#so its like james that couldve been your discussion topic!! that couldve been your thesis you couldve explored that!!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gibbearish · 1 year ago

Text

to anyone watching the james somerton situation and going "well how DO you write your own things like this then? everyone's talking about how /not/ to but i dont know where to start, the way highschool taught me essay writing was all about the number of sentences in a paragraph and mla citations :("

you know how james made things up between his """sources""" that sounded just plausible enough that people accepted it? he did it in the wrong order, do that part first THEN research. 100% serious right now, just make some shit up in your head that sounds vaguely right based on what you know now, write it down, and then go check if you're actually right or not. boom, now you have a topic. thats literally all it is, its just you saying "i think (xyz)" and then checking to see if the facts agree with you or not. if you turn out to be right, talk about what lead you to the conclusion initially and anything you learned about that you didn't predict. if you turn out to be wrong, talk about the right answer and examine why you thought differently at first. then either way talk about how things got that way, if you think it should stay like that, and why (e.g. how does it being that way effect people right now). tada suddenly you have an essay that is unplagiarized and entirely your own thoughts, with a plethora of sources on hand to cite because That's What You Used To Check. now be free your beautiful doves

#obviously its not actually that easy but thats how it tends to feel after the fact KENFKSBFKBSKFBDJ #like presumably the reason youre writing it is because youre excited about the topic right? so show other people what was #so exciting about it to you #if the research made you go 'no way no way no way this is insane' freak out about it onto the page #(esp if youre aiming for youtube‚ obv if youre actually doing professional writing dont make it Too Out There but still keep the energy)#act like youre showing a friend and you also want them to go no way no way no way this is insane #thats the frustrating part abt james is its like. you can tell he kind of does have a bit of that deep down #like the 'current body standards come from nazis' thing just Stated like that is absolutely misinformation #but '/do/ current body standards come from nazis' is a topic i could see absolutely being a thing #like with 0 context it sounds plausible enough on its own‚ they had weird body standards and we have weird body standards #and its not like there arent other things at the very least america decided to keep around from them and i imagine canada #wasnt much better given all ive heard abt their history #so its like james that couldve been your discussion topic!! that couldve been your thesis you couldve explored that!!!!#you could've said 'i think these standards come from here and here's why' and broken it down and drawn connections to show people why you #think that!!!!!#but no he just horks it up into the filler without a thought and moves on with his day #sorry just rewatching the todd video and the podcaster at the start refers to it at james 'making the connection' between #those things and it just struck me like. huh yeah misinformation and theorizing are only really separated by #putting a question mark at the end sometimes #obv its way more nuanced than that in general but with one isolated statement like that you can see how thin #that tipping point is #and that just makes it 1000x more frustrating bc it's like you were so close! you were so close to coming up with an interesting #question to ask and perspective to offer!!! and then you just DODGED AROUND IT doing basically the same amount of work anyways?#in pursuit of laziness???????????#absolutely mystifying #ah apologies the podcaster says 'does the cultural connection' but same diff #and it was modern fitness culture not body image standards in general #theres been a lot of info going thru my brain recently phrasing details get lost in the weeds sometimes kwbfkshfksh #james somerton #hbomberguy

1 note · View note