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feminetflix · 5 years ago

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De atracos y ab*rtos - Of heists and ab*rtions or How women are being robbed.

⚠️ this contains major spoilers for LA CASA DE PAPEL / MONEY HEIST season 1, specifically episode 3!

Personally, I have experienced the series la casa de papel (original title) or money heist as progressive, realistic and not afraid to deal with certain topics like domestic violence which I will be commenting on in posts yet to be published, female trans representation and occasionally peppered with numerous feminist parentheses (see characters like Nairobi and dialogues around/involving her opinion).

However, there are certain aspects I did not enjoy to watch / do not support. That is normal and every show has its flaws, those resulting all the more dangerous however, as money heist is not just any show. The series is thanks to its popularity by now a relevant aspect of people’s opinion-forming and plays into the perception of many people all around the world, coming from different cultures and having experienced all kinds of upbringing. The target audience is not specified, yet crime drama (the genre) is estimated to target both females and males aged 15-40 years old. Means, also targeting minors and adolescents. Again, all cultures / religions / races / classes etc etc included.

I am fully aware that this kind of range was not expected and therefore not taken into account by producers, talking about the first two seasons that were solely meant for a Spanish audience, not an international one. (The series was initially intended as a limited series to be told in two parts. It had its original run of 15 episodes on Spanish network Antena 3 from 2 May 2017 through 23 November 2017. Netflix acquired global streaming rights in late 2017). The analysed / discussed scene is indeed part of this maybe not so carefully crafted content. Cough.

Let’s get right into it.

Characters interacting: Mónica Gaztambide (Esther Acebo), one of the hostages who was also Arturo Román's secretary and introduced as his mistress and “Denver” (Jaime Lorente), one of the robbers participating in the heist [Denver is an alias, all robbers being referred to with city names]

Context: Mónica has an affair with Arturo Román (Enrique Arce) -hostage and former Director of the Royal Mint of Spain- which leads to an unwanted pregnancy. Numerous factors influence her (for now) final decision: she doesn’t want the child. Shortly after, the robbery unfolds and she’s taken hostage among other people. She then requests an ab*rtion pill, which at some point arrives in the mint alongside other medical supplies. The scene analysed: one of the robbers (Denver) is supposed to hand her mentioned ab*rtion pill. Before that he holds an emotional speech on the subject, morally risen forefinger, accusations and tears included.

Here the dialogue without comments:

————Now my opinion / the actual post:

“You need money, right?” One might think that the amount of money seen in this frame (20.000,-€ approx. $21.701,50 according to Denver) is an exaggerated, way too generous gesture. Let me tell you, it is not.

According to a 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost of raising a child from birth [to] age 17 is $233,610. If that made your heart skip a beat, take a deep breath before you read on. Incorporating inflation costs, it will be more like $284,570. Since that’s based on 2015 numbers, we can expect the cost will be even higher, babies born since then.

[…] This average includes everything from housing, food and transportation to healthcare, education and childcare to clothing, personal care items and entertainment.

Let me now remind you that Mónica is a secretary, so she likely earns (barely) enough money to be financially independent herself (taking into account that she lives near or maybe even in Madrid, her workplace, the Royal Mint situated there, so housing alone is hella expensive) and can’t really expect reliable support coming from the potential child’s father, Arturo Román, either, who initially denied support himself, their relationship a secret to the family and wife he already has. Phew.

Btw: A University of California at San Francisco study found that women who were turned away from ab*rtion clinics […] were three times more likely to be below the poverty level two years later than women who were able to obtain ab*rtions. 76% of the "turnaways" ended up on unemployment benefits, compared with 44% of the women who had ab*rtions.

“Enough to get the kid diapers until he graduates.” The problem or let’s say points raised above are now also being ridiculed or not taken seriously to say the least.

She takes the money, sticking to her decision however. “So, what’s the problem?” Or “Then, what is it?” A million additional things, Denver, believe it or not a potential child is a big deal. That and none of your business.

Also, see the reaction? How he stares at her in disbelief (and possibly even disgust, see the risen corner of his lips?). How he looks at her as if she were heartless, selfish, a monster – the picture often painted in this debate when it comes to women who decide to terminate a pregnancy. How he doesn’t respect her “no, thanks” and continues. Continues influencing her, later on even starts to mansplain his way into her stone cold heart. Okay, then let me continue as well.

“That he’ll f*ck up your life? […] Your son. Better to have your life f*cked up by your son than any of these sons of b*tches. Or me.” Call it ‘f*ck up’ or not – that is entirely her perception, her decision and I’d dare to say…she knows best.

First, because regardless of the fact that she is a woman and you are not – well it is indeed her life and, uhm, excuse me Denver, you’re no sibling, no friend, no acquaintance, quite the contrary, you have known her for what? Three minutes and already jump to conclusions?

Take the privilege of explaining her how a child would f*ck or not f*ck up her life?!!

Secondly, what makes him assume the gender of this cluster of cells, this potential future life, this basis for a potential life that may later on develop into a life (it is not a walking talking baby boy already, my friend!).

Personhood begins after a fetus becomes “viable” (able to survive outside the womb) or after birth, not at conception.

Does it provide a smooth transition for that awfully funny and figurative “son” – “sons of b*tches” (org. Hijo – hijos de p*ta) line or is it literal propaganda?

Why does he say “your son”, although he cannot possibly know? I’ll tell you. In order to distract the audience from the fact that he is referring to a pea-sized basis for a potential life by painting the picture of an already existing male human being. Mónica, do you really want to murder your son? Mónica, does that cute little doe eyed baby boy really f*ck up your life? Yeah, propaganda at its best.

Also, another example for ridiculing the point “a child would destroy my life” by comparing an unwanted pregnancy to a literal robbery at gun point. Great one.

“This f*cks your life up. A kid doesn’t.” Do you see that raised gun, that is quite literally an extension of a raised index finger? Wow, the drama. On a different note, did you notice the symbolism? A weapon stands for death, murder and guess what is also often equated with murder.

“How do you know what f*cks up my life? What do you know?” Finally. Exactly. He doesn’t know her, like at all. He doesn’t know her situation and no, he’s also not the pregnant one or anyone who would have to worry about that.

What do you answer to that, hmm? Let’s make this whole dispute even more emotional and dramatic. That ‘a cute little son isn’t as bad as a robbery’ didn’t convince her?

Let’s try with an extraordinary f*cked up and tragic life story, nobody asked for. Its goal? Showing the oblivious, naive, little secretary what real ‘f*ck up’ means, despite the evident lack of any sort of knowledge when it comes to her life (story). Again, conclusion-jumping and wallowing in prejudice at its best.

Have a look at his expression while ‘lecturing’ her. How disrespectful, how belittling. ‘Oh please, what do you know about life?’. On a wider scale: ‘How could we possibly trust women to rationally and with a clear conscience decide such things for themselves – concerning life and death, if they have not the slightest idea, living in their bubble of security and stability and no real problems’ etc. This is everything but taking women and their reasoning abilities, their judgement seriously.

“My mother was going to ab*rt me.” Now the audience doesn’t only have the mental image of a potential cute little son, it is furthermore provided with the image of a living, breathing human being standing right in front of them. Just look at him and his pleading puppy dog eyes. No actual child actor could have done it better.

Thank god she did not go through with the ab*rtion, right? Oh thank god she was not allowed to.

Taking advantage of this frame to remind you of the fact that we are still talking about a POTENTIAL future life, not an existing one that is nevertheless put above the mother’s already existing life in this impudent, low and unfair debate.

“But first…she inhaled the heroin she had to sell to be able to pay for the ab*rtion. Then she was caught by the police. Between jail, drugs and the police, I was born. What do you know?”

1)Adding even more emotions, subtle accusations and drama to that oh so rational dispute? Check. Making his situation seem two thousand times worse than hers (which he, again, has no clue about)? Check. Subconsciously painting the picture of reckless, irresponsible drug addicts/ “lowlifes” or generally female members of “society’s margins” usually being the ones to abort and make it seem like the state’s or whoever’s responsibility to prevent them from deciding for themselves? Check.

2) Then he even tears her valid ‘what do you know (about my life)’ out of the initial context of being confronted with endless assumptions and prejudice and blows it way out of proportion in order to demonstrate the insignificance of … everything concerning her? Her background, her life, her reasons. Everything.

And FINALLY *drum rolls* the wild theories and hypotheses and presumptions she was dying to hear because since he, I repeat for the twelfth time, has no actual clue about her life, let’s make up one.

“Because it seems that you don’t have a very exciting job. And maybe outside of work your life is not that great either. Or what is it that you do? ‘Kilates’? And Friday night drinks, right? What a f*cking drag. Another plan ruined by the kid[…]” That and the entire following paragraph. Wow. All accusations thrown at women who decide to abort in one.

Because OF COURSE a middle aged, down to earth, intelligent, responsible woman like Mónica Gaztambide has no other reason for terminating a pregnancy than not being able to drink alcoholic beverages or party anymore. Because OF COURSE it is valid to assume a woman or any person for that matter one has known for half an hour and interacted with for literal five minutes has a boring enough life that would not be affected in any way by a pregnancy, birth and ultimately being forced to raise an unwanted child. Because OF COURSE Denver would know how much a pregnancy can affect somebody, especially one that is forced upon a person. Quite frankly he has no idea and no right. The audacity.

“Do [your friends who are also mothers] seem f*cked up? / Do their lives look f*cked up? No, right?” Because you know best. Not only regarding her life but on top of that also that of her friends. Because those pregnancies or motherhood in general did under no circumstances end a career or prevent them from pursuing one in the first place or cause the end of a relationship or force them to stay in a toxic or even abusive relationship or change their financial situation completely or rob them of their fragile financial independence and/or free time altogether or cause any (mental) health complications or … you get the point. Oh, and because their situations are completely identical to Mónica’s situation, that is additionally not half as dramatic as your life story. Of course, Denver.

Seeing the ‘rational’ argument doesn’t really work, let’s add yet another dramatic, emotional rhetorical question. As a precaution.

“Do you know how much a child can love you?”

How could she, being the heartless, cruel, selfish, irresponsible, ridiculous and impulsive murderess you’re ‘exposing’ her as?

⚠️ Another spoiler warning for seasons 3 and 4 and still 1.

Would Cincinnati - that’s her sons actual name, not alias – really love her like he does now?

Friendly reminder: his biological father (Arturo Román) let her know - right from the start - that he wouldn’t take on any responsibility whatsoever, regardless of his later statements about doing so. Why those statements don’t matter? Despite his awareness of her state, despite knowing she was pregnant he shortly after urges her on to steal the cellphone she is caught with right after the analysed scene, ready to risk her life and the potential life of his unborn child. Literally, because as soon as she is caught with it, Berlín orders Denver to execute her.

So to those of you who will now say “but- but Cincinnati is okay and has an amazing life and does love her” etc etc, first think certain things through. If Denver wouldn’t have spared her, if she didn’t just happen to get together with him and if the heist didn’t just happen to work out like that, what then?

Cincinnati would have a different name. What else? Well for one, he wouldn’t have a father (that is now Denver) like at all, resulting in possible daddy issues / issues in general. How I know Arturo, the biological father, wouldn’t be there for them, wouldn’t fulfill all his empty promises?

Did he canonically care about his son? Was he devastated that he was not given the possibility to see him or did he instead focus on that random book of his and his speeches about heroism and honour and so on? If he wouldn’t have called his wife by his mistress’s name and through that expose himself, if his family wouldn’t have left him all alone, don’t you think he would stick to them? Just to paint a picture of who the father is and how he behaves and what we can assume from that behaviour. So the probability was high she would’ve been left alone with I quote “all the love” and of course all the responsibility. It’s a thing, Denver.

Secondly, if she didn’t just happen to turn into a millionaire thanks to the heist working out, would she really be able to provide a life for Cincinnati? Would she really be able to remain financially independent? Would her life at her son’s side really be all peace and harmony if she wouldn’t just so happen to be able to live from heist money?

So many coincidences, so many risks and no security. Can we really blame her? Do we have the right?

With these questions I will end this seemingly endless post and leave you to think about it, reflect certain things and – if you want to – share your opinion(s) with me. Please don’t hesitate to do so, as long as those contain rational arguments and most importantly respect. Thank you for reading!

(Also: sorry for the extensive censoring, I had to, otherwise it wouldn’t appear in the tags.)

#la casa de papel #lcdp #money heist #choice feminism #why we need feminism

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zombizombi · 7 years ago

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3 -- for the Kent Parson Birthday Bash

“Nobody is know,” said Alexei. They were having Thai food before he left for Providence after spending a week in Las Vegas. “I’m sure. Everyone think I’m the man on your instagram -- why you put those, anyway?”

“Well --” Kent flushed. Alexei was referencing some particularly ravishing photos of Jeff’s mostly naked body. “He looked good. I couldn’t help it. You saw that ass, obviously.” He took a bite of his pad kee mao. Alexei had green curry, but it was almost gone.

Alexei laughed. He had such a nice, warm laugh that Kent couldn’t help but smile in response to it. Alexei ruffled Kent’s hair a little. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “My abs better, but if people have to think I look like someone else naked, is not a bad choice. He looks good.” He swirled some of Kent’s noodles around a fork, stealing a bite.

Kent laughed. “I should put you both on there, keep people guessing.”

Alexei raised a brow. “What, not enough drama for you in last year?”

He had a point.

Coming out had been messy. Kent had known it would be, but he just -- couldn’t take it any more. He’d done it in the least flashy way he could think of, coordinating everything with the front office and keeping his therapist’s number on hand at all times. He’d taken all sorts of questions and dealt with a lot of homophobia, which was… exactly what he’d expected. And honestly? It hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought it would be. Mostly. He didn’t have to pretend to have a girlfriend anymore, for one thing.

And once one person caught Kent and Alexei having a friendly coffee together and posted it to Twitter? There was no convincing anyone that they weren’t madly in love. There had always been pictures of Kent and Alexei together, ever since they’d met at a training camp, and quick-thinking fans immediately tracked them down as “proof” of a long-standing relationship. The internet exploded. Kent’s call to Alexei, originally meant as an apology, took a twisting turn into a plot to cover up his real boyfriend with a fake one.

Over the last year, Kent and Alexei had gone on some very public dates. They were seen at big-name restaurants in Vegas, took each other to the NHL awards, and made sure to get caught having pie in a bakery in Providence, just the two of them. It was fun and hilarious and, once they’d figured out that nobody really noticed anything if Jeff came along, too, their dates often included Kent’s actual boyfriend.

The more time he spent with Alexei, the easier it seemed to get. When he visited in Vegas, he stayed with Kent and Jeff, taking their guest bedroom. When the Aces came to Providence, Alexei always took them some place he really liked -- in addition to his one-on-one publicity stunts with Kent, of course.

He never said anything about wanting to end their arrangement, despite the fact that it had been going on for a while. Alexei wasn’t actually seeing anyone that Kent knew of, and he always seemed content with his time with Kent and Jeff. They’d only staged one or two kissing pictures, nothing too risque, but both times Kent had come away with the feeling that they could’ve gone a lot further. He couldn’t deny that Alexei was just his type -- tall, dark hair, hot as hell. He was the kind of guy Kent wanted to climb like a tree, and the idea of seeing him in bed with Jeff only made it worse.

That was the feeling he was going home with that evening. Alexei’s crushing hug in the airport stayed with him on the drive home. They had fun together, didn’t they? And they’d only gotten closer over the last year. Kent couldn’t help but wonder how much more fun they could be having. When Alexei was over to their house, they always laughed and stayed up too late and just generally… enjoyed each other’s company. They’d all fallen asleep on the sofa together more than once.

Honestly, it wasn’t the first time Kent had considered asking Jeff what he thought about Alexei. They got along just fine, and Kent knew that Jeff was thankful for Alexei’s help in covering up their relationship -- not because they were worried about being out, but because they were on the same team. It was a PR nightmare.

Not that Kent publicly dating a man from another NHL team was without its own problems. Still, it was easy to deal with, much easier than speculation about Jeff’s role on the team if everyone knew he was the captain’s boyfriend. It would’ve been even worse if everyone knew they’d been dating for three years.

Coming home, he tossed his keys down by the door. “Babe?”

“What?” Jeff’s voice came from the kitchen. “You back already? Have fun?”

“Mmm.” Kent found Jeff washing dishes. He slid his arms around Jeff’s waist, leaning his cheek against Jeff’s bare back. He smelled like Irish Spring soap, clean and comforting, and his hair was still wet. Kent closed his eyes.

“Miss me?” Jeff rinsed the last plate. “Not ready to replace me with Alexei?”

Kent laughed. It was a running joke between them, either Jeff’s being replaced or their adding Alexei to the relationship and sleeping in a giant hamster pile. “Never,” he said. Pressing a gentle kiss to the back of Jeff’s neck, he opened his eyes again. “But we can add him in if you want.”

Jeff laughed, too. “Yeah, all right.”

Wait, for real? They’d never discussed an open relationship seriously before -- at least, Kent thought they hadn’t. They’d talked about it in very casual terms, mostly in reference to Alexei. Jeff was fond of the term ménage à trois. “Are you joking?” Kent asked.

“Are you?” Jeff twisted in Kent’s arms. “C’mere.” He leaned down, catching Kent’s mouth with his. “I was wondering about that, myself. We say it often enough.”

Kent pulled back. “Were you?”

“You like him,” Jeff said, voice soft. He grinned. “Not as much as you like me, but let’s face it -- I’m amazing.”

Kent rolled his eyes. “I do not --”

“Yeah, you do. You guys have fun, he’s great. I like it when he’s here. Every time he’s come over, it’s chill.”

“And he’s hot,” Kent said.

“And he’s hot.” Jeff rubbed at the back of Kent’s neck. “It’s no big deal, babe. I just, y’know. I wanna have fun, too.” He paused.

That was fair.

“Does that make this an open relationship?” Kent asked. He wasn’t really sure he could stomach the idea of Jeff going out and finding someone else. That’s what an open relationship would entail, wasn’t it?

“Uh,” said Jeff, “no. That makes this an I’m okay if you want to look up polyamory and talk to Alexei specifically relationship.” He kissed Kent’s forehead.

Oh, good. “Cool,” Kent said.

Their bright idea to get that ball rolling was to have Alexei come by and spend more time with both of them. Kent made sure to imply that he wanted to see Alexei just because he wanted to, turning down any ideas of public places they could be seen. “Nah, we just wanna hang with you,” he said, careful to use the plural “we” instead of “I.”

Jeff opened the door, letting Alexei in. “Hey, man.”

“I bring you a wine,” Alexei said.

“Classy as fuck,” said Jeff, “okay. C’mon, I’ll put that in the kitchen and we can finish that episode of House of Cards we were watching last time you were here.”

“You don’t finish it already?”

“Nah, man, I waited for you.”

Alexei’s laugh melted the ice off Kent’s nerves. “You are too good to me,” he said.

“I get that a lot,” said Jeff.

The wine was a perfect match for the pasta Jeff had cooked.

“So,” said Kent, fidgeting a little. “I know, um. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately, and, uh. That’s been nice. But --” He paused, not sure of how to say it. How were you supposed to ask a guy if he wanted to date you and your boyfriend?

“Spit it out,” Alexei said, after a long silence. “You are like -- jumping beans?” He patted Kent’s thigh.

Jeff laughed.

“I just, um. I was wondering if we could, uh. If we could maybe not fake date any more,” Kent said.

The smile slid off Alexei’s face. “Oh,” he said. He swallowed, pulling his hand away from Kent’s leg. “Ah. I’m sorry.”

Jeff frowned. “I think that came out wrong,” he said. “We’re trying to ask if you wanna date us. Both, I mean.”

Alexei stared.

“For real,” Kent added. “Boyfriend-style. Not fake dating, I mean. Like actual, real, all sleeping in bed together dating…” Alexei’s face was unreadable. That meant he needed to backpedal, right? Big time. “If not, it’s cool, so don’t --”

“Yes,” said Alexei.

“Oh,” said Kent.

“Cool,” said Jeff. “I get the left side of the bed. No debate.”

Alexei laughed.

( here it is on AO3 -- part of the @kentparsonbirthdaybash collection! )

#kvpbb17 #kent parson #alexei mashkov #jeff swoops troy #polyamory #omgcp fic #omgcp #partatoswoops?#now that we're all revealed I can post this #tater #parse #swoops

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cryptswahili · 6 years ago

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The FUD Stompers: Like It or Not, XRP Army Is Winning Crypto’s Hashtag War

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

When it comes to crypto, everyone loves to talk about “community.”

Every cryptocurrency has one, we’re led to believe, but often as not the community is just a Telegram channel peppered with demands of “@admin wen airdrop.”

There is one cryptocurrency, however, for which the word is anything but a cliche. I’m talking of course about XRP, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, which is closely – if contentiously �� associated with the San Francisco-based startup Ripple.

“It has become a second family to me,” TplusZero, one of XRP Twitter’s most active and followed members, told CoinDesk.

Search Twitter for XRP-related content, and you’ll find yourself among thousands of accounts dedicated mostly or entirely to XRP and the ecosystem around it – which, in addition to Ripple, includes startups such as Coil, which aims to help content creators monetize their webpages.

A few big names will quickly become familiar – XRP Trump, Hodor, Tiffany Hayden, Bank XRP. Seemingly nothing happens in the world of XRP without these accounts knowing about it, and if they happen to miss an update, there are dozens of other accounts standing ready to flag it.

There’s a whole constellation of forums, blogs and YouTube channels that feed an XRP-hungry audience, but Twitter is arguably the hub for the XRP community (especially its English-speaking contingent), and several people I spoke to created Twitter accounts for the first time just to participate in the XRP conversation.

XRP Twitter is perpetually abuzz up with discussion about the merits of XRP and the challenges – none of them insuperable, of course – that it faces on the road to mass adoption in cross-border payments (its main use case) and beyond.

Many of these discussions are deeply wonkish, assuming a detailed knowledge of the Ripple product suite, the incumbent cross-border payments infrastructure and the XRP Ledger’s consensus protocols. But this is crypto after all, and much of the banter is rah-rah.

For many in the community, XRP’s eventual “mooning” (crypto jargon for astronomical price gains) is a bygone conclusion – the only question is when. Ripple Me This, a bull among XRP bulls, told CoinDesk: “I describe this as the opportunity of several lifetimes,” adding, “those who recognize the opportunity and position themselves accordingly will be the next 1 percent.” The account has since been suspended.

Many XRPers believe the coin’s rightful place is not just at the top of the cryptocurrency hierarchy, but at the center of the “Internet of Value,” a technological revolution that promises to allow money to move as easily as email:

The community’s favorite hashtags – #0doubt, #xrpthestandard – serve as a kind of shorthand for this narrative of universal hyper-XRP-ization.

‘Shill is strong’

Of course, every crypto “community” worthy of the name has carved out a niche in social media where their geekiness and optimism can thrive. So what makes XRP special – or influential?

To paraphrase another pick for this year’s Most Influential series, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance: strength.

In a recent tweet, CZ complimented the community – at least, they took it as a compliment – saying, “the xrp base shill is strong.” In this case, he was referring specifically to the push to make XRP tradeable against every other asset on the exchange.

“Get it out of your system,” CZ urged, “and put all your shills under this one tweet, and let’s see how much we get.” It would be tough to exaggerate the intensity of the shilling – CZ’s word – contained in the 3,400 replies that followed.

Below is a sample that captures the tone of the replies (and showcases the strength of the often-ignored – in the West at least – Japanese XRP contingent):

The community needs no invitation to make the case for XRP, of course, and they will frequently home in on exchanges, brokerages, media outlets and others, urging them to list, cover, respect, promote or simply recognize XRP.

The most recent push? A write-in campaign for a Bank of England Twitter survey.

The XRP Army

Given their ability to mobilize in support of their favorite asset, it should come as no surprise that the XRP community can also mobilize in its defense. And when that happens – when the community feels XRP is being threatened – their geeky charm melts away.

Meet the XRP Army: the community on the FUD-fighting warpath (the image below is from a thread I’ll detail further down).

Short for “fear, uncertainty and doubt,” FUD refers in theory to baseless criticism that’s meant to deter research on or investment in its target. In practice, though, there appears to be near-zero room to question XRP without being cast as a FUDster: all criticism is baseless criticism. Even statements made by Ripple to the media will be attacked as fabrications if they don’t conform to the narrative.

What’s the difference between XRP enthusiasts’ trolling and any other variety of trolling? After all, publicly expressing an opinion on any cryptocurrency will invite similar negativity from that token’s tribal chauvinists.

Again: strength.

The XRP Army distinguishes itself mainly through scale and organization. Question another coin’s merits, and a handful of trolls might come out of the woodwork. But measured by volume, intensity, duration and consistency, the attack will pale in comparison to an XRP Army operation.

First, a foot soldier will spot the offending tweet, article, podcast or video and rally the troops by posting a few hashtags – #XRP, #XRPArmy and the like – and tagging the high command: some combination of XRP Trump, Hayden, Hodor, BankXRP and their peers.

Then, as an XRP enthusiast going by BoiDontFollowMe described it (disapprovingly) to CoinDesk, a flood of accounts will “brigade” the alleged FUD-monger, posting dozens or hundreds of comments.

As a few of these replies attract dozens of likes and retweets and spawn their own threads in turn, the attack forms a torrent of thousands and thousands of angry notifications that lasts for days.

Dispatches from the front

Any number of case studies are available to see the community in action, including the XRP Army operation this article spawned – almost immediately after the reporting for the article began, and before a word of it had been written.

As with pretty much any article, the first thing I did for this piece was to identify a few potential sources. That done, I reached out to them where I thought they might respond: in this case, Twitter direct messages. I wanted to knock out a number of interviews, so I prepared a list of questions. It didn’t go well.

One of the first people I reached out to sounded the alarm, and soon enough XRP Trump had jumped in to denounce my approach: “I’m not participating in that. I don’t like the behind closed door sending messages to some people while ignoring others. So I’m not answering.” (Asked who I was ignoring, he responded, “How would I know?” I didn’t ask him to elaborate on what an interview that isn’t “closed door” looks like.)

Hayden also declined to be interviewed. But in reality, she and XRP Trump did engage, just on their own terms, in public, posing – and answering – their own questions. (The XRP Army is practiced at controlling the narrative.)

Hayden and XRP Trump proceeded to publicly lambast the yet-to-be-written article in a string of posts. And they weren’t alone. The bombardment continued for days, following familiar lines of attack. In no particular order, these were: allegations of incompetence based on previous work …

… of bias …

… of stupidity …

… and of desperation …

Add a bit of professional belittlement …

… insinuations of sinister intent …

… and an implied threat of legal action …

XRP Trump, it should be said, argued against suing CoinDesk and attributed that particular suggestion to a “false flag” attack by a “bitcoiner.” Whether or not that’s the case, Hayden took up the thread to speculate that Ripple may be unable to sue CoinDesk because Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk’s parent company) is a Ripple investor …

How exactly that meshes with DCG’s status as a bitcoin-shilling cabal with an iron grip on crypto “media” is unclear …

… unless, that is, DCG only invested in Ripple to prevent Ripple from fighting DCG’s pro-bitcoin bias – or you know what, never mind …

Top all that off with questions of psychological fitness …

… and some top-shelf, high-proof, barrel-aged vitriol …

… and you’ve got a sense of the XRP Army on the warpath. In this case, the “brigading” lasted well over a week. Here’s what my notifications looked like one morning after not having checked them overnight. “One morning” being the morning of day nine …

The thread was still going after nearly three weeks, but following the iron laws of internet entropy, it had devolved into jokes about small penises at that point.

The A-word

It’s worth mentioning what angered the XRP community in the first place.

The catalyst was that I asked – among other questions, such as “What’s your experience with the XRP community been like?” – whether “some of the more aggressive behaviors some XRP fans engage in are justified.”

Full disclosure: the first person I reached out to – who was also the first to sound the alarm, was sent a different version of the question, which gave examples of “aggressive behaviors”: “Name-calling, piling into people’s mentions, threats (I know that threats are rare)?”

After he refused to answer, I removed that section when reaching out to others. As Hodor’s tweet shows, though, it didn’t make much difference.

It should also be noted – fuller disclosure – that the XRP Community has not forgotten about this story about their Community Night party in May, so they are not inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt.

What’s most bizarre is that, side by side with this barrage of, well, aggression, were questions about why I’d provided no evidence of aggression:

Some participants in the thread, though, were apparently aware that its general tenor was less than friendly …

… and in a private message another XRP supporter, Crypto Dave, did not mince words.

Asked if he thought aggression was justified, he answered in all caps, “YES.” He cited a “media blackout” of XRP and Ripple by the likes of CNBC and Bloomberg, which aim “to suppress the price.”

He also said that the same media outlets, which refuse to mention XRP and Ripple, “call XRP ‘Ripple’ all the time, which it isn’t.”

Another community member offered some kind words: “I feel bad about the massive backlash that has come your way… I am sure you are just trying to do your job.” (“Don’t quote me,” they added.)

And as noted above, another community member, BoiDontFollowMe, said, “if you’re talking about the accounts that brigade and are rude for the sake of being rude, then no, I don’t think that’s justified.”

More than one person I spoke to, however, expressed the view that casting XRP community members as aggressive – even some of them, some of the time – simply has no basis in fact.

“Aggressive XRP members,” XRP Yoda told me, channeling his namesake’s syntactic quirks, “I have not seen any.”

The view from the inside

It’s tempting to see blanket denials of aggression on the part of the XRP Army as, to use the voguish term, gaslighting.

But that might be unfair. From an outsider’s perspective, the XRP Army is a horde that appears on the horizon, wreaks havoc and then departs.

From the insiders’ perspective, though, the same group is a community that – left to its own devices – would peacefully nerd out on the minutiae of the XRP Ledger’s consensus protocol, Ripple’s business development efforts and product suite, Coil’s content monetization product and the like.

TplusZero described individuals in the community as “incredibly intelligent, curious and visionary,” adding “consistently welcoming, humble, idealistic and autodidactic” for good measure. Several other community members offered similarly glowing descriptions.

“I have found the community to be well researched, level headed and open to a good discussion,” a user going by EDadoun said, adding, “I also really appreciate how engaged elements of the community are in terms of advocating for high level use of the technology.”

Beyond being interesting conversationalists, XRP supporters can be incredibly supportive, kind and generous. One Twitter user described going through “some really hard money issues” which made it difficult to get his daughter to spinal surgery in a different state.

The XRP community “helped get her there not even knowing me or her,” he said, and she’s now home recovering.

Another community member recalled a time when an XRP-er went to the hospital “for a serious condition.” Since hospital food “isn’t so good,” another person from the community, RobertLe88, sent food to the hospital, which the patient then shared with his nurses.

The community’s favorite app (barring Twitter), the XRP Tip Bot, has enabled acts of charity both large and small.

The Tip Bot functions as a sort of fourth engagement function on XRP Twitter. Have something to say? Reply. Like something? Heart it. Really like something? Retweet it.

But if you feel overwhelming love or gratitude, you send the person who posted it a small tip in XRP using the Tip Bot, which automatically integrates with Twitter. XRP Trump is particularly lavish with the XRP-denominated love.

Wietse Wind, the independent developer who created the Tip Bot, told CoinDesk that he “really didn’t expect it to take off like this,” since he’d just approached it as “a hobby project.”

One user, going by KingBlue, saw potential for the tool do more than brighten a few XRP tweeters’ days. “My mind immediately turned to charity,” he told CoinDesk in a recent interview, specifically to St. Jude, a non-profit children’s cancer research hospital.

KingBlue began organizing the fundraiser in June. The initial goal was to raise 5,000 XRP but, he said, “we blew through that,” bringing in over 24,000 XRP at the time of writing (worth over $8,300), as well as nearly $3,400 in fiat.

Own these digital assets… for real and forever.

What happened?

So, what accounts for the disconnect between these two sides of the XRP community – the one that buys winter coats for kids and the one that generates deluges of angry spam?

Of course, not all individuals engage in both types of behaviors. But here’s the answer I heard again and again from community members: they are under constant siege. Journalists, entrepreneurs, developers, investors, influencers, lawyers and garden-variety trolls constantly needle the community, leading to the kinds of response we’ve seen above.

The critics have a few favorite talking points: XRP is an unregistered security issued by Ripple; it’s a “banker coin,” a cynical effort by the financial powers that be to co-opt a budding revolution; it’s a worthless “shitcoin”; it’s being dumped on naive retail investors in a “never-ending ICO” (to quote one lawsuit’s complaint); Ripple has full control over the ledger, including the ability to freeze it; Ripple can release the XRP it’s locked in escrow on a whim; the list goes on.

Some of these claims are purely a matter of opinion (“shitcoin”). Others probably have a definitive answer, but either it can’t be known yet (the security question is working its way through the courts) or we hit a wall: he-said-she-said, can’t-prove-a-negative. Some lines of attack do in fact appear to be genuine FUD (XRP’s technical documentation, all forms of emphasis in the original, says: “XRP CANNOT be frozen by any entity or individual”).

“XRP fans have been targeted for many years,” Kieran Kelly, an active member of XRP Twitter, told me. “I think the XRP community just got to a stage where they got fed up with the constant insults.”

Another member of the community urged me to consider the “hundreds of hours” people like Hayden, Hodor and XRP Trump have put into fighting bad information. BoiDontFollowMe said that seeing the “same misinformed talking points parroted across different channels by people who have no interest in educating themselves” causes understandable frustration.

Hayden, in particular, has had to put up with more than others. Anti-XRP trolls often go personal, and when she’s the target, the attacks sometimes veer into sexism – even in-person intimidation.

At the XRP Community Night party in May, she said, “somebody seemed to be there entirely to harass me. That’s *really* scary. Nobody helps, but they hold up scorecards to judge how I handled being attacked.”

No, you’re a bot

As with any group that feels it’s under siege, what most rattles the XRP Community is the idea that they’ve been infiltrated, that the saboteurs walk among them.

For XRP Trump, it was that random account that pitched the idea of suing “FUDDesk,” which I naively – in his estimation – believed was an authentic XRP supporter. “False flags are real,” he wrote. “Just stay long enough to become a target and you’ll know.”

For Kelly, it’s the so-called 589-ers, whom he cast – though he acknowledged he can’t prove it – as bitcoin maximalist infiltrators intent on discrediting the XRP community as a whole.

Here’s why 589-ers might cause XRP enthusiasts some reputational harm: they predict – “preach” might be a better word – that the price of XRP will be $589.00 or higher at the end of 2018. They continue to say so as of Dec. 20, with XRP trading at around $0.37.

Those who question their prophecy are “sheep.”

Kelly argues that the ones spreading 589-ism, beginning with the now-dormant Reddit account bearableguy123, are “sockpuppets” – fake social media accounts, sometimes automated, sometimes operated manually – which their owners use for “astroturfing”: social media manipulation that creates the illusion of broad support for a message and aims, in turn, to catalyze real support.

The idea that astroturfing is rife on XRP Twitter, however, is most associated with Geoff Golberg, an independent researcher who’s been studying the XRP community’s online presence for months.

“It’s coordinated amplification,” Golberg said in a recent interview. “This isn’t organic.”

He cited suspicious patterns of following, liking and retweeting that point to some degree of manipulation. In certain cases, the accounts appear to be automated (“bots”), that is, controlled using a script.

In other cases, he said, the accounts appear to be controlled manually, but even so, “there isn’t an actual, XRP-supporting person behind each pseudonymous XRP Army account. That’s the whole point.”

In short, he said, “these aren’t real accounts.”

While Golberg hasn’t shared evidence that explicitly links the alleged astroturfing efforts to any particular culprit, he made it clear that he doesn’t think it’s limited to or even primarily the work of 589-ers. Far from a bitcoin maximalist attempt at sabotage, he said, it appears to be a coordinated effort to promote XRP as an investment.

It’s not difficult to find anecdotal evidence of astroturfing in XRP. To illustrate the point, Golberg performed a network analysis of XRP Trump’s followers using the data visualization software Graphistry. In the graph below, each of the account’s followers is represented by a dot:

The dots’ positions are determined by how connected each one is to XRP Trump’s other followers. The analysis relies on an algorithm called Eigenvector centrality (or Eigencentrality), which determines the influence of a node in a network. The algorithm is used, for example, by Google to rank search results.

The large, light blue circle on the upper right-hand side of the graph is XRP Trump. The colorful clouds emanating from that central node represent different “communities” of followers, who are more closely related to each other, relative to the dataset as a whole.

There’s one section, though, that doesn’t look very much like a “community.” The green, red and pink sections are nebulous, with messy, complex interrelations among nodes. By contrast, the light blue blobs in the upper right-hand corner look less, let’s say, organic. Particularly when viewed close-up:

As it turns out, the 8,200 accounts that make up these blobs all have the exact same mathematical relationship to XRP Trump’s following as a whole: an Eigencentrality score of precisely 0.013143. That score also happens to be the lowest in the whole dataset.

“They are all equally disconnected,” Golberg said.

For over 8,000 of XRP Trump’s roughly 21,000 followers (when the data was collected in September) to have an identical relationship to the broader network – down to the sixth decimal place – would be staggeringly unlikely in an organic, human network, where thousands of complex, individual volitions yield thousands of different degrees of influence. Golberg told CoinDesk that it’s “a huge red flag.”

To get a sense of how strange this distribution of Eigencentrality scores is, here’s a chart of the 10 lowest scores, along with the number of accounts corresponding to each (around 1,200 accounts with identical centrality appear outside of the two big blobs, bringing the total to around 9,400):

Clicking through a few of the blobs’ accounts doesn’t inspire confidence that they are just improbably like-minded people.

Take “xrp to riches” (@to_xrp), who follows XRP Trump, Hodor, Ripple, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Ripple CTO David Schwartz (along with a couple of other XRP influencers). “xrp to riches” doesn’t say much:

Or “patrick morrison” (@XRPaddy), another real human person who follows all of the accounts mentioned above (and a slightly different set of “other XRP influencers”). “patrick” is every bit as chatty as “xrp to riches”:

Then there’s “x5r5p”, who – again – follows all the big Ripple and XRP names mentioned above, plus a smattering of second-tier accounts, and – again – struggles with shyness:

Golberg – who has examined other crypto communities as well as political campaigns – readily acknowledged that astroturfing is widespread in crypto, but said of the XRP community, “I’ve never seen it to this extent.”

To try and corroborate his findings, CoinDesk used SparkToro’s “fake followers audit” tool, which shows that XRP Trump, Schwartz, Hodor and Garlinghouse all have above-average proportions of fake followers, relative to the sizes of their followings:

Those data points in isolation leave important questions unanswered, though. They don’t indicate who is responsible for the fake followers. I have around 150 fake followers (11 percent of the total), according to SparkToro, but I certainly didn’t purchase them or spin them up myself.

And as Kelly argued, astroturfing can indeed be used as a false flag attack. For example, in a recent U.S. Senate election, supporters of the Democratic candidate attempted to discredit his opponent by using thousands of Russian sockpuppet accounts to follow the Republican (who lost). This attack created the impression that the Republican candidate was colluding with a foreign power, recalling alleged collusion between the Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University and a contributor to the self-explanatory Botometer project, told CoinDesk that finding the answer to the astroturfing question depends on exactly what you want to know.

If you’re asking “whether the online conversation about the topic of interest (XRP/Ripple) is manipulated via bots,” he said, “you would want a sample of *tweets* (as opposed to accounts) on the topic,” he said. Fake follower counts, in other words, don’t directly answer that question.

There are certainly a number of pseudonymous, XRP-themed accounts that post and retweet at high rates. Take “grega” (@ceramika74), which has found the time – in its 241 days of existence – to retweet 38,838 XRP-related tweets (161 per day) and like 84,717 (352 per day). It has never composed an original tweet.

Few XRP accounts are as prolific as “grega,” but it is an extreme example of a pattern: nameless, faceless, often short-lived XRP monomaniacs who do not gripe about politics or make fun of celebrities or do anything at all but signal-boost bullish messages about XRP. In many cases the signal-boosting is clearly manual; not every sockpuppet is necessarily a bot.

(To be clear, many accounts – including high-volume, XRP-focused, pseudonymous ones like Hodor, KingBlue and XRP Trump – clearly represent a real person’s primary social media presence.)

Mike Kearney, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, told CoinDesk that a search for $XRP did turn up “evidence of automated/coordinated activity,” including “an usually active base of users posting exclusively from the web browser.” It’s “more common to see automated/bot/inauthentic accounts post via non-cell-phone sources,” he explained.

In addition, “these exclusively web-client-posting accounts also just so happen to have created their accounts within the last few months at an unusually high rate,” Kearney said.

Capitulation

Whatever the extent, nature, intent or provenance of XRP Twitter’s alleged astroturfing, many in the XRP community are enraged by Golberg’s allegations.

He said they frequently report him to Twitter and LinkedIn (the latter suspended his profile as a result), as well as threatening to hack him. This is above and beyond the normal trolling XRP Army targets can expect (based on my own experience and that of others I spoke to).

Golberg does not always eschew trolling himself, it should be said. He called Schwartz “full of [poop emoji][poop emoji] and a coward.” Middle fingers, kissy faces and taunts worthy of the XRP Army are go-tos, in DMs as well as public tweets. Hayden and XRP Trump have called him a “psychopath.” He said such claims are “character assassination” meant to discredit his findings.

In one case, however, an XRP investor (who confirmed as much to CoinDesk) took things a step further and publicly called for Golberg to be killed.

The intended target needn’t have worried too much. Nassar deleted his account and apologized to Golberg from a different one in a private message.

Still, incidents such as this one have made Golberg less civil in his engagements with the XRP community, he told CoinDesk.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Nassar said: “I was losing all my savings” the day he sent the “who can kill him” tweet. Few in the XRP community directly address this subject, but the financial pain is no less real for going mostly unmentioned.

Also largely unacknowledged is the role XRP bullishness might have played in tempting new entrants to invest too much. Influencers on XRP Twitter frequently criticize outlandish price predictions (especially ones presented as near-certainties), but during the heady days of early 2018 it was sometimes a different story:

Given the fall in prices, you might expect cracks to show in some XRP community members’ enthusiasm.

One person I spoke to quit XRP Twitter as I was working on this article, though they didn’t cite the price. When I first began reporting this story, BoiDontFollowMe told me that perceived aggression by XRP community members was “generally […] justified.”

A couple of weeks later, however, the same person messaged me from a different account, saying they’d deleted their old one.

“My thinking has evolved,” they said. Referring to the de facto leaders of the XRP army, they added, “it’s clear they’re aggressive, but if anybody disagrees or tries to call them out, they” – that is, the ones doing the calling out – “[are] sheep, or weak, or a rape victim blamer or any other horrible names.”

The account-formerly-known-as-BoiDontFollowMe called this behavior “childish and embarrassing,” particularly as it was coming from “some of the largest and most influential individuals in the community.”

Some members of the community will likely never throw in the towel, but for many, it may prove difficult to keep the faith in the face of monetary losses and – depending on who you ask – negativity.

Compared to its peak at the beginning of the year, XRP’s price is down by more than 90 percent. Of course, plenty of other cryptocurrencies have fallen further. And, it should be noted, many investors are still in the green at current prices, having bought long before XRP’s price went parabolic in 2017.

Even so, “2018 has been a very tough year for people,” Kelly told me. “If you bought in January and you held, you have lost money. Fact of life.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––

Original art by CryptoPop (@cryptopop)

Images by David Floyd for CoinDesk

Source

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

#cryptocurrency

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notapuzzlepiece123-blog · 7 years ago

Photo

Hey guys, I made this picture on my DeviantArt (if you’re on DA, my user is NotAPuzzlePiece).

Since I can’t find a share button on DA I should post it here too, and explain why I made is even though all it’s all pretty obvious to all of us.

Also, YamiDawn33 is a friend of mine IRL and on DA. And if you have a good caption for this send it to my inbox/messages and I’ll see if it’s okay or not here.

Content/Trigger Warning for mentions of ABA, Quiet Hands mentions, overall ableism/eugenics mentions, and me cussing like a sailor like normal, but with more passion.

And so, without further ado:

“Hey everybody (haha can I even say that?), I feel like I had to upload this for...reasons. To be specific, for some reason a lot of people are unfamiliar with the concept of ableism and what its effects are on disabled people. Be warned here, there will be lots of swearing/strong language, ranting, getting shit off of my chest, and reliving my past as my wrists shake when talk about this. I'm not sure if I should mark the art as 'mature' or not. I'm don't really know if this belongs in the "Macabre" art category: to me it's important but it's also an incredibly sensitive psychologically terrifying nightmare for me to talk about once I get into the details. Ableism: Discrimination on the basis of ability/disability. In theory this is illegal but in practice it happens in everything from housing to organ transplants and everything in between and beyond. Internalized Ableism: The way one internalizes themselves as inherently bad, broken, and depraved because of their disability despite knowing otherwise. The closest comparison I can get to is this is like internalized sexism, but with disability. I feel like this is incredibly important to talk about but because of the cure-culture that exists, disability is simply pushed to the side as an afterthought, if it even comes up in discussion at all. Able-bodied (AB): Not physically disabled in any way. Body function, height, etc. does not significantly deviate from the societal norms. Neurotypical (NT): Not mentally, intellectually, or developmentally disabled in any way. Brain function does not significantly deviate from the societal norms. And even when that happens, I can guarantee you that 99 times out of 100, it's the able-bodied neurotypical people who get to talk about disability, not the disabled person themselves. And by virtue of the AB NT not having any disability, they don't know what it's like living with one. And yet it's almost always the AB NTs who constantly speak over us, dehumanize us, and blatantly ignore our cries of agony despite the fact we are right in front of them. This goes for all issues. As an Autistic I always have this happen. It's not just Autistics. It's every disabled community. I only mention Autism because that's what I am. There are disabilities I don't have, I refuse to speak over them. Autism $peaks: Autism Speaks. The $ in "Speaks" was originally to reflect the fact they only spent 4% of their fund toward "resources" but now is meant to denote this eugenicist organization in general. Filicide: The killing of a child by their parent. Disabled people are statistically more prone to this, and violence in general (stats for Autistics: 6 times more likely to be sexually assaulted, 10 times more likely to be physically assaulted in general) When Autistic people say Autism $peaks is a hate-group, you should believe the Autistic. Not the neurotypical parent who happens to have an Autistic child. The child is Autistic, the parent is not, the Autistic will know better by virtue of being Autistic. When we say we either can only minimally our actions during meltdowns or literally can't control those actions, we literally can't. Most of us can't even remember what we said or did during meltdowns. When we say that the noise is too loud even though there are only six people in a room, you'd better believe it. If the lights are too dark or too bright, you'd better believe it. When we say our rocking and hand-flapping and tapping our feet in a certain way is our equivalent to facial expression, and it is used as much for joy as it is furiosity, I know for a fact it is because MY hand-flapping is EXTREMELY different depending on my mood. And yet the it's the neurotypicals that get listened to. A majority of them say we're broken, missing, Autism $peaks has literally made comparisons to Autism being like your kid was kidnapped, so many neurotypicals only defend stimming as a necessary evil, the use of functioning labels hurt us and yet neurotypicals continue to use them to defend shit like filicide. The lack of hand in the drawing, by the way, is on purpose. Have you heard of Quiet Hands? I've seen Autistic people go home from ABA therapy with bruised wrists and no ability to tell their parents because they won't give a rat's piss. I've heard the stories where a six-year old was flapping her hands in jot and her therapist fucking used TACKY GLUE to pin her hand to the desk and fucking HELD them there despite her SCREAMING and wanting to to stop. ABA therapy: Applied Behavioral Analysis. Non-ABA-ABA Therapy: A personal distinguishment I make between harmful therapies and non-harmful ones due to US insurance laws. True ABA therapy: A personal distinguishment I make between harmful therapies and non-harmful ones due to US insurance laws. Why do you think that true ABA therapists don't let the child's parents back in their little "offices"? I was in a fucking "behavior" school, called Hillcrest Family Services, and if I even so much as read a book under my desk I was thrown into an isolation room by a police officer, even though we were being taught turtles are cold-blooded and I knew that when I was THREE YEARS OLD. Those dickhead staff just assumed that we were incapable of doing anything at or even three grade below our grade level. And before you even FUCKING TRY TO DEFEND ABA the shut the HELL UP and sit. Your. ASS. DOWN. NOW. If all of THAT hasn't convinced you, then what does that say about you? Would you be encouraging assault and filicide if I was talking about ABA therapy for depsression? No, you wouldn't. And if you think this is all illegal, oh no you are SOOOOO fucking wrong. First off, ABA therapy is technically/legally the ONLY therapy that is insured in the US, so many non-ABA therapies decide to go under this label specifically for that and that alone. Thus my distinction between what I call non-ABA-ABA therapy and true ABA therapy has arisen. Secondly, one of the founders of true ABA therapy, Ivar Lovaas, also created gay conversion camps. Yes, you heard me right, the guy who co-founded true ABA therapy also founded gay conversion camps and yet was somehow able to defend ABA's torturous existence. ... ... ... And...if you've read through all of that I'm incredibly shocked and incredibly grateful. I don't mean to say all neurotypicals do this to us, I'm not trying to be mean or hateful or anything it's just. ... I'm aware that there are allies out there, but out of all of my interactions with neurotypicals, I've had about three people I know to be neurotypical who have been kind to me on a regular basis (somewhat shameless shoutout here to YamiDawn33 for being an awesome friend and a decent human being). I simply don't know what to do sometimes because, as you can see, the fact I have to wear a mask these days, the fact that I actually had it better than other disabled people even as I was being dragged into isolation rooms, that being a verbal Autistic and knowing non-verbal Autistics are falsely perceived to be "unintelligent" and "lesser" and yet I have the privilege to be an advocate? It makes me feel like a fraud, a fake, a sell-out. At the same time I feel equally as broken, missing, invisible, chained.... I'm not free until all of us are free and it just keeps following me and haunting me like something, like a ghost, its some inescapable leash, a cage, I don't know how to describe it, it's a lot of things. Seriously. Thanks so much for listening to this nineteen-year old sophomore university student talk about social justice and literal Hell, it means a lot to me.”

#YeahIAdmitItICussLikeASailor #IDontKnowWhatElseToDoInThisInstance #NeurofamilyIsAwesomeBTW #NotAPuzzlePiece

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