#correlation doesn't equal causation

[genericpuff]

yeah i don't think this is the kind of advertising rachel needs right now-

[solphage]

Just think of all the successful people currently enjoying that delicious substance; major CEOs? Great artists? Wielders of world power? All of them enjoy the high mountain powdered leaf, so with that kind of correlation it's irresponsible not to enact this proposal

proposal: mandatory state sponsored cocaine use for all american citizens

pros:

everyone will be faster

no more "woah, op what drugs were you on when you made this?" comments because we will always know what the drug is

open up a whole new industry and job market

cons:

unknown (possibly nonexistant)

[bitchesandbroomsticks]

Politicians are..."Bad" you say?

It really is funny how quickly republicans will say that the government isn't running right because politicians are corrupt and bad people and make money off of us while voting against our best interests and lying to us and not being efficient and not upholding the values a civil servant is supposed to...

...and then blame it all on democrats.

like, when I told my dad waaay back during trump's first campaign that I agreed that all politicians should subject to higher scrutiny and that the government isn't working as efficiently as they should and that congress should have term limits and age limits and that at the end of the day both parties were more like different sides to the same coin and both sides should be held accountable and not blindly trusted?

he said "Exactly, those damn democrats are-" and i tuned him out because it was clear that when i said "both sides have corruption" he heard "I agree the democrats corrupt" and couldn't be assed to dive any further.

I knew that back in 2015 and the same mentality that won his first presidency is at the core of his win this time, just grotesquely aged and morphed through rage feeds and publicly platformed conspiracies and racism.

[twoheartsoneclara]

i don't know that barbie (2023) is inherently to blame for all these weird "girl ____" trends going on but like. the timing of it is a bit suspicious to me.

[thatoctokittenclutchinganotebook]

I wish I knew how to reach out to my friends. I've been spending hours today alone trying to figure out how to message my friends. It's not the first time or last time. Almost every day I spend time thinking "You should message them" and then I don't because of my anxiety and depression and adhd. The closest I can apparently come to it is making a tumblr post in the hopes that one of the three friends who I think follow me on here will see it and go "Hmm, maybe he's not ignoring us because she doesn't want to hang with us. Maybe he just has anxiety and desperately wants to reach out and ask to play games together again!"

Doubt that will happen though.

I just always worry that I'll say the wrong thing and I sit there so afraid of saying the wrong thing that I never reach out at all, and all the friends I want to talk to or hang out with or be there for just drift away.

I wish I was a better person. I wish I was a braver person. I wish I could reach out to my friends.

[txttletale]

( i want to preface this by saying that im coming from a place of genuine confusion and wanting to learn, and if i say something rude please let me know/it is definitely not my intention ! ) i understand if you don't respond, but i'm kind of confused about the "being uncomfortable with incest/cnc/age-play (shortened to ICA for the purpose of this ask) kinks" is queerphobic post. in my own personal experience both online and offline, cishet couples where the woman calls her partner daddy are seen as cringey/uncomfortable. every person i've met who watches game of thrones has been made uncomfortable by the incest/doesn't support it. while i agree with the fact that kink is private business, i don't think the arguments provided are solid enough to say that being anti-ICA is exclusively queerphobic...? i feel like it more so has to do with structured discomfort. i do understand/agree that transfems are definitely under more scrutiny when it comes to kinks and fetishes, but i'm not sure if correlation equals causation here.

there is a huge jump between 'being uncomfortable' and the type of treatment that trans women online who are into Problematic Kinks™ get. nobody is asking you, personally, to be comfortable with everyone's kinks. my point is less that people are 'comforable' with the aformentioned mass-culture cishet expressions of these kinks, but that uncomfortable or not they do not respond to them with targeted mass sexual harassment, exile and ostracization from communities, and co-ordinated social murder campaigns. the cishet girl who calls her boyfriend daddy might be considered 'cringe' but she is not considered a dangerous predator who thousands of strangers need to be warned about and shown her private sexts so that everyone knows what a dangerous predator she is.

[xclowniex]

I really need goyim to listen to the whole "if 9 people sit at a table and then one nazi sits at that table and no one tried to remove the nazi, then there are 10 nazis at the table"

I have lost my entire irl friend group due to antisemitism, and whilst correlation doesn't equal causation, so im not saying anything as 100% fact, however there is mad correlation between levels of being antisemitic and closeness with a specific person.

I can't be bothered to turn it into a physcial graph but in my head, oo babie is it a strong graph

[natalieironside]

A couple years ago I started blocking every unfamiliar URL that called me dude or bro or something like that and all the transphobic harassment I'd been getting started to trickle off and then just kinda stopped completely. I straight up can't remember the last time I got a transphobic ask or comment directed at me, it's been like a year.

I know correlation doesn't equal causation but I can't help but suspect that maybe Kipling was onto something about the danegeld

[onesidedradiostatic]

Prev. https://www.tumblr.com/onesidedradiostatic/768663529880436736/re

Oh I see what you’re saying now! There’s been no “positive integer” of ace Mammon in the show! And you’re right!

I personally don’t hold out any hope that the show will ever cover or explicitly bring it up, outside occasional secondary/metatext, like the pride piece or social media. (I feel similarly about Alastor.) Can’t feel let down by the absence of something you hoped for if you never let yourself hope for anything! <— I tell myself, curled up on the floor. The old and factually incorrect “can’t miss what you never had” fallacy. /sarcasm

I’ve got aroace goggles but they’re not rose-tinted…. Likewise,

“(also having the "good" characters tell the ace character he's unfuckable and that he should keep fucking himself kindaaaaa doesn't sit right with me, I really don't want to read bad faith into mammon being made ace rep but it gets kinda hard like this)”

I feel this too, and nihilistically I feel like it’s just another one of those commonplace things that Hellaverse-style writing tends to use for comedic effect that inadvertently (or via unexamined bias, ie “this came so quickly and naturally to you that you didn’t pause to think about how this could come across to other people in your target audience or if there was a more effective way to do this before giving the go-ahead and locking it in? Ok.” Disclaimer: this is common in lots of media! I don’t intend to say it’s something unique to the H.verse writing. It can happen to anyone, like catching a cold, but it’s the hope that the writing and editing process will catch these instances and make them better, but stuff can slip through, it happens. No offence intended) implies something Less Than Ideal like a harmful stereotype or perpetuating casual bias and then assigning them Morality etc. We don’t need an aspec rendition of the Hays Code/Disney/dudebro film “queer-coded villain who you can tell is bad because they’re queer and that’s bad because it’s not good like the good guy!”

The “You like/don’t like sex/romance? What’s wrong with you? I’m the normal one!” can be toxic/dehumanising in both directions when one side thinks it’s superior to the other. But the common M.O is

- the old “If sex/romance = value/virtue/humanity, Then less/no sex/romance = less/no value/virtue/humanity”

- (Bonus points when it equates sex/romance with the capacity to love and be loved!)

- which when used as an insult is basically just a rehashed cousin of those nice-guy “fuck you you’re ugly anyway” and manosphere “I don’t want to fuck you therefore you have no/negative value”

- weirdly but not that surprisingly, it shares a few vibes with ablism, probably because certain people see aspec as something “missing or defective”. Which has historically been thrown at all lgbtqia+ so it’s sad that it persists from within the queer umbrella

- But, loosely speaking of theoretical connections to ablism… I’m not claiming that fidget toys are exclusively for one type of neurodivergence/or ASD. But there is enough fodder for a potential bad-faith reading “show implies aspec symptom of neurodivergence/ASD, says they’re unfuckable and less valued than neurotypical amatonormatives! correlation does not equal causation!” type thing. I’m too sleepy to go there.

- Saying “you’re unfuckable” to someone who doesn’t want to Do The Fucks isn’t an insult in of itself, (it’s like saying “You’ll never get a girlfriend!” to a gay dude, they’d be like “that’s exactly what I want!”) but the connotation that fuckable= worth as a person, therefore they have no worth, is. Like, you could just say “you’re a worthless piece of shit” and not bring sex into it at all, but it’s Hellaverse and sex is everywhere, including the language. It’s the lingua franca… the lingua fucka?

I could assume a goodish faith usage of insulting an ace character as unfuckable/‘the only person who’ll fuck you is you die mad’* in the “I know this bothers you, so I’m using it to bother you” way. Like how in the pilot Angel used -isms to bother Vaggie. :/

*’the only person who’ll fuck you is you’ is also a bonus trope of ‘aspec people are autosexual/autoromantic or self obsessed’ 😂

But yeah otherwise it sits weird.

There’s so much one could write and explore just on the general topic of “Aspec and Othering in the Hellaverse”, it’s actually fascinating. Whether it’s a good fascinating or bad fascinating is irrelevant though. Gender and Sexuality in horror and horror-inspired media is always a blast to look into. (You can’t tell me Alastor isn’t a little horror inspired. How his aspec-ialty can play a part in his portrayed uncanny-valley not-humanness to other sinners, being part device, performance and contradictory animal, etc etc. There’s heaps to go on if anyone felt inclined. Goodnight tumblr)

(prev)

this is a lot so I don't think I can cover everything here but yeah

I personally don’t hold out any hope that the show will ever cover or explicitly bring it up, outside occasional secondary/metatext, like the pride piece or social media.

alastor was at the very least allowed a verbal confirmation in hazbin itself so I don't think it's impossible for mammon (or octavia) to have allusions to their asexuality in their show, really I accept even subtext. for mammon it's still not even subtext yet, just word of god. but again, I won't fully judge him as bad rep here because obviously the show isn't over yet so reference to his asexuality could still come up in the future, I just had some hope it would happen sooner than later y'know and also ASMODEUS got to show up in full pan wear but we don't get any reference to mammon being asexual?

but yeah sorry this one is kinda nitpicking at this point, moving on, all you said after that yeah exactly what I meant about bee saying no one wants to fuck mammon as an insult, I know it's probably not intentionally shaming an ace character for it but it still can have bad implications even with good intention as just a lighthearted canon-typical joke

and this actually

- But, loosely speaking of theoretical connections to ablism… I’m not claiming that fidget toys are exclusively for one type of neurodivergence/or ASD. But there is enough fodder for a potential bad-faith reading “show implies aspec symptom of neurodivergence/ASD, says they’re unfuckable and less valued than neurotypical amatonormatives! correlation does not equal causation!” type thing. I’m too sleepy to go there.

I'm a bit worried about the infantilisation too, I've already seen people compare mammon talking about sex as an asexual to being like a child talking about sex

and mammon's constant use of toys in the trial doesn't really help with it, I worry that the logic behind mammon as ace rep comes down to "he's too childish and immature to understand sex and just pretends to understand it when he talks about it like a child" and that's on top of the whole "I can't see him caring about anyone legitimately therefore he's ace" logic which I have ALSO seen people say in response to him being ace

I don't want to assume that these were the actual intentions behind making him ace, of course these qualities can co-exist on top of being ace but the problem starts when you start correlating them and I think it's already bad that these are takeaways some parts of the fandom have

maybe I'm judging too early, maybe I just need to wait for mammon to be referenced as ace in the show itself and see how it's treated. but just. idk. there's just a lot of factors at play that makes me skeptical of him as ace rep, I was already skeptical when he was revealed as ace rep in the helluva pride art but this episode's showing of him has made me even moreso. genuinely, I do think having a canon sex-favourable ace is good! great in fact! but I can't praise it just for that when there's no indication of him being ace that you can see from watching the episode, if there is ever an episode that indicates him being asexual while being sex-favourable then I will praise it

anyways sorry for having topics surrounding ace mammon be so negative, I feel like it could overshadow the fact that I still really enjoyed the episode!!

[echologname]

In support of Sam x Danny

We never got to see what the relationship of the Phantom trio was like before the portal accident but I think it's mostly similar to how we see them in the show. To me, it seems like it's implied that Sam always secretly liked Danny and then one fateful day, she and Tucker witnessed him almost die, don't you think after something traumatic like that, it's harder to keep feelings for another inside? Also, after Danny got his powers and started fighting ghosts, Sam got to witness his bravery and willingness to help people put to extreme tests. She didn't fall in love with him because of cool powers, she genuinely fell in love with who he is. His new life as a halfa, like all trials in life, helped him to become a better person, throughout their adventures virtues were strengthened and vices were weakened and their friendship was matured through its testing. I don't see it but it's a common claim that Sam only started crushing on Danny AFTER he got his powers which paints her in a shallow view. So, I'd like to point out correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Clearly Danny went through big changes from the accident but I betcha Sam and Tucker weren't quite the same themselves and if one of them being a more prominent openness to showing affection then there's nothing wrong with that.

Whether friends or lovers, I think both work but I just wanted to say, Sam doesn't deserve the hate she gets from fans for canonically being the one to end up with Danny in the end. And who's to say it's a forever thing? Teens are constantly growing and changing and so are their romantic interests. It's OK to think you work together at one point and not so much the next. Their identities are still developing and so are their brains. And if they do stay together forever, no matter what happens, then isn't that all the more sweet and wholesome? Even if Sam had an inkling of ghostly bias towards liking him, it's totally the green eyes given how much she likes plants and nature (ironically green is the color of life and health).

The whole episode with Sam falling for the fake foreign exchange guy who looks a lot like Danny's ghost form doesn't help her case. I get it, because of an example like this, fans fear she likes Phantom more than Fenton. But his whole persona WAS all an act for the purpose of targeting what a specific girl likes like telling Sam he was a vegetarian then acted like a jock in front of cheerleaders. Or maybe this is what she needed, to see that like Danny, this guy also had an alter ego but he was using it deceptively for personal gain. Meeting Danny PHANTOM for the first time might have felt like meeting a new person to her, so a stranger from another country symbolizes that. Then the truth about him being a jerk comes out when he metaphorically, "drops his mask." Sam knows both sides of Danny and knows that he isn't like that guy at all, and she's seen for herself that he's still himself no matter what he looks like. He genuinely wants to help people and doesn't put on an act. Perhaps this failed relationship helped her realize how much Danny cares for her both as Fenton AND Phantom and that he's always been a good friend she can trust (he DID spy on her in the episode and of course Sam was offended but it didn't really hurt their relationship).

Disagreeing with them being together is still understandable but c'mon, how many relationships were you in that was also a cringe pairing? Relationships aren't perfect but the people that we were/are with have helped us understand ourselves and each other more. The person you're with now may be who you need to be with for a certain period of your life to help prepare you for the one you'll be with forever. It's important for even awkward and rash relationships to take their course so we can grow from them.

So, I think we can find it in our hearts to be more forgiving to some cartoon kids. Sam and Danny's relationship is an important part of their character development no matter how it turns out or how much the ship is hated.

[sinofwriting]

If you could humor me, how do you think drivers would respond to Arthur questioning them about why so many drivers suddenly got married? I say: Charles ruffles his hair dramatically and says everyone just wants to be on his level, Max gives something brief about them all just being in the age/phase of life where many get married before ranting about the car, Ollie blushes and stammers that he forgot to water his cat before running away, Oscar shrugs and says he never noticed, Mark says correlation doesn't equal causation, and Jenson seamlessly flips the focus by asking Arthur if he is wanting to get married and does he have a special someone and that's why he's focused on this. -🦢

In reference to this ask

Okay but you nailed it.

Charles would just ruffle his hair and say that people are copying him (y'know ignoring the fact the in verse you have to be an active driver/retired for less than three years to claim a wife and that everyone else had a claimed a wife before him other than Oscar and Ollie).

Max would say it's just time for everyone to settle down, ignoring Arthur pointing out that just a few months before he was married Max was very vocal about not settling down yet.

Ollie is trying his best to avoid Arthur after how mad the older got at him for not inviting him to the wedding and says something about feeding the car, locking himself, which then gives Arthur even more of headache cause he can never tell with Ollie if it's some weird English saying or Ollie just messing up his words.

Arthur approaches Oscar and Mark at the same time and is less than impressed with their responses of it happens.

Jenson's response makes him book a trip in hopes of finding the love of his life because no Jenson! He doesn't have anyone special and yes he is jealous! How can he not be when it seems like every single person he knows has a wife and is attached at the hip with them. He's getting worried that Dino is gonna just pop out of nowhere with a wife.

Jenson then watches as Arthur has a small breakdown over all of this and has to stop himself from laughing when Arthur says that Leo will have a wife before him.

[battle-subway-ghost]

Personally, I'm putting my bets on superstition. I've never seen evidence of them actually attracting more shiny Pokemon.

so is anyone else wondering how shiny charms work?

are they magic or something??? do people make shiny charms?

or is it just superstition and they don't actually do anything

[ororoiqaditchalla]

THE STREETS HAVE SPOKEN

So much for Ayodele bending the knee. Let's review.

Storm #3 - Storm is ass out in an open field getting raw piped by Wolverine. Sales DROPPED from #36 to #39.

Storm #4 - Storm is in the afterlife speaking fondly of her first love, T'Challa. Sales rose 14 spots from #39 to #25 in units sold AND broke into the top 50 in dollars at a staggering #35.

Do I think the mention of T'Challa is what shot the sales up? Of course not. Correlation does not equal causation - I'm just being a petty jackass. But Storm #3 had it all. An appearance by the X-Men. Incredible art. A lifelong fan favorite pairing. Rough and raw cheek bussin'. And it's obvious that Storm/Wolverine having sex was supposed to be the hook to bring the readers in. Marvel was pushing that sex scene so hard (Breevort was even bragging about it in a chat before the issue hit the stands). Not only did Ayodele's Monster's Ball moment not help the sales, the numbers dropped.*

Are we really supposed to believe that the appearance of Dr. Doom made that big of a difference in sales when the X-Men guest appearances did not? That a mere lingerie pic sold thousands more issues than raw sex between a favorite fan couple? Stormverine may be the favorite couple of self-hating Black women and the virgins who love them, but no one else is buying it - literally.** It's a terrible pairing that reduces Storm to nothing but Wolverine's cum rag. It doesn't work. It's never worked. Hell, it didn't even work in this issue. Let it go.

Perhaps the sales rise was just a coincidence. Perhaps it was a shot across the bow. Either way, was it worth degrading such an iconic, legendary Black female character who means the world to so many of us - especially Black women - just to create a little buzz? Only Ayodele can tell us that, and when it comes to what he has to say about the matter...

___

*And before anyone starts crying about Blackness, let's not forget that the sex scene b/t T'Challa and Ororo in Storm #4 (2006) created ten times the fury as Storm #3 - and rightly so.

**Again, I truly believe had that scene been done with respect instead of just going for shock value, it would have gone over far better. There are a million ways Ororo and Logan could have hooked up without rutting like wild animals - especially since this is a Storm solo. However, doing so would be rewriting the Stormverine relationship into something respectable - something it has never been - so you gotta give Ayodele credit for not doing so.

[tf2heritageposts]

Dude this kind of behavior is exactly why I usually don't mention that my own groomer was a trans woman, in the sense that I don't wanna come off as demonizing transfems. Like yeah she's trans, doesn't erase the fact that she's a nonce NOR should it reflect badly on every trans woman ever. Every situation like this has nuance, correlation does not equal causation, and nobody's identity absolves them of the consequences of their actions. People blatantly overlooking the evidence you have presented and calling you transphobic for speaking out against your abuser is just so bizarre and disrespectful. I genuinely hope you are safe and everything turns out well for you.

thank you so much man and i hope you’re doing okay

i really feel like i have to word everything i say carefully and with a disclaimer that not all trans women are like this because of how fucking stigmatized they already are, especially with the stereotype already that they’re pedophiles and rapists

and it’s already a major problem for people to witch-hunt transfems over the mildest of reasons so this just makes me feel fucking horrible even though i know what happened

hell you have zero idea how little i wanted to go public with this. i even said in the discord server this

which i had to say for people’s safety

but then delilah made a post herself trashing us and making up shit and my hand was forced and i hate that so much

[crazycatsiren]

I'm going to say this out loud one more time: abusive people are abusive because they're abusive, not because they're mentally ill. Mental illnesses don't make people abusive. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

[alan-in-the-outernet]

Where is Victim, in the source AU? If Chosen and Dark never became cyberterrors, and thus never attacked Newgrounds, does that mean Vic is happily living elsewhere?

Has any word reached him about this weird being that was spotted? Or the strange actions of his rival company?

Victim is still a cofounder of rocket corp with Mitsi, so he is happily living and doing that with her while she acts as CEO! And Agent's around of course too.

And I imagine while the being itself isn't public knowledge, they've probably heard of SOMETHING... down the grapevine, so to speak.. of some weird potentially new species that had disappeared... and are trying to find out...

...And then they learn something was stolen from that rival company.. something that company is DESPERATELY trying to find...

...And while correlation doesn't equal causation, well... it's something to look into