#not tagging this because i don’t want people to dogpile me for my controversial takes

[myhsterie]

just went on the keratosis pilaris subreddit to see if the cream i just bought is good and goddamn everyone’s so melodramatic. maybe that’s a dick thing to say but it IS true. it’s one of the mildest skin conditions. don’t let it stop you from dressing a certain way or doing certain activities. i’m a huge slut and no one’s commented on it!

i feel similarly about celiac - it’s not too stressful. i just don’t eat at certain places, pack lunches & other food for myself when i go out, and tailor my diet to accommodate it naturally. i feel like i have less to say on celiac because my symptoms aren’t super severe but it’s still true. your life’s not over, just switch gears and keep going. take what you’re given and keep on chugging, don’t get stuck in the mud. just keep going. (this is good advice in general.)

i know i can’t police people’s feelings and that this sounds very “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, but my god it’s not the end of the world to have bumps and redness on your skin, or to have an autoimmune condition with a frankly straightforward treatment even if it is at times difficult to execute. it doesn’t make you a social pariah. take some time to process your feelings, adapt, build a social circle that is accepting and ready to help you (easier said than done i know), and go live your life.

[terminalpolitics]

egowave is full of shit: long version

I double-checked just to be sure, and it turns out she’s just a liar. She claims that she fought with me because I said “antisemitic” things and that now I am trying to play down my antisemitism.

So, I went back through the archive of all my blog posts and here’s what I found:

2.27.2018 I made a post with the line: “I think most major religions are harmful and raising a child in a religion is abuse.” It didn’t get many notes. I reblogged it from time to time, but nobody really noticed.

3.14.2018 I make a post about why it is harmful to raise your child in Christianity. Mostly it gets angry notes from people with “traditionalist” in their url.

3.20.2018ish After disagreeing with femoids about Leftist authoritarianism, the word goes out that I’m “bad.” Posts are read in bad faith and people claim I want to burn books and kill anyone who reads Marx.

3.20.2018 Egowave --at that point I don’t think we had ever interacted-- publishes an anon about how bad I am because I don’t like Tankies. That’s the first time I recall hearing of her.

3.21.2018 The post about Christianity is rediscovered by Leftists combing through my blog for “more bad takes” and now it turns out I am a “bigot” and a racist for saying Christianity isn’t great for children.

3.21.2018 I respond to another Leftist’s post -- again it makes clear that egowave was disagreeing with me about Tankies, and then -- unrelated to egowave-- I discuss the controversy going on at the time in Leftist Tumblr about my Christianity post.The Leftists attacking the post at that time were angry because it targeted Christianity.

3.22-23.2018 It gets popular in the femoids, peeteseeger, alyesque circlejerk to make fun of Wiccans and neo-pagans. I make a post reminding Leftists that no religion is more “real” than another. This post gets picked up by a blog called mallcommunism in Egowave’s circle.

3.23.2018 Egowave makes a post saying: “terminalpolitics bravely defending the wicca and neopagan community from slander while also saying its also child abuse to raise a child in a major religion this is so good. this is so tight.” The “major religion” in question was Christianity. We know this because of the context of the discourse at the time (the Christianity post was the one Leftists were angry about) and because she says “major religion” -- singular. If, as she later claimed, she was talking about my other post she would have said “major religions” as the post did because it did not single out any religious tradition. Egowave was just trying to get in on the dogpile again as she did when my crime was suggesting unity with tankies was bullshit.

Up until that point, I had not posted about Judaism.

3.23.2018 I respond to Egowave and reiterate my position that Wicca is “just as real” as any other religion and that we shouldn’t indoctrinate children into religion generally. I also reference the “shitty views” she expressed in her other posts mocking Wiccans and other religions she disliked at the time.

Egowave then asked me if she could celebrate Hanukkah with her children, thus bringing Judaism into the discussion for the first time. Again, up until that point the discussion had only dealt with Christianity.

I answered that you would need to wait for your children to decide to celebrate Hanukkah with you because the child must be able to choose their own religious belief.

And that was it. The conversation ran its course. I don’t think I’ve discussed Judaism since, though people do mail and message me trying to bait me into it.

Now, egowave and her friends produce memes about my “antisemitism” (you can find them if you look at the #terminalpolitics tag). She claims that she was motivated to disagree with me because of my attacks on Judaism, but Judaism had never come up until she brought it up and I answered with my general principle for all religions on the subject of raising children in a faith system (which people are welcome to disagree with).

Form the beginning, Egowave has just been trying to get in on the dogpiles started by more popular bloggers: Terminalpolitics is bad because he hates tankies, Wiccans and neo-pagans are bad, Terminalpolitics is attacking Christianity -- all popular complaints. So, her retcon that she was concerned about Judaism seems surprising when it had not come up -- and even after it came up I didn’t actually say anything bad about it beyond expressing my objection to raising children in any religion.

I realize nobody else cares and folks are unlikely to read this and that’s okay. I wrote it to get the timeline straight myself and to put it in the #egowave and #terminalpolitics tag for those interested.

This is how a smear works. You just make memes and repeat something enough and that’s all your readers will ever know. Now, people are welcome to go through my posts and look for my hatred of Judaism or posts in which I single out Judaism. You won’t find any because I never wrote them. You will find posts about Christianity and the problems associated with religion in general.

Now, egowave wants me to unblock her -- but why would I want to interact with someone who is completely full of shit?

Anyway, have a great day.

[do-you-have-a-flag]

this is a thomas sanders post womp womp

because I follow some great people do i had to check tags to see what was going on but i keep seeing misinformation on my dash regardless and I don’t want to encourage the dogpiling response that this website is infamous for

if people take issue with a 28 year old marketing their humour and content towards teens then they must sure hate... every teen comedy actor pretending to be a teen.... every kids show host making shows for kids and pretending to be children for the sake of education...... adult voice actors who voice kids and teens in cartoons.... pretty much all adults who write teen fiction or children’s books????

like??? if you find someone annoying due to their entertainment persona then that’s fine, avoid them where possible

if you disagree with them on a specific point sure, go ahead, try and read tone though and look at who they associate with and amplify the voices of because this dude was directly confronted about a specific opinion and answered honnestly and he probably formed it because of the input from his various friends who he features in his videos as well as what he sees online and at no point did he tell anyone to agree with him? you can say “well he knows he has an audience” so sure, definitely, but no part of his opinion was an instructional guide

also the incident everyone took issue with was one of ignorance on his part and as soon as he was informed of what he did he got rid of the offending post and apologised with a request that people not do the thing (the thing being underaged fans drawing raunchy fanart, something a lot of teens do but that he felt uncomfortable with once he realised the age of the person since it was inappropriate and that’s why he asked that people not do that)

and the thing is that youtube fame and vine fame is such a recent thing and so different than traditional celebrity, there is no PR department or social media management, it’s just one dude and his friends?? nobody who gets popular by making the funnies online is gonna be to everyone’s tastes in comedy

like.... I find his humour kinda boring and falsely energised, his audience skews younger so it’s not really relate-able for me anymore which is weird because he’s not much older than me

so if you don’t like him.... blacklist his name tbh? hit the j key to skip posts on tumblr that slip through your filters?

know the difference between genuinely harmful content and people who annoy you

I find him annoying too but i can see a lot of positive messages in his content so who the fuck even cares, at the end of the day all that happened is 

1: a guy got popular online and accidentally reblogged raunchy fan content without knowing how old the fan was and once he was told about it he apologised, removed it, and discouraged younger fans from creating that sort of content in regards to him

2: a guy got popular online, kept his personal orientation private other than referring to himself as being a part of the lgbtq community and visibly supports his friends of various genders and sexualities, when directly confronted about his opinion on if asexuals are lgbt gave his opinion in as respectful a way as he could and failed to comply by the definitions that suited everybody because the way that the non cishet acronym is defined is already complicated and there’s a lot of controversy right now about the place of ace/aro people within that dependant on their romantic or sexual preferences and the behaviour of people in various groups and issues of oppression and attempting to apply labels in ways that are inappropriate and it’s a complicated issue is what i’m saying

3: a guy got popular online and his style was hyper optimism and #relateable content targeted at teens and uni students and people got annoyed at his persona and thought it was inappropriate for him to market himself like a teen when he’s in his late 20s and there’s something to be said about adults putting themselves in spaces aimed at teens but what he’s doing is closer to a comedy actor playing someone younger for skits and would you direct the same criticisms at SNL actors playing teens or adult actors in teen movies or series? Probably the fact that his content is online and he’s not a traditional celebrity and is way more likely to interact directly with fans is the issue, there is a genuine problem with men who achieve online fame using it to take advantage of people in their fanbase and we should be wary of that issue but that’s not what’s happening here

ultimately this is not a defence post, I don’t follow thomas sanders, I don’t find his work that funny, if he does turn out to be a scummy person then I’ll talk about him like he is one and warn others off and support the people who need it, but as far as i can tell he’s a fairly neutral to positive personality online and totally avoidable. As for the ace dis-curse.... yikes. yikes to people on all sides.

[terminalpolitics]

A Short History of My Blog

I made this blog a few years back so that I could talk to various friends from an MMO after the game forums got overmoderated and complaining about racist behavior by a player earned you a ban.

In the beginning, I mostly used it to discuss things about that video game and to socialize or reblog pictures of charming cats. My friends would always cheer me on when I defended Obama or talked about how morally reprehensible Republicans were. They were also very happy with my call-out posts in which I archived evidence of sexual predation or bigotry by members of our small MMo community.

I noticed then, though, that when the creeper in our community was popular –or worse, one of their buddies– they suddenly took a much more “tolerant” veiw of when things like racial slurs were really in bad taste.

While posting more politics in defense of Obama and against Republican obstruction, I ran into Tumblr’s white supremacist and neo-Nazi community. Now, I had been antifascist for years and I have warned for a long time against the rise of the far-right and the dangers of rightwing extremism – in person as well as online.

So, I got into a lot of fights with Naziblr, and I got a lot of notes from folks (mostly anonymous) who thought I was being “unfair” or who wished my blog “went back to how it used to be”. And because I did feel bad springing Naziism on people’s dash, I made up a special tag for my anti-Nazi posts so that folks could filter it out and just enjoy MMO talk and cat photos.

A similar thing happened when I wanted to talk about Putin, Russia’s anti-LGBT bigotry, and the resurgence of the far-right globally. It got to be a bit much for my followers so I had to make a special tag again.

As I became more and more disgusted and realized that Obama was not the progressive we had voted for, and I began to criticize the United States more – attacking fuck-ups like the thankfully-late Chris Kyle, I got less and less “^^this”s from my friends.

When the Democratic primary happened and I started posting in support of Bernie Sanders, my friends (who were largely with her) started vague-posting anti-Sanders responses to my posts, but acted all “I don’t know what you mean” when I tried to discuss it directly. So, I (you may have guessed it) made a unique tag for my pro-Bernie Sanders posts so that people could block them. I also made a separate unique tag for my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and used #politics so if somebody wanted to ignore the whole election, they could block that too.

Then, having not really been connected to my MMO community in awhile and being bored of blogging in general. I shutdown my blog for a couple of months.

When I restarted it, I changed the name and informed everyone that it was 100% political from there on out. Bernie had lost the rigged Democratic Primary and I was now supporting Jill Stein and the Green Party as they were the only progressive act in town.

Well, that was completely unacceptable.

Though they knew I was planning on voting third party, my friends repeatedly reblogged memes and shitposts insulting third party voters. When I responded to these posts, they usually gaslit me and said I was actually attacking them by objecting to their post that insulted me.

And because I was voting for the wrong white women, they smeared me as being racist and sexist – in vague-posts or MMO chats of course.

At the same time, they posted ridiculous and objectively sexist things about Jill Stein. When I responded negatively, they lamented what I had “turned into” and called Jill Stein a “cunt” and “bitch” and added that I was a “pussy.” Yet, somehow I was the person being sexist here.

When I called out the clique who were responsible for the trolling, my friends again tried to gaslight me and acted like it was a coincidence or something that they all frequently dogpiled my posts.

In some cases, I asked people who obviously hated me to unfollow me and they refused because “Um, I kinda read some of the news you post even though I think you are a scumfuck.” So I blocked them.

Then, I just blocked everyone who liked the “Jill Stein is a cunt” post and suddenly about 90% of the trolling that my admittedly controversial blog received dropped off.

While blocked, whenever I made a post about something like Clinton’s complicity in the right-wing coup in Honduras and subsequent assassination of activists, there would be a spate of mirror-posts arguing that Rightwing coups were actually progressive. And I’d be told about it by our mutual friends.

When I didn’t respond, a “friend of a friend” made a parody of my tumblr called @terminallystupidpolitics that’s profile read something like “hurr durr Jill Stein mah white privilege.” I was told about that by another mutual friend.

And of course when Trump won it was my mostly my fault according to my friends. But I had blocked them, so I only heard echoes of it when mutual friends reblogged their sentiments.

I don’t tell you this because “Oh, I’ve had it so rough!” I haven’t. A few appleheads hating on you over politics comes with the territory. Even losing friends over politics is completely normal – especially when the politics reveals that your friend was only ever concern-trolling when it came to social justice.

The reason I tell you this is because I tried to self-censorship and I tried not to rock the boat, but that wasn’t enough. It isn’t enough that you hide your position or just keep your social justice on the downlow.

The very fact that you are committed to social justice is a threat to people who secretly feel that your committment makes theirs look bad. They can’t allow you to exist even on the margins because if someone says “I won’t compromise on this issue” and they will compromise, they suddenly feel bad about themselves.

And when people feel bad about themselves, the easy option is for them to take it out on someone else. 

Rather than recommitting to social justice which is hard, they can just discredit the person who is more real than they are – you see this done constantly by the Democratic Party on a much larger level.

Self-censorship gets you nowhere and just stifles your message. Your friends don’t want your civility, they want your conformity. Only when you stop having opinions outside the party line will you be allowed back into the fold. “Agree-to-disagree” is just shit they say when they are losing the argument and smearing you instead behind your back.

You can only be true to your own beliefs. You gain nothing by moderating your beliefs so that your friends will be more accepting of your difference – it is not your difference they value, it is your likemindedness. They want their biases and values confirmed and justified. They don’t want you to fuck up the bubble by offering an alternative.

These days I feel much happier being able to post what I want without pulling any punches. I like to think that I am expressing myself openly and honestly and people can either take it or leave it.

I do still see comments reblogged by mutuals from folks that gaslit and smeared me, but it seems pretty distant now – like we were all different people. Or maybe we just got a better look at each other.

I value the work that people are doing on tumblr in spreading truly progressive and antifascist messages. I think that a lot of good can come from that. If you think to yourself, hey, maybe I should start a political blog, my advice is to not worry about what your friends think – if they can’t handle you talking about social justice then they were pretty shitty friends to start.

As Trump consolidates power and the press and political system normalize his bigotry, it is more important than ever that we speak our minds. We cannot hold back because of society’s centrist propagnda, or because it might upset our friends, or because the Democratic Party tells us we aren’t allowed to criticize them.

We need to be real, and that is what I aim to do with this blog for the rest of my time here and I hope you will join me.