#genuinely i am not mad that there is An Issue

[uncle-fruity]

I really want to underline some truth:

I am a better activist and a more energetic and enthusiastic participant in the issues I care about now that I've stopped believing the guilt trippers and have involved myself in activism on my own terms.

I get to decide what I do and do not care deeply about. That's not another person's place to tell me what I think and feel -- especially if it's a complete stranger. I know myself better than they know me.

I get to decide what is too much for me. I set my own boundaries and priorities. Other people might not agree with me, but they can die mad. I'm not their soldier to recruit, and what I do with my time and energy is my business, not theirs.

I know my body and my limitations better than anyone else. The people who truly love me and support me trust me to manage my ups and downs and do not assign a moral status to me when I take care of my needs first. Especially over time, they know that I will be back and ready to help out as soon as I'm able to. When I'm less able to participate, the people who love and support me take care of me and make sure I know they're there for me.

I am no longer doing activism in any real way online. At most, I try to provide some education and some emotional/mental health support. If you look at my Tumblr, you won't see even half of what I deeply care about. Part of that is a growing sense of internet safety, and another part of that is that there is very little I can do online that's going to make a difference. Another part of that is when you post stuff as a reaction or out of a sense of obligation, you're more likely to spread misinformation, especially if you don't take time to verify the information (which can be genuinely difficult if you don't know how to do that). I fell into that trap a fair amount when I was so guilt ridden that I was terrified to be seen as a Bad Person.

Which brings me to this major point: there will always be people who are quick to judge you and quick to make you out as a Bad Person no matter what you do. In someone's mind, you are probably already a Bad Person. Does that actually make you a Bad Person? Does someone else's definition of good and bad line up with yours, and does it matter? Have you considered that the person calling you a bad person might be a bad person by your standards? Who has the right to strictly define morality in the first place? Regardless of the answers to those questions, you don't have to let other people define you. And the guilt trippers are doing substantially more harm to the cause than people who are trying to rest for their emotional and mental health. I don't think that makes them bad people, but it does make them bad at community building, which is a fundamental necessity for activism.

My advice, if you really want to be a good activist, is to kill the part of your brain that tells you you aren't good enough and don't deserve rest until you are. No one can do it all. No one is a perfect activist or a perfect person. You need to have a clear idea of what your priorities are and what your capabilities are. You need to seek community and, as OP originally stated, joy. It's not just you who needs something to fight for or who needs breaks, your community needs it too. If you overwork and constantly retraumatize yourself, you will eventually hit burnout and you will not be able to help at all for much much longer than if you had just taken a break or made time for the good things in life when you first needed to. You also run the risk of creating a culture where no one else feels like they deserve rest and eventually burn themselves out, too. Then where does the movement go when all its activists are too stressed and tired and having a crisis of morality to do the work? The movement goes to die, is where. Sure, being angry is valid and important, but if that's all that's keeping you here, you're going to find that anger is not sustainable and will eventually give way to extreme depression when you realize that anger alone does not fix the many problems of the world. Your anger and guilt will kill a movement so much harder than indulging in a little positivity and rest from time to time.

Oh, and me? Now that I've gotten out of guilt trippy and frankly abusive online activist spaces, I am so much better at doing activism that matters. I organize a queer art group. I attend meetings to discuss problems and try to find solutions. I have more energy to educate myself and others. I can do more direct action. All of this is stuff that I literally had no space for while I was suffering from the burnout those online spaces caused that I now have space for because I decentralized social media in my life and especially in my activism.

Please. For your own sake and for the sake of the causes you care about: take a break. Have a rest. Do something fun. This is me telling you directly that the people guilt tripping you are being inappropriate & rude at best and literally abusive at worst. It is okay to forget them and live your life in ways that serve both yourself and others. They have no power to send you to Hell, I promise.

Sorry about the rant I'm just SO sick of this "we have to be on all the time never look away if you aren't upset about politics and traumatizing yourself watching people die on Twitter you're wrong and complicit and evil" like I know things are fucked and we need to stay angry but we can do that while also taking a minute to crack open a cold one with the boys or have gay sex or get tipsy at the line dance, we HAVE to have joy to remember why the fuck we're refusing to give up in the first place. Fight like hell for your loved ones and then also go home with them to smoke weed and drink sweet tea and make biscuits covered in honey and butter please, please don't deprive yourself of joy, you're allowed to be happy BEFORE the work is done. You're allowed to be happy.

[virginiaisforvampires]

I see some people are freaking out because Jacob said something to the effect of " This is Sams season," and thinking that means that there wont be a lot of Louis this time around.

I am taking the positive viewpoint in thinking it means that Louis has figured himself out and won't be off on a side quest trying to come to terms with his existence and will be there to support Lestat while he tells his story.

Perhaps in the background but not gone, since it is the Loustat show and all.

To be fair, that's not why they're throwing a tantrum. It's the same subset of ignorant assholes, and they're belittling and mocking Jacob yet again, because they are pissed they think he said something nice and supportive about Sam.

That is literally it, and I hope this little incident will serve as the ultimate proof of their constant bullshit never having actually been about Louis or Jacob.

It's always been about their performative, manufactured outrage and pearl-clutching, because the show is not the one they made up in their heads. They don't give a shit about Louis or Jacob. All they care about is getting attention and being right in their delusions, publicly punishing the ones they deem wrong, and furthering their hateful, vile agenda of inserting bullshit where it does not belong.

They have always been the issue within this fandom and what more evidence do people need to finally understand what has been happening? Just look at the way they treat Jacob and the fact they are now, like I said, big mad because they think Jacob dared say something positive about Sam.

It was never the show they made up in their heads, and they're lashing out more and more, because deep down they know their reign of terror is about to become null and void i.e. that's why the phrase "it's Sam's season" was such a trigger.

It has nothing to do with genuine concern about Louis' story. It has to do with the fact Lestat is not the terrible villain they made up in their heads, and they have no identity in this fandom outside of that notion.

[legacysam]

I'm lucky that my job is usually pretty easy, but due to technical issues it was bonkers today and will probably be the same tomorrow and I am ready to throw the entire IT department into a volcano

[bidokja]

I thought you kin kdj?

anon i hope this is a joke cause if this is a genuine question it is the singlemost scathing read i have ever recieved in my life 👏 bravo

[werehamburglar]

I actually went through this... surprisingly recently. Months ago-- almost a year ago-- I committed some sort of faux pas with a group of friends, tried to talk it out (tried), and asked that they communicate with me more up-front about what I'm doing wrong in the moment because I can't tell what I've done to upset them. I can pinpoint, sometimes, that people are upset (sometimes), but the actual cause is much harder; and that sometimes is operative, since I don't know most of the time. I really, really don't. Either the whole world is in on a joke and I'm joking along and taking it too far, or I ruin the joke, or it wasn't actually a joke, or, or, or-- I never know where I stand. You know? I don't think asking for more communication about when, where, and how I've messed up is that big an issue.

Only, it happened again-- I took something too far without knowing that I did so (because they didn't tell me after I asked), and this burbled and festered at the same time that an apparent wound concerning something else I was apparently doing wrong was beginning to rot, and apparently there was an issue that was going on for years that nobody told me about and was silently mad at me for without telling me; and how am I supposed to know without being told? I can ask and I can guess, but putting the onus on me to navigate these mazes when I have the "can't navigate social mazes" disorder is... well, it's not insulting, but it does hurt. It sent me reeling, to the point of crying at work while I was scrubbing dough shelves. And I'm sure they didn't think twice about it, but I was thinking over every possible interaction I could have messed up with them over the past four years.

Friend groups refusing to help, callout posts, these cultures of silently rolling our eyes and deciding to condemn rather than communicate-- who does it help? Genuinely? Who does it help? This culture of punishment only serves to reinforce that we are other, that we are lesser, that we deserve worse-- and, I'm not sorry for saying this, but I don't. We don't.

I think... I think we're all able to say things like, "That wasn't quite appropriate and here's why," or "Hey, knock it off." It's not too much to ask. It makes things easier for everyone.

I saw some snippet of a callout post for an autistic trans woman where they list social faux pas she committed, and I think we allistic people should all feel 100x more ashamed of not telling people in the moment how we feel about what they're doing. I think its extremely evil and cruel to not only lie to an autistic person and blame them for it but also to feel justified shaming them for your behavior. And it's currently the social norm to do that

[alastyr-not-alastair]

Hhhungryyyyyyyyyyy

[lesbiradshaw]

people reducing liam to the fanon archetypes of either Sunshine Puppy or Aggressive Dickhead is crazy because i rlly do think he’s one of the most complex members of the main cast when you actually LOOK at him outside of a shipping lens.

[seaofreverie]

Had the most awful ruined day because my flatmates who had been telling me that I'm not doing something (doing my portion of the weekly cleaning) that I very much DID do each week, decided today to fully reveal their awfulness and keep pestering me over it once more, telling me that I don't clean and asking me to tell them what exactly I cleaned like they're the owner of this flat and not just someone I'm sharing a living space with, and all the while I was being polite about it and not attacking them over all the things I could be bitching about if I were them, like how THEY don't clean after themselves and how they're loud at 4am and keep inviting friends several times a week. What I got in return was that they apparently thought I wasn't home so after I stopped texting them the same thing over and over they all met up and loudly made fun of me and congratulated each other over the "sick burns" they threw at me and implied that they think I'm stupid and somehow don't understand what I'm being told. All the while I was sitting in my room wanting to blow the entire place up because I needed to leave for a meeting I had later and couldn't leave that godforsaken flat.

[dennisboobs]

plain and simple i am not going to be able to remain in this fandom long-term if i have to keep putting disclaimers on every single one of my posts that say i don't condone dennis' bad, bad actions and that i am in fact aware he's got a history of sexual assault and dubious/nonconsent. the entire gang has done heinous shit. why is dennis the only one who needs to be treated like this? if some rando wants to post about how dennis is pookie pie that doesn't automatically mean they're blind to his crimes. every single member of the gang is a piece of shit. that's kind of the point.

draw dennis with cat ears who give a shit

[atopvisenyashill]

do love how this is an asoiaf blog but i did not put either show in my top 10 this is the world we live in

[guinevereslancelot]

not to be ungrateful but i don't get paid enough at my job lol

[rolandeepyaoi]

i'm not diagnosed with autism, but it is highly suspected to be something that i have by everyone around me. one of the biggest things that's been keeping me from really accepting that i may be autistic is that i've always thought i was a really empathetic person!! and even if i had a lot of trouble discerning what emotions other people are feeling, i thought i was still empathetic! and i was explaining this to my friend and she was like, those two things are the same. i was super confused, but apparently empathy is feeling With the other person, not For them. so im sympathetic, not empathetic. and i genuinely had the most . idk. cinematic rerun of my entire life and how i've interacted with anyone ever. i've never had a crazier moment of brain-melting confusion ever. i realized that no, i wasn't very empathetic at all. and then i facetimed my best friend since second grade and she So Casually said, "yeah you've never been a very empathetic person." LIKE HELLO????? THIS IS NEWS TO ME!!!!!!!!!!! idk my entire world shifted. i've been acting differently my entire life and i never noticed. was some really really freaky shit to realize.

[frascospecimen]

Splatoon 3 fans will just find fucking anything to get mad about huh

[muirneach]

every time i can tell that im being too much of a hater on here im like. okay im taking a step back i will become zen. but it never sticks. cest la vie as they say

[neuromantis]

i got a different type of sour gummies (actual strips!) and a cheaper energy drink.

i intend to get my battery acid spaghetti as close to the original as possible. i need to try it. i have to do this.

[partoftheairforce]

also accidentally ordered both of the bfiafl japanese deluxe cds last night..

i should not be able to purchase things at 2am! missing the hundred bucks today but happier about the cds 💋💋💋💋