#i only have online friends

[toxifoxx]

🥴🥴🥴

[sadnappo]

APPARENTLY

guys oh my god they invented a thing called friends. and they love you and want to talk to you and be around you. has anyone heard of this

[lilidawnonthemoon]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

pygmalion and galatea for aroace people

you should tell your friends what I look like, riz gukgak.

[miusato]

Honestly the main attraction for Shinjiham is how contrast their personality is and it is always funny for me to think about how people around them would react if they found out they're dating in this AU lol

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I need him so bad

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Decided the thing to do is to drop into rando servers, put down a couple of drawings, and smoke-bomb outta there.

Peace, love and fishing on planet Earth.....

[darlinguistics]

'its just IMPOSSIBLE to not be addicted to your phone nowadays its UNREALISTIC-'

heres some advice to being less chronically online. for gen z (and younger??) who dont even know how to start thinking about it and have only heard shitty advice from older adults who just genuinely do not get it, from a fellow gen z and my experiences so far.

*these are personal and may not all 100% resonate but its still good prompting to start thinking about things! PLEASE feel free to add your own stories/advice in the notes! support your fellow humans, dont gatekeep what youve learned, lets have these conversations! and no negativity/pessimism please <3

first thing is to make it a less scary thought, a more concrete idea and not a hypothetical. it doesnt have to be all-or-nothing, cold turkey, a huge announcement and a fundamental shift in your personality. the internet will be in your life for the rest of your life, this is an ongoing relationship you are trying to make healthier thats all! and it takes one step at a time and some self-compassion, but a true effort nonetheless. 'dont you think thats a bit too serious-' if youre my age you quite literally grew up and developed online, it is literally part of your psyche the way your childhood is, it IS serious, you deserve to treat it seriously.

dont save your login info/dont stay logged in for social media accounts, having to manually log in when you want to go on like youre on some elementary school chrome book is a really healthy and clear boundary to have between being logged off and logged on.

-> bigger challenge - uninstall it on your phone in general, only log on on your laptop/pc if applicable for you!

if youre motivated to, try to work on your posture too. i only say that because most of our bad posture is at least partially related to being on our phones a lot, and when i started wanting to fix my posture, completely separately and unrelated from trying to break my phone addiction, it made it easier to lose interest in my phone since i didnt want to ruin my progress with my posture. it made me start to have a mindset like 'well if you cant do this on your phone with good posture then dont do it' and 'if youre on your phone so long your posture starts to cave in, youve probably spent too long on your phone anyway'

listen to music more. its easier for me to kinda write off my phone and do other things if i just open music or a podcast or long youtube video on it. i know we all love long video essays, but i recommend music more specifically for me at least because im less inclined to pause music or scroll while listening to it for some reason? whereas using a show or video or podcast for white noise, im way more likely to also be scrolling on my phone and that is my activity lol. music for some reason i dont want to interrupt and instead of being on my phone i can clean or do something productive on my computer etc

this one is sooo hard but try to fall asleep with some distance between you and your phone, even just a couple feet. mine stays on the desk next to my bed which isnt that far but its better than on bed like it used to be. when you wake up you probably wont feel like reaching for it right away if its far and even better if you have to get up for it because then at least you stand and move your body first thing instead of looking at your phone first thing. and try to get more and more of your morning routine done before touching your phone over time.

-> for me, i started by just trying to at least wake up a bit in bed before touching it, then stand up before touching it, then stand and stretch, then going to the bathroom first, making coffee first, feeding the cat first, etc. its surprisingly helpful to have a specific chore/task in mind that is The requirement so that everytime you do it you get a lil dopamine rush for unlocking your phone from yourself lmao. when the weather was nice i used to make my Requirement being outside first before going on it and i LOVED that. esp as it got easier and i started doing more and more before going on it and finally walking outside with coffee and my phone felt like such a pleasant little reward.

find a hobby that uses your hands. example: i really need to get back into knitting because when i did it regularly so much time that wouldve been on my phone was spent knitting with music/podcasts/shows/(even online lectures! when i felt productive lol) playing. its the same amount of physical relaxing - barely moving lol - but uses a longer attention span and a much better dopamine hit than scrolling, i literally MADE things.

-> you might be thinking, 'but mindless knitting isnt better than mindless scrolling is it?' but that mindless feeling on your phone is just that, mindless. the mindless feeling you get when doing something like knitting is actually closer to a flow state, which is actually incredibly good for you, like a fulfilling nutritious meal as opposed to 'empty calories' or whatever

get a widget for your homescreen that shows your screen time. i have one and of course it doesnt always stop me but seeing that time go up all day the more i use it and the pride of keeping it low is really helpful

practice grounding. in general.

spend more time on anonymous activities and have more privacy and less attachment with your 'persona' - what i mean by that is, i consider things like scrolling through tumblr (for me personally!) to be relatively harmless because i dont try to like,, brand myself here. if youre a tumblr regular you know the jokes - 0 follows, 0 notes, screaming to the void, moots you dont talk to, blorbo pfp and urls, fake names everywhere, and we're having fun! basically targeting the 'everyone is famous now' thing with this one - embrace being a nobody with no personal stakes here

-> personally ive never kept up with having social media accounts that are actually just, me irl - like a facebook or main instagram, like a locals account yknow? but i think it goes for that too - stop spending so much time trying to further personalize your online presence in the hopes of it representing you perfectly - because it never will, and it shouldnt, and you shouldnt aspire for that. your social media presence is lighthearted and incredibly surface-level, treat it like that! thats not me bashing social media either, having that mindset will make it more enjoyable bc youll be using it as it should be used!

do following/followers or camera roll/files or app purges. this is also a soft launch type of way to practice easing into a better mindset. aside from just literally getting rid of junk, the process of trying to judge whether or not you need something is good practice in mindfulness! even if you dont delete everything you feel like you maybe should, thats fine, youll do other purges in the future too. eventually youll get better at parting with things and realizing when things that feel good in a moment are actually bad for you. and it forces you to regularly check in on your more long-lasting parasocial relationships online and how theyre serving you or not

speaking of parasocial - for actual friends, if theyre irl, think about how much you interact with them online vs in person and why you think that is and how it affects you. maybe youll wanna see them more irl if possible (i promise its better for your friendship), maybe youll realize you dont need to keep tabs on them anymore (old high school acquaintances lookin at you). for celebrities and fandom things - try to think about the bare minimum content from them you could do with. you dont have to unstan all your faves and stop enjoying things - but do you need their notifications on? do you need to have a stan account? do you need them on all the platforms? do you need to have all that saved content of them? are there aspects of this that you love that could be found elsewhere?

if youre of the genre of online where you just cant help yourself from getting involved in big discussions or discourse and arguments - i recommend journaling when you get upset by something online, articulating your feelings without the idea of someone ever reading it and without the goal of 'winning' or being the most correct and logical or even the most sympathetic and morally good. take away every audience aspect of it. what is this really about for you, and why would strangers online deserve to hear your personal well-thought out opinions? why would your thoughts deserve to be simplified and misconstrued and underappreciated the way they would be in this discussion? is there even an outcome to this where you feel truly satisfied? are their people who are more worthy of hearing your thoughts who arent part of this audience? is this a conversation that is best held online where so much communicative nuance is inevitably sacrificed?

in the end these are all just practices in remembering how in control you are. and that goes for if any of these are scary or too difficult sounding too! these all become less scary if you remember that as soon as anything becomes too uncomfortable or painful, you have all the power to stop doing it, make a change, and try again later. so much of advice for quitting bad habits can be intimidating because the pressure and the shame that would come from failing scares you out of the possible benefits of trying - just go ahead and kill that shame from the jump. of course youre going to fail! you are going to have setbacks! thats part of it! you have agency in this, always. the internet is not inherently or completely evil nor good. build trust in yourself to make the calls on when it is serving you and when it isnt on a case-by-case basis, and then give yourself permission to learn through trial and error.

and remember you are worth all of this effort. i believe in us <3

[plant-ago]

An Open Letter to Dan and Phil

Dear beloved nerds,

This was originally going to be an (even longer) actual letter that I was going to give to you at the tour, but my nonprofit-employed ass can’t afford a meet and greet, so we’re doing this instead. I promise it’s not just trauma dumping— mostly, it’s about saying thank you and trying to cultivate some hope for all of us.

I’ve been a big fan since around 2014, when I was a mentally ill neurotic deeply repressed loner egg (average phannie, let's be honest). Now I’m a whole adult who got therapy and HRT and has joined the legions of transmascs with the Dan Howell haircut! What a legacy.

I’m making jokes because the thing I actually want to talk about, and the reason I decided to make this an open letter, is kind of serious. But in light of the election, I feel like I need to share this, both with you and with all the other queers in this little corner of the internet.

Here’s the gist: I’m a paralegal at a non-profit organization that works to help queer migrants get asylum. Mostly what I do is sit them down in our nasty sterile office and try to be kind, and help them get through telling me all the most terrible things that have happened to them, and then turn around and pare it all down into legalese that is digestible to the government to make the case they should get asylum.

It’s a horrible job, really, and one that shouldn’t have to exist. Some parts are plainly wonderful, like meeting so many queer people from all walks of life. But it’s also heartrending and difficult, and burnout is always looming. My horrible banal work is often literally a matter of life and death for the client, and I’m fighting a broken system for a chance at giving them the happiness and safety is owed to them by international law and, really, by any decent human standard, should never have been in question.

The thing is—and this is reason to hope—queer people really do exist everywhere, no matter how much repression and violence we face. In a tiny village in Colombia, there's a kid who’s all spit and vinegar, dresses like a boy and plays football and fights anyone who says that they can’t, who grows up wiry and gets black eyes because men still can’t handle getting their asses handed to them on the soccer field by a dyke. This client texts me at my work number sometimes to ask if I’ve eaten that day, because they wanted to check in on me. He asked me to call him by a boy’s name, recently. I don’t know that he’s told anyone else. I open every message I send him with "Hola, James."

Then there’s the sweet, babyfaced college freshman who got death threats when he was outed to his classmates back home, and whose parents kicked him out when he refused to marry a girl to protect the family's reputation, leaving him alone in a foreign country. He was couch surfing and just trying not to miss class so he could keep his student status and he was so conscientious I wanted to cry— he’s eighteen, guys. Eighteen. I’ll get him his papers or so help me fucking God I will kill for him. You know? You know. After that meeting I had to sit at my desk with my notebook and fill an entire blank page with the phrase “he’s just a kid,” over and over again, until I felt like I could breathe.

On a Friday morning recently I get up and open my laptop to interpret on a call with a soft-spoken older trans woman who's sat in the bleak phone room of the ICE detention facility because her immigration judge didn’t believe that she was really transgender. “An odor of mendacity pervades everything the respondent says,” the judge wrote in her ruling, where she determined the client wasn't "credible." To this day I’m still floored that she straight up ripped off Tennessee Williams—new frontiers in bigotry, truly. She didn’t even cite. In our meeting now, the client quietly tells us how hard it was when she came out but how happy she was the first time she wore makeup, and she'd rather stay in detention here for indeterminate years as proceedings spiral on than go back to Guatemala, where they'll kill her—boys, if I ever get within spitting distance of this fuckass judge, it is on SIGHT. Absolutely fucking ON SIGHT. For legal purposes, that was a JOKE.

So I finish the call and get up to get a snack. It’s only ten am but feel tired already because I’m angry, which is not unusual but also not something I want to hold onto, because it doesn't help anything. So I make some toast and look at my phone— two texts, which I ignore, a spam email, and, wouldn't you know it, a YouTube notification from Dan and Phil games! Jarring! That’s just sort of how life is though, isn’t it? Deathly serious and lighthearted in the same breath.

But regardless, seeing the notification makes me feel warm, so I have my toast and watch a little video of you two playing Roblox or dress up or whatever it is you do on that channel these days. I have a good giggle and I finish my toast and go back to my desk. It’s a crucial part of my diet really— the giggles, not the toast. I’m not angry anymore. I’ll be angry again, but for now my cortisol levels are manageable and I can put my head back into emails or whatever the fuck. Do you ever think about how plants make food for free out of sunlight but we sit around writing emails all day? And that’s if we’re lucky. Capitalism is hell.

Anyway, there is a point I am trying to make, and it’s not really about the banal horrors of neoliberal nation-state or capitalism or even homophobia. It’s to say thank you for coming back to make silly videos together, because I love them, and you never fail to make me happy. And yeah, maybe something about the story of that scared eighteen-year-old kid at the front of my mind makes it particularly sweet to watch you two goofing off and being openly queer. It reminds me why I’m doing what I’m doing, and it gives me the strength to send another fucking email because sometimes doing “important work that I value and believe in deeply” means having to send another fucking email. And sometimes I’ll rewatch your older videos, and then come back to the more recent ones, and my heart bruises, because you remind me what I’m fighting for and why. It’s nothing grandiose, it’s just— for queer people to get to have the ability to grow into themselves and be outrageous and silly and make mistakes and to love and be loved for who they are. To have the safety and support and security that no one should ever go without. That’s all.

So I am being dead serious when I say thank you for making top-tier light entertainment, and for coming back to a job that wasn’t always kind to you, and that it does actually matter. All this talk about terrible influences and legacies has made me think that sometimes you doubt whether you do good in the world, so let me be clear: you really, really do. I kind of get the sense that in order to accept sincerity Dan needs to be beat over the head with it, so if that’s the case, consider yourself coerced, you dickhead. You matter to me, and especially in times like these, I think I speak for all of us when I say that the joy you share is a precious and treasured gift. So please accept my gratitude in return.

All my love,

Jules

(I removed or changed all identifying information in this letter to protect privacy, but the stories are real).

[moonlitkissing]

It's that time of night when calling up a friend and asking for casual sex feels like a good idea

[roboyomo]

played gartic phone with my friends tonight. look at my cheese doodle boy

[suntails]

I’m going to paint you a picture of modern communication, and how it is fundamentally broken.

Let’s look at one friend. You chat pretty much everyday, and mostly talk to this person on twitter and discord, with occasional tumblr DMs. That’s three places you talk. But that’s actually not true, because you also have each other’s priv twitters and talk there as well. That’s four. Now account for, let’s say, one post reply per account per person, in addition to your DMs. That’s eight. But that’s ALSO not true, because not only do you talk in discord DMs with each other, but you’re in a friend group server as well! And you talk in those channels together! That’s nine.

This is one friend.

Now look around you. How many friends, how many mutuals are you in contact with. A few, a handful, a dozen, more? How many accounts per person do you have, how many places can you send each other posts, devolve into separate topics and conversations? How many people text you as well. Friends, family, coworkers? What do you do day to day around catching up, what IRL commitments will rip you away long enough to let the pile build again?

I can’t do it. I cannot live an actual life in the real world and balance this much interaction, it’s crushing. I reply to a friend’s post because I’m interested in the subject, I want to have a discussion! I WANT to talk about it with them, but I immediately kick myself for adding another conversation to the pile. Day by day, I ignore messages for hours on end and watch mountains pile around me, to reply en masse at the end of the night to let the cycle repeat. I wake up to six discord DMs and as I clear the third, the first replies back again.

We weren’t meant to have thirty simultaneous conversations. We weren’t. And you know in your bones that the number isn’t an exaggeration.

[copsecore]

whoever did that post about how blocking people in this fandom is so freeing but so isolating is like 10000% correct btw

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

Just to minimize my chances of being genuinely misunderstood OR deliberately misinterpreted, and crucified for something I don't think, How Dare You Say We Piss on the Poor website etc...I'm gonna say this right up top. I absolutely understand why people don't like Thessaly as a character, if anyone does completely unironically stan her as some kind of feminist hero who Did Nothing Wrong uwu, I personally see it as a bit of a red flag. I don't like terfs real or fictional. In a vacuum, I could even completely sympathize and agree with the people who want her cut.

HOWEVER.

It's really something to me to see people clamoring for her to be cut, because she carries and expressed an ugly indefensible prejudice (transphobia) in words towards (1) person. Meanwhile Hob fucking Gadling enacted one of the most violent forms of antiblack racism I can even think of against thousands no, millions of people, the ripple effects of which still affect billions more today. Just a little light idk, profiting off the fucking slave trade and had to be told by someone else that it was bad...and he's a fan favorite.

People are saying Thessally being Dream's love interest reflects badly on him or is somehow endorsement by the narrative (?!?!?!?!?!? Didn't she (SPOILER ALERT AS IF IT MATTERS BY NOW) help participate in his extended assisted suicide? She's not painted as a great person to me just another character what are y'all SMOKING whatever fine. It's fine this is fine.) But shipping Dream with Mr. Former Slaver is not only not verboten or frowned on widely in the fandom but its THEE most popular pairing by far. So...why the difference?

Like where are the same fans who are saying Thessaly shouldn't just be more clearly shown to be wrong, she shouldn't even be in the show at all when it comes to Hobert's crimes??? Yes, transphobia is indefensible. Isn't racism?

And I hear the cries of "it's fiction!!!" Already rallying (if anyone who needs to hear this even sees it lol) to which I say:

HORSESHIT. I KNOW you don't, deep down, really agree because if you did, why get upset about Thessaly being included??? Why does what she said to one person matter if it's Just Fiction You Guyze. Fictional characters are allowed to do bad things and fiction isn't reality sweaty....except when you only apply that standard to fictional racists you like and simp for, but fictional transphobes you don't are SO HARMFUL they shouldn't even be portrayed in fiction.

Like. Give me a big fat BREAK. This looks like bullshit, no? I'm sorry, but I'd love for someone to try and give any other explanation besides one personally offended you or hit home for you, and the other doesn't.

And if that bothers you or you feel like it says something negative about you...idk what you want me to say??? You can't control how other people perceive you and that's how people outside this majority-of-the-fandom bubble see it. You don't need to respond, I just wish and genuinely hope this gives you a moment to think about why fans who ARE bothered by both (and not just paying lip service to being bothered by the one but railing against the other) are so frustrated with people saying everyone is welcome but in practice only bending over backwards for the comfort and emotions of themselves, and people they can easily relate to.

You don't have to like Thessaly (I don't. I find her an interesting antagonist, I don't stan her. And frankly imo likability is not. the point of her character) but you'll pardon me for feeling more than a bit cynical and side eying people's motivations for what seems a...pretty obvious double standard, on what fictional crimes related to real world issues matter to y'all, and which clearly don't. Either actually bring the same energy to the table for fictional people who committed atrocities, even if against a group you're not part of and thus don't feel the need to empathize with, or just carry on, but accept that you don't have the SLIGHTEST room to talk about cutting characters who do immoral things. And you also need to accept that you look like a hypocrite when you do.

[eliounora]

of course at the bottom of everybody's existence lies a deepfound loneliness but I do wonder why it is such a struggle to find likeminded people for some of us. now I'm prone to feeling like an outsider because of the particular experiences I've had and I've cut ties to a lot of people, which explains why I don't have a lot of friends, but even with the friends I've had I've always held back and had to change to fit in. there's been feelings of not being queer enough or straight enough, or being too nerdy, or not wanting to drink or smoke, or drinking too much. in some part my lack of friends is because of my refusal to adjust or getting tired of adjusting after coming to realise that I can't really talk to these people about the things I want to talk about, but I suppose the goal is to find a good balance of fitting in and staying true to yourself. food for thought

[katsigian]

Hey what if we left people the fuck alone when it comes to their ships, yeah? Let people enjoy what they want to enjoy in this bleak fucking world instead of barging in with some lame and unneeded moral grandstanding. "UMM actually here's why your ship is problematic 🤓" how about we stop being judge-y and self righteous instead? What are you a cop? Because policing someone's ship in your 30's is embarrassing

If someone wants to ship their OCs with a certain dynamic or with a specific type of character, then that's FINE. Stop being a clown and vague posting about them. Unless there is something obviously wrong (i.e. underage and so on), your opinion need not be expressed in the most bitch-coded vaguepost