#social media can do good

[a-method-in-it]

A non-complete list of things you can do that will actually affect the world in positive ways:

Give money. If you have money, this one is easy. Whatever cause you care about, there are people actively working on it, and they all need more money.

For maximum impact for your money, set up a recurring donation, even if it's small. Recurring donations allow organizations to plan their budgets better and spend less on trying to solicit donations.

Call your reps. Ignore anyone who tells you it doesn't matter. Call them. Local, state, federal, all of them. The more local they are, the bigger impact individual calls make.

Register to vote. Ignore anyone who tells you it doesn't matter. Terrible people would not have spent hundreds of years and untold amounts of money trying to restrict access to the ballot box if it didn't matter. Vote every time.

Donate Blood. Stealing this one from the person above. It's a good one.

Join a community organization. Doesn't have to be political or big. Get involved with a community garden or a group that reads to kids at the library. Join a local DSA chapter or become an abortion clinic escort or attend a queer meetup. Honestly, join a walking group if that's what's around you. Getting out into your community is an inherent good and will make you more likely to encounter groups doing good work in your community.

Start a community organization. Does your town need a community garden? A mutual aid group? Someone to pick up litter at the park so people actually go there? Be the change you want to see in the world.

Unionize your workplace. I yap about this one all the time, but it's a thing that anyone can try to do; it's hard but there's no barrier to entry at all. I have resources on my union 101 tag about how to get started if you want them.

Talk to real people in your life about politics. Online debate with strangers doesn't do anything. Talking to people in real life can. Reblogging doesn't do anything. Telling your mom how upset you feel about an issue and explaining it to her might. If you feel like you're shouting into the void on social media, it's probably because you are. And I find it's much better to talk (not shout) to people you know who actually hear you.

I feel like. Part of the reason we're seeing hot takes like "video games like Stardew Valley are bourgeoisie and you should feel bad for playing them" and "if any actor in a TV show even hints at supporting any part of Israel then we need to boycott that entire show" and stuff like that is.

Online activism does virtually nothing. It does virtually nothing, guys. You can reblog and repost stuff all day and it does nothing. And so there's this desperate need in people's minds to Do Something, but social media platforms have so thoroughly trapped us into the idea that This Is How You Connect With People, that we think blogging = activism.

But nothing we've reblogged thus far has made a significant difference in the world. So we keep reblogging, desperately, convinced that if we root out the real evil in our media consumption or if we pare down our beliefs to the One True Ideal and force everyone around us to share that ideal, then finally Something Will Change For The Better.

Log off. Go give blood; there's a critical shortage right now. Help someone in your community; it might not fix wars that are thousands of miles away but it'll help that person. Call or email your local representative about issues that matter to you. Fucking vote. Do something in the not-online space. It'll matter more than 100 posts in a row about Important Things.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[swampthingking]

andrew’s definitely gotten in trouble with his pr manager for tweeting things along the lines of:

“no mania inducing medication will compare to the euphoria i will feel the day donald trump drops dead”

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Little bright colored outfit with a fun vest ~

(shoes from ebay like 10 years ago. everything else is thrifted)

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[occidentaltourist]

bbc: Some sweet #Silvacre content for your FYP ❤️

[queerofthedagger]

i mean this in the like... nicest way possible, but there is no way to post your writing and/or art on the internet without running the very high risk of it getting scraped, whether you post it on tumblr, pillowfort, or ao3. sites being 'anti ai' does not mean your art cannot be scraped. it is simply almost impossible to prevent, much less guarantee that. I'm not saying this to be a pessimist or to stop people from being rightfully pissed about this. it sucks. massively so! but if the idea does in fact bother you that much, you should know that moving sites won't fix the issue. ao3, as far as we know, has been scraped/is getting scraped. you can set your fics so that only logged in users can access them, but it only makes scraping one step more difficult, and by no means impossible and the otw has stated this clearly.

which, again, this sucks! i don't have a great solution either!! but tumblr is relatively honest, at least, when it tells you that it cannot prevent, only discourage it. ao3 said the same thing. any site promising you otherwise is, to the best of my knowledge, lying to you.

[dailyriolu]

A silly guide on how I draw normal Riolu vs My sona

[lucalicatteart]

A new sculpture! Finally... I feel like I never sculpt anymore since I'm always sick or have some 500 other things going on or projects to finish, but I'm trying to schedule time to do it more often this year hopefully..! Just a generic fantasy creature as usual, but did try making the eyes a little more sparkly this time.. hrmm..

[peapodsplace]

Hey Baba, it seems like you've been seeing a lot of yucky stuff online right now. A lot of people who aren't remembering their manners and are forgetting that there's people behind a screen. I know you like your screen time but please remember that the world isn't all like that okay? Some people are different online and forget their values and let's remember that these days, algorithms perpously show you things that'll make you upset. Yes, yes it's not very fair, is it sweetheart. Please remember to take some breaks and that the world isn't really like that. It's so important to protect yourself. Yes, silly even if you think you don't deserve it; because you do.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i mean it when i say we've gotta bring back askblogs. bring back making character chat posts with poor choice text colors over random backgrounds. bring back blogs dedicated to what outfits you think characters would wear.

fandom is an ecosystem, not a numbers game. these types of blogs/posts/etc still exist in concept, because people still want to make them and they're a great way to get your thoughts of an idea out in a simple format, but most people make them on like tiktok or instagram reels and that's where the problem lies. Those videos don't go anywhere. The format doesn't allow for the discussion to spread through the community and they're less likely to be engaged with in general. And to make them most people have to either show their face or figure out editing software, so the barrier to entry is higher (editing) and/or they have to forfeit an amount of privacy.

those types of posts/blogs are the first rung of the ecosystem. they're the perfect environment for younger members of the fandom to begin safely interacting with the larger community and putting their own thoughts and ideas out there. roleplay is the other major spot for that and those communities are diminishing as well, honestly (if you know of an rp forum board site, cherish it. and if you can make one, make one). they allow younger fans to begin engaging with the source material on a different/deeper level, but still at a very low barrier to entry, and begin conversations with other fans, which also helps them build skills which in turn may encourage them to pursue other avenues within the fandom (fic writing, other formats of askblog - which itself usually leads to art, cosplay, also fic writing, etc). Without those places to build those skills, they might feel discouraged from trying to begin when surrounded by curated people who have built their skills up for years.

And those conversations they foster also in turn help the community, by offering ideas to artists or fic writers to extrapolate on or building community jokes. And that text/blog format specifically is extremely beneficial, because it allows younger members of the fandom to remain anonymous and keep their privacy without concerning themselves with having any platform or having anything attached to them (very important for young fans figuring themselves out and navigating online community spaces for the first time, since they can remove themselves from spaces easily if they decide they don't like it and they're protected, rather than PUTTING THEIR FACE ON THE INTERNET). And those posts they make will spread a lot more into the community since they're in a significantly easier format to be reposted (few people are gonna be reposting tons of random short-form videos versus spamming their instagrams with reposts of 10 random fandom images yoinked from tumblr, or reposting to pinterest or something). Like, don't repost art, at the VERY least don't repost without credit, but also I am not ignorant to the fact that my art is not just the first google image result for "pjo pride" and related searches, but also the 4th, the 6th, the 9th, the 10th, the 11th, etc etc., and pops up in the search results before the official ReadRiordan does simply because people reposted my work more (most with credit, thankfully).

For fandom to be a community, it needs to perpetuate itself. There needs to be engagement with one another and conversation. If that bottom rung is cut off, then new fans won't be able to grow into the other niches of the fandom, and the fandom will be solely reliant on the source material and die out extremely quickly, and there won't be a community. There's no conversation! There's no reason to stay beyond the original material! But if you don't have points of entry for new fans, they won't have any way to build the skills needed to move into those niches, or engage with the community in a healthy way.

tl;dr: Bring back askblogs and character-based text post blogs. They are vital to fandom ecosystem.

[elllteo]

Creators I love you but it's time to wake up

Among rumors about our tumblr user data being sold off to Midjourney/Generative AI, recent Extremely transphobic events (that have been ongoing) coming to a head, another extremely concerning internet censorship bill being pushed in upper levels of government, and a general air of frustration over how the site belongs to and is operated by perhaps the second stupidest CEO (second only to twitters own) of our age, I'm very done with the last few vestiges of what the old internet held for artists.

And if you're reading this, you probably are too.

I know we're tired. We are all tired. It is not always viable to pack up shop and move, again and again and again.

From tumblr to twitter to anywhere else we've ever grown up posting, things no longer work. Our audiences are kneecapped by aggressive and hostile algorithms, our reach is abysmal - if we aren't shadow-banned or silenced for one (transphobic) reason or another, we're thrust into an ever growing pit of hostility where the only thing that drives clicks is fighting and contention.

We're tired. We're so fucking tired. We aren't businesses, we aren't content mills, we cannot keep this pace that modern social media has set for us, to wring every ounce of creativity out of us to profit from and leave us rotting.

The key to staying afloat here, and I cannot stress this enough, is to stay connected to your peers.

Pack up and move as units if you must. Exodus from the sites that are killing us. Push your entire friend group of artists to move from one site to the next that promises you a kinder experience.

Art drives movements, it drives change, it is all that encompasses being human. If you take that away from the shitty places, they will be left with nothing but a cesspit of inhumanity and the people who follow you will be more incentivized than ever to move with you.

Yes, this is terrifying. There are no guarantees. There never was, and never are, and never will be.

But stay connected. Stay human.

Support each other and be willing to hold hands and jump when we all - as a group - need to jump from the flames we're all trying to convince ourselves wont kill us before rescue comes.

Rescue isn't coming, rescue will be found hand in hand with each other. I'm offering you my hand, please take it. There's always a new start, there are always helping hands reaching for you. You have to look up from the doom-scroll long enough to see and take them.

[salt-n-salt]

I'd like to improve my art but I often find myself getting frustrated due to inconsistency and general dissatisfaction and frustration with what I draw. I have a lot of vivid ideas of what I want to do, but I have a hard time actually doodling them down and I was wondering if you had any advice? Of course it takes practice, I know, but it's hard to consistently practice when you just feel upset with how most of your drawings turned out after putting a lot of effort into it.

that’s a tough question! i think i used to be in a very similar rut about a year or two ago (and it’s something i can guarantee EVERY SINGLE ARTIST goes through!), and the honest truth I can give u about how i got out of it was a complete change in mindset.

a good question to ask yourself is: what am I drawing for? For fun, for engagement, to improve? none of these are necessarily a wrong thing to draw for, but they can, and DO, affect how you interpret your own work. the best thing I ever did for myself was when I shifted my focus from engagement to fun (it’s not an immediate change— I was in nearly a 2 yr drawing dry spell to re-find myself and my passions!). i abandoned my old art account of a different social media platform bc while i had good engagement there, it didn’t make me happy. I decided that id draw what i love and id draw it just for myself, and later down the line i might share it w people (like I am now!) now none of my art either disappoints me or makes me proud, I just draw to draw! all I can do is draw something, decide if there’s something to be improved on, and keep it in mind when I draw my next thing.

A cute piece of advice I heard once was from an artist who thought of drawing as “taking their pen for a walk”. If you approach pieces with a detailed composition in mind, ur bound to be disappointed! bc how can we possibly achieve smth exactly as we see it in our mind?? I really encourage you to just draw for the sake of drawing and just walk ur pen around ur canvas. I have like 10 canvases on my procreate that are just me drawing the same kendall face/head with different goofy fucking ugly ass smiles bc guess what!! I LOVE DOING IT !!!!

please just remember that u are on a road all artists end up on. there are artists who’s work u find flawless and beautiful who most likely think the exact same way you do! draw bc it’s fun and bc it’s what you love, and if you feel it isn’t, take a fat ass break from it and reevaluate what you love just like I did!

[witchqueen]

Does anyone have any tips to help stop yourself from comparing your artwork to others, or equating your value as an artist with likes and reblogs?

I've struggled with this for a while and it's getting old, I don't know how to just shrug it off. Any genuine advice would be nice

[silentreigns]

I have been reading too much of what people have been saying about Lewis's move to Ferrari recently. And I can't take this honeymoon phase seeiously at all. I genuinely like both Lewis and Charles but I am gonna root for Lewis first and foremost. He needs to take back his 8th championship more than Charles needing to get his maiden F1 championship. I feel like there's going to be a lot of the Lecfosi who are praising LH now will turn against him next year, regardless of if he outperforms Charles or not.