#my blocklist grew again

[vipper73]

Us ghosties can't survive on twitter because people are always spreading hate and making shit up for no reason .-.

[aromantic-misguide-to-romance]

One of the reasons why I can't take the anti-minor panic in fandoms seriously is because of how I encountered randos literally dumping their smut in reblogs and - despite all those common fears of accidentally interacting with a minor - obviously not checking the original blog they reblog it from.

"Minors DNI" but they themselves are not bothering to see if they are not initiating the interaction and invading a space.

I don't mean just vague horniness, seeing it is honestly fine with me personally, but. literally dumping smut on a stranger? Gross.

My blocklist grew again.

[dylawa]

*Steps up to my soapbox*

I had this whole spiel about “these are the reasons I block people and these are the kinds of people I block” to open this post initially, but instead I’m just gonna skip to the main story and make a plea. No “read more” because this is important.

Over the past week, I’ve had the misfortune of being exposed to a certain group of users without critical thinking skills and reading comprehension, that caused my blocklist number to go up astronomically. It’s no one’s fault but mine, and Tumblr’s recommendations; the users whose posts I came across want as little to do with people like me as I do with people like them and I’m not here to be a mentor or babysitter. So while it’s unfortunate we crossed paths (even though they have no idea I was “there,” because I know how to not interact with shit that pisses me off now), at least I could do us both a favor and block them, as well as anyone in their notes sharing their sentiments.

That number went up due to a combination of things, starting with my “For You” page recommending those blogs it especially shouldn’t have, and then the content in those posts (and me using the notes as a blocklist) lead to me searching for a specific term to add more accounts to my list myself. The latter action, I could have gone on doing for days, probably, since it was a search on my own terms and not a post where I could just stop when the notes ended. And the number of users I blocked could have been bigger, but for the sake and worth of my own time-- and sanity-- I had to stop at some point. As much as I would love to block everyone I may ever need to block in one sitting, that’s not possible by any metric.

But it’s that latter action that’s why I’m making this post.

I am not going to go into details about what my search was after the initial post inspired me, neither the exact word, nor what I found in those prior posts that inspired me to do this. None of it is against TOS, for the record, I just don’t want to be bothered explaining that whole story on top of this one, and/or having the exact kinds of people I’m talking about easily find this post and, again, display a lack of critical thinking and reading comprehension. All you need to know is a (non recent) message about a terrible situation was spread without irrefutable proof, and there were too many people who were told this false information in a single anon sentence. Some of these messages had a link, but not many, and the link was to an extremely questionable source, if not downright malicious.

And without any additional research, or asking for proof aside from this single sentence statement, many people decided to believe it.

Some people did the right thing and actually looked into the details, including the very few times there were links to “proof,” then additionally did more and sufficient research outside of that link. They then told those spreading or believing that false message to piss off, but the number of users who put in the extra work definitely was not high enough.

We joke about the “reading comprehension” on this site, but I know that the users making those jokes are, in reality, just as peeved and, frankly, scared, as I am, about how this lack of crucial logical and reasoning skills are on the rise. But the thing is, the term I searched for that grew my block list, is about an event from years ago. So while this is not a new phenomenon, it is most certainly on the rise.

*Side glances at the Twitter refugees*

And I bet I can guess why.

I know at the time of writing this I am not even the last person on these kinds of people’s minds, and even in the future that may remain true. But I do not, and will not, have the time or patience for people who never learned how to research for facts, not be reactionary, and use those skills to pause for a moment and form their own conclusions. I know the urge to placate, trust, and appear as the “good guy” to avoid conflict is a strong urge (dare I say survival instinct in some cases) in many of us-- we’re users on the mentally ill website, after all (said affectionately)-- but it should not be at the cost of our common sense and ability to reasonably see most, if not all, sides of the circumstances presented to us.

There is a reason critical thought and reading comprehension is taught in school (at least, it was in mine). There’s a reason they make logic workbooks for kids, and have us participate in science fairs and learn the scientific method, and write book reports and study history and where we went wrong, even if using or talking about those specific topics are things some of us will never do again outside of academia. The skills transfer-- it feels so obvious to say it, but for some of that stuff, it isn’t about the details of the specific applications of things like sine, cosine, and tangents, for example. The specific applications of those formulas and calculations will only matter to some. The knowledge of a thing is about the long term applications of just knowing they exist and what they can do, even if only vaguely. It’s about knowing there’s more to life and thought than our own personal focuses and morals.

And there is a reason there are people in positions of power-- government or otherwise-- who want to take these crucial thinking skills away from us-- and, apparently, are succeeding.

This is my plea to you: if you’re told something that has some kind of significant or personal impact as succinctly as possible by anyone-- a stranger, an anonymous tip, an authority figure, an online personality, a parent, a friend, your closest friend, a goddamn doctor or scientist (they get slightly more credibility, but they’re absolutely not infallible)-- look into it yourself. Find as many reputable resources discussing the matter as you can. Do this especially if the person who imparts this statement of fact-- true or otherwise-- on you provides none of those resources themselves, but also do it no matter what. Do it even if they provided many reputable sources-- if you find all of the same things on your own, great! You can be more sure that you know the details of the situation. But if it’s important, if it shifts perspective on an individual or matter at large, take nothing at face value from someone else before doing your own due diligence. Even the people who have your best interests in mind can leave out information, either unintentionally, or even for their own gain-- beneficial or nefarious.

When they say “Knowledge is power,” they’re not just talking about the immediate applications of academia or politics-- it’s the broader picture of the combination of everything you know, and everything you don’t. Power is control. When people control knowledge, they control power-- and knowledge isn’t always just knowing dates of historical events and the textbook definition of “propaganda.”

Oh, and also, feel free to block anyone and everyone that makes you even slightly annoyed if you want to, without guilt. You owe no one debate if that’s not what you’re here for. But be smart for yourself, no matter what you do.

[pochapal]

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking: 

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3. 

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it. 

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with. 

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

[cleverthylacine]

The anti in question.

Saint Dumb of Ass the Pure (aka ”antiship-crossing”) somehow fixed my post so I can’t reply to it myself.  Yes it was reblogging someone who reblogged them, but it was MY post with my opinion on it.

Anyhow this is what I wrote and many of you Liked it.:

The age of consent is different in different places because the notions of “childhood” and “adulthood” are different in different societies, and have also usually changed with the times within a culture.

Generally, in every culture, people agree that a twelve year old is a child and a twenty year old is an adult. Throughout the world as a whole, the age of consent varies from country to country, In most places, it is somewhere between 14 and 18, and the average age is actually 16, not 18.

There is not an epidemic of “pedophilia” in places where the age of consent is 16.  Sex is simply, like voting, and drinking, and joining the army, a thing that different places permit at different ages.

I think 14 is probably too young for most people, but it was 16 where I grew up, and I was doing it when I was 16, and I don’t think it did me any harm.

This does not mean that I want to date 16 year olds.

That’s a whole world of NO, and not just because it’s illegal!

I did not date people the age I am now when I was 16.  I’m a grown ass adult; I can do whatever I want to and pay my own way.  Why would I want to be in a relationship with someone who can’t?

I’m not sure why you can’t understand that adults might enjoy writing about younger characters in relationships as a form of reminiscence or a do-over. No adult really wants to be a teenager again, but it’s fun to remember what things were like when everything was new to you and you were just discovering what your body and other people’s bodies could do. Or if you had a rotten experience as a teenager, it can be fun to write about the experience you wish you had.

Right now though, 95% of the people I’m writing in sex scenes are robots, so do with that what you will.  Anti logic confuses me dreadfully.

I mean. I am writing a fic about the Decepticon Justice Division, and yet nobody thinks that I want to torture people to death.

EDIT:  And then Saint Dumb of Ass the Pure Quoth:

antiship-crossing reblogged your post “The age of consent is different in different...”#'the age of consent is different bc other ppl are different' how do you not hear the racism spewing from that #blocklist #tw proship #mod poppy

How do you get from what I said to there?

I wasn’t just talking about the age of consent worldwide, but also within the US.

Race has nothing really to do with it. It is a known fact that differeing groups of people, when faced with a difficult question like “at what age are people able to decide if they want to have sex or not?” will come up with different answers.

There is no uninversal consensus about this. That’s all that I said.

Does this person think that the law of the land throughout the US is 18, no exceptions, period?

Are they not aware that there are states where 14 year olds can get married? (For the record, I think this is bad.)

Do they think that everyone just instinctively knows that 18 is when the Brains Fairy bops you on the head and says you can fuck now?

I don’t even.

But if someone blocks me and then writes nasty shit about me because they failed reading comprehension on a post of mine, it ain’t gonna stop me from finding away to tell them what an idiot they are, even if they block me.  

It’ll stop them from seeing it, which is fine, but it won’t stop me from publicly marvelling at the stupidity of their bad takes.