#it is EXHAUSTING to try to engage with any kind of media these days

[eddis-not-eeddis]

Modern entertainment is not edifying or restful and it’s driving me crazy.

[cosmicjoke]

Im so tired of this fandom. I really think I’m done with it honestly, people have completely ruined this show for me. Levi is one of my favorite characters in all media and I’m just tired of logging on and seeing people go to Levi blogs like yours to hate on him. I’m sorry you have to deal with that. These people go out of their way to hate on something people enjoy and it’s awful. And they are just vile with their comments because they can hide behind anon. I’m sick of seeing certain character fans hate on Levi because they’re upset he’s popular. Newsflash to them: it doesn’t make us regard their faves any higher!! And I know this may sound stupid but I see this happening so often lately that every time I think of aot I think about this shit and it has severely diminished my enjoyment of this work. I can’t imagine getting asks like this constantly. I’m so sorry :( I’m so tired of the idiocy and lack of media literacy people have in the fandom. I’m sick of the superiority complex certain character stans have. And I’m sick of people attacking others for just liking a character like Levi. After a long day I just want to login and see art and meta from people who share a love for Levi.

I totally feel you. I get unbelievably sick of the crap I see go on in this fandom, and the constant bullying and harassment that takes place, on top of the way you aren't even allowed to fight back against it without someone else coming at you for saying something they supposedly find offensive, really does make being in this fandom exhausting. When you end up being attacked for defending yourself against bullying, it really is easy to become discouraged. So I thank you so much for your support, truly.

And yes, that anon really is a vile person, truly just disgusting. I honestly don't even know what their agenda is, other than wanting to make other people miserable, and I guess that says it all about the kind of person they are. That they've now resorted to trying to degrade Levi by using slurs and ableist language about him also says it all. Well, I refuse to let them do that to me, or allow them to ruin my enjoyment of AoT or Levi. Fuck them, I say. The harder they try, the more I'm just going to keep engaging and talking about how great Levi is, lol. I think that's the best revenge. And truly, they expose themselves anyway every time they open their wretched little mouth for the insecure twat that they are, lol. The fact they'll only send their messages on anon also speaks volumes about their pathetic cowardice.

So yeah, I totally understand where you're coming from, and wanting to just leave the fandom. But for me personally, I won't give these clowns the satisfaction of driving me away. Every time they say something to me, I'm just going to remind them that they're the ones who can't seem to stop talking about Levi and his popularity. Because at the end of the day, they only prove how popular he is by being unable to move past him, trying so hard to deny how loved a character he is, while themselves literally obsessing over him. It truly is the definition of pathetic.

[dykeulous]

i’m also a trans radfem (mtf). i don’t condone rape threats on either side and also believe it’s fine if people have genital preferences. i don’t feel like i fit in any where either. in a way i don’t really hate terfs (unless they send me rape and death threats) because i understand most of them are angry at the patriarchy and have all right to be. i saw your rant post and i felt a little validated. i hope you find community soon :) sending you lots of love. 💞

thank you, lovely anon! i love invoking a sense of belonging in people with my posts. i hope we both find community soon; we deserve it with all the patience we have for both sides who don’t want to hear us out in the slightest. my posts speak volumes & i clearly have shifted from merely trying to figure my own feminist theory out & documenting my thinkpieces on a social media app for myself and myself only, to trying to build community, find like-minded people, influence someone– even redirect someone, if possible. it’s been an exhausting journey, because at the beginning (like i said in the rant post), this was never meant to be an account of that sort of nature. it was a personal blog where i documented my thoughts & tried to guide my own self to come to a finalized understanding of my beliefs. my beliefs have evolved a lot from the day i first made this account, and they are still a work in progress. i’m now engaging more with both radblr & transblr, getting annoyed at both sides, but trying to keep my shit together for the most part lol. we deserve an award, anon. we really do. we deserve an award for keeping our cool down & restoring to kindness, compromise, understanding & patience– despite getting dragged around like wrecks by the unnuaced world.

i wish you the best, and i hope you stick around. we need more people like you. i sincerely hope the hateful & miserable blackpillers in this community don’t push you away. you belong. you deserve to be part of this community, and i am glad you are choosing to stay despite the vocal minority actively working on ruining our image & movement with their awful beliefs & actions.

[genesisrecord]

hello world.

name's alex, or i guess i also go by cancel on here too. he and neos if you want. 18 years old unfortunately. transmasculine nonbinary and aroace. im diagnosed with many things and undiagnosed with many more things. welcome to the introductory post for this chaos pit of a blog.

information.

im an artist with a main focus in character design and concept art, though i do illustrations too. i love my ocs so thats what i draw most of the time. id advise against following me for fandom stuff other than lotf but i do reblog some animanga things and other media i like from time to time. i use this blog as a catchall for my art, yapping, and reblogs, so beware.

if youre coming from the lotf fandom, hi. so heres the deal. i used to draw the lotf characters, but eventually my designs and hcs for them became so complex and removed from the novel that i decided to make them ocs. theyre called the island kids. you can look at their refs and read about them by clicking that link. i long for them to eventually be their own characters apart from lotf, but i understand that they still look and act similarly to the lotf characters, and seeing as they literally evolved from them, they can pretty much be treated as the same thing. thats why im here. i still engage with the fandom normally, but when i draw the "lotf characters" im really drawing the island kids. apologies if thats highly confusing, dont worry. im still confused myself.

if youre here for oc content, hi. i have way too many projects to possibly keep track of so id suggest to not even try. if youre interested in any particular project feel free to ask and i will spill the beans all over your counter. i dont really have a hierarchy of projects as my focus switches constantly but in general the island kids and catwog are on top. im also a big fan of making gijinkas so youll probably see a lot of those from me too. i aspire to be a character designer / concept artist one day and making ocs have always kind of been an outlet for me to hone that skill. i treat them like my babies. i hope you will like them as much as i do.

some other miscellaneous interests i have are mythology, shakespeare, various animanga, some choice video games, internet / psychological horror, and a bunch of other stuff, but i dont usually talk about those on here. they may pop up from time to time though.

rules.

before you follow ; im quite literally almost never on this app so posts are extremely inconsistent. i wouldnt follow for one particular thing because you will get an earful of everything else im interested in at the moment. not much else, just make sure you can handle the uber instincts of my uber autism.

do not interact ; bigots of any affiliation (racist, ableist, queerphobic, etc), proshippers, zionists, terfs, ai "art" creators or defenders, nftbros, mspec "lesbians" or defenders, and generally annoying people. this isnt exhaustive but for the most part i just block if i dont like you.

misc.

my ask box is always open for general chatter or art requests. probably wont draw media characters but feel free to send in lotf characters, my ocs, or your ocs and i might doodle them depending on my availability.

please dont hesitate to message me if we share an interest or you just wanna talk with me. i dont bite i promise. and if you are ever so inclined to draw one of my ocs, i beg of you, please tag me or send it to me so i can scream about it and do my little autism dance while looking at it for the next 5 business days.

you can use the tags down below to look for specific stuff on my account, though i cant guarantee everythings tagged properly. i also tag reblogs with the name of the media im reblogging and the characters in the post so you can also look for stuff that way.

if youre interested in more of my yapping and / or art, heres my twitter and instagram. my discord is ihavetheconch if you want to shoot me a friend request.

[tomorrowusa]

For anybody still desperately clinging to Twitter/X in the empty hope that it may soon return to its glory days: IT WON'T. It's just getting worse.

The recent terror attack on Israel and the Israeli response have highlighted the continuing descent of Twitter.

[T]he platform now called X has become a vortex of false claims and doctored footage. It’s a fog-of-war machine. That’s been the unmistakable reality in the days after Hamas’ deadly terrorist attack on Israeli civilians—a land, air, and sea operation that has killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and led to another 900 deaths in Gaza following Israel’s military retaliation. Musk’s changes to the foundation of how Twitter works have not only rendered Twitter useless as a means of making sense of the conflict as (or even hours after) it unfolds, but made it actively counterproductive for users trying to figure out what’s going on. As Musk and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino have rolled back the platform’s rules of engagement and rid their ranks of the content-moderation teams and tools that actually keep X trustworthy, they’ve also put in place a system that fundamentally incentivizes the spread of misinformation during times of mass panic and confusion, in part because X is now a platform that pays for viral content. The end result is that Twitter, more so than any other platform right now, is fertile ground for a new kind of war profiteering.

A few debunkings – relatively minor ones. It would be an exhausting effort for somebody to keep up with them all. A problem with debunkings is that they can sometimes continue to spread the lies which are debunked. But here are some which don't do that.

On Oct. 8, the day after the initial Hamas attack, an account called @AGCast4 posted a video supposedly showing a Hamas rocket attack in Israel. The BBC journalist and fact-checker Shayan Sardarizadeh debunked it: The footage wasn’t from the ongoing conflict or any real-life war but from the video game Arma 3. The account was—and still is—verified with a blue check mark. Two days later, the investigative outfit Bellingcat, known for its visual forensics work, had to debunk some fake news … about itself. A doctored “BBC” video was circulating on social media, claiming that Bellingcat’s journalists had confirmed Ukrainian weapon sales to Hamas. “We’ve reached no such conclusions or made any such claims,” Bellingcat’s official account wrote on Twitter. In a screenshot, Bellingcat showed that a Twitter account called Geopoliitics & Empire had shared the video. Like the account that posted video game footage, this account was also verified with a blue check mark. (The account owner deleted the post and called it an “honest mistake,” simultaneously posting a meme captioned “We are going to be famous.”)

Those blue check marks have lost all meaning.

But now anyone who pays for Twitter Blue—recently renamed X Premium—can just buy a blue check mark for $8 a month, along with the veneer that they are a notable person or a legitimate source of information. Just last week, X removed headlines from linked news articles, making the site exponentially more confusing to scroll through.

“There is a difference between platforms that take steps to mitigate harm, platforms that have not yet started taking these steps, and platforms that take steps to undo processes that mitigated harm,” Chinmayi Arun, the executive director of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, told me. “Users who are accustomed to a different version of X may not know how to process or understand what they are seeing now.” It’s been mere days since the war broke out, but European regulators are already peeved with what they’ve seen. In a posted letter to Musk, European commissioner Thierry Breton asked the X owner to comply with the continent’s sweeping Digital Services Act. He urged the billionaire to respond within 24 hours with assurances that he’s taking the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” seriously or face legal penalties.

I wish the European regulators luck. But the best move is for people to abandon Twitter/X. You feed the trolls and the disinformation machine by remaining there.

Musk may want to prioritize “free speech” and being “open source,” but millions of people rely on his platform for reliable information. And, as it’s played out time after time, there are often very scary real-world consequences when conspiracy theories and fraudulent stories are allowed to run rampant. The only thing that’s transparent is the owner’s inattention.

Seriously, those people need to stop treating Twitter/X as a news source. The best way to do so is to simply leave. Get the word out!

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Puzzmo

I was not at all prepared for the onslaught of time here.

Hey, have you heard of Puzzmo? It’s a website that does a bunch of engaging, carefully cultivated and constructed puzzle games, you know, like like the page from a newspaper, oh okay, okay, so a newspaper was, like, okay, back in the day, to inform you of things like mustache wax sales and the latest asbestos explosions, a company would take a tree, and, rice, slice it very thin, then press that flat, and then they’d roll it up and throw it at your house. At some point in this exchange, people made money doing this, and that the media ecosystem in which sample bridge hand games flourished, alongside crosswords and the entire Garfield media empire.

Anyway, Puzzmo is like that, as a reference frame, except, like, really good.

Puzzmo is a website. You can go to Puzzmo, and it will show you a crossword, a chess puzzle, a jumbled up word puzzle, and a type of game called Spelltower. Oh wait, I guess I can’t just treat Spelltower like everyone knows Spelltower.

Okay, then, if you don’t know Spelltower, you can just go to the google store and download Spelltower onto your phone and play it right there. It’s a word finder game with gravity. Long words are worth more points, but they destroy letters around them, and those letters get you points, but there’s a big bonus for getting rid of all the letters by the end of the game, and that puts you in tension with long and short words. When you play Spelltower, you don’t want to thoughtlessly blow up the middle of the tower and leave long, unuseful stacks on the sides, because doing that leaves you with a bunch of little nubbins at the bottom that literally cannot connect to anything. If you do know Spelltower, Puzzmo’s version does this cool flashy rainbow animation when you clear it, and that’s really cool feeling when you get to see it. Further complicating Puzzmo is that some challenging letters (X, Q, Z and J) give you a bonus for using them in a word – they blow up their entire row – and three letters every tower will have a star on them, which multiply the score of the word.

These bonuses stack.

If you get two stars in one word, its score triples. If you get two stars and a challenging letter, it triples the letters in the word but also everything in that big blow up. And when one of those challenging letters is part of that, it’ll triple all the letters in that row as well, and if you think ‘wow, I guess I should try and learn all the words that can use Q without a U,’ then you have a brain like mine and that’s how I learned the Arabic word وَقْف, and its romanisation Waqf, which yes, can be pluralised, and that means you can have Waqfs, which crosses the four-letter long line and becomes a five letter word and will blow up larger groups of letters around it and when I pulled that out, and yes, I’m kind of just excited about Waqf and getting to use it.

Oh, and it’s timed.

Puzzmo is a weird kind of speed game to consider in this, the week of GDQ, but bear with me. The crosswords are timed. There’s a leaderboard where you can see how quickly you do your crossword compared to other people. There’s a timer system, but also, you can hide the timer, so you don’t have to operate any kind of pressure. And yeah, that was how I kinda got pulled to talk about Puzzmo. It’s a speed game but the only person you’re racing is yourself, and the game is deliberately broken up so you can’t grind yourself out and become exhausted by it, right? It’s a place to play with the idea of speed, but you could also focus on trying to maximise your score, and it’s also very satisfying.

I had no intention, at first, to ever write a Game Pile about Puzzmo. Then I saw, looking at my statistics with Fox one night that I’ve played twenty five hours of four minute word puzzles.

The first time I heard about Puzzmo, it was a toot on Mastodon that described itself as making ‘thoughtful puzzle games.’ This is for a website I have paid exactly zero dollars into and which tempted me to check it out by making sure that I had to solve a puzzle and then solve another puzzle to get the URL to get into Puzzmo, and then every day, Fox and I set up the TV and we’d do things like Spelltower and the Crossword puzzle together. It’s kind of hard to escape how good Puzzmo is at being what it is, a unit of fun puzzles to play with with high quality varied presentation and just the right kind of crossword puzzles to leave us, Australians, really mad at how centralised they are to America. Twenty five hours of this – when I write this but I’m confident it’ll be a lot higher by the time this goes up – is a good sign that the thing is itself, a really good thing.

And it’s free. It doesn’t have to be, you could pay a subscription cost and in the process, get access to an archive of puzzles and even more puzzles every day. At first, as presented, it looked like this was the whole model for how Puzzmo made money at all: a good service where the top tier of interest would pay money to the maintenance of the website, and all I was going to expect was a modest ongoing addition of game modes and that’s all I needed it to be. Simply put, I thought Puzzmo was a beautiful little niche of Nice Internet Material that reminded me of a better day of internet stuff.

Anyway, the second time I heard about Puzzmo, it was on Checkpoint, explaining that not only had Puzzmo been financed by the Hearst Group, it was now being bought by the Hearst Group, and was now attached, free, to a bunch of newspaper subscription and news services. It’s not like it’s a bad thing for a game to, as it were, aquire ye bag. There isn’t anything about Puzzmo that necessitates it being bad that it’s currently owned by a company that’s owned things like major controlling interests in Verizon.

What does matter is trust.

Right now, every single time I’ve been playing an online game, a corporate — like, impersonal and organisational and profit-driven — host has a consistent trend towards getting worse. You might have heard of this as enshittification. It probably came up with a conversation about paywalls, or maybe even Wordle. I’m not saying Wordle is bad now — but Wordle is a thing a newspaper owns so they can encourage me to engage with their newspaper, and that newspaper has some really weird opinions. And you know, take what you want out of systems like that, gold from dragons, I don’t have a problem with that.

It just makes me pause.

I was very close, before the door closed, to buying a lifetime subscription to Puzzmo. After all, it was a game I was playing every day with Fox. Money choices and best practices meant that I opted against doing it, but there were times I might have done it, if I was more flush with Patreon coinage.

And now, I don’t know if I’ll ever pay into Puzzmo. Not because it’s bad or even because it might be bad, though I absolutely am convinced now that over time, Puzzmo is going to get worse. Just the natural byproduct of the enshittification of the internet, as companies enclose around the things we use and care about.

You should go try out Puzzmo. It might be the best, today, it’ll ever be.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[alltheselights]

To continue on the previous anon. I entered the fandom last fall, I absolutely adore him as a person and the music he makes. I love fitf, I’ll blast that record full volume any moment of the day. I want to see it live, I want to see him succeed. But, I am getting exhausted already of the drama and of the ways his things are dealt with? I’m really looking at the Niall fans enjoying themselves, no lama no drama etc etc. And I can’t help ask, in 2023, why it’s gotta be like this?

Even if he’s dealing with whatever it is that led to this cancellation, if he’s trying to fix it or whatnot, he could at least say so? Like just tell us you’re dealing with some shit, trying to fix new dates to be there or whatever and that you’ll brb. What’s the matter? This kind of vague posting and odd silence around the matter just raises more questions.

I feel he ought to engage with fans a litte more in general, it’s a smart way to do promo and hype up the crowd. It costs him a minute or two of his week to post a short tweet/video/pic of what’s up. Niall’s killin’ it on tiktok/insta, Lewis is beyond amazing. I know H and L both have this brand of being off socials and kind of aloof but I’m not sure if it’s working in Louis favour…

Sorry for the delayed response, bub! Yeah, I really wish that Louis had handled things differently and I was really disappointed. I will say though that the fact that he's been lurking on social media but not saying anything over the last few days (he's been liking things on Twitter and Instagram) suggests to me that he has been lurking, which means he's seen the backlash from fans. And I hope that he's taken that to heart and will act differently going forward.

I don't see him getting rid of his useless team, but it'd be nice if he makes more of an effort to hold them accountable. Touring seems to be the most important thing to him and his team's lack of professionalism and competence in planning and executing the tour should be a massive problem for him. Also, their refusal to work to expand his fanbase should also worry him if he wants to continue touring worldwide. It's expensive to tour places in a lot of the places around the world that he wants to go and for him to do it, he's going to need to start making sure that his team is planning properly, promoting the tour properly, and both maintaining and growing his fanbase. It's amazing that he wants to tour places that most artists don't tour, but he really needs to realize that he and his team need to start putting in work if that's going to be possible for him long-term.

I'd really love for him to wait a few months and then announce tour dates early next year in Asia and Latin America. I'd like for it to be properly planned and announced. I'd like for those fans to be reassured that it will happen. I'd like for the ticket sales to be organized and for there to be verified pre-sale so the tickets aren't being plucked up by scalpers. I want them to go with smaller venues with the option to move to larger venues or to add dates so the shows are selling out early, which will also be reassuring to fans. I want the dates to be properly promoted. This is probably a dream that won't be realized, but those fans really deserve it.

[soworthloving]

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

Have you ever found yourself completely overwhelmed by the season of life you are in? Maybe you feel a little abandoned by some friendships that are not showing up or you may feel like your second guessing your job. Maybe you feel like you are way in over your head and the circumstance is far from seeing any glimmer of improvement. 

I have one word for you and it might produce an eye roll, or two… you might think this is cheesy but hang in there with me and try it...

– G R A T I T U D E –

I remember a time where my circumstances felt too big of an emotion that finding gratitude in anything felt like a hopeless attempt, but after exhausting all my other attempts I tried a few disciplines and it got me through the waves of grief. (that can still show up) 

Gratitude is truly a powerful mindset that can improve your overall 

well-being and outlook on your life. I promise. 

HERE ARE THE TOP FIVE THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP YOU BECOME MORE GRATEFUL:

Gratitude Journaling

Keeping a gratitude journal involves regularly writing down things you are grateful for. Do this in the morning and on the bad days, end your day a small list. This practice encourages you to focus on the positive aspects of your life, even the small things, and helps shift your perspective towards the things that gave you life.

Acts of Kindness  Engaging in acts of kindness for others can increase your feelings of gratitude. Buy someone's lunch in the drive through line, insta cart a friend their favorite snacks. Be on the look out for how you can serve your friends and community. To think outside of yourself. Helping others and witnessing their positive reactions can make you more appreciative of the connections you have and the impact you can make on others' lives.

Limit Media Consumption

Reducing your exposure to negative news and social media can help you become more grateful. Constant exposure to negativity can distort your perspective and make it harder to appreciate the positive aspects of life.

Reflect on Challenges Reflecting on past challenges and how you overcame them can increase your gratitude. Recognizing your own strength and resilience can help you appreciate the lessons and growth that difficult experiences have brought you.

Remember, cultivating gratitude is an ongoing practice and a discipline that takes time and effort. A lot of it. Becoming more grateful for the little things and the bigs will not fix your feeling of overwhelm but it will help boost endorphins when you need them most. Incorporating these habits into your daily routine can gradually shift your mindset and help you see the world through a more grateful lens.

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary25

9/29-30/2023

late night, tonight.

i was out super late after this very bad poetry reading here for some of these creative writing majors. i don't have a lot to say about it, it was bad and the writers make some people close to me miserable because they fail at being kind basically. kind in a real way, the kindness that lets you have some give for meanness when you actually articulate/show effort put towards anyone else, people who are utterly shallow, you know. i believe it must be the case that we all know of people like that essentially.

i didn't get to work on music today really, that's kind of good, tomorrow i will try to write some stuff, i did work on music actually i guess, i wrote a riff, and i'll see where that can take me, or less writing the riff, i wrote some chords to mess with. a fun shape that has a good sound, disso and freaky when inverted.

anyways tonight was good, or like, half good. it's given me a lot to think about, with people who do certain things (like 'ethical' nonmonogamy and if that can exist when the presupposition is monogamy in the first place). i met new people who i like, who are really nice and fun to be around, who got drunk and told me dirt about some old people i knew. or really, one person. that doofus from the noise band, actually. i don't mind saying that. i won't discuss the dirt. it just kind of makes me feel something sad, about people like that, and i guess at large people who in some sense resemble the poets, shallow engagement and deeply troubled ideas of what being an artist means leading to difficult lives, miseries that begin loud and only grow quieter, never actually dissipating.

my gf really wanted to take me to this, the reading and the afterparty, she and a friend really wanted to hear my thoughts on these people because supposedly i'm very funny about that kind of thing, she forgot i guess the bore of the poetry, and the fact that as time goes on, the ruin of these lives is exposed more and more, rich (really i don't actually know, it's the impression i get) developing bad habits and using people, and the drama, while never uninteresting to someone like me (maybe it makes me evil to want to hear), is always sad.

sometimes i am like a child and i just wish everyone could be okay and fine, i'd sometimes light myself on fire to make that possible, but someone i used to be obsessed with told me that me wanting to be jesus or buddha (he said both) so bad wouldn't do anything for anyone except feed how badly i like to see myself hurt. he's right. i guess that's what knowing things does too.

maybe my whole life i'm just going to be hurting myself in new ways.

so i made 3 new friends, or 4, let me count, yeah, 4, i think. and i actually saw 2 friends i knew before tonight, and i was with my one girl friend. so 7 people, i'm gonna see some tomorrow at a gay bar to see a drag show, super exciting stuff. hopefully there won't be any pangs of sadness over the fact we are living in hell sort of.

i guess everybody has really unpleasant fascinations sometimes.

one conversation tonight, one of the new friends told me about her research topic, modern apocalyptic media and its convergence with evangelical christianity, just talking about all that stuff and its evolving state, the dwindling numbers of evangelicals and their panic, her past, and stuff. i liked that. i liked all of tonight, even the sadder parts.

i'm listening to the song theory on sex as an art form, by camera obscura, on repeat. a really great track, it's just so perfect, i love the synth-y punky part especially, but i guess it's also perfect next to a perfect melodic release, this movement that recalls something tumbling downhill, or leaves off petals, while the first part is this total mania.

anyways i am exhausted now, and tomorrow is another day of socializing and stuff.

had an awful thought, or not awful, i dunno. someone posted the song absent friend by bark psychosis, a song that takes me to two specific moments in my life. one was when i'd listen to this song, thinking about the man i loved who would disappear without a word because he was awful, and i'd lay in bed without anyone to talk to, and the second place, is years later, when a friend who loved this record to bits, killed himself, and the song was so pointed, it felt like it said something. the night i found out i walked around and listened to this song.

both times, the lyric "that's the biggest joke of all" took on pretty different meanings. right now it means something else i guess.

the awful thought was about my dead friend rather than the friend who is dead to me. my dead friend, the thought was: the most meaningful thing he'd ever do for himself was kill his own self, that's where all the force of his life would end up, and missing him, and not wanting to forget him and wanting other people to know him, all i am left being able to do is revive the corpse he made of himself and tell others, this is what he did, this is his monument and it's an awful one but it is his. i don't know what else to say about it, i'm staving off the wish to tell a stranger in a server about him because they posted this song, all i can say is i guess, beautiful song, one of the best ever, and they won't know how much i mean that. maybe i mean it less because it means such particular things to me, and rather than thinking it's the best song ever, it's just clusters of memory and feeling forever tied to it. whatever, though, that's fine.

anyways, byebye!!!

[hipsterredbull]

so you know that I've been like, obsessed with the idea of "debating" or how you might engage (or not) with the right

and idk if you've been following the MSM coverage of palestine but there's been like two moments in the "discourse" where things have shifted, right, where people have actually broken through the wall and gotten the rabid zionist media's attention at all

the first was a year ago where Bassem Youssef (who used to only be known by the moniker the Jon Stewart of Egypt) went on Piers Morgan and made incredibly dark jokes about killing his Palestinian wife as like this shock humor that really freaked people out. 23 million people watched that interview. And it really raised attention to issues. It blew up so big they immediately invited him back and he was like, one of the biggest pro-Palestinian voices being platformed because the views for the attention he was getting outweighed having an anti-Zionist on the show.

more recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates released his book "The Message" where he goes to the West Bank for ten days and compares it to the Jim Crow South. He comes back and does the media circuit and he says that he felt lied to by the American media by their portrayal of Israel. Everyone is shook by this because he's like, idk, Barack Obama's favorite author or something and part of the existing intelligentsia -- I'm not part of this world, none of this really means anything to me. But everyone has to talk to him, and he just very calmly is like "I saw what I saw."

It's not that there haven't been any pro-Palestinian voices in the media before, but they have always been trying to argue with the zionists and you just can't. Medhi Hasan, bless him, is the author of How to Win Every Argument. And he fucking talks that way. And it is kind of exhausting. He might be one of the smartest people on the topic and I learn a lot from him, but he will never really "win" over dickheads like Piers Morgan. You watch the two of them talk over each other and get their jabs in and you see how western debate culture has totally degenerated all discourse. It's so painful.

But watch the latest interview of Bassem Youssef on Piers Morgan. The pace is slow, while Medhi is motor-mouthed. Medhi is all statements and assertions, while Bassem will do something unexpected. He might tell a joke, a story, ask a question. He's not without facts -- maybe he has a chart or a quote. But someone like Piers is always trying to back you into a corner using sophistry and you can see Bassem maneuvering around those attempts. You just can't fight these people head on.

This is why Ta-Nehisi is such a threat too. He traded in his social capital so he could tell his story very in a straight-forwarded manner and there's not a lot you can do to challenge that (other than the familiar calling him an anti-semite). He throws folks off their game by refusing to argue the facts. The appeal to pathos here is really powerful. You just can't debate people into issues, this one in particular.

[boldcompanynews]

Smart Emmanuel: How to Navigate Distractions in the Digital Age - Notice Today Web - BLOGGER https://www.merchant-business.com/smart-emmanuel-how-to-navigate-distractions-in-the-digital-age/?feed_id=149596&_unique_id=66a9b46c5dfa6 Have you ever wished for more time? Has the day ever ended, leaving you wondering how quickly it passed? Worse still, have you ever felt so tired yet achieved so little? You haven’t done any real work but feel drained, with low energy levels? There are several reasons for this.In a world where everything is accessible via your smartphone and the internet, we are constantly distracted by irresistible skits, videos, and pictures from strangers, friends, and family. When you escape it on Instagram, you get stuck on WhatsApp status or a link to a TikTok or Snapchat video. If you try to be too serious, an interesting post on LinkedIn might catch your eye, leading you to Google more about the topic while all your planned tasks for the day suffer. The distractions are constantly in our faces, and before you realise how much time you’ve spent on the internet, your important hours are exhausted. It is important to ask ourselves, what kind of person must we become to maximise the 24 hours we have each day?In the past, all we had was TV. Local TV stations had our lives planned for us because we could only watch movies at night and watch the news for one hour. But now we have 24-hour news networks. You can watch thousands of movies non-stop, and you can watch hundreds of thousands of music videos. You have millions of music selections you can listen to anytime. You can read millions of stories or books anytime, anywhere. We have too much of everything, anytime we want it.According to statistics, the average person spends over 3 hours per day on their phone, which totals more than 20 hours a week. Another report by the American Psychological Association found that multitasking with digital devices can reduce productivity by up to 40%. This constant influx of information and entertainment significantly impacts productivity and focus.We deserve to have fun and enjoy the gift of unlimited content and entertainment, but we must also learn to manage our time and avoid distractions. These should not replace the necessary work we need to do to achieve our goals. They must not encroach on our reading time as students, our work time as employees or entrepreneurs, or our time for spiritual growth and connection with God. While addictive, these fun distractions should be treated as such, and we should only engage with them when our schedule allows.It’s challenging to label these activities as distractions because many social media posts, YouTube videos, and movies can be helpful. However, just as it’s wrong to close your eyes to pray while driving—not because prayer is wrong but because the time is inappropriate—it’s also wrong to use time meant for other tasks to indulge in social media, movies, 24-hour news networks, or internet browsing. The point is to allocate and schedule specific times for these activities.***Feature Image by Ketut Subiyanto for PexelsSmart Emmanuel is an accomplished entrepreneur, bestselling author of Make What Customers Want (Create Global Brands), A Sales Man’s Story (Tales Of Sales Success), Letters To My Daughter (A Fathers View On Gender Equality) and EFETURI (There Are Many Paths To Wealth) and arguably Africa’s leading Sales and Brand Growth Strategist and Product Development Expert. Mr. Smart has spent the last thirteen (13) years helping to transform individuals and businesses, teaching strategic selling and brand building, designing and implementing sales systems and led the creation, design and launch of one of the fastest selling cookie brand in Africa – Nibit Mini Snacks.Personal website is smartemmanuel.com“Have you ever wished for more time? Has the day ever ended, leaving you wondering how quickly it passed? Worse still, have you ever felt so tired yet achieved so…”Source Link: https://www.

bellanaija.com/2024/07/smart-emmanuel-how-to-navigate-distractions-in-the-digital-age/ http://109.70.148.72/~merchant29/6network/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/pexels-photo-7034449.jpeg #GLOBAL - BLOGGER Have ... BLOGGER - #GLOBAL

[rialikesbts]

Useless rant ahead so you guys can skip if u want <3

Soooo basically my only three friends from university cut me off :(

Two of them are a couple and they initiated it because i wasn't participating in group projects with them.

Now I am kind of an overachiever and i have good grades and i work really hard ! I tried working with them into 3-4 projects but all 3 of them never put the effort in so at the end of the day it was always just me doing all the work.So another group asked me if i wanted to work with them since they knew that i was someone who puts in effort and i agreed ( Already had worked with them in the past and got a 4.0 gpa that semester!)

Now i already did tell all 3 of them that things weren't working out since I was the one getting exhausted and two of them cut me off and they told the third one that I'm useless to them since I only want to hang out with them and not do projects with them.(I honestly felt so sad hearing this because even after i changed groups I was still trying my best to help them out like sharing my notes etc)

The third one didn't want to but no one else was taking her in for the group projects we have each semester since everyone in the class knows that those 3 do not do any work (I'm a software engineering student so it's very competitive).So she told me that she would only talk to me on WhatsApp and social media but not engage with me in class.I was devastated and told her it's better not to do it half heartedly.

So noww I am basically alone.

And it hurts a lot.

Like what is so wrong with changing your group if you're current group members aren't putting any work !!

I just feel so frustrated and alone.

Need some hugs 🫂

Thank you for those who read till the last line

[queeriboh]

You know, I think you need to rethink that approach. You’re getting 3 likes? That means 3 people cared. They did read it. Those 3 people wanted to know. I know it’s like pulling teeth, trying to get any single one of them to say so though. Unless you spend the time to befriend them. But it is worth trying to befriend them. If you have people who regularly like your posts, it’s not a far shot that maybe you’ll also get along when you talk in DMs.

You’ll just have to make the first move. And with some it might not work. But if it does work, you made a friend who cares. Good engagement (especially on OCs) so rarely comes from the void, you can’t ask the void for that. The void literally doesn’t care, and it’s only been getting worse with the way social media is set up nowadays.

But you can ask friends. And I know making friends is hard and exhausting and terrifying at times, but it’s really the only way. Chat them up. Most of us are lonely on the internet now, and would love a chat. (We’re also all extremely socially awkward but that’s just something that needs braving and dealing with.)

it could just as easily mean 3 people saw me bitching and begging and just wanted me to shut up and pity liked it. even though I begged for any and all questions about what I wrote bc I wanted prompts to continue gushing, not one person even said "yes, please go on!" or showed any real interest.

and it isn't like I haven't tried to make the first move. Arling's replied to more than a handful of posts and selfies, and been completely ignored. Yugi's been getting ignored the same way, even when I do try to make the first move.

and I only have the same handful of followers on all my accounts. I do talk to some of them in dms. but when I voice my frustrations I ALWAYS get these same kind of responses. "well keep trying! I mean I'm not interested, but hey, somebody will be." just like this.

I have friends I chat with ooc every day. they still don't ask me any questions about my characters or lore. I've straight up asked friends on numerous occasions to join my TLs, and I get told no thanks every single time.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this has been happening for 10 years. I begged and pleaded and even tried to PAY people to join Demi and Angel's tl back in like 2016. I wrote their entire story from start to finish playing every single character by myself.

I don't know what to do. I can't just go into the ask boxes of people who don't like my posts or even acknowledge my comments and replies on their posts

[mess-of-contradictions]

Have been MIA for the last 6 weeks because life is chaotic and exhausting and I haven’t had the bandwidth to engage with anything or anyone.

I took a two week vacation with my family mid-August, which I realize is a privilege to be able to do, and was honestly enjoyable in many ways but there were also several ways in which it was not. The two weeks leading up to it, work-wise, were horrible because I work 24hr shifts and I had to get all 7 shifts for the month out of the way in the two weeks before, so I went into vacay already kind of depleted. On top of that it’s been 5+ years since our last family vacay and between Covid and just getting older I didn’t realize how much more introverted I’ve become. Two weeks of constant socialization with no time to myself went way past the limits of my social battery and I was just DONE by the end of it. Plus, we took a cruise (which we’ve done before but will never do again in this post-covid era) and of course it was during this lovely Covid surge we’ve been having and people have just forgotten any lessons learned at the start of the pandemic. So many people were obviously sick and determined to go about their vacation despite that and there was SO much coughing and sneezing and sniffling that progressively got worse and it was just so so gross.

Then, to pile onto all of that, once we got home my dad became critically ill as a result of our trip and ended up hospitalized and on a ventilator for several days. I hadn’t realized how difficult being the medically literate person in the family could be until that happened. Everyone looked to me to translate what the doctors were saying and what was happening, and on the day he had to be intubated I unfortunately was not at the hospital so my mom put his doctor on the phone to explain what was happening and essentially give the okay to do it. It’s a whole other level of exhausting to go back and forth to the hospital for 3.5 weeks and be the optimistic one for the family while trying to hide the fact that I’m internally panicking over the very real possibility that he might not make it. Being in healthcare can be traumatizing in lots of different ways but that was not one that I was prepared for.

Anyway, things have finally started to calm down. Thankfully my dad is almost back to his normal self and was discharged from the hospital today. I’m trying to find my way back to enjoying and engaging in social media again, let alone life outside of work and going back and forth to a hospital. In all honesty I really just want to sleep through the rest of the year and wake up once it’s 2024 but I’m hoping that some decent rest and time to myself will help that too. We’ll see. I just need life to not throw any curveballs at me for like a solid month and I think I’ll be good.

[solena2]

Saw a post about which books the batfam would read that was Wrong so I’m throwing my hat into the ring

So first, Bruce. Bruce has No Life aside from the whole “pretending to be an entirely different person in public” thing, and as such he reads precisely three things. 1: shitty romance novels. He says it’s because they’re the kind of thing his persona would read so he needs to be able to talk about them if asked but he secretly likes them. 2: anything nonfiction. Put literally any nonfiction book in front of him and he will have finished it within an hour, regardless of length. 3: Agatha Christie. He’s read all of her books multiple times and got all of his kids into her work as well.

Next is Dick. Dick doesn’t read much, because this man has absolutely no free time ever. Like, day job as a cop, night job as a vigilante, and a social life? He doesn’t sleep and he definitely doesn’t have hobbies. He does really like comics though. He owns pretty much every Calvin and Hobbes collection ever published, along with a respectable amount of Foxtrot and some Dilbert stuff he regretted buying after doing some research into the author. He also has a semi-secret pulp fiction addiction, especially the weird horror thinkpiece ones that you always regret reading when you try to sleep.

Jason, unlike Dick, reads constantly. He loves books, he is a massive literature nerd. Since he lives on his own, he gets a lot more alone time than the others, and he spends most of it reading. Jane Austen is his favorite, but he also likes other romance novels of that era more than he’ll readily admit. He also loves Frankenstein, partially because he projects on the monster and partially because he finds the fact that Mary Shelley started writing it in order to avoid having to talk to Oscar Wilde hilarious. He mostly reads classics, but he’s got a soft spot for more recent coming of age stories. He read The Girl Who Could Fly when he was like 12 and it’s stuck with him since.

Barbara really likes sci-fi/fantasy novels with heavy worldbuilding and intricate plotlines. Any time she hears about a series that’s five books in and still hasn’t fully revealed the main plot, her eyes go wide because she knows what she’s doing until 3 AM that night. Because of this, she’s also recently gotten into plot heavy isekai series, though she slightly regrets it due to how exhausting all the harem bullshit can get in a lot of them. She can’t read any book with hacking in it because the inaccuracies kill her inside. She also loved The Martian, but like, who in the batfam wouldn’t, honestly.

Tim, being a heathen, Doesn’t Read. He’ll pick up a book on something if it’s the only way to get the information, but he mostly engages with media by watching video essays and/or reading the sparknotes. He just doesn’t focus well on books. If Jason every successfully bullies him into giving audiobooks a chance, though, he’ll probably get into them a lot more, since it’s just the format he has trouble with.

Steph is one of those people who specifically seeks out terribly written stories because she thinks they’re hilarious. The worse a book is, the more she loves it. She mostly goes for bad YA dystopia novels, since they’re easy to find, but anything that manages to be so bad it’s good is up her alley. She also reads vigilante rpf, mostly because of the faces people make when she forces them to read fanfiction of themselves. Wattpad is her favorite site in the whole world.

Cass has trouble with reading, on account of her whole Thing, so when she wants to read something she’ll bully someone else into reading it to her. She likes fantasy novels, with a noticeable trend toward anything remotely similar in vibe to The Last Unicorn. Jason introduced her to The Chronicles of Narnia and she loved it.

Damian reads horse girl books. He pretends it’s because he’s mocking the “infantile characters” and “plebeian obsession with friendship” but everyone knows the real reason is that he’s pissed he didn’t grow up in a time when riding a horse everywhere was practical. He’s also read just about everything by Tamora Pierce or Anne Mccaffrey, though he won’t admit to it because he’s ashamed of genuinely enjoying stories with predominate messages of love, hope, and caring for each other. Recently he’s gotten into Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series and he’s completely addicted.

Alfred, if asked, will profess that he’s read every butler’s handbook every created. This is probably true, but his real interest lies in bodice rippers. No one knows this except for Bruce, who found one of his stashes on accident when he was 9 and almost ending up reading some extremely steamy porn before Alfred caught him and moved his secret cache off the property.

[my-darling-boy]

Genuinely asking, isn't self-diagnose with a condition kind of dangerous? Because legitimizing self-diagnosing opens a door to many malicious people who would want to exploit the fact they can self-diagnose? And in turn, make the space of autistic people worse?

Was going to skip this, but I’m writing a LONG response because I’m VERY exhausted with the amount of misinformation I see on this “self dx is dangerous” take, so buckle up and allow me to info dump.

Recently, authentic_autism_advocacy, an Instagram account run by a supposed medically diagnosed autistic woman was discovered to be a non-autistic woman, Connie Manning, posing as a medically diagnosed autistic person to spread hate and anti-self diagnosing speech. In reality, she is a neurotypical mother who regularly uses her autistic son for clout; she also turned out to have a hand behind CalmWear, a brand of sensory compression products designed for disabled people. Not only had she been spewing hatred towards other autistic people, she had been accusing well known AFAB autistic tiktokers like beckspectrum of faking being autistic and threatening self diagnosed autistics and saying they are a danger to the community, and engaging in other incredibly discriminating behaviour. Yes, she herself was a neurotypical person posing as a medically diagnosed autistic to perpetuate hateful rhetoric about self diagnosed people and used her voice to speak OVER autistic folk for financial gain and exploitation of autistic people, including her own son. If you want to read this roller coaster of a story, an autistic person wrote an entire article on it with tons of screenshots and sources.

So let me make one thing clear to you.

The purpose of actually, genuinely self diagnosing is not done to attract attention or to parade around and exploit other autistic people. Self diagnosed autistic individuals have recognised due to difficult life circumstances, financial hardship, bigotry and stigma within the medical/legal world, being a minor, lack of insurance, lack of proper access to safe care facilities, being denied assessment due to incompetent or biased practitioners, and/or any other obstacle that they may temporarily or permanently be barred from diagnosis. Self diagnosis does NOT instantly mean a person is posing for clout, nor does it indicate a person is trying to wring money from assistance services or exploit other autistics. And nts who use self diagnose with intentions of harming the community? That’s NOT self diagnosis, that’s abuse of something meant to aid people blocked from medical care or financial means to that care. All we can do for autistic people, no matter who we perceive them to be, is treat them the same way we would any other autistic person. Because the moment you start deciding by your own book who deserves respect and who doesn’t, you’ll be on a slippery slope to locking out thousands of autistic people from the community. If it’s discovered a person like Connie is literally abusing the system of self dx to intentionally mislead the community, by all means, we must hold them accountable. But you cannot simply go about granting and revoking access from people just because someone lacks a diagnosis or doesn’t fit your idea of what being autistic looks like, especially if it’s based on stereotypes.

Moral of the story? Isn’t it ironic how anti-self dx people will 100% believe a user who claims to be medically diagnosed but shows no “written proof” of it, yet always demand written proof from a self dx person? It’s almost like even anti-self dx people can’t tell the difference between someone who is medically diagnosed autistic and someone who isn’t. Well, that’s because they can’t. While there might be common traits, autism has no set model, it is a spectrum, no autistic person is alike; Policing self diagnosed people about their self diagnosis isn’t a form of protecting the community. It’s a form of gatekeeping. If you find yourself granting instant acceptance, without asking for proof, to a person insisting they are medically diagnosed like this neurotyical mother, but then prohibit self dx people from entry entirely on the grounds of not showing proof of medical assessment, you are upholding a double standard. This is why policing autistic people’s diagnosis, self or not, is inherently useless.

So here’s the thing... instead of asking people to stop self diagnosing, what you should instead be asking yourself is, “Why do people self diagnose? What kind of medical system could possibly be in place where people feel they need to resort to self diagnosis rather than get an actual diagnosis?”

Well, it’s mainly common knowledge among most of the autistic community that diagnosis is NOT easy to come by.

One of the main reasons why people cannot get a diagnosis is due to financial/insurance reasons. It’s reasonable to estimate that by the end of 2020 almost 30 million Americans alone were without health insurance. I’ve heard costs out of pocket for an autism diagnosis are between $500-$6000. If a person or a family cannot afford health insurance—which by the way on average is around $5,400 a year for a single person and $13,800 for a family here—where are they supposed to pull out $6,000 to get screened?

You might be asking, “Well aren’t insurances supposed to cover disability?” Sure, there are options for disability care through health insurance—not even going to get into that—but like a lot of things in the US, this is a severely flawed system. A lot of private health insurance will stop or limit coverage for an autism diagnosis or assistance services once a person reaches 18 to 21 years old. In most states, coverage has a higher chance of being denied to autistic adults coming with the added age cap or ONLY covering ABA, an abusive, manipulative “therapy” used to force social compliance and trait suppression on autistic people. The fact that ABA, a conversion therapy, is covered, but little else, shows exactly what insurance companies think of autistic people: they’ll only cover us if we want to learn to be “normal”. This can leave many undiagnosed autistic adults who cannot afford analysis, insurance, or safe assistance services with nowhere to turn. If I was not on my parents’ insurance, there is NO WAY I would EVER be able to afford a diagnosis. I don’t have $2,000 lying around. The MONEY ALONE would prohibit me from getting a diagnosis, no matter how many autistic traits I presented.

When I was going through this system years ago to start a diagnosis, I was shocked to find no therapist within three hours of me was accepting adult patients. “Up to 18 only” their websites would say. And in the event I had found one (1) that accepted me as a then 20 year old with X insurance, and that person refused me diagnosis, I would be out of options unless I planned a 5 hour drive which may have also led me to another biased screener. A person seeking self financed assessment can waste thousands of dollars therapist hopping.

People will say, “Well I live in X place, and where I come from, it’s covered!” Well the reality is that everyone in the world does not live where you live. It’s not realistic to assume everyone is in the same position as you or your family to afford care or access the same resources as you. When you say, “Just go out and get a diagnosis! It’s not that hard!”, understand you are speaking from your personal vantage point where screening may be easily accessed or easily covered/is free OR you have no personal knowledge of what that process is like yourself.

The second thing that bars a ton of people from being diagnosed is the fact that when autism was first discovered, its research was HEAVILY centered on white, cis, heterosexual men. The idea that autistic people are ONLY cis, white, heterosexual men carries on to this day. If you are an outlier to this stereotype, your chances of being misdiagnosed with something else or refused diagnosis skyrocket because so-called “professionals” don’t know how to observe traits in any other person besides a cis, white, heterosexual man, and refuse/fail to recognise the endless ways in which a person can be autistic. ALL the time I hear how AFAB people will go in to get screened only to find out their screener does not believe AFAB people can be autistic, because yes, sexism and anti-lgbtq+ ideas play a huge role in the incredibly outdated diagnostic process, because autism is still believed to be an “AMAB only” thing. People report going into a therapists office and being asked questions like, “Do you like going outside? Do you like having friends?” and being told that if you agree with either of these, you cannot be autistic because criteria at some places is so backwards, you can’t even say you enjoy conversation without failing the test. Other things commonly heard during the analysis are screeners telling someone they are too smart/articulate to be autistic, gas lighting them by saying they are mistaking their symptoms for something else/making them up, telling a person they seem normal, dismissing clear autistic traits by saying they’re unique “superpowers”, or intentionally misdiagnosing a person as ADHD INSTEAD of autistic. People on social media have also pointed out what influences racism has on the diagnostic process as well and how lack of research and understanding of autistic POC contributes to under-diagnosis and stigma has only contributed to refusal of care and under-representation of POC in the disabled community, as one autistic Black woman points out on Instagram, “I found excellent articles that support and validate my feelings and experiences, but I could find no research on autistic Black people.” Additionally, because research has primarily been done on young men, this means anyone who is not a cis man and is over the age of 18 and is seeking a diagnosis has a much higher chance of not receiving one because screeners don’t understand how autistic traits may present differently in adults, especially since adults are very likely to mask. Some autism screeners are so against autism they have told clients they would only diagnosis a person autistic if it was their last resort to avoid “placing a burden on their shoulders”. These reasons are largely responsible for why autism is incredibly mis/under-diagnosed. This ask would be the length of a novel if I included every single type of discrimination and mistreatment during the evaluation process alone, but understand it can be incredibly biased, sexist, transphobic, racist, or just flat out ableist. And guess what? Though this process can take as little as a month to get sorted, that is rare. The assessment SHOULD be very short. But a lot of autistic people have reported their diagnosis took more than 2-4 years because of having to waste time, energy, and money hopping from therapist to therapist looking for someone to take them seriously, as many autistic people compiled on the actuallyautistictiktoks page on Instagram point out.

The last thing I want to touch on is this idea that people have that self diagnosing is dangerous. “What if someone self diagnoses and they take advantage of services that are meant for autistic people?” ...The Big Things you think I am going to take advantage of as a self diagnosed autistic person, like scholarship money for instance or SSDI, I do not have legal access to without a formal diagnosis. I cannot waltz into a law firm and ask for a $5,000 scholarship for autistic people without a diagnosis, because they WILL NOT give it to me!

Let me tell you some of things I’ve “cruelly taken advantage of” as a self diagnosed autistic person. I bought glasses with blue light protection, because screen and fluorescent lighting at work and even natural blue toned light from the sky lowers my threshold for some sensory input like noise and social interaction; wearing them to work everyday has improved my sensory thresholds incredibly. I’ve talked to my manager and told him I’m autistic and that I have a hard time understanding vague direction and may need to step away briefly on occasion to tend to a shutdown before a meltdown comes on at work; he had no problem with this. I use subtitles; sometimes I have trouble processing audio or reading facial expressions and tone, and being able to see the words displayed on the screen gives me a significantly better understanding of what I watch. All my life, I have been having meltdowns which I had mistaken for mental breakdowns or panic attacks and having access to resources that walked me through preventative methods and tips on what to do if I have one has been ENORMOUSLY helpful to me. All my life, I was trying to deal with them thinking they were something else; becoming aware of this and accepting that they are in fact autistic meltdowns has helped me not only go through them, but has helped me redirect stims which at their worst previously had me hitting and clawing my arms, slapping my face, and even hitting my head. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait 4 years for a diagnosis to use resources I could be using to make my life more accessible right now!

People will say, “Oh well yeah, I don’t mean You are one of Those Types of self diagnosed autistic people, you clearly sound/look autistic, I’m talking about other people.” The thing is, there is no broad “sounding/looking autistic”, that’s stereotyping, and you can’t demand everyone who interacts with you show you their Autistic Card, because again, not everyone is able to be diagnosed, especially given the mistreatment and stigma present towards autistic people in the medical field! And what made you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “don’t seem autistic” to you? Why didn’t you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “seemed autistic” to you? By denying anyone who doesn’t have a diagnosis resources they may very well need, you are denying assistance to thousands of people who are without means to be diagnosed. And I am SO tired of seeing comments online on self diagnosis posts that “people don’t know what they’re taking about” as if they know us personally, like are you me? Are you my doctor I’ve consulted? Did you watch me academically research and consult with other autistic people about being autistic for over 3 years? I’m tired of “well, one time a self diagnosed person laughed at my actually autistic diagnosed friend...so all self dx people are evil” because there is ZERO correlation between a person being self assessed and their behavior towards a non self assessed person. The fact both those arguments are in use whenever self dx comes up is yet another form of gatekeeping.

Self diagnosing autism is not begging for attention or Evil Criminal Money Funneling Schemes. It is a result of a deeply flawed medical and insurance system that has failed to give proper attention and care to those who need it, it is a result of resources not made available, of safe support systems not there for kids and adults alike. You want to talk about what’s truly dangerous? How the hate group Autism Speaks has been parading itself around since 2005 as an advocacy group for autistic people and has been misusing millions of dollars worth of donation money and promoting stigma and hatred around autistic people; no autistic members are present on their board. How Sia and her new film Music was nominated for 2 Golden Globes despite it replacing the original autistic actor with a neurotypical actor, using offensive stereotypes, and using the main autistic character as a prop, and featured an extremely dangerous bodily restraint scene on an autistic person having a meltdown in public and featured very insensitive content due to Sia’s lack of consulting with autistic people to make the film (spoilers in that article).

Instead of policing autistic people, whether they fit your idea of what an autistic person is or not, redirect your efforts and your energy to dismantling systems and holding others accountable for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about autistic people that are legitimately dangerous on such a scale that they have created insurmountable damage to the autistic community. But I guarantee you, worrying over whether your classmate is “faking it” will not do any justice to the decades worth of discrimination autistic people face still today.

I understand. You care about the community, you don’t want autistic people to be exploited or taken advantage of. I don’t want to be exploited and taken advantage of as an autistic person, and I don’t want that for others! But I also understand that when we self proclaim ourselves as judges of random autistic strangers on the internet or start accusing people of faking or demanding to see medical paperwork from people when the basis of our suspicions is “this person doesn’t look like my stereotyped view on how I think an autistic person should act”, THAT is when you really run into trouble. Because if you are allowed to deny self dx people entrance into the autistic community, what’s stopping you from thinking you have the power to deny ANYONE entrance into that community?

And there is power in self diagnosis for many autistic people. When the evaluation system is literally rigged to set you up for failure and put you through unnecessary hardship, self dx is a self affirming, empowering tool to take back control from a process designed to gaslight and crush you. The evaluation process was NOT formulated by an autistic person, nor was it made to be inclusive of all autistic people. Until the evaluation system in place for autistic people is safe, accessible, and free to ALL, you have EVERY right to self diagnose.