#but still prevalent

[sounds-like-moss]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Kids need more options. More freedom. Regardless of if parents tracking is a factor. Yes tracking is a part of it and being able to mess up or make choices your parents aren't happy with is also a part...but like. Even without, offline is less and less an option. At least an appealing one or one that seems real and viable. I saw it happening and I'm sure it's fucking worse now. Organizing seems like a pipe dream or at least something hard when you're a minor, don't have access, and physically are not somewhere you can see enough options to realize they DO in fact exist. So they sit there at this weird ass combo of aware and so out of touch at the same time. Like the world is a stage and they don't see the stage left exit. It's observe and be observed, performing all the time in this scripted stilted way but like what else is there? It's there. But it might as well be set design or a character archetype. Put on. Never off. It makes living seem mundane at best and alien/impossible at worst. I worry for them. Cults try hard...but the Government tries harder.

I should know, in my personal experience they're one in the fucking same. And they're at their worst when you're isolated and blind to the options

here's my hot take about my generation and people younger than me (I'm 22 years old)

The reason current teenagers and people in their really early 20s are conservative on accident and have such shitty takes on the internet is because our generation was much more sheltered than previous generations and because we were raised to be ok with orwellian servailence and that is 100% the fault of our parents, Reagan Era kidnapping panics, and the rise of technology all coming together to prevent us from doing the sketchy shit that sends parents into panic mode but which is also completely fundemental to childhood development. If your parents had even a crumb of money to their name and even a shred of free time they started tracking your phone as soon as it was possible to. I did not experience this because my parents are actively trying to live like it's the 1990s and still have not gotten cell phones of their own, and did not let me have one until I was 18 years old and it was no longer their choice, but literally over half of my friends in middle and high school had their phones tracked by their parents at some point or other, and we would occasionally find this out, not because their parents told them, but when we were trying to do the aforementioned sketchy shit and their parent's car would pull up. And I would, like a reasonable person after finding this out, encourage my friends to just leave their phones at home, and their response would be "What if I get kidnapped" or "My parents are just trying to keep me safe"

This in my estimation has lead to a combination of kids being terminally online because they do have internet access and are better at deleting search history than their parents think they are, but don't have the freedom to go out and do shit without their parents' knowledge or consent, so they have the most privacy from the people who control their lives while they're on the internet, and kids not having the real world experiences they should have, not knowing how to connect with other people irl, not feeling comfortable leaving the house because of the horror story lies their parents told them to make them ok with the surveillance they were inflicting on their kids. Kids these days are growing up in the fucking panopticon when they should be out in the woods playing with knives or stealing cigarettes from their older sibling and going out to an empty parking lot to smoke them or whatever and that shit is sticking with them into adulthood. Things that were "tee hee we could get in trouble isn't this so fun and daring" in the 1990s and 2000s have become in the 2010s and 2020s things that are "If I do that without texting my parents some sort of lie to excuse where my location is my parent's car will pull up and I will get grounded for the next two weeks."

Like even when I was 19 I had a 16 year old friend who would volunteer their time at a food shelf and that's how we knew each other. We would talk about dungeons and dragons together, and the game store was 4 blocks from the food shelf. One day we left the food shelf earlier than they had told their parents they would and they got punished for that. We were literally just going to look at dungeons and dragons miniatures and dice, which was self evident if you could see where we started and how far we walked and where too. I have to assume that this isn't uncommon. It's wrong, but it's not uncommon.

[ispyspookymansion]

its really wild how many movies and tv shows are just like, obscenely skinny. how many casts are representative of the average population, if you sampled a crowd in a normal store or on a train? how many actually “average” bodies do you see on screen? how often are the stomachs shown flat or concave, how often are the thighs all muscle no fat, how often are the jawlines and cheekbones totally sharp and not covered by even a hint of softness? its bizarre and offputting whenever you start looking at media with that in mind

[rox-of-iu]

to no ones surprise more of my special guy

[rookflower]

starting a petition to end this dichotomy in warrior cats designs forever

[aromacaque]

every time i see "old" aro/ace terminology that isn't nearly as commonplace as it once was because the online communities that either created them or promoted them got destroyed during the peak of exclusionism during the 2010s i get so sad

it was genuinely horrific watching aspec communities dwindle in numbers online in real time during 2015-2019 (i'm sure it is a major contributor to how bad my internalized arophobia was at the time) and i wish people other than aro/ace people spoke up about it or even Acknowledged the amount of damage it did to our community

this post was brought to you by black ace rings, white aro rings, ace of spades, ace of clubs, ace of hearts, ace of diamonds, and all of the other symbols we had that have been lost to newer generations due to so much of the community being effectively harassed away by TERFs

[triglycercule]

horrortale waterfall game broke me sorry (hey just like horror!)

[mfdragon]

Love me some University AU stuff

(I have in fact read One Piece Gakuen and I love it)

[mamawasatesttube]

the timkon fans who shit on bart are annoying, the konbart fans who shit on tim are annoying, and i don't actually know if there are timbart fans who shit on kon, but i sure hope not, because they'd be annoying. the three of them are a set!!! do NOT separate. red tornado literally assigned them one shared brain cell. what is not clickign

[ezlo-x]

Personally I think the death of internet forums has ruined what a fandom used to be, because we now got everyone in one pot chewing each other’s head off. You can’t talk about how YOU interpret your favorite media without some idiot coming to forcefully agree with their take. I think we gotta start saying make your “own damn post” like yes im disagreeing with you but also get the fuck out of here this post is not for you and you clearly have a different opinion than mine. Youre not starting a discussion you’re just being annoying

[frostedpuffs]

every time someone makes a point to say that "Marinette doesn't wear makeup, she isn't like other girls" I want to SIGH because not only does Marinette Actually Wear Makeup in canon, it is exhausting that it is 2023 and people are still doing the "not like other girls" thing

[falling-star-cygnus]

y'all, Y'ALL- I just noticed that Hobie Brown has dimples

this is my favourite discovery

[apollos-boyfriend]

people who get caught up in the “good old days” are so detached from any actual modern media it’s ridiculous. does this person just think hand-drawn animation was taken out back and shot in 1998

[hypocrisy-incarnate]

people will really just sit around and try to win the 'think of the most depressed, traumatized, self destructive, threadbare washcloth of a man' challenge. and then decide to write a podcast about him.

[somegrumpynerd]

Does anyone else hc that Nightmare can like, absorb his tentacles back into his body sometimes? Like the way Stitch does with his extra arms?

[sadkachow]

You cannot claim to be anti-AI while still actively seeking out and using AI.

Once again.

You cannot claim to be anti-AI while still using generative AI, no matter the reason.

(Bold/italicized text: You cannot claim to be anti-AI while still using generative AI, no matter the reason.)

Even if you’re just using it to make fun of it or show how bad it is.

Even if it’s only for your personal use, and you don’t plan on sharing it with anyone.

Even if you’re “just” roleplaying on Character AI.

If you are willing to justify your usage of a system created and profiting off of stealing from artists and writers, a symstem that is destroying the Earth, then you were never as “against that system” as you think you were. Being anti-AI isn’t something that exists only in name. You can’t claim to be against AI if you are willing and able to use it as soon as it benefits you. You can’t say you’re for writers’ and artists’ rights if you’re using the very thing that is causing them harm. You can’t claim to care about climate change and saving the Earth if you are participating in the system that is destroying it.

There is no middle ground here.

There is no “Oh, but I-“.

If you have the knowledge of what generative AI is doing, of how it is hurting people, and you choose to use it anyway, you aren’t  against it. You aren’t fighting against that system, you’re upholding it.

You can say how much you hate AI and how horrible you think it is, if you choose to use it anyway, then your actions and your words are not lining up, and the former reveals so much more than the latter.

Stop pretending like AI is something you can condemn only in name, while using it to your heart’s content in your free time. All it does it tells writers and artists that you don’t really care about us, and that any actions you claim to be taking to protect us are performative at best and lies or even outright malicious at worst.

You are—and I mean this in the kindest way possible, even with the fury that generative AI invokes in me—a complete and utter hypocrite. AI is not your friend. It is a tool, and it is a tool that steals from writers and artists in order to function. It is a tool that is using levels of energy and emitting amounts of polution in order to be maintained that are actively damaging the Earth. No matter how much you try to justify using it to yourself, that doesn’t change.

Stop hiding under the guise of being anti-AI while continuing to use it yourself.

[maxx-the-queer]

Can't believe I'm saying this but I miss the references to Andraste and the Maker in Dragon Age. The exasperated exclaimations of "Maker's Breath," or "Andraste's ass," were so incredibly absent in Veilguard, I can't recall any dialogue where characters use them or an equivalent. I know the focus was on the Evanuris, but man, we've got at least 3 humans and 1 dwarf who by all likelihoods should be Andrastian and follow some version of the Chant.

I've seen fanfics where characters use "gods!" as an exclaimation like we're in Faerûn and not Thedas, because Veilguard just straight up forgets about the cultural importance of the Maker and Andraste and so new fans to the series have no idea either.