#echo chambers

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

This is hilarious: an epicly-overconfident Kamala-supporting "political analyst" prematurely celebrates a Democrat victory by purchasing champagne on election night and lecturing a man. Did it ever get drunk?

Best comment:

[cazort]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joseph Abehsera (@thekingzletter)

This is a very compelling and disturbing experiment by an instagram user, who found that Instagram is showing very different top comments to different people, and that this difference ends up strongly reinforcing confirmation bias, creating an "echo chamber" effect.

I.e. the algorithm shows people more of what they already agree with.

This has many negative effects:

it causes polarization, dividing people into different camps in particular issues.

It tends to reinforce people's beliefs rather than challenging them.

It makes people less empathetic when talking to people who hold different views from ours, because we wrongly assume that they have been exposed to certain ideas or perspectives because we see those things voiced frequently, but they may have never seen them at all.

I find this super creepy. I want to start or join a campaign to force Social Media companies to do this. We can do this through regulation, i.e. we can pass a law forcing companies to allow users the choice of whether or not to sort comments in this way, and we could make the law require users to opt-in, so make it so that the comments would default to showing in the same order for all users. There are many different options. Another thing that I would like would be requiring social media companies to explicitly say right above the comments, whenever the order of the comments has been personalized.

These laws would be great for small companies because it takes active effort and resources to personalize comments, so by default, smaller companies probably don't do it. I.e. not doing it is the path of least resistance so this would not be placing an unusual burden on smaller, newer, and less-well-funded social media companies.

[whatbigotspost]

It’s only an 11 min listen linked but to summarize:

•we’re pretty much never changing people’s minds who don’t agree with us

•we’re in echo chambers of feedback for what we already believe

•we get addicted on people who think like us already liking our posts and that reinforces and expands what we already generally think and feel

•it’s happening right now like this is it occurring wheeeeeeeee 😂🔫

[enbyhyena]

I don't know if anybody will notice/care, but for posterity's sake I want to explain why I haven't had a DNI in my pinned post, and share what I've just added to it as a way of explanation.

I don't have a DNI because I believe asking people not to interact shuts the door on personal growth and fragments communities (making them easier to prey on by real threats), and the objects of a DNI rarely listen anyways, sometimes even causing MORE harassment than you might otherwise receive.

Without allowing in outside voices now and again, you remove the ability to think critically for yourself. It's all too easy for a bad actor to sow discourse while presenting it in a seemingly harmless way, and without anyone to fact check, it can spiral out of control and cause even more finger-pointing, confusion, and disinformation. It is my belief that the collapse of communication between every level of our society has singlehandedly become the ultimate root cause of every problem we currently have.

I hate that everyone is being forced into echo chambers lately and are treated with extreme moral prejudice if they try to crawl out of it without immediately and fundamentally changing their beliefs (and are talked down to/condescended towards if they just want to learn about the other sides in a critical way, or Hell, even introduce new ideas altogether). I won't have anything to do with it and tbh neither should you. (I'm looking at you, shipcourse-posturing minors. You're all just hurting each other and yourselves. Stop it.)

Also, all of this is not intended passive-aggressively and I say it coming from a place of genuine concern for the communities I've grown up in and love. There are people that don't care if you're proship or anti, there are people who don't care if you're pro-endo or anti-endo...there are people who don't care whether or not you, as a gay person (generally speaking) believe trans or asexual people belong underneath the LGBT label. There are people who don't care what language you use to describe disability. Hell, there are plenty of people in power who don't even care if you're repub or dem (for American readers). This isn't to say that these conversations shouldn't happen and that we shouldn't talk about it; but that's just the problem. All these DNIs are achieving is shutting down communication and creating invisible cracks in our communities. And when we stand so far apart, it will be that much easier for our oppressors to take ALL of us down. They don't care about the differences. They want ALL of us gone regardless of nuance. They don't think we should exist AT ALL. Period. We are stronger together and our oppressors know this, so they plant seeds to isolate us.

Oppression has no morality. Oppression is indiscriminate and affects EVERYONE.

So yeah. That's my take. Don't care who you are, don't care what you post. I still reserve the right to moderate my feed and block as I feel the need to; but don't feel like you can't talk to me. I don't do that whole purity/cancel culture shit that's been so popular online/in fandom lately.

TL;DR Interact or don't, just don't be an asshole.

[rektober2024]

Rektober Day 4 - EchoChambers

The fun get-to-know-you minigame Rek created in his base in EchoCraft! I figured a great start to the EchoCraft based prompts would be that, as they're both a fun concept and looked really cool!

A below the ice cave/chamber with soul torches. The aesthetics are 10/10

For the video attached, Rek starts talking about creating the Echo Chambers around 4 minutes in :)

[leam1983]

Peepshow

I've joined the Gaming Circlejerk subreddit as of the past few days, and it can best be summed up as a place where tolerant cis allies, the LGBTQA+ and other individuals of alternative identities all come together to shake their heads at the Gamers™ losing their marbles at the sight of Intergalactic's horribly designed actually pretty main character which serves at another great use of photogrammetry, or at the notion that you'll be playing The Witcher 4 as Ciri, as opposed to Geralt. It's given us a few pearls, like fanart of both characters sporting sunglasses while drinking Slushie-shaped tumblers of Berry Frost-colored Incel Tears™. "So DEI-licious!" crows the drink's tag line, much to the subreddit's delight.

After a few days of joining my peers in equal parts mockery and consternation, I realized why I'd set my Firefox bookmark of my CrushOn.ai user page as my main point of ingress - as I didn't want to see the first page of appallingly popular Fetish content that honestly feels like Incel fodder.

I mean, I know on which platform I am. This is the Hellsite, where all kinks are welcomed as long as said kinks are explored consensually - up to a point, obviously. The thing is, what I make an effort to glance over each and every time I want to look at my notifications or at the comments left by my bots' users is honestly degrading, in my opinion. They're always within the site's very, very lax rules regarding content moderation (no underage content, everything else is fair game) but that opens the floodgates for honestly weird fantasies like apocalyptic universes where girls are penned like cattle or implausible circumstances where anally penetrating your hypothetical sister would somehow not qualify as incest...

At first, I didn't think much of it all. I swept it under the rug as just some early-pubescent fare, basically the result of raging hormones needing some girding before proper expectations could be set for dating someone of the fairer sex.

But I kept scrolling, hoping I'd come across my usual fare - bot-powered Softcore where Context and Consent are key - and only saw screen after screen of the same kind of material, where the user either degrades someone or is on the receiving end of a particularly humiliating treatment.

So, let's play Devil's Advocate. Let's assume that in the user base, there's people for whom this qualifies as catharsis. Let's assume that there is a percentage of people who have a self-aware and healthy relationship with these kinks; while understanding that with how extreme some scenarios can be, this means that some people need more. Some people don't just want to go for sub-dom kinks in the sanctity of a shared bedroom, but have the balls to more or less generate fanfics where either base biological gender can just snatch the other and subject them to seriously scarring treatment.

It's kind of hard to not think of this, when parsing through Gaming Circlejerk on Reddit, while realizing that for plenty of men, even fictitious women should be pliable, submissive, maternal, fair-skinned and of a delicate bone structure.

Pair that with the rise of Tradwives and the horrendous toads that serve as their husbands, parading store-bought Stetsons and cowboy boots around, and you're left realizing that a ton of young men online are not well at all, lately.

I see myself as a gamer. As in, someone who values the medium's capabilities to tell stories and to relieve the player or players of their burdens, in a way that's unique to themselves and that no book or movie could match. When I play competitively, it's to eventually break down cackling with similarly-inclined sympathetic pubbers or a few close friends. If a girl other than Sarah joins our group, I don't feel pressured to add chauvinistic jokes or to check her ability before the session starts.

On the other hand, the Gamers™ haven't gotten over Abbie from The Last of Us: Part II and wax Phrenology and Eugenics when they're not hurriedly stashing their Waifu Bait dakimakuras from their parents' sight.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ostromizing democracy

Friday (May 5), I’ll be at the Books, Inc in Mountain View with Mitch Kapor for my novel Red Team Blues; and this weekend (May 6/7), I’ll be in Berkeley at the Bay Area Bookfest.

You know how “realist” has become a synonym for “asshole?” As in, “I’m not a racist, I’m just a ‘race realist?’” That same “realism” is also used to discredit the idea of democracy itself, among a group of self-styled “libertarian elitists,” who claim that social science proves that democracy doesn’t work — and can’t work.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

You’ve likely encountered elements of this ideology in the wild. Perhaps you’ve heard about how our cognitive biases make us incapable of deliberating, that “reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments.”

Or maybe you’ve heard that voters are “rationally ignorant,” choosing not to become informed about politics because their vote doesn’t have enough influence to justify the cognitive expenditure of figuring out how to cast it.

There’s the “backfire effect,” the idea that rational argument doesn’t make us change our minds, but rather, drives us to double-down on our own cherished beliefs. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s the Asch effect, which says that we will change our minds based on pressure from the majority, even if we know they’re wrong.

Finally, there’s the fact that the public Just Doesn’t Understand Economics. When you compare the views of the average person to the views of the average PhD economist, you find that the public sharply disagrees with such obvious truths as “we should only worry about how big the pie is, not how big my slice is?” These fools just can’t understand that an economy where their boss gets richer and they get poorer is a good economy, so long as it’s growing overall!

That’s why noted “realist” Peter Thiel thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Thiel says that mothers are apt to sideline the “science” of economics for the soppy, sentimental idea that children shouldn’t starve to death and thus vote for politicians who are willing to tax rich people. Thus do we find ourselves on the road to serfdom:

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

Other realists go even further, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with orthodox (Chicago School) economists shouldn’t be allowed to vote: “[a]nyone who opposes surge pricing should be disenfranchised. That’s how we should decide who decides in epistocracy.”

Add it all up and you get the various “libertarian” cases for abolishing democracy. Some of these libertarian elitists want to replace democracy with markets, because “markets impose an effective ‘user fee’ for irrationality that is absent from democracy.

Others say we should limit voting to “Vulcans” who can pass a knowledge test about the views of neoclassical economists, and if this means that fewer Black people and women are eligible to vote because either condition is “negatively correlated” with familiarity with “politics,” then so mote be it. After all, these groups are “much more likely than others to be mistaken about what they really need”:

https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2015/03/the-demographic-argument-for-compulsory-voting-with-a-guest-appearance-by-the-real-reason-the-left-advocates-compulsory-voting/

These arguments and some of their most gaping errors are rehearsed in an excellent Democracy Journal article by Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier, and Melissa Schwartzberg (Mercier’s research is often misinterpreted and misquoted by libertarian elitists to bolster their position):

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/68/the-new-libertarian-elitists/

The article is a companion piece to a new academic article in American Political Science Review, where the authors propose a new subdiscipline of political science, Analytical Democracy Theory:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/analytical-democratic-theory-a-microfoundational-approach/739A9A928A99A47994E4585059B03398

What’s “Analytical Democracy Theory?” It’s the systematic study of when and how collective decision-making works, and when it goes wrong. Because the libertarian elitists aren’t completely, utterly wrong — there are times when groups of people make bad decisions. From that crumb of truth, the libertarian elitists theorize an entire nihilistic cake in which self-governance is impossible and where we fools and sentimentalists must be subjugated to the will of our intellectual betters, for our own good.

This isn’t the first time libertarian political scientists have pulled this trick. You’ve probably heard of the “Tragedy of the Commons,” which claims to be a “realist” account of what happens when people try to share something — a park, a beach, a forest — without anyone owning it. According to the “tragedy,” these commons are inevitably ruined by “rational” actors who know that if they don’t overgraze, pollute or despoil, someone else will, so they might as well get there first.

The Tragedy of the Commons feels right, and we’ve all experienced some version of it — the messy kitchen at your office or student house-share, the litter in the park, etc. But the paper that brought us the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons, published in 1968 by Garrett Hardin in Science, was a hoax:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin didn’t just claim that some commons turned tragic — he claimed that the tragedy was inevitable, and, moreover, that every commons had experienced a tragedy. But Hardin made it all up. It wasn’t true. What’s more, Hardin — an ardent white nationalist — used his “realist’s account of the commons to justify colonization and genocide.

After all, if the people who lived in these colonized places didn’t have property rights to keep their commons from tragifying, then those commons were already doomed. The colonizers who seized their lands and murdered the people they found there were actually saving the colonized from their own tragedies.

Hardin went on to pioneer the idea of “lifeboat ethics,” a greased slide to mass-extermination of “inferior” people (Hardin was also a eugenicist) in order to save our planet from “overpopulation.”

Hardin’s flawed account of the commons is a sterling example of the problem with economism, the ideology that underpins neoclassical economics:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Economism was summed up in by Ely Devons, who quipped “”If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’”

Hardin asked himself, “If I were reliant upon a commons, what would I do?” And, being a realist (that is, an asshole), Hardin decided that he would steal everything from the commons because that’s what the other realists would do if he didn’t get there first.

Hardin didn’t go and look at a commons. But someone else did.

Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel for her work studying the properties of successful, durable commons. She went and looked at commons:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons

Ostom codified the circumstances, mechanisms and principles that distinguished successful commons from failed commons.

Analytical Democratic Theory proposes doing for democratic deliberation what Ostrom did for commons: to create an empirical account of the methods, arrangements, circumstances and systems that produce good group reasoning, and avoid the pitfalls that lead to bad group reasoning. The economists’ term for this is microfoundations: the close study of interaction among individuals, which then produces a “macro” account of how to structure whole societies.

Here are some examples of how microfoundations can answer some very big questions:

Backfire effects: The original backfire effect research was a fluke. It turns out that in most cases, people who are presented with well-sourced facts and good arguments change their minds — but not always.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-019-09528-x

Rational ignorance: Contrary to the predictions of “rational ignorance” theory, people who care about specific issues become “issue publics” who are incredibly knowledgeable about it, and deeply investigate and respond to candidates’ positions:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08913810608443650

Rational ignorance is a mirage, caused by giving people questionnaires about politics in general, rather than the politics that affects them directly and personally.

“Myside” bias: Even when people strongly identify with a group, they are capable of filtering out “erroneous messages” that come from that group if they get good, contradictory evidence:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237827

Majority bias: People are capable of rejecting the consensus of majorities, when the majority view is implausible, or when the majority is small, or when the majority is not perceived as benevolent. The Asch effect is “folklore”: yes, people may say that they hold a majority view when they face social sanction for rejecting it, but that doesn’t mean they’ve changed their minds:

https://alexandercoppock.com/guess_coppock_2020.pdf

Notwithstanding all this, democracy’s cheerleaders have some major gaps in the evidence to support their own view. Analytical Democratic Theory needs to investigate the nuts-and-bolts of when deliberation works and when it fails, including the tradeoffs between:

“social comfort and comfort in expressing dissent”:

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0065-2601(05)37004-3

“shared common ground and some measure of preexisting disagreement”:

https://sci-hub.st/10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.1080

“group size and the need to represent diversity”:

https://www.nicolas.claidiere.fr/wp-content/uploads/DiscussionCrowds-Mercier-2021.pdf

“pressures for conformity and concerns for epistemic reputation”:

https://academic.oup.com/princeton-scholarship-online/book/30811

Realism is a demand dressed up as an observation. Realists like Margaret Thatcher insisted “there is no alternative” to neoliberalism, but what she meant was “stop trying to think of an alternative.” Hardin didn’t just claim that some commons turned tragic, he claimed that the tragedy of the commons was inevitable — that we shouldn’t even bother trying to create public goods.

The Ostrom method — actually studying how something works, rather than asking yourself how it would work if everyone thought like you — is a powerful tonic to this, but it’s not the only one. One of the things that makes science fiction so powerful is its ability to ask how a system would work under some different social arrangement.

It’s a radical proposition. Don’t just ask what the gadget does: ask who it does it for and who it does it to. That’s the foundation of Luddism, which is smeared as a technophobic rejection of technology, but which was only ever a social rejection of the specific economic arrangements of that technology. Specifically, the Luddites rejected the idea that machines should be “so easy a child could use them” in order to kidnap children from orphanages and working them to death at those machines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory

There are sf writers who are making enormous strides in imagining how deliberative tools could enable new democratic institutions. Ruthanna Emrys’s stunning 2022 novel “A Half-Built Garden” is a tour-de-force:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/26/aislands/#dead-ringers

I like to think that I make a small contribution here, too. My next novel, “The Lost Cause,” is at root a tale of competing group decision-making methodologies, between post-Green New Deal repair collectives, seafaring anarcho-capitalist techno-solutionists, and terrorizing white nationalist militias (it’s out in November):

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A lab-coated scientist amidst an array of chemistry equipment. His head has been replaced with a 19th-century anatomical lateral cross-section showing the inside of a bearded man's head, including one lobe of his brain. He is peering at a large flask half-full of red liquid. Inside the liquid floats the Capitol building.]

[liskantope]

I see my post from last night again wringing my hands over the way the dating world looks got some reblogs (including reblogs-without-comment), and I do want to express something that I'm not sure I've expressed before but has been warranted on some level for like ten years, which is... I (and we who are commiserating and reblogging each other's posts on this topic) need to be careful not to be fostering an echo chamber of the "feeding into one another's helplessness and hopelessness" type. I've always been critical of this when it's done by groups of (often very online) people that share some common challenge or marginalization status, including particularly groups who seem determined to wallow in some possibly overblown fear or ever-more-loosely-defined mental illness or neurological condition. And the more I notice that my dating-related posts get a certain amount of engagement, the more I'm aware that I run the danger of veering myself and others too far into the analog of this for "oh dating is so awful and scary and impossible, especially for men seeking women!"

Of course the ideal remedy would be to foster discussions that are productive and help us move forward, and to be fair, I would do a better job of doing that if I had any idea what the productive way forward in this realm should be.

[engagepro-social]

The Dark Side of Social Media: Unveiling the Dangers of Homophily

In today's digital age, social media platforms have become integral parts of our lives, connecting us with others around the world. However, amidst the allure of connectivity, there lies a darker side to social media—one that perpetuates homophily, or the tendency for individuals to associate with others who share similar traits or interests. In this blog post, we'll explore the negative aspects of homophily in social media and its potential risks.

Factors Contributing to Homophily:

Homophily, the phenomenon where individuals with similar characteristics are drawn to one another, has long been a subject of study in social network research. As McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook (2001) elucidate, "the idea that similarity breeds connection has been a major theme in research on social networks, both formally and informally, for almost half a century."

The Role of Social Network Services:

In their analysis of social network services, Lee and Ahn (2012) dive into the homophily effect, noting that "individuals with similar characteristics tend to be attracted to one another and form connections." This underscores the pervasive nature of homophily in shaping social interactions online.

Risks of Homophily in Social Media:

While homophily may seem innocuous at first glance, it can exacerbate existing societal divisions and perpetuate echo chambers, where individuals are only exposed to viewpoints that mirror their own. This can lead to polarization, as individuals become increasingly isolated within their ideological bubbles.

Preventing the Negative Effects:

To mitigate the negative effects of homophily, it's crucial to actively seek out diverse perspectives, engage in respectful dialogue with those who hold different viewpoints, and critically evaluate the information we encounter online. By cultivating a sense of curiosity and open-mindedness, we can combat the harmful consequences of homophily in social media.

In conclusion, while social media has the power to connect us in unprecedented ways, we must be cognizant of its potential pitfalls. By understanding and addressing the negative aspects of homophily, we can foster a more inclusive and diverse online community.

References:

Lee, E., & Ahn, J. (2012). An analysis of homophily effect on social network service. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7235, 245-252.

McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415-444.

[jbfly46]

Lol at the trans/LGBTQIA echo chamber of basing serious life decisions on pure emotion, apparently not knowing anything about crowd psychology, sociology, and peer pressure. I've met plenty of reasonable trans/LGBTQIA people, these are not reasonable people.

[medicinalblacklocusts]

PINNED POST.

howdy hey name's echo

they/them and it/its pronouns for me please and thanks

tone indicators would be appreciated, especially if you are making a joke as i have a difficult time deciphering intentions via text, i will also be using tone indicators when necessary or if i feel that my own tone could be misinterpreted

posts will mostly be about ieytd/ieytd2/ieytd3, but there will be the occasional oc spy posting (if i feel brave enough to do so)

there will be infrequent posts from me as my motivation levels are very inconsistent but i am up to chat so send in asks :)

all personalized tags used will be stationed here, including chat tag, art tag, oc tag, etc etc... more will be added as time goes on

if there's something that needs to be tagged as tw/cw that i forget, do notify me and i'll add it

here's the obligatory dni, do NOT interact if you are proship/MAP/NOMAP, homophobic/transphobic, exclusionist, racist, terf, etc, i'm not gonna fucking baby you about this and will block you immediately

[lamilana]

escape echo chambers!

Growing up, my family never outright identified clearly with one political party over the other. It was mainly just specific policies or actions they discussed. They often poked fun at politics and downplayed how serious it is. This led to me being more indifferent. I used to parrot their talking points in schools and to my friends, not understanding the impact of my words.

As I grew up, I gained more access to the internet. While this could have been disastrous, I credit the internet for introducing me to new perspectives I wouldn't have had before. With a staunchly conservative and religious family, some ideas I wouldn't have never comprehended the complexity or depth of them. Researching and coming to my own reasonable conclusions has given me a sense of individuality and self-confidence.

It's why I'm so against just listening to others around me and taking what they say as truth. Everyone has their own biases and values that will influence the ideas they promote. Children, especially, are vulnerable to harmful rhetoric spewed by the people they grow up with. If you watch the anti-integration protests at Central High in the 1950s, you'll see children who don't even understand algebra properly be ready to attack and villainize a whole group of people based on what they've heard from their communities.

People will comment on echo chambers present on social media and internet but neglect the echo chambers that are present in the United States. Many counties are still somewhat segregated due to racist policies. This prevents new generations from interacting from new cultures and developing an open mind. Thus, continuing another hateful cycle.

But that's not to say this problem isn't bad online. People nowadays have lost so much of their critical thinking skills to the point that they believe anything someone they support tells them. Whenever I'm scrolling on Twitter, I see multiple far-right accounts taking footage of something like Muslims in a European country and promote Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric by claiming it was an 'attack' (usually on Christianity). They get thousands of likes and comments of support, only for the community notes to reveal that the video is not where the original poster claims it's from.

People will control and mold you into their version or idea of who they want you to be if you let them. Politicians specifically gain from you being a sheep to their ideology because, in our corrupted government, it allows them to stay in office and make money off of investors. Many, but not all, don't have your best interests at heart, which is why you have to be a principled person. You have to open your horizons and become uncomfortable with the truths in society. We don't live in a perfect place: people die everyday from violence, kids are starving, and women are slowly losing their rights. Something like politics is something that impacts everyone. People don't understand the weight of their decisions. Yes, people the government are public servants but if you elect selfish people, they don't have to respond to your demands until the next election. If you don't the play the game, the game plays you!

[tetsunabouquet]

From the ask game

5. what made you start your blog?

6. What's the best and worst part of being a creator?

-Sevonnie <33

5. I actually explained that when I made a post about digitally restoring a drawing I made of an OC from an old friend of mine who ended up ghosting me years ago. She gently nudged me to start Tumblr as I wanted to post some of my projects like my sewing ones. As for coming back from a years long hiatus and re-starting as a fanfic blog that still posts my other art projects except for my doll related ones as I now have a seperate blog for that; it all started by reading fanfics on Tumblr during the summer after the pandemic was over when I was suffering from severe KNB brainrot.

I've mentioned a couple of times that I used to write fanfics in my teens but was basically bullied out of doing so by xenophobic readers who were just plain rude about me not being a native English speaker and my occasional hiccups. One even insulted me purely because I mentioned a Dutch term with an English explanation because it was apt and as far as I know this descriptive term doesn't exist in English. It was wild. But that summer sparked my want to write fanfiction again so now here I am. 6. The best part is all the love I get for my work and knowing it moves others and I've brought them joy, The worst thing is dealing with internet culture. For one, I hate the lack of nuance and just blindly painting something as good or bad. I've even lost a couple of mutuals and followers because I just refuse to participate in that game, they can cancel me for all I care. I've mentioned before how, during my creative writing studies, I developped a theory based on Freud's Id, Ego and Superego and internet culture like echo chambers and how the internet encourages people to achieve their Superego's with their Id and disregard their Ego entirely. Not acknowledging nuance is a factor tied to that very notion. This allows it to be easier to 'other' a group or a stance and eventually, demonize. Demonizing something online will eventually bleed through into your real life, wether it turns you into an enabler or downright toxic and discriminatory towards someone who is from that group or holds an opinion contrary to yours. And all of this, because demonizing the other group will hopefully bring more attention, profits of whatever benefits to the group that's doing the demonizing. This is one of the facets that I believe created the issue at hand. I really hate engaging with that kind of stuff.

[sumit-chauhan-1]

Blind Allegiances: Why We’re Obsessed with Choosing Sides We Don’t Understand

In a world driven by social media, news snippets, and viral opinions, people are increasingly drawn to choosing sides—political parties, sports teams, ideologies, or even trending controversies—without fully understanding the underlying issues. This behavior reflects a deep-seated need for belonging, identity, and validation, but it raises questions about the consequences of such impulsive…

[terfism-unmasked]

presented without (further) comment

Sometimes it boggles my mind that women can spend decades of campaigning and get hardly anywhere, still have their rights up for debate as a political ploy or chipped away over time, and can have statistics and research to back up every claim and be laughed at, but some males go “actually, we’re women because we say so” and they’re let into female spaces like ????