#internet mum

[ofmermaidstories]

the australian government is trying to legislate kids under sixteen off of social media. so, if you are aussie and under sixteen, you won’t be allowed to have a sm account on sites like twitter, tiktok, facebook, youtube—and more.

i know our relationship with minors, as fic writers who write for other adults, is rocky at best. the rise in self-censoring and shame-based attitudes among readers in general is helping to kill any and all artistic curiosity in the next generation, which in turn makes it actively hard to be in shared, online fan spaces. it’s easy to blame the kids, but at its heart i think this is an active adult failure. our younger generations have gotten the raw end of the deal, in many ways; one of them being allowed to grow up alongside of material that they should’ve never had free access to, not without guided parenting.

And that’s the thing. the answer isn’t banning them. the legislation involved means that social media companies will be the ones to face the penalties (the fines) if minors break the new laws. which means—what? censorship gets even worse, in an effort to be even more kid friendly? Government-interest friendly? this talk started happening in the thick of the pro-palestine marches, as the movement was trickling into universities and highschools. And okay, let’s say it’s not that—what else could this be about? could it maybe have something to do with the fact that the australian government wants to implement a Digital ID nation wide?

"This one is for the mums and dads,” Albo, Anthony Albanese, our prime minister and prime dickhead, says in the announcement. “They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online. I want Australian families to know that the government has your back.”

But this isn’t about protecting kids. At the very best, they’re selling it as a scapegoat—like, oh! Haha, now you can just tell the kids it’s illegal!! It completely ignores the reality that people have to parent these humans. Like, it’s giving people, at best, an excuse to continue being lazy. They don’t have to sit down with their kids and the things they’re engaging with, anymore—because they’re banned from it! Instead having conversations about the media they encounter, it’s okay! You don’t need to worry about that anymore! The australian government wants to pretend this is about protecting kids from predators or online bullying, instead of parents confronting the fact they’ve created little assholes with unfettered access to tools to harass people with, or let their kids walk into traps because they haven’t taught them basic internet safety.

I have mixed feelings. Like any other (reasonable) adult, I worry about what kind of effects this much freedom to this much knowledge and drivel and personality can do to someone younger, someone who hasn’t like—had to learn how to make their way through a world where people are messy and a little weird and sometimes outright unlikable, but you have to still be professional about it, you know? I worry about things like micro-trends running the fun and excitement of digging in and finding some niche fashion that becomes your personality. I worry about status symbols like the right makeup and fitness pants and waterbottles getting popular too fast, and then cycling out just as quickly and creating a pace that kids without means can’t participate in as fast. I worry about podcasts run by sigma-pus males or whatever, tradwives selling glamour under the pretense of housework, like, so much of it. But these are all things that you as a parent have to negate!!! Like. You can’t just ban kids from the internet and then expect them to be normal about things whenever they’re allowed back—you have to teach them to be, to handle it. You have to teach them!!

I am saying this as an adult. An adult who likes adult things, and likes them in an open, easily-accessible space. An adult who would actively benefit from minor-free social media. There are things as an adult creator that I wanna talk about, or write about, in ways that aren’t always age-appropriate (or at all!!) for a younger audience. And look—my personal view has always been that as a fanfic writer, my responsibility to you guys (adults and sneaky-little-minors alike!!) has always been to warn appropriately on or in the fics themselves. That’s it. You get the warning labels on the tin, and you decide what to do with that afterwards. It’s not always perfect because I’m not perfect. I will make mistakes. I might not tag for something specific that ends up being a trigger for you. But the thing with fanfiction and fanfic communities is that we generally have to trust each other. I might miss a warning, but you have to trust that that mistake wasn’t a deliberate effort to hurt you. I have to trust that you guys know your own boundaries and will engage—or not!!—accordingly. I opt to treat my space here, my blog, as an open-one. Because it is! It’s a public blog LOL. If you have a tumblr account, then you have access to it! So, I try to treat this space like a public conversation in a café, or a foodcourt. Maybe I slip a raunchy little book over the table to you, and we make one or two rude jokes, or otherwise a stray rando catches the tail-end of a more serious conversation—but it’s all things I would be comfortable (enough) discussing with someone in a space where maybe I don’t know everyone involved, you know? I benefit from the knowledge that oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about local kids getting on here. 💀 But—I hate that for them!! Do I trust younger readers? Not always!!! I worry that they’ll get caught in the wrong feedback loop, that they don’t like, investigate claims or challenge information for themselves, that they’ve never had to! And hey, to be completely fair, I don’t always trust proper adult readers with that either LMFAOOO, but the point is that kids get more grace and more worry from me because they are still actively learning to be apart of things, of communities. And I think banning them from that is ultimately a mistake. To protect someone you have to teach them what to look out for, how to engage safely, how to trust themselves. And that’s not what’s going to be achieved here. This social media ban is a useless bandaid in the face of bigger problems (housing crisis, inflation, the AUKUS submarine thing i don’t even want to talk about it its stupid) that the government is waving around to distract everyone with. And it’s working. Because people would rather sit there and scroll on facebook, or whatever, instagram, instead of actively parenting.

[kavehater]

I support girls but NAH THIS IS REACHING “if you look carefully LIKE REALLY CAREFULLY 🤓☝️”

[scorpiusmalfoylovesoscarwilde]

I've officially managed to stay alive longer than James and Lily Potter 🤩🤩🤩✨️✨️✨️ #22

[zhoudadudugongjin]

[now-you-sound-like-a-jedi]

Found out tonight that my colleague who I talk about Star Wars with every time we're on the same shift is one of those Star Wars fans :/

We were talking about The Acolyte and he said he wasn't going to watch it because he's "fed up of all the woke nonsense" (as someone who actually has watched it, is the "woke nonsense" in the room with us??)

He later clarified that he meant specifically that there isn't a white guy in the main cast. Like, dude... you realise that every movie in the damn franchise is literally full of white guys right?? I'm sure you can cope without one for a single fucking series

[thaliatimsh]

Moment of pain nobody ever talks abt:

Innocently looking up something about a video game or tv show and tapping on the link to a dot fandom dot com wiki

Realising what youve wrought

Trying to tap out before every ad in the universe tries to load

Already being too late as the gargantuan weight of nine billion ads jostling for position throttles the RAM of your phone

Phone explodes

[bbbrianjones]

ughh do like ???? my mum has been given at most two years to live and idk i don'teven like?????

[crowkip]

just discovered you and your art and i'm going feral like aajsjfkfk it is gorgeous i could almost live off it

anyway you have another lesbian supporter <3

[terranesque]

LOVE how ungoogleable i am. anyone looking me up from my work emails will get an imdb page and that is it

[schizowitchic]

also like i partially found out i might be intersex because i was looking at trans stuff and there was like "(however many) months on t and finally seeing some bottom growth" and like pictures of t-dicks and i was like.... um.... that's kind of just what my clit looks like anyways. so i was like "hey google give me a quick rundown on this" and learned what clitoromegaly was and then i was like. hm. intersex resources. and it's like a sign? symptom? side-effect? of certain intersex conditions

[cult-of-the-eye]

I have PTSD right and one of my symptoms is nightmares but not like in the usual way, it's more of a "let's see how many ways we can psychologically torture cult by playing out extremely detailed and vivid situations to put them in" way...which means I have dreamed about being entrusted a child to look after who was being hunted to death by crowds of baying people and also about someone being sliced like an accordion potato

[shubblelive]

imagine having your own mother look you dead in the eyes and say “jack manifold is better than you” like i think i’d crumple

[drag0nalias0]

Finally about to watch Nimona!!!!!

[oshidorifuufu]

me when i remember my father never wanted me in the first place x_x

[dracomort]

Some 20-year-old: I've just started making minimum wage, what should I do to set myself up financially for my future?

White redditors, foaming at the mouth: Pay your parents rent, you useless sack of shit. You elder abuser. You worthless animal. You thieving vulture.

[shatterthefragments]

Accidentally introduced mum to the phrase “are you shitting my dick” today 🪦