University originally enrolled as an English major. However, as life would have it, after taking a single quarter's worth of writing classes, I realized that my work felt incomplete.

That very same quarter I met this wonderful woman who mentored me, and she introduced me to the guidance counselor of the film school. I took an intro to film class and fell in love with being on set and with taking up space in leadership roles within film production (and with boosting other POC to take up their space within film as well). I’d always been a bit reserved, but on set I found myself feeling totally comfortable leading. It was a match! I switched majors immediately. Filmmaking pushes my loves for storytelling with my passion for visual arts into perfect harmony. I also found that I really enjoy encouraging my crew members and actors to push their ideas to their fullest capacity on set. It’d wild how many people have inspired my journey to get to this point, and even since making my own films, I’ve become fascinated with animation and coding and I’m currently learning about new Virtual Reality tech. I truly think that the sky is the limit with storytelling through independent filmmaking. I love seeing simple ideas transport audiences to places far outside of their comfort zones.

Currently I live in Chicago and really love it here, and I’ve also been traveling a lot with my film and as a part of Sundance Ignite’s Fellowship program. I’ve found myself learning and growing exponentially and there’s still so much to learn and still so much room to grow! Sometimes it’s an adventure and sometimes it’s answering emails.

MM: What was the inspiration for your narrative, Pangaea? What was the directorial experience like?

OP: I made my film Pangaea as a critique of tragedy voyeurism and live-streamed pain. I think that for my generation, Hurricane Katrina was a prominent example of the media frenzy exoticizing people’s suffering- many times creating a numbing effect on spectators. Childhood trauma is just as real and devastating as experiencing trauma as an adult and often because it is so overlooked and underestimated, it goes untreated.

I came up with the concept of “Pangaea” from a flashbulb memory I had of watching news footage from Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. My family was glued to the television as we saw all these adults (mostly journalists or experts of some sort) parade in front of the camera. The most memorable moment for me however, was seeing this little boy push his way on screen. 12 years later, I can only remember the last three words he said to the camera: “Shame shame shame!” Seeing this woke me up to how real and dire of a situation people were in.  That moment inspired me to create a film from a child’s perspective to call people out in a similar way.

There were several challenges involved in the making of “Pangaea,” including the fact that we shot most of it standing atop of a real roof with a 6-year-old lead actress. Long story short, my crew was stellar! We road tripped 15 hours down from Evanston to New Orleans together over spring break. Half of us stayed with one of the Associate Producers who lived down there and the other half stayed in the AirBnB that we shot the film in. We had some underwater sequences, we had some animated sequences and through it all- I ended up having a really fun time making it. I sincerely cannot complain at all. I’m super grateful to everyone who helped bring our story to life. And shout out to all the mothers who went above and beyond to bring our young actors to set (some even stepped in as extras!).

What worried me the most though, was getting the story right. Since I was born and raised in Michigan, I‘m very much an outsider to New Orleans culture and I believed it wouldn’t be authentic or right for me to try to tell this story on my own. I took great care to make sure that I involved New Orleans in the making of this film as much as possible. My team and I researched Hurricane Katrina heavily. We read books on childhood survivors of Katrina, we talked to a child psychologist that worked with kids from New Orleans after the hurricane, we talked to a journalist about ethics in storytelling, but most importantly I personally sat down with people who were there when it happened. It was also very important to me to shoot on location in New Orleans and that my actors be from Louisiana as well. I think that my experience making this film has given me a new love for research and script revisions and all in the name of me being careful to tell this story without being exploitive or sensational. It’s also given me a huge love for New Orleans. I think New Orleans is honestly one of the dopest places in the world and it deserves so much shine!

MM: Could you speak on what it means to be an Aesthetics Engineer?

OP: I came up with that term later in college. People would ask what I specialized in or what I was interested in pursuing, and it was always something visual: draftsmanship, graphic design, special effects makeup, production design, creative coding, animation, film direction, etc.

I love thinking of art methodically: you’re presented with a problem (a concept to bring to life) and then it’s up to us as creatives to find a way to build the idea tangibly from start to finish. This does usually take a lot of engineering. Whether I’m crafting props out of silicone, or building a body cast for a sculpture, or animating a sequence, the things I find myself doing to make a piece of artwork successful tends to take a lot of self-taught precision.

The way I use the word “aesthetic,” I’m usually referring to a specific combination of elements used to create an overall tone. For example, my “aesthetic” for the day could be “Rock star grieving widow” and that could physically take the form of an all-black ensemble with church shoes and blown out hair. I usually consider the aesthetics of my art pieces first, before even developing a story. Visuals come more naturally to me than anything.

[minijenn]

...sigh... 

Ok, so I’m going to do something I usually never do. Start discourse. Why? Because I got this review on the last chapter on fanfic.net and I just... need to vent for a minute (this was a guest review btw): 

“ Eh, you still have original scenes with Steven so it isn't completely copy-paste. And you have word count to go with this to boot. There are honestly only a few plot points from both shows that I'd rather see explored differently, but none of them are set to occur quite that soon yet. However, I will say that you shouldn't discourage others' right of free speech. Reviewers should be allowed to speak their mind even if it is about things the author might not like to hear. BUT, you don't always have to take negative reviews so personally. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Or as the internet puts it, idgaf. Yes, there are things out there that are flames or pure hate speech, but the right to free speech is one of responsibility in that one should be allowed to speak uncensored, but must be willing to accept the potential consequences of whatever it is that happens as a result of them speaking. If one gets beaten up for saying something that others don't like, then technically their right to say what they said in that articular instance wasn't violated (as they still got to say what they did in the fist place, rather, the right not to get unreasonably assaulted is what is violated), although the threat of future consequences to said speaker if they ever say something like that again might serve to discourage said speaker and function as a form of de facto censorship. Granted, all you've essentially asked us reviewers was "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". And honestly, I can agree with this if one simply wants to insult or offend someone for no justifiable reason, but again, telling others to not say things (or worse, that they can't or are not allowed to say certain things) is only a small leap away from censorship. Of course, the internet does provide a degree of anonymity to speakers, so it can be rather difficult for an offended speaker to actually do anything to "get back at" that speaker. The exceptions are when people use traceable or ban-able accounts. Heck, even the requirement of accounts in general can be a discouragement to all those unwilling to register and/or login. One author on this site even had a petition to get the owners of this site to remove the guest review feature altogether. While it is true that many people do use the non-traceability of guest reviews to mess with others, some like myself rather enjoy it. I suppose I've rambled on about stuff that isn't relevant to this story, but perhaps the messages of warning and "learning to tolerate by not caring" might help you. Well, this was all I feel like saying. Enjoy your day. “

K, so... um... what? I am at a complete fucking loss right now? How was me asking my readers to be kind in their criticism anywhere fucking CLOSE to censorship??? I just wanted my readers to think twice about what they were saying before saying it, but never ONCE have I EVER said that I would censor their comments. I don’t block people for saying negative things, nor do I refuse to read it. Constructive criticism is actually very helpful and refreshing, but at the same time, so very rare. Why? Because of bullshit like this! And for reference’s sake, here’s the note that I left at the beginning of Dreamscaperers that resulted in this fucking mess: 

“Ok, so... about this chapter. I know so many of you have been hyped about Dreamscaperers for the longest time, as was I. But... I'm already anticipating many of you being disappointed with how it turned out (even though I'm personally pretty proud of it). See, I kinda stuck fairly close to the original episode for it, mostly because its my favorite season 1 episode of Gravity Falls and I wanted to do it justice and also because I didn't want to give you guys too many spoilers here. So no, the Gems themselves do not directly appear in this chapter. They don't encounter Bill or anything like that. Why? Because I'm saving that stuff for later. And you all will understand why I did when we get to that point. But for now, I want to make a request of you all. Please, PLEASE don't go to the reviews after reading this chapter and complain about it being copy-pasted or too close to the episode or that it barely has any SU content in it at all, ok? Because frankly I already can't stand reviews like that from the beginning and because I KNOW ok? I KNOW that I do that, but do you know why? Because I want to keep this story in the spirit of both shows as much as possible, and maintaining the plot points and dialogue that I love is my way of doing that. So please, if you're going to complain about any of that stuff in the reviews, then just don't review at all, ok? Please. Thank you.”

Notice how I said it was a request. I wasn’t FORCING anyone to do anything. If someone wanted to go into the reviews and rant about the chapter, yeah I would probably get a little upset, but I had never stopped them at all. I just asked nicely. From there, it was the reader’s choice to decide whether or not to be considerate. 

As a media major, I find free speech and expression like, SUPER important. And for someone to assume I dont? That shit pisses me off more than anything. And someone telling me that I don’t have the right to ask for civility in the reviews to my story? Kinda seems like its own form of “restricting freedom of speech”, doesn't it?