#than it is to stand by your ingroup

[honestlyvan]

It is also some wild internalised victim-blaming sometimes.

Do I understand what got me bullied, what made me an easy and desireable target? Yes. Do I understand why my bullies specifically got in on it? Yes. Do I still think the people who bullied me could have just not? Also yes.

honestly I think no child deserves to get bullied, and I hate the trend of people going "the bullies were just normal actually" or "I deserved it." I know I didn't. was I a little shit? yeah. did I deserve it? no. like, imagine the most annoying kid you can imagine. they wouldn't deserve it either.

[whatudottu]

Seeing the “cerebrocrustaceans are highly territorial” headcanon slowly start to pick up more steam (albeit with a split as to whether they’re so cliquey and ride-or-die they view everyone who isn’t in their in-group as a potential threat until they’ve made it abundantly clear that they mean no harm or if they despise any sort of group collaboration unless it’s absolutely, positively necessary) makes me wonder if it’s a common stereotype by the galactic audience to view them as being massive pricks to everyone they meet. Like, oh, everyone on Encephalonus-IV hates each other’s guts and they’re incessantly rude to anyone and everyone they come across! They’re so petty and envious they can’t stand the thought of anyone being better at them than anything and delight in the suffering and misfortune of people they don’t like! They fly into murderous rages if a galvan so much as breathes on them, and if they weren’t such cowards, they’d nuke Galvan Prime into oblivion only to immediately start yet another rivalry with some other species for one reason or another!

Hah! Doesn’t help their case that Dr Psychobos became very well known thanks to the super famous superhero Ben 10!

But no yeah with galvans being the cold detached sort of smart, especially with their prevalence in intergalactic relationships (you don’t become the smartest being in not one but multiple galaxies by sitting alone in your room), what comparatively little interaction to the wider galactic sphere cerebrocrustaceans have has more expectations than if the galvans were more subtle in their influence. If you’ve heard how much of an grumpy old man scientist the First Thinker is, especially when you hear about one of his creations striking out against him due to neglect, well you’ve already started to get the picture of an isolated workspace that no one dares interrupt.

So then you come face to face with a snappy cerebrocrustacean scientist who’s rude, direct, and hovering over your shoulder making sure you don’t fuck up, well you won’t really find many cases of neglect when everything you do is under scrutiny. I guess the difference between my headcanon and @ohyeahben10 ‘s headcanon would be if you can endure the territorial… hostility may not be the right word, the fact that you’re in the same space as a cerebrocrustacean at work is already more than what they’d typically give, in my headcanon sphere you could potentially get past that barrier and transition from outgroup to ingroup; I don’t know exactly what’s in ohyeah’s head but I assume given his headcanons she might say that you practically could never get on a cerebrocrustacean’s good side, or at least not as close as an ingroup would suggest-

Either or, it’s gonna leave a bad first impression, and that is how the stereotype for being prickish is so widespread. Potentially, if a notable cerebrocrustacean scientist works intergalactically, the stereotype may narrow to Encephalonus IV having a very dickish social culture.

[canonizzyhours]

Hot take: Both the 'canyon' and the wider OFMD 'fandom' can turn people away from the show. This fandom's infighting is a waste of time and everyone would be happier looking for fans they agree with vs. spending hours wasting their life arguing about pointless shit. (Yes, this post is ironic, but I'm tired of moralizing, and wanted to rant.)

You as a fan are responsible for curating the community you care about and finding passion there, not endlessly posting rants about how weirdly passionate other fans are.

Fandom is just a bunch of very opinionated people who get online and try to find community and for the most part, that's okay! You consumed a piece of media and have opinions about it, but know why you're creating a post. You're not actually going to get murdered by Izzy lovers if you properly tag your Tumblr posts as Izzy-critical. For example.

I write OFMD meta, it's very easy to pop on Stede Critical if I'm discussing why I don't like aspects of his arc, or Ed-Critical for how he was written in S2. Proper tagging shows respect to Ed-focused or Stede-focused fans without clogging the tag with hate. I enjoy aspects of Izzy's character, and if I'm negative I STILL tag Izzy-critical.

Trying to claim moral superiority for 'choosing the right side' in fandom looks immature on both ends. In the end, yeah, I'm sure people in both camps were harassing people. I've got 15 Izzy-focused words on AO3 in this fandom on all branches of loving-to-hating aspects of his character. I have gotten death threats, from both camps, I get it. But those are shitty people, regardless of fandom affiliation. I don't hate an entire subgroup due to that.

Izzy having a subsect in fandom is not really that different than Ed, Stede, Olu/Jim, or hell, S2 positive fans having their own spaces and communities.

I was in fandoms for Marvel (Loki), Supernatural (Castiel) and Witcher (Jaskier). I know how prevalent some side characters can be, it's as if it's y'alls first time seeing this shit. Liking or disliking a character isn't a moral failing. THIS is the ACTUAL reason I saw people leave the fandom.

Moralizing if participating in Izzy (and TBH, Stede) fandom made you a good person or if you were 'filling AO3 with another white man'. Don't complain you don't have water if you haven't even tried to dig a well. Vice versa with only 'pure holy radical leftist non racists' holding themselves above everyone else for liking characters like Edward, Oluwande, or Jim. Why are you wasting time complaining that they aren't represented on AO3?

If you want more Archie fic? Write Archie fic. If you want Ned to get the villian arc he deserved? Do it. If you really hated Izzy and wanted him to die sooner, you have your audience, be respectful of people and their time.

But reader of this post, you are not the moderator for all content created. Why do you spend your time caring about what another ingroup is doing instead of having fun with YOUR in-group??

When this fandom dies out, my stand-out experiences will be the fond memories of what fic I created and the many friends I made along the way. Can you say the same? Or will you remember OFMD because you keyboard warrior'ed your way into not even having fun anymore?

#304.

[thenarator]

Why exactly do you not like class 1-B? Sorry if that sounds rude, just curious.

(plus it's always fun to read you ranting about MHA)

so, it's not that i particularly hate class 1b or anything. i even like some of their designs and i think their quirks are neat (shemage in particular is fabulous in both design and execution). it's just that, because the story is from izuku's perspective, we get to see very little of their personalities. what we do see of them is filtered through their interactions with class 1a, which means we really only ever get to see them as rivals and antagonists, albeit lower-stakes antagonists than usual. i would probably like them a lot more if we got to see more of them just hanging out as a class, rather than competing with class 1a. however, the only real glimpses we have of how they interact as a class is . . . how they treat monoma.

rant under the cut.

look, i just don't think class 1b is a very good environment for monoma, ok? class 1a would just be much better for him. i think he'd fit way better into the class dynamic and he'd be a lot more popular and well-liked. class 1b don't appreciate him, even though he spends all day every day hyping them up. and for what? to get karate chopped in the neck whenever he gets too enthusiastic? take a seat, kendo.

we already know that monoma was bullied in school for not having a "heroic quirk." the same is true of izuku and shinsou, so honestly this is probably a pretty common problem in the bnha world. if you're a kid that's being bullied, to the degree that you have any friends at all, your friends are probably other kids who are also being bullied. so how do you make friends with that kind of kid? you defend them. that is INSTANT clout on an elementary school playground. if a kid is getting picked on and you step up and say something about it, you and that kid are immediately besties. foolproof strategy, always works.

that probably worked pretty well for monoma through elementary school and middle school. he got very good at it. his prime directive for making friends became "defend your ingroup, attack your outgroup." i mean, kids can get bullied for a variety of nerdy interests, but one thing they all like is talking shit about the people who are mean to them. you will find no greater vitriol for supermodels than among the kids who get bullied for being fat. monoma learned that in order to make friends he needed to be the first person to stand up for others and the loudest person calling out injustice. that's just how it was.

unfortunately, that strategy doesn't work so well in hero school.

there's not a whole lot of bullying going on in a class made of people who want to be heroes (unless you're, like, bakugou or something), so there's not a lot of "ingroup vs outgroup" dynamics. there are cliques, but there isn't an "us vs them" mentality. not to mention, most of these kids weren't ever bullied, because they're strong and have good quirks. many of them were popular and never needed anyone to defend them because they were never under attack.

monoma's strategy no longer works, because no one needs him to fight for them.

UNLESS YOU'RE CLASS 1A!

class 1a are CONSTANTLY under attack! all the fucking time! their first day of school they weren't even allowed to go to orientation, they were immediately set the ridiculous task of figuring out how to use their quirks in brand new ways in a matter of minutes, and then told that the person who was slowest at it would get EXPELLED. it wasn't like "all of you need to reach this benchmark or you won't be able to handle the curriculum" it was literally "ONE OF YOU IS GOING HOME AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO PREVENT IT, SO MAKE SURE IT ISN'T YOU!" and then, on their SECOND week of school, they get driven out to a remote facility and attacked by VILLAINS! they have to fight for their lives! they have to work together or get killed! SEVERAL OF THEM LITERALLY ALMOST DIE!

this is a class that needs monoma SO MUCH!!!

class 1a is constantly being torn down, by circumstances and by their own teacher, and they NEED a dedicated cheerleader! they need someone to hype them up! they need someone to say "i know this situation sucks but we're the best so we can do it!" they need someone to tell aizawa that he's being unreasonable, or failing that to tell the students that their teacher is wrong about them and they're not worthless or stupid or whatever else insulting things he calls them! they need someone to hype them up, to organize them against the enemy, to give an inspiring speech and get them all fired up! this isn't just artificial ingroup vs outgroup dynamic, this is a class that's constantly having to rally together to deal with clear and present danger! monoma would be GREAT at that!

and yet he gets stuck in class 1b, where all he gets for all his hype and enthusiasm is whacks to the neck and occasionally blows to the back of the head that DRAW FUCKING BLOOD.

anyway class 1b don't appreciate what they have and for that they deserve abject humiliation, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[panacrine]

Diaries of Resistance, part 2

My friends reach out to ask me if I’m doing okay. “Thank you for checking in on me,” I respond. “I’m hanging in there.” But this is what I really want to say: 

I am sitting in my desk chair in my room. The dehumidifier hums quietly in the background. It’s getting a little stuffy, so I turn on the AC and put on socks because my feet get cold easily. When I’m hungry, I paddle over to the pantry and binge eat a whole bag of chips with guac and salsa. I am fine.

Across the ocean, Bisan has narrowly avoided death by two minutes as she’s moved from the entrance of Al Shifa Hospital. Motaz is reeling in horror as he watches his colleague get hit by an air strike right in front of him; he would have been in that car if he hadn’t stayed behind to charge his phone. Students who are protesting the US’s aid to Israel see their faces and names on the side of a truck in front of the Columbia gates. People are losing their jobs because they dare to say publicly that maybe we shouldn’t bomb a defenseless population. They are not okay.

If you care about me, you would care about these people. You wouldn’t just care about them—you’d care about them more than you care about me right now, because I don’t need your attention or your pity. The concern that drives you to text me should drive you to sign a petition or repost information that you found useful or boycott or have the courage to talk about this genocide in your life. Because it was only by a stroke of luck that I was born one generation after the Vietnam War, 40 years and oceans away from having bombs dropped over my head and guns pointed at me too.

I beg you, I implore you, I’m screaming for you to look beyond me because I AM FINE and to ask yourself to care about someone who isn’t a reflection of me and you. I am asking you to expand your definition of ingroup and to put in the work that I know you’re putting in for me for someone who needs it more.

Also, I say I appreciate it, but I also wish that you wouldn’t do that. Leave me alone unless you have something to show for yourself. 

Actually, yes, it would make me feel better if you put your money you were going to spend on me to Doctors without Borders. (You really want to get me something that I would want? If you think I’d want anything other than the end of oppression, then you don’t know me at all.)

Children getting water behind their house? Their grieving father? A 79-year-old refugee? You’re defending yourself against what?

I understand now, actually, that to be Buddhist and to have faith is resistance. It encourages me to not spend extraneously such that I don’t prop up global companies that thrive on greed and the exploitation of poor people. It encourages me to look inward for strength and not fall for the glittery ads flashing at me every second. It encourages me to live according to the rhythms of nature, to respect and cherish the ground that I stand on, and to give back to it.

The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children. - Audre Lorde, Power

I feel sad for the people who think that one group’s liberation must necessarily involve the killing of the oppressors. Imagine what it must be like to live in constant fear that what you’re doing to other people will be done to you. In a more enlightened world, we’d be able to collapse the distance between me and you and see that what I want for myself is something I must want for you too, regardless of who you are and who I am. I’d never want someone to go through the suffering that I experience, and in the same way I’d defend myself, I’d defend you too. But you wouldn’t defend me unless I give you a signed affidavit saying that I believe everything you do. That makes me sad, so incredibly sad, for the both of us, and all of us.

It hurts me to the core to see pictures of my people crying, clutching their children, their faces smudged with debris and sweat and blood. In this moment of pain, the camera has rendered them objects of suffering rather than subjects of their own stories. Can you imagine becoming the pictorial symbol of suffering? Can you imagine your whole life, full of inside jokes and laughter and hard work, being crystallized in still frame as a silent cry of powerlessness? Photography takes away the object’s agency. 

I don’t want to be known for what I consume: I want to be known for what I give.

Every time I like a video of a new atrocity, I feel more acutely that I am in a dystopia. They bulldozed over a refugee camp outside a hospital. There is someone’s leg sticking out of the rubble. A white and orange cat is nibbling at the martyr’s earthly body. My chest feels hot and twisted I cannot comprehend the cruelty I am typing on my black phone screen they are dying on the steps of a hospital we can’t help them now

[ithisatanytime]

Planet 1999 - Party (Official Video)

  if you are an atheist and you care, you study, you cant be a leftist. essentially every good or bad thing you feel is towards one goal: survive and reproduce

 you touch a hot stove and you feel a dreadful sensation that you cant stand, you HAVE to pull your hand away. its clear to see the relationship here. now lets say you look at a beautiful woman you are drawn to her, she spurns your initial advances outright humiliating you but you push through the emotional pain because shes that beautiful, again here its clear to see the relationship, a little less clear on the womans side of things but she wants to make sure hes serious about her before giving away too much, after all he might just try and sleep with her and saddle her with his offspring and bounce leaving both her and her offspring in a bad spot, its subconcious shes not literally thinking this, she doesnt literally think anything she watches tik-toks.

  suddenly, in the past eighty years (out of some half a million) humans have begun to spontaneously do all sorts of things that ensure they will never reproduce, whether it be leading a homosexual lifestyle, getting tubes tied, remaining on birth control through your entire reproductive years, going to school for your entire reproduction window etc etc. if you believe in evolution, you cannot be a leftist, ALL PAIN is to avoid dying and to make sure you survive long enough to reproduce, all of it, all pleasure too, but it turns out for all of time something like on in ten people were actually the opposite of their brith sex inside and or same sex attracted or they wanted to be bull dyke shoulder pad wearing ceos and they just never felt brave enough to speak out! you can believe that if you have a nice tight warm pussy, but not if you are a man who understands biology.

 the real answer is different populations of humans developed different behaviors evolving largely separately from one another, this is covered with the lie of culture, culture is just behavior and it comes from your DNA its not the other way around thats a lie that was spread by franz boas pet goy margarete mead in her long and thoroughly debunked coming of age in samoa. culture is just behavior mostly, birds dont need to be taught how to sing their species song or how to build their distinctive nests the behavior is innate. thats why black countries always look like black countries, white countries always look like white countries and east asian countries all look like east asian countries. japan and china are different from each other, but not as different from each other as china and Gabon africa. and jews in particular have a survival strategy that closely resembles a parasite, they pretend to be innocuous guests and through subterfuge and promoting each other into important positions they transform whatever host country they are colonizing to be a more hospitable environment for jews, no conspiracy is even required, this is just natural ingroup preference turned up a notch, so how come i have such a problem with it? because it leads to suffering, there is no greater threat to the human soul than this.

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

So obviously the entire Feanorian Host as a whole is a bit intense about the cause, but I feel like there’s different levels of devotion between their individual followers.

So my question to you is, from least to most intense, which Feanorions followers are the most cult-like and why?

the cultishness absolutely varies by region! i'm being a little facetious when i call them an out-and-out cult, but fëanorian minion culture certainly has... tendencies. the isolationism, the way loyalty to the group supersedes absolutely everything, what they do to those who 'betray the cause,' not to mention how absolutely psyched they get at the opportunity to do murder. still, the precise way that manifests, as well as how intense they are about, does change a lot depending on where you are in east beleriand. surprisingly it doesn't track that much with how tolerant of outsiders each subdivision is, which is most evidenced by:

the gap: maglor and his cronies are easily the most xenophobic part of the host, which is both a cause and a consequence of them having probably the least regular contact with non-fëanorians out of all the armies of east beleriand. paradoxically, this gives them very little incentive to go full cultist; much of the deliberately off-putting stuff the rest of the host does is partially to distinguish them from the outgroup, which isn't something you need to do when everyone you deal with is either part of the gang or an obvious enemy. they still do the elaborate facial deformations, they still have a bit of a Thing about fire, but the thing that's holding them together is much less utter devotion to the cause and much more the organic friendships and kinship bonds between riders

there's a few other reasons why the folk of the gap are relatively less culty. the gap is sparsely populated to begin with, and most of its population is at least semi-nomadic; it's a lot harder to cultivate that kind of obsession when everyone's off doing their own thing most of the time. while the gap doesn't have the highest headcount of mithrim sindar - as stated above, its population is tiny even by east beleriand's low standards - it has more mithrim sindar as a proportion of the population than anywhere else in east beleriand, and the culture of the gap has this big mithrim sindarin focus on community and clan to counteract the noldorin tendency to sacrifice everything for grand ideals. the general lack of new recruits from outside the host only serves to intensify all of this; the riders of the gap fight together because of the spiderweb of social and personal obligations that link them all together, not necessarily because of the cause (though that is still a factor, i want to be clear.) this fairly isolated society held together by individual and familial bonds stands in stark contrast to:

himlad: the thing about celegorm and curufin's people is that they're up against the fuzzy border between east and west beleriand, between maedhros' definitely-not-a-kingdom and the finarfinians' section of fingolfin's defensive line. as such, they're more or less constantly in contact with the outside world, coordinating troop movements, sharing information and resources, recruiting from the same sindarin populations. there's still a clear delineation between the fëanorians and the fingolfinians, partially because there's a lot of mountains between their major centres and partially because this lot actually do have an other to define themselves against and thus a reason to emphasise their own identity, but there's a lot of chatter and petty squabbling and philosophical discussion and a steady regular connection to the outside world counteracting the worst of the cultishness. unlike pretty much any other part of the host, the himlad minions never really lose the sense that they belong to a greater community of elves

which explains what they do in nargothrond. i don't believe that literally every single one of their followers abandoned celegorm and curufin, but i'd buy it was a lot of them, maybe even most of them. it helps that it's specifically the finarfinians their lords are betraying, the people they've - perhaps not fought side by side with, but who definitely always had their backs. even without that, though, the very existence of that relationship means they're used to working with people from outside the host, getting to know them, empathising with them, which is a pretty hefty counterbalance to the specific the-whole-world's-out-to-get-us undercurrent of internal propaganda. by no means was it an instant switch, or an easy one; after finrod got ousted there was a ton of interhost politicking and debate and the occasional brawl as everyone tried to figure out what to do. but the fact that the question was even open says a lot, i think. that probably wouldn't have been the case even in:

thargelion: caranthir’s domain is the most heavily populated part of east beleriand, and the settlement at lake helevorn is the closest thing it has to a city. a significant portion of that population aren’t fëanorians by even the loosest definition; they’re dwarven traders or miscellaneous humans or sindar far enough from the front line of the siege they can just keep on with their lives the way they always have. the fëanorians (and here, more than anywhere else, that’s a fuzzy category; this is the easiest part of the host to join, and the easiest to leave) are mixed in with all these groups, negotiating supplies, managing tribal levies, patrolling the roads, state stuff. out of all the subdivisions of the host, the thargelion minions are the hardest to distinguish from outsiders.

to keep their ingroup coherent, then, they actively mark themselves out. the minions in thargelion are probably the loudest about their collective identity and the cause and the joy of bathing in your enemies’ blood and all that. they have weird midnight rituals and purpose-built meeting halls and elaborate coded language, and while being overly tyrannical about it would be bad for business there’s definitely a sense that they form a tightly knit core which looks after its own above all else. that image is somewhat complicated by the aforementioned blurry edges of the thargelion host - is the sindarin bureaucrat who’s never touched a weapon in her life but plays a vital role in the military administration a fëanorian? is the noldorin freeholder who pays very little attention to the day-to-day minutia of the war but keeps his sword sharp for the hour it is needed? - but the alliance of old soldiers at its heart is a clear and palpable thing, especially when you can feel its eyes. when their hackles aren’t up the minions are perfectly happy to mingle socially with the other peoples of thargelion, though, which sets them apart from:

himring: on the frontlines of the siege of angband, with all the nightmares of the north pressing directly on their spirits, maedhros’ followers stoke the flames of their devotion high. the warriors of the cold fortress are less showy about their fervor than their counterparts in thargelion or even himlad, but the ardour underlying it is markedly more intense; they don’t have much in the way of over-the-top rituals, but they have vast amounts of ironclad unspoken rules they follow unwaveringly. they’re polite to outsiders, sometimes even welcoming, but you never forget that you are, in fact, an outsider, and that himring and its satellite forts form an internal world others can never quite see. even to other fëanorians, they come across as aloof

their fervour also tends to manifest as a deep personal loyalty that borders on reverence towards maedhros himself. all the brothers command respect, of course, they’re all magnetic personalities who draw people in and bind them together, but maedhros’ minions are on a whole other level. they mythologise him, tell stories of his deeds like he personally holds the line against morgoth, treasure the slightest contact with him, hold being called to his direct service as the highest honour of all. most of the new recruits to the himring host are brought in by the vast pull of maedhros’ reputation, from all across beleriand and even from the north. but no matter where they came from, they all understand that they will fight and live and die together beneath the banner of their lord. which is a bit weird, even by fëanorian standards, but they’re nowhere near as bad as:

ossiriand: amrod and amras’ henchelves are considered by the rest of the host to be notably psychotic, which is saying a lot. the minions of ossiriand are utterly terrifying, absolutely fanatical about the cause, the most bloodthirsty murder cult in east beleriand. you’d think the green-elves they share their territory with would act as a calming influence, but in practice the two groups mostly avoid each other, because the green-elves naturally prefer to stay away from these nutbags. you’d think being away from the front lines would lessen the need to solidify their identity through cult nonsense, but in practice it gives them the free time to go full gonzo. most of the horrible rumours you hear about the fëanorians in the rest of beleriand are either specific quirks of the ossiriand minions, or most egregrious in the ossiriand minions. they have an orc pit

or so they’d have you believe. the fëanorians in ossiriand effectively serve as the host’s intelligence division, scouts and spies and saboteurs. a lot of their work is clandestine by its very nature, and they tend to be pretty secretive about what they actually do. half the things you hear about them are probably disinformation, lies they’re deliberately spreading to make themselves sound scarier. hopefully, at least. as anyone who’s chatted with an ossiriand minion knows, they are both eagerly awaiting the fulfilment of the oath, and already preparing for what will come after

(this paradigm does break down after the siege is broken and the union of maedhros fails and the dregs of the armies of east beleriand wind up stuck in the same ever-shrinking territory. still, i think the origins of the survivors are... interesting. the people of the gap were almost completely wiped out in the bragollach, the people of himlad mostly jumped ship with celebrimbor, even the people of thargelion took heavy losses in the nirnaeth. but the people of himring stood firm around their lord, and the people of ossiriand were never really frontline fighters in the first place. minions from the more cultish parts of the host tend to survive longer, and in greater numbers. i feel this could have... consequences)

[jasprose2]

Gokiburi no Aji/The Taste of Cockroach English Translyrics

Based on Hazuki no Yume’s translation.

If every single day was full of fun, exciting things to do (Badum-bada! Tada, tada!) Then every single face would have a smile in its spot (May you have a good day!) I'm sure there'll be a day when I can make my dreams into the honest truth And I'll laugh with everything I've got

Let's take a step! And shake off the sadness in your life (Take it easy, it's super easy) Let's all connect! With everyone circled, it's alright! (All our buddies, our allied buddies)

We're all marching towards our future, each a true challenger But, I hate to say, there's not a way that no one's ever getting hurt... (Oh, you mean, like this?)

So take a hand! And form an invincible tie! (All our buddies, our allied buddies) Let's take a stand Your stupid quirks that we'll rectify

When we find somebody bad, we'll work together as one And destroy them with the flame of justice nobody can overcome (Couldn't call it just)

I'm sure it must be sad, those lesser kids who have to look at us They see how bright we shine, how our potential hurts their eyes We know they're out of luck, and when you see stuff like that If you simply don't touch on it, there could be a problem with people thinking you don't care about those who are less fortunate than you so It's better to pretend like you're sorry about how much their lives suck in comparison to yours so that way you can get people around you to like you more So I'll laugh with everything I've got

So cut your bonds And bid your morality goodbye. (God, it's ugly. Accusing falsely.) Let's cut the crap. Quit bitching about what you don't like. (In harmony forever leaving) You get it, right? That you're either ingroup or you're out ("Let's all share it!" If I was stupid) You know I'm done with you trying to boss us around (I've conceded, you're hard in the head)

Everyone on Earth's a super special "only one!" (..?) But when everybody's special, almost everyone ends up a dud! (!? Are you even sane?) (OF COURSE!)

Darling, don't you cry, you're the one I hold most dear Goodness, they can be so hateful, those saints they all revere Darling, don't you give up now, youre the one I hold most near Goodness, it's truly heroic, the spirit cornered now

If every single day was full of fun, exciting things to do (Never could be, it never would be) Then every single face would have a smile in its spot (Are you high or something?) Oh god, I wanna puke! Doesn't she know everyone else can hear her, too? And they'll laugh with everything they've got Break her heart with everything they've got

I was gonna make a cover of this with an UTAU I liked, but I lost interest right at the “Darling, don’t you give up now” part. I always run out of steam towards the end.

[max1461]

This is always the anti-pluralist talking point: "you only value respecting difference because you don't really care about the wellbeing of people who aren't in your ingroup. If you did, you would realize that they too should live in the way that (wish to) live, because the way that you (wish to) live is Right and justice is when people live to Right way."

Obviously there are some things I am universally against. I'm universally against hitting your kids, as it turns out! And I'm universally again slavery, and I'm universally against war. But most things are not like this. Most of what makes up "culture", like most of what makes up individual preference, is not this sort of salient ethical matter. The people who say "culture is the food you eat and the language you speak" are closer to being right than the people who say "culture is your ethical norms". Yes, ethical norms are a part of culture, but not the majority or even the plurality of it, I don't think. I think the assumption that they are is an artifact of the discourse-bubble; internet politics people are used to staking their identity on Big Ethical Questions, and so they assume that everyone does this, or that the answers to Big Ethical Questions are the meat which makes up the bulk of human life. But I think this is not so!

The bulk of human life is made up of "mundane" things, making food and doing your laundry and shit. Of course in broad material or economic terms these things feature in ethical debates, but in moment-to-moment practical terms... it does not deeply matter how you do your laundry! It does not deeply matter how your parents taught you to do your laundry. Etc. Pluralism follows from the observation that the bulk of human life is not truly very apt for prescription. Whatever laundry-doing-norms you happen to have are fine.

Even for more charged things like interpersonal interactions, there is often no clear "right" answer. Some people (such as myself!) would, all else being equal, prefer to live in more private, reserved, stand-off-ish society, where negative face is respected and people take a long time to get to know each other. Some people want to live in a friendly and open society, where people come up and chat with you on the street. Your preference might be mediate both by the norms you grew up with and by the innate features of your personality; I suspect this was so for me. Is either set of norms "right"? I don't think so! I think both are fine.

I think this argument against pluralism is not very convincing.

Cultural pluralism is pretty much always xenophobia masquerading as xenophilia, anyways. If someone else beats their kids and you don't think it's alright to beat kids that isn't something you're going to be a pluralist about, unless the parents doing it have a sufficiently different color skin and racial or cultural background to you, then it suddenly becomes fine and not your place to criticize. But your increased tolerance for the parents is due solely to a decrease in your interest in the welfare of their children, so it's hard to argue that this position is humanizing.

[maybe-a-little-wicked]

Rant because I’m not going to be able to sleep until I get it out of my system.

It’s rant time. 

So, a content creator I followed just had to make this apology on twitter for making a (what others considered) a fatphobic comment. And I just...

*sighs*

This is such an annoying, frustrating thing to talk about, because it’s always the people I agree with socially that make this such a big deal, and all those old guys were right when they said that standing up to your friends is a lot harder than standing up to your enemies. 

Because pissing off conservative, sexist, republican, racist, boomers, etc, etc, etc.,? SO much EASIER than pissing off the liberals, leftists, socialist's, gen z-ers, etc, etc, etc,. 

But ya know what? It’s also a kind of intolerant when you can’t even talk to the people you agree with 90% of the time because they have a habit of rabidly jumping on you for daring to have a different opinion than them. The fact that the second you want to have discourse about something you get called intolerant or ignorant or a republican (shivers)  for daring to threaten the group opinion. 

This has happened to me, to be clear. I got told I wasn’t a feminist (i’m a very staunch feminist, you can scroll through my tumblr and see that) because I didn’t agree about a stupid burger king tweet. 

But, I’m just going to talk about it. I’ve got to get this stupid discourse out of my head, even if it pisses off my ingroup. 

We have got to have a conversation about just how freaking sensitive we are. We have built this culture online about how everyone has to give this giant apology for every little mistake or perceived slight. And ya know what? It’s bullshit. 

And before anyone says anything, this isn’t to say that I don’t think people shouldn’t apologize when they’ve said something actually offensive. We should hold people accountable for their actions. There are times when I agree whole-heartedly with this. And then there are times when I think it’s so fucking stupid it makes me feel like my head is gonna pop like an overfilled balloon. 

Because ya know what, just because you’re offended doesn’t mean someone owes you an apology. Being offended doesn’t make you right. Being offended or upset doesn’t mean someone owes you something. Get comfortable with not getting an apology for every little thing that hurts your feelings. Because, at the risk of sounding way too much like a boomer, sometimes you gotta toughen up. Sometimes, things are gonna hurt your feelings. And that still doesn’t mean you are owed anything. Getting your feelings hurt is a part of life, but they’re still your feelings to handle, not someone elses. 

It reminds me of this example with a friend of mine. She was bagging on these girls who went to an open mic poetry stand and they were all talking about their SA. She kept saying that they shouldn’t been more considerate of the people in the audience who might get triggered or how it was upsetting to her and they should’ve toned it down. 

No! Just because something upsets you, doesn’t mean someone else has to change their behavior. Those girls have every right to open up and talk about their experiences and heal. And if that’s upsetting to you? That’s your problem, not theirs. 

It’s the same thing. Yes, sometimes people need to be held accountable for their actions and they need to apologize and own up. And sometimes, ya gotta grow a fucking spine and recognize that not everyone on this planet is gonna owe you an apology because your feelings got hurt because they did or said something you didn’t like. 

And it pisses me off how we can’t have a conversation about this. Because everybody’s too fucking busy trying to make sure nobody is offended. It’s toxic! We all dance around each other and our precious, delicate sensibilities. If we can’t talk about shit, then we can’t have discourse. We can’t do what we’re meant to do to solve problems, learn new things, and gain knowledge. Not everybody you meet is going to agree with you. Not everybody you meet is going to communicate in a way that you like or approve of. But learning how to put up with those situations? Learning how to let things go and not take things personally? Learning how to acknowledge that people are different? That’s tolerance. (And no, this doesn’t apply to slurs, that’s not what I’m talking about.) 

[korpuskat]

Kinktober Day 10 - Cybering - Tomura Shigaraki/Eijirou Kirishima

[Ao3 Mirror] Rating: Teen (series will be Explicit) Word Count: 2,732 Summary:  Running the League of Villains and being on the run without any resources is really stressful. Sometimes, Shigaraki just wants to relax, play a game, and virtually kill people.Kirishima feels the same way. Contains: Among Us shenanigans, future Kirishima/Shigaraki

I’ve been wanting to write this fic for a while and once again I can’t make it short enough to write in one day so here’s a like 2 or 3 part series.

=====

He's tired. Exhausted. More than anything in the world Tomura Shigaraki misses his bed- his room- his consoles and games from the time before. Before Kamino, before Sensei had gone and-

Tomura scowls, chases the thought from his mind. He's been over this a hundred times, been stewing in it even day for weeks, there's no point getting worked up again. So he does what little he can to relax, to lie back on the old, dingy mattress and the rotted, half-ripped sheets. His coat will act as a fine enough blanket tonight, but for now- now he's too tense, too angry to sleep. Normally, he'd invest some time in his latest game, a series he can drop an hour into until he's finally relaxed and ready to get the sleep that eludes him.

But then. He's lost that too, hasn't he? He's left with only his phone and a data plan on someone's bill somewhere that has yet to be traced to him. (At least he hopes; would be rather awkward if the heroes were aware of his late night search history).

There are few games he can play and enjoy, mindless things, but damn if there isn't one that keeps his attention. Tomura sets his name to Dust and loads into the first lobby he sees. As soon as he loads in he moves to the laptop to change his color to black. The chat explodes:

KingExplos (orange): you made it public dumbass KingExplos (orange): gtfo rando

Tomura sneers at the next one, considers finding another lobby.

AllMight (green): Welcome! Floaty (pink): hi!

The prospect of being imposter and killing him first makes Tomura stay.

RedRiot (red): Oops sparky (yellow): but we got 10 players now! RedRiot (red): Ignore orange, Dust Alienqueen (purple): He's cranky lol

They must all know each other, probably all in a Discord together. So long as they're not teaming, it doesn't matter, he can put up with their too-friendly chatter for now.

Dust (black): start RedRiot (red): Right!! Sorry!!

Tomura rolls his eyes, but settles back into his pillow as the timer counts down. The first round goes smoothly; he's a crewmate and works through his tasks with stunning precision, except for the damn card swipe that takes three attempts. He ends up doing the refueling task at the same time as red, the energetic little bean circling his own black avatar a few times in enthusiasm. Tomura scowls, considers the likelihood that red is an imposter all too happy to follow Tomura to the engines, but lets that worry fade- as halfway through the first refueling someone reports orange's body.

Alienqueen (purple): where Froppy (lime): where? Shouto (white): ?

Then, the location come in one by one, all except for the reporter:

AllMight (green): froppy and I were in admin! Froppy (lime): yep sparky (yellow): afk in caf lol Shouto (white): elec with alien

It takes a minute, and Tomura begins to suspect a self-report, until at last:

Ingen (blue): KingExplos's body was outside Navigation and I am sure I saw Floaty running away towards Oxygen! Therefore, pink is an imposter! Floaty (pink): what!! I was at up engine, blue's lying

Tomura grins, he does so love this part.

Dust (black): pink's lying. Dust (black): i was in up engine. RedRiot (red): Yeah!! RedRiot (red): Dust and I were doing refuel together! Floaty (pink): I was just outside, going to medbay Floaty (pink): Ingen don't lie to them!!

The banner pops up: Dust has voted. The rest of the group follows, ringing in one after another.

Froppy (lime): sorry floaty Floaty (pink): dang it Ingen!!

Sure enough, a little pink bean floats out into space followed by Floaty was an Imposter. Easy. Even if blue was slow on clarifying, it should be an easy game with only one dead and one imposter left.

The game resumes- and Red excitedly follows Tomura's avatar back to the upper engines to finish refueling. Tomura finishes first and- watching as Red's avatar remains stuck to the console- waits for Red to finish. It's logical, Tomura decides, to go in pairs and not get split up. Even if he wins, it still sucks to die. And when Red runs to him, circles him again, they pass by the reactor to go get more fuel to do lower engine.

There's no body interruption this time. Tomura only has one task left and it's trash. The bar's not far enough over yet for him to use his visual task- but Red circles him obnoxiously again and moves back and forth back towards storage. He has nothing better to do, Tomura decides, and follows him. Red leads him past storage, past comms, and up the corridor into weapons. He stops next to the console- and sure enough, the ship's lasers fire as Red does the asteroid game.

Well, at least Tomura knows he wasn't running around with the only other murderer on the ship. Red circles him again, excitedly following as Tomura wanders back into the cafeteria.

Just in time to watch green snap lime's neck.

Tomura blinks, then huffs a single amused half-laugh. But Red is the one to get there first, smashing the report button as green still just stands there over lime's bisected corpse.

RedRiot (red): DEKU!!!!!!!! RedRiot (red): WHY!!!!!! AllMight (green): I'm sorry! Alienqueen (purple): where RedRiot (red): YOU KILLED HER??? AllMight (green): I'm sorry, Froppy!!!! Shouto!! Chargebolt!!

Sure enough, the crewmate list shows not just lime dead, but white and yellow too. Impressive, actually. Tomura wonders where the bodies were, if only the one they witnessed is the one that got reported. Probably electrical. Red continues his caps ranting.

RedRiot (red): UNMANLY! Ingen (blue): Where was the body found, RedRiot? Dust (black): its green Alienqueen (purple): omg! all might's an imposter!

Tomura resists snorting. The votes come in fast- ending with green voting for himself. He spins off into space and Tomura is rewarded with the winner's screen. He's shocked to see everyone- everyone load back into the lobby. Not a single leaver? They're definitely in a group together.

KingExplos (orange): WHY THE FUCK DID YOU KILL ME FIRST?? Floaty (pink): gg lol sparky (yellow): killed by all might sparky (yellow): what a way to go AllMight (green): I said I'm sorry! Shouto (white): It's alright, that's how you win. Alienqueen (purple): no its alMIGHT KingExplos (orange): SHUT UP AND START

Tomura allows himself to laugh at that at least, orange's frustration more so than purple's joke. They're not terrible, no obvious cheaters thus far- and their ingroup dynamics keep the focus off him.

This time, the text pops up red. Imposter. Tomura grins- and notices the character off to the side of his avatar. Red. Well. So long as he isn't following him around like a lost dog, maybe Tomura can carry him to a win.

The game starts and Tomura immediately heads down to admin, stops in front of the wiring panel and waits, watches the other characters filter in and out- for a moment it is just him and green (an urge to kill All Might no matter who catches him is intense), but pink and purple both wander in and Tomura has to move on. He heads down to storage, finds nobody idling there (too close to admin anyway). Electrical is obvious, a great kill spot, but on a whim he heads right into communications- and finds orange by his lonesome.

He drops into the room, slits orange's throat, and is back out heading up past shields, nav, and weapons. On the way he passes Red, who stops to wiggle back and forth at him before continuing on down the way Tomura came from. Tomura makes it all the way into the cafeteria and presses up to the wiring panel next to blue. He waits for the kill cooldown to reset- is just about to tap the button when--

Body reported! Tomura scowls- and blinks at the megaphone under Red's name. Blinks at the second red X in the crew list, white also having been killed and not by Tomura.

RedRiot (red): Stop killing Explos first! I can hear him yelling up there!! Alienqueen (purple): where? RedRiot (red): Comms AllMight (green): oh no RedRiot (red): Came from nav and didn't see anybody

Tomura stares at the chat. He'd killed white and reported orange's body to look innocent, not a bad plan-

Ingen (blue): I was doing the trash removal in cafeteria with Dust who was doing wiring. Floaty (pink): was in the middle of reactor game :( Alienqueen (purple): f Alienqueen (purple): in medbay waiting on samples sparky (yellow): wait shoutos dead too Froppy (lime): deku is it you again? AllMight (green): what!! no!! RedRiot (red): You can't kill your way to being at the top of the class!!

Students. Ah. Makes sense how they all know each other now, the dynamics at play. Perfect.

sparky (yellow): all might sus lol AllMight (green): i'm not!! AllMight (green): i was in elec doing the spinny thing Dust (black): alone? AllMight (green): i think so sparky (yellow): sus lol Alienqueen (purple): yeahhh sparky (yellow): wait sparky (yellow): dust where were you???

Tomura rolls his eyes.

Froppy (lime): ingen said they were in cafe with him Dust (black): wires in cafe w blue sparky (yellow): oh Floaty (pink): read chat spark lmao sparky (yellow): sorry dust llo sparky (yellow): lol* Alienqueen (purple): youre so dumb omg Ingen (blue): Dust and I were in the cafeteria completing tasks. Froppy (lime): are we voting? sparky (yellow): green is sus for sure!! Floaty (pink): idk :( RedRiot (red): Elec is near comms and he was alone...

Tomura's finger hovers over the vote button. Too aggressive and he'll look suspicious... but voting someone off immediately would definitely help.

Alienqueen (purple): im skipping for now Alienqueen (purple): but ur on thin ice!!! AllMight (green): its not me!!!

The votes rolls in one by one. Red's appears in the list- and Tomura wishes he'd been more clear how he was voting. He plays it safe, skips. There's plenty of time to coax out that suspicion. The results tally up: pink, yellow, and sure enough Red had voted for green. If Tomura had voted the other way it would've been enough to eject him- damn. It's fine, he can work with it.

The game resumes and Tomura guides his avatar through rooms, pauses at task locations to seem genuine, to wait for a good opportunity. He finds the perfect one, at the bottom of storage blue leads him towards the trash chute. The grin that curls at his lips is cruel, but he can't help it. They're the perfect target, blue's precision could be a problem if Tomura needs to lie. Blue wiggles then stops to complete the task- trash explodes out from the side of the ship, proving blue's innocence. Tomura already knew that. Before blue can step away somewhere more visible, he taps the kill button and his black avatar skewers blue's.

He runs towards electrical, dips in and makes it all the way to the vent, stopping there- and waits for just a moment. It might be risky to leave electric so close to the body, so he jumps in the vent and slides his way over to security, popping out when he's sure no one is around. Easy. He stands by the cams but stares at the hallway, waiting for a potential victim as his timer ticks down. People probably aren't done, not concerned with using security yet- and just as Tomura is about to give up and seek out prey for himself, a little pink bean comes running by.

They turn into the reactor room and approach one of the tasks. Tomura sits at the other task, right next to each other- only seconds left, 5, 4, 3- he just needs them to be below average at the memory game- 2, 1-

He jams the button as they begin to run away and his avatar stabs theirs and- Body reported!

It's fine, it's fine. Nobody else was in reactor with him, he's sure.

Dust (black): where Alienqueen (purple): KIRI....... AllMight (green): where? sparky (yellow): ? RedRiot (red): uh Alienqueen (purple): KIRI KILLED TSU....

Shit.

sparky (yellow): riot!!! how is that manly!! Alienqueen (purple): RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME IN MEDBAY AllMight (green): omg Dust (black): lol

Tomura is definitely not laughing out loud, but if he doesn't respond he'll look suspicious.

RedRiot (red): Look!! RedRiot (red): You weren't supposed to come in!! sparky (yellow): hahaha ok vote kiri Alienqueen (purple): YOU KILLED TSU! RedRiot (red): You weren't supposed to see!!

That does make Tomura shake his head, perhaps a little amused at Red's explanation. No use trying to defend him. He taps the vote button and they come pouring in. Tomura can still win this, he's pulled it off with worse- so long as Red sticks around to pull out some sabotages for him, there's a good chance. The voting ends, green being the last hold out-- and Tomura's mouth drops open.

As one final parting gift, Red has voted for green.

Red's body goes spinning off into space, the confirmation RedRiot was an Imposter appearing after

It doesn't always mean something, but maybe, maybe, the rest of the crew will think it was Red implicating green as his co-conspirator. The game resumes and Tomura wanders over towards medbay. They'll probably be grouping up soon, he needs to work fast to separate them- and the alarm makes his screen flash. Red's already at work.

Tomura crosses cafe to go to oxygen, stands at the console there- and yes. yes. purple comes running in from nav. The cooldown from the round starting is rough, but it's enough, it has to be- the sabotage ends (damn, if he could've killed her before that, he could've won immediately) just as it comes off the timer. The black avatar rips open to reveal a mouth and takes a chomp out of purple.

Tomura runs to the cafeteria- and watches as yellow slams the emergency button. He'll notice purple is dead, they were together, shit-

sparky (yellow): deku!!!!!!!!

and yellow. Yellow votes. Tomura full-on fucking laughs.

AllMight (green): what!! sparky (yellow): you been sus all game its you isnt it!!! AllMight (green): no!! it's you! accusing me to get the rando to vote me out and win! sparky (yellow): omg no! Dust (black): actually Dust (black): it's neither of you

and Tomura votes for green.

sparky (yellow): OMG sparky (yellow): R U FR AllMight (green): i told you!!!! sparky (yellow): how do u change ur vote???? Dust (black): you cant AllMight (green): that was too sneaky dust

Green accepts his fate, votes for himself. Tomura wishes he was actually All Might- that'd certainly be a novel way to kill him, to eject him into space. The winner's screen appears: Black's avatar and the ghost of RedRiot standing as menacingly as little bean creatures can.

He taps through the ad, loads back into the lobby.

RedRiot (red): Haha! We got y'all! KingExplos (orange): you fucking dick Alienqueen (purple): denki ur a moron LMAO Floaty (pink): that was amazing dust KingExplos (orange): fucking killing me first again Floaty (pink): but omg :( AllMight (green): i told you!! Floaty (pink): I just needed to do reactor :( RedRiot (red): Dust you were beast!!

Tomura blinks, feels sweat gather on his palms. A few of the players from the previous game didn't return.

Dust (black): thanks RedRiot (red): Do you have discord?? RedRiot (red): I have go to sleep but we made a great team! RedRiot (red): Should play again some time!!

He shouldn't. It's not like his discord is private or obviously him or anything, Tomura only uses it for the gaming servers, a quicker way to look for group before loading in- but he hasn't needed to do that in some time. He'd been swiping away any notifications, set himself on do not disturb and didn't open it to not make himself miss his consoles.

But he liked this. Red was good, good instincts, wasn't overly annoying or stupid, and more than anything, they had good synchronization. What harm could it be? At worst Tomura just blocks him, at best they play Among Us some more. He waits for two more people to leave the group, probably also headed off to sleep if they're all students before typing out his username.

=====

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[arcticdementor]

A sea change has taken place in American political life. The force driving this change is the digital era style of moral politics known as “wokeness,” a phenomenon that has become pervasive in recent years and yet remains elusive as even experts struggle to give it a clear definition and accurately measure its impact. Where did it come from? What do its adherents believe? Is it just something happening inside the Twitter bubble and on college campuses or is it really spreading across the social and cultural landscape and transforming the country as sometimes appears to be the case? In reality, “wokeness”—a term that originated in black popular culture—is a broad euphemism for a more narrow phenomenon: the rapidly changing political ideology of white liberals that is remaking American politics.

Over the past decade, the baseline attitudes expressed by white liberals on racial and social justice questions have become radically more liberal. In one especially telling example of the broader trend, white liberals recently became the only demographic group in America to display a pro-outgroup bias—meaning that among all the different groups surveyed white liberals were the only one that expressed a preference for other racial and ethnic communities above their own. As woke ideology has accelerated, a growing faction of white liberals have pulled away from the average opinions held by the rest of the coalition of Democratic voters—including minority groups in the party. The revolution in moral sentiment among this one segment of American voters has led to a cascade of consequences ranging from changes in the norms and attitudes expressed in media and popular culture, to the adoption of new political rhetoric and electoral strategies of the Democratic Party. Nor has this occurred in a vacuum on the left as the initiatives set in motion by white liberals have, in turn, provoked responses and countermeasures from conservatives and Republicans.

…

As white liberals have come to place far greater emphasis on racial injustice, they have also endorsed reparative race-related social policies in greater numbers. This is evident across a range of issues: the rapid growth in white liberals who favor affirmative action for blacks in the labor force; in the increase in white liberals who feel that we spend too little on helping blacks, and that the government should afford them special treatment; in the increase in white Democrats who think it’s the government’s job to ensure “equal income across all races”; and in the increase in white liberals and Democrats who think that white people have ‘too much’ political influence.

…

Some of these changes arguably stem from Trump’s rhetoric and policies on immigration. But a glance at the data shows that, as with their attitudes toward blacks, the percentage of white liberals perceiving “a lot” or “a great deal” of discrimination against immigrants more than doubled between 2000 (29%) and 2013 (57%)—i.e., well before Trump arrived on the scene. Additionally, between 2006 and 2014, the percentage of white liberals saying they feel “very sympathetic” toward illegal immigrants and their families grew from 22% to 42%.

For the woke and their allies, these rapid changes are heralded as signs of progress, leading at times to harsh criticism of anyone who would stand in their way. This ideological stridency and triumphalist attitude can be powerful weapons against political opponents but are alienating—perhaps deliberately so—to moderates and conservatives. But, in a sense, no one is put in a more strained and problematic position by the politics of white liberals than the white liberals themselves. The woke elite act like white saviors who must lead the rest of the country, including the racial minorities whose interests they claim to represent, to a vision of justice the less enlightened groups would not choose for themselves.

Consider, for instance, that black and Asian Democrats and liberals are significantly more supportive of restrictive immigration policies and less positive toward racial/ethnic diversity than their white counterparts. Black and Hispanic Democrats and liberals are more sympathetic toward Israel than the Palestinians (likely due in part to the fact that they tend to be more religious). They are also more likely to part ways when it comes to contemporary social and gender-identity issues, including views of the #MeToo movement. In all, though they do converge on some issues, the attitudes and policy preferences of the woke white left are unrepresentative of the “marginalized communities” with whom they are supposed to be allies. And as woke liberals play a leading role in party politics, the Democrats, who are increasingly defined by their embrace of diversity and progressive stances on issues of racial justice, appear to do so, at least partly at the direction of a small white elite.

…

Remarkably, white liberals were the only subgroup exhibiting a pro-outgroup bias—meaning white liberals were more favorable toward nonwhites and are the only group to show this preference for group other than their own. Indeed, on average, white liberals rated ethnic and racial minority groups 13 points (or half a standard deviation) warmer than whites. As is depicted in the graph below, this disparity in feelings of warmth toward ingroup vs. outgroup is even more pronounced among whites who consider themselves “very liberal” where it widens to just under 20 points. Notably, while white liberals have consistently evinced weaker pro-ingroup biases than conservatives across time, the emergence and growth of a pro-outgroup bias is actually a very recent, and unprecedented, phenomenon.

…

For most of human history, the primary trigger for moral emotions like outrage came from local acts of wrongdoing. After all, if you have no idea what events are going on outside your village and hardly any sense of the world at large, it’s hard to be outraged by them. In the modern era, however, this is rapidly becoming less true. Along with drastic improvements in material well-being, which, some argue, has enabled individuals whose immediate needs are met to shift their to concern to the welfare of people they’ve never met—modern technology has widened our exposure to injustices against strangers. The diffusion of the internet, social media in particular, has enabled people from across the globe to document and upload their every moral grievance. In a recent study, respondents reported experiencing significantly greater exposure to immoral acts and expressed greater moral outrage online vs. in person or through traditional media platforms (newspaper, TV, radio, etc.). Meanwhile, other recent research finds that morally “outrageous” content is retweeted, shared, and commented on more frequently than all other material in circulation. And with algorithms tracking what you click on so as to direct you to similar stimuli in the future, political social media consumers are being fed a steady supply of outrage.

…

Thus, by all indications, the first half of this decade appears to have been a watershed for white liberal racial consciousness. The picture that emerges from the various points of data is one in which white liberals and social media created a kind of outrage feedback loop. White liberals started spending ever increasing shares of their time in a medium—social media and internet news sites—at the same moment that, for multiple reasons, that medium produced a higher volume of race-related moral outrage stories relative to other forms of journalism. Exposure to the stories on those sites, in turn, generated moral outrage among white liberal readers who then fed that emotional response back into the sites, which catered to their appetites as consumers, thus powering the feedback loop. Liberals tend to have an “unjust world bias” as it is; but digital media ensures that this disposition is frequently reinforced.

…

Along with the sweeping changes on race and immigration issues is the reversal of white liberal attitudes toward Israel. Between 1978 and 2014, white liberals consistently reported sympathizing more with Israel than the Palestinians. Since March of 2016, this trend has turned on its face. Currently, significantly more white liberals report greater sympathy for the Palestinians than for Israel.

…

The surveys show that among white liberals, Jews are perceived to be privileged—at least in comparison to other historically victimized groups. Having made a full recovery from the Holocaust, Jews are no longer the downtrodden collective that white liberals can readily sympathize with. Other groups lower on the privilege hierarchy and less tainted by association with whiteness now have priority. So long as anti-Semitism has a white face to it, there is no problem here. But if the face is actually that of a member from an “oppressed” or “vulnerable” group, there may be a cognitive dissonance.

…

A wealth of research shows that elected officials are most responsive to the voices (and campaign contributors) they hear from the most; and, by many measures, white liberals and Democrats are the most politically active group on their side of the partisan aisle. White liberals make up 20-24% of the general population but, for a multitude of reasons, exert an outsize political and cultural influence. They are more likely to consider themselves activists, are more active on social media, and, significantly, they are one of the most affluent groups in the country. Of course, small groups of vocal and determined minorities can drive positive changes and spur social progress. The danger is that “woke” white activists acting on behalf of voiceless minorities have had their perceptions distorted by social media-tinted caricatures that obscure more objective measures of reality and end up silencing or ignoring what the voiceless groups, themselves, have to say about what policies are in their best interest.

…

Due at least in part to digital media, white liberal attitudes that more or less endured for decades have been drastically overturned in the space of months or single years. In contrast, the attitudes of white conservatives—and conservatives in general—have moved at a more glacial pace, if at all. For liberals, the lack of awareness of how fast and far their attitudes have shifted fosters an illusion of conservative extremism.  In reality, the conservatives of today are not all that different from the conservatives of years past. And it’s the frustration with white conservatives’ inability or reluctance to keep pace with liberals on the path to enlightenment that is intensifying our political divide. But conservatives tend toward normative and structural stability. They don’t take well to rapid social change. The perceived imposition and spread of progressive norms naturally elicits psychological reactance—a visceral desire to resist and affirm one’s agency in the face of perceived social pressure. This is the very process that is at least partly responsible for the election of Trump.

Resentment of those seen as standing in the way of necessary social and cultural change may inspire a commitment to what political scientist Eric Kaufman calls “multicultural millenarianism”: the belief that the demise of a white majority will pave the way for a more racially progressive and just society. Perhaps this is why white support for increasing immigration coincides with more negative feelings toward whites. Whatever the case, such sentiment would have been hard to fathom 10-20 years ago. The digitalization of moral outrage that makes it possible today could, with the pace of innovation, make it even more potent in the years to come.

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

this is an email i just wrote to a coworker with a politically radical teenage trans child. i respect dad, he's doing his absolute fucking best to keep pace

[please do not mistake targeted rhetorics and framings to a white upper middle class coworker for a complete manifestation and explanation of my beliefs.]

--

I am honestly not sure what's going on with the last email I sent or if it did? But the video is Why We Secretly Want The World To End. It's a very hopeful framing, though the title is definitely clickbait. It's over an hour long because unfortunately, everything worth saying takes time to say. Sorry for the long watch and the long read, but you said you'd take anything I got!

Once you've finished the video and have all sorts of wonderful facts about how humanity is actually fundamentally cooperative and we have statistical proof of that, you can also read about the real lord of the flies. 6 teenage boys really were stranded on a deserted island and committed no acts of violence, instead managing to guarantee that all survived with a lifelong bond.

And after that, when we're feeling confident that we can generally trust each other, I'd like to introduce an indigenous philosophy of change. In a sentence, worlds end all the time. Your world could end tomorrow with the loss of a job, a loved one, a treasured belonging, a valued physical or cognitive activity. Worlds are layered on top of each other and their sum is beyond our imagining. Worlds end every day not just in the ageing and death of individuals but in the destruction of the world they created in their presence. Change is inevitable, and new worlds take the place of the old. We want our world to end because we see brighter futures beyond it. We want to see the world that might be birthed instead.

People are good. Even our desire to see 'the end of the world' is rooted in the desire to see something better for ourselves and others. And its that fanatic nature to our cooperative instincts that is, in reality, our downfall. When we've managed to cooperate into something big, something grand, something we're convinced is valuable beyond the value of our own life, we turn against all perceived threats against it. We strive above all else to preserve the ingroup. And when the ingroup has committed itself to exclusionary and supremacist ideas of what it means to be human, what it means to deserve food, what it means to deserve respect, the fanatic nature of cooperation and desperate need to preserve both the ingroup and our place within it forces us to live in fear that someday the ingroup will change so much as to exclude you. So you patrol the boundaries. Make sure you're always on the right side. This is a problem unique to us. It's unique to our supremacist ideologies. We can actually just stop, at pretty much any time. We do not need to do this at all. We produce enough food right now to feed the entire world population. We possess more empty housing right now than homeless people in the US (pre-pandemic stat, may have changed with rise in homelessness. but the point stands.) The scarcity we fear so much is manufactured by the people who are used to having far too large a share (Wealth, Shown to Scale). The problem is not people. The problem lies in our systems and the prioritization of profit over both human lives and the usefulness of the profit-producing endeavor. The fact of the matter is "idgaf as long as I get mine" is a bad and inefficient way to organize human society.

It's a good thing that we want to see this world end. It's our better nature asserting itself. I can't think of any more profound testament to humanity's altruism and innate care for each other than an entire generation longing for the apocalypse and continuing to participate in their society anyway because there are people right here, right now who need you to do your part or they might suffer for the lack. On a personal note, I can't work anywhere but the nonprofit sector because doing anything other than working on these issues drives me to insanity. 

As a series of final points that don't fit in anywhere else:

the concepts of 'nature' and social darwinism we're all so used to—"survival of the fittest"—are fundamentally based on incorrect understandings of evolution as well as being false for a great many other reasons. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean survival of the strongest most over-powered organism in the ecosystem. In fact, a predator too efficient for its environment quickly overbreeds, decimates all of its food sources, and causes its own population to starve into extinction (we are experiencing that right now! I wonder if supremacist ideologies had anything to do with it?) It's about your ability to master a niche, to fit yourself within the web of life. The logic is reflected in the research. Increasing bodies of evidence suggest that evolution straight up selects for cooperation. You're more likely to survive if you and a bunch of other organisms are working towards mutual survival. For the same reason unionizing and crowdfunding work, you've got a better shot if you're in it together. Related to that, Humans were literally never a dominant predator species, we were always a rabidly cooperative prey species. We didn't domesticate other species as an act of ecological domination, we developed symbiotic relationships with multiple species over hundreds of thousands of years. If we were to attempt to analyze 'power structures' within the development of symbiotic relationships, trees and cats both domesticated humans.

Humans have not been subject to environmental evolution in 250,000 years. We have been largely physically the same since that point. If you took a 6 year old human boy from 100,000 years ago and plopped him in the modern day, he'd have a minecraft plushie in a week. The only difference between us and them is our mass of accumulated knowledge. This is because we love each other. We care about each other. We do not generally allow each other to die of preventable causes, and what we consider "preventable" is NOT utilitarian in nature. We say that dying of tuberculosis is universally preventable because we have, somewhere in the world, all of the resources and accumulated knowledge necessary to cure it. And that is what we assign to ourselves as a base standard. Here's another lovely video essay about disabilities in prehistory and the unquestionable reality of our constant drive to keep our loved ones safe and healthy. If you CAN keep them alive, it's 'preventable.' We create our own reality in a way that no other organism on earth can or does, and we largely use it to take care of each other. Even in the midst of multiple political crises, your entire life and everything in it depends on the cooperation of other people elsewhere in the world. Often agreeing to things you would consider unconscionable due to the sheer force of our need to be around others.

Loneliness is deadly! Chronic loneliness is a public health epidemic. Puts you at higher risk of every single health condition that exists, makes you less likely to recover from them, and permanently changes your brain chemistry, putting you at permanent higher risk for depression and other mental illnesses. We need each other.

We are collectively awakening to the reality that we need each other. After a world that brainwashed you into believing we didn't, the transition will be painful. But the new world is worth it.

if hope is a weapon you weild, i've sharpened it to a razor's edge at this point

[samueldays]

In which it occurs to me that the absence of Inquisitions and dogmas is another reason for social division

One of the useful roles of the Catholic Inquisitions (e.g. Spanish, Roman and Portuguese) might be described in presentist language as internal policing.

If you claimed to be Catholic but then went and did sorcery or Judaism, the Inquisitions would get you on something akin to a charge of fraud or misrepresentation. If you were an openly Jewish sorcerer, the Spanish state at the time might nonetheless object that you were illegal and should be burned to death, but that wasn’t the Inquisition’s job. The Inquisitions were, by and large, focused on those who professed to be Catholics but committed heresy.

(Whether sorcery or Judaism should be illegal is a separate question, but the Catholic dogma is clear that you can’t do them and be Catholic.)

Two other things the Inquisition would get you for, often overlooked in the rush to defend more sympathetic victims, were excessive zeal and freelancing. If you set yourself up as Bob the Pastor and tried to show off your superior piety in the manner of the Pharisees by streetcorner preaching and haranguing that people should pray for eight hours a day, the Inquisition would firmly shut you down. “There is an official prayer schedule,” they’d say, “several official prayer schedules in fact, and the one for monks only prescribes four and a half hours of prayers a day, not eight. These people you’re preaching to aren’t even monks. You heretic. And oi, where’s your preaching license?”

Today the Inquisitions and most things like them have been abolished, freelance preaching has been declared a right, hurrah, three cheers for Pinkerism and the decline* of violence and freedom* of religion, et cetera.

But improvement is not necessarily monotonic improvement, and net benefit may still include downside. One such is that overly zealous freelancers now have freer reign to make abusive demands, shame people for not living up to preposterous standards, redefine ideological terms on a whim, and there’s fuck-all to be done about it. Some mass-movement types make a virtue of necessity and embrace overly zealous fringe nutcases as a way to bolster the movement’s numbers and make the core look moderate, but a lot of others hate this effect from both ends. When the fringes of your own ingroup are getting shitty and making your movement repulsive, you might wish for your own Inquisition to make them straighten up. When the local representative of the outgroup has gotten some power over you and is wielding it in a way that doesn’t correspond to outgroup’s promises, you might wish the outgroup could send their Inquisition to reign the representative in.

And similarly with dogma, codified and written down and made official. Dogma serves an important function in keeping people on the same page, and to an extent creating ideological and institutional personhood in Kevin Simler’s sense: being an identifiable, consistent, predictable thing with quiddity, rather than an untrustable bundle of ever-changing needs and wants. Losing dogma means losing the basis for reining in your own fringe and the basis for complaining about the other’s fringe.

Dogmatism frequently gets short shrift, but even granting its ills, at least the dogmatic man is someone you can reason about. What does his dogma require and forbid? Given this, how does one deal with him? The opposite error creates the fundamentally untrustworthy man, who cannot even be trusted to act in his own self-interest because perhaps he might adopt a new principle overriding it tomorrow.

In summary, the lack of Inquisitions and dogma is a major reason we have the nasty internet argument behavior of nutpicking - in lieu of reasoning, find some insane outgroup members to quote derisively! After all, it’s not as though the sane ones have any standing for claiming “We are the True Group”, is it? And all sorts of further nasty things flow from this.

*doubt

[mylocalofficial]

How to Take Amazing Photos to Promote Your Local Business

How to Take Amazing Photos

Customers are judgmental, help them with some amazing photos.

In fact, we're all judgmental, it's scientifically proven. Contrary to popular belief, being judgmental is necessary. When customers look at your business they make a judgment call, automatically.

Yes, No or maybe.

It's an unpopular thing to admit that we sort people, businesses and things based on their appearance.

But it's true.

Job applicants who look the part often do better in interviews. Well-dressed people who drive nice cars are viewed as wealthy. Attractive, well-presented businesses are viewed as more successful.

This caused scientists to ask a question.

Are customers judgmental?

Absolutely.

Alex Todorov and Janine Willis, Princeton University psychologists, discovered in their research that people respond to faces instantly.

Customers form first impressions in as little as 50 to 100 milliseconds.

Customers are making judgments about you and your business before they've had a chance to think about it. This first impression is visual and based almost entirely on emotion.

That's a big problem.

We're taught to believe a lie

The lie goes like this:

"It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, it's what's on the inside that counts."

Remember that?

When it comes to marketing this is an absolutely dangerous lie. Customers should make judgments about the organizations they do business with.

The wrong choice can be devastating.

They can lose money, time and resources. They can be hurt, humiliated or punished for making the wrong choice.

Amazing photos guide a customer's choice

Amazing photos, regardless of your industry, are important. They give customers the information they need to properly evaluate your business.

It shows customers what to expect.

Most of the time, this evaluation process operates at a subconscious level. Customers use the information they've accumulated to make instant, gut reactions. Their assessment is fuzzy, quick and imprecise.

What exactly are customers evaluating in your photos?

1. Ingroup/outgroup. Simply put, customers ask themselves the question, "Are you like me?" If the answer is yes, the conversation continues.

2. Social class. Sadly, classism is viewed by many as the last acceptable prejudice in the world today. Customers use this to vet/validate the social standing of those they associate with.

3. Ethos and values. Every group has its own culture, its own set of values and norms. Customers expect your Ethos and values to align with theirs and the ethos and values of the group to earn their business.

4. Trustworthiness. "Will you hurt me?" Customers want to know they're safe with you. They're looking to decrease risk, pain and suffering.

5. Social status. Businesses with high social status and high social capital command a considerable amount of respect and prestige. As people, we're drawn to those around us who are exceptional in some way.

Local businesses tend to neglect photos, or they'll simply post unflattering photos that position their business negatively.

Not good.

But customers are absolutely looking for more photos. How do we know that?

They tell us. And Google tells us – just look at your Google My Business Insights.

Poor imagery kills the sale

A recent study from the National Retail Federation in the USA found that 94 percent of customers felt image quality was “very” to “somewhat important” in their buying decision.

Isolate women's responses and that number climbs to 96 percent.

Look at Yelp's top restaurants of 2017 and something interesting stands out. Each of these restaurants have hundreds and thousands of positive reviews and images.

Customers want to see…

★ High quality photos

★ Demand (e.g. lots of customers if you're a service business)

★ Alternate views (e.g. different views of product/business)

★ Topic specific images (e.g. cakes, tables, interiors, etc.)

★ Color changes, where appropriate

★ True to life imagery (e.g. view on model, customer photo of food, etc.)

★ View(s) in a room

The keywords here are quality and variety.

Customers want to see your business from more than one perspective. More photos give them the ability to evaluate consistency.

You'll never be able to take the perfect photo…

If you focus your time and attention on all these specific variables. It's overwhelming and simply too much for the average business.

You still need amazing photos though.

So, what do you do?

You focus on your ideal customers, the customers you'd fight tooth and nail to keep. Then use photography to present your business in a way that wows them.

How do you do that?

You focus on their wants and needs. If you're a fine dining restaurant looking for big spending regulars you show…

★ A pristine environment

★ Influencers who frequent your restaurant

★ A high class image (e.g. dinnerware, table cloth, attire, etc.)

★ Exclusivity markers (e.g. wait list, limited seating/hours)

If you know your customers, you know this is what they expect.

What if you're the owner of a Blues and Jazz cafe, like Blues City Deli and you're looking to attract more customers? With apologies for an example from the USA but the concepts translate well to the UK.

Step #1: Know your audience

You confirm the demographics and psychographics of the customer segments who are (a.) willing to pay and (b.) able to pay.

Then you figure out what makes them tick.

Their desires, goals, fears and frustrations. Their expectations from a Blues Cafe, their reading habits, how they spend their free time etc.

I wanted to know so I referred to a study by the Jazz Audiences Initiative (JAI).

They broke listeners down into six groups:

Research for Amazing Photos

They sorted them by education level:

Research for Amazing Photos

By education status:

Research for Amazing Photos

And marital status:

Research for Amazing Photos

So, with less than an hour's worth of research we know our ideal customer is:

★ A member of at least one out of six groups

★ Highly educated bachelors or above

★ Works full-time (which means discretionary income) or retired

★ Married or partnered

Armed with this research you're ready to…

Step #2: Reject the wrong people

Customers judge, remember?

Your photos don't have to be Smithsonian worthy but they should convey quality. Product, ambience oriented photos aren't about showing off your photography skills, it's about sending a message.

Customers are subconsciously looking for specific cues on:

★ Ingroup/outgroup

★ Social class

★ Ethos and values

★ Trustworthiness

★ Social status

Which is exactly what Blues City Deli does.

Research for Amazing Photos

See what they did there?

The right message is easy to convey if you attract the right audience.

Do the upfront work to attract the right audience and these details mostly take care of themselves. That's the problem though. Most local businesses don't do the upfront work.

So they struggle.

They attract the wrong people who, in turn, repel the right people.

Step #3: Take amazing photos

Remember, you're not looking to win a photojournalism award. You're looking to send a message.

Which is exactly what Blues City Deli does.

They share photos about their history.

Research for Amazing Photos

They convey status, showing they're so good customers are willing to wait.

Research for Amazing Photos

They sell the ambience.

Research for Amazing Photos

By inviting you to listen to Live Blues with them, they're telling you they're part of your ingroup. They're one of you.

Research for Amazing Photos

Something interesting is happening in their photos, can you see it?

No?

Did you notice the similarities between their customers? The style of dress, the attitude, demeanour and presentation?

That's homogeneity.

Take photos of your business; post, share and promote them on your local listings and profiles.

Step #4: Get customers to willingly promote you

How?

How on earth do you get customers to willingly promote your business, product or service?

It's simple.

You make your customers the hero of the story. You share your prestige with them. It's different for every business but there are all kinds of ways this can be done.

You could…

★ Get customers to join in on Live Blues night

★ Run a contest, then promote the winner

★ Brag about specific customers in a case study or testimonial video

★ Ask customers for advice, follow it, then show them that you did

★ Remember (and act on) specific things about your customers (e.g. birthdays, the anniversary of their first visit, bad day or tragic events, etc.)

★ Surprising/random acts of kindness and generosity (done as a habit).

See the secret? It's honour.

When you honour customers you're showing that you cherish them. That the relationship is more important than just "money".

Find a way to honour customers in a way that's meaningful to them and they'll find a way to share it with everyone. It's wonderful because you've given them a way to brag without bragging.

Sure sounds good, but it will backfire

Asking customers to share photos is a terrible idea. What if you train customers to "take pictures" and you make a mistake? You've given them everything they need to hang you.

That is true if you have a bad relationship with your customers.

Mistreat your customers and they'll eagerly wait for the chance to take you down. They'll tell their whole world, anyone, who'll listen about your failure.

If customers are neutral that's far less likely to happen.

Most customers don't write reviews. They read them sure, and most base their buying decisions on them. That much is true.

But the vast majority aren't willing to share their bad experience.

If you have thousands of reviews like the local businesses we've covered they're even less likely to share (though they should). They're less likely to spill the beans on your mistake if you have a good relationship or rapport with them.

Does that mean you should count on that?

No.

But you're far less vulnerable than you've been led to believe. If you're running a wonderful business you can counteract that.

Customers are judgmental, they should be

We're all judgmental, it's a necessary, scientifically proven part of life.

Customers are making judgments about you and your business before they've had a chance to think about it. This first impression is visual and based almost entirely on emotion.

Give customers what they're looking for, meet their wants and needs, and you'll find their judgment swings in your favour.

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https://mylocal.org.uk/online-credibility/reputation-management/how-to-take-amazing-photos/

[sleepystrawberrybunny]

hi! thank you so much for taking the time to read and to answer and share your experience, your words mean a lot!

fortunately, my university overall has always had a positive or at least tolerant attitude towards the queer community until now. this professor specified that we should not feel obliged to intervene and that she understands that it is not easy to open up in front of strangers, especially on very personal topics, but some controversial situations - more than this - have arisen. from a certain point of view it is likely to happen because in this course we are dealing with delicate and taboo topics, but I am struck by the reaction of the teachers and my colleagues. again, I'm so used to live on the internet that I lost sense a bit of real life, that out there there are lots of people, my age even, that are not exposed to certain things as I am, or are ignorant or not even respectful about it. what you said about "the classroom should be a safe space, not somewhere where you feel like you have to justify the existence of your identity." feels so accurate. (it's the dream, truly.) apart from this episode, the ease with which some people felt allowed to intervene in a certain way towards people with whom they do not share identities and experiences is truly irritating to say the least. one of the previous lessons the professor talked about a little girl who's in the same class of her son who was previously known as a boy. her reaction was to respect her identity, name and pronouns, thankfully, and to pass the message on to her son. in the classroom instead, some intervened asking how it was possible that a little girl of her age could know such a thing, misgendering her, etc., some even insisting to be right... not in an heavy way, but they still did it. the most respectful person about it was a fifty or so year old woman (we do have some older people attending this course too, not only people in their 20s) that also talked about knowing a woman that is intersex.

it really is hard standing up for yourself or your community. I don't know that little girl, but I wanted to defend her because she deserves it, as part of my queer ingroup but not only, because she's a human beign first.

"i know i experience that full-body anxiety reaction, shaking all over when it comes time to speak up, particularly when it is personal." this! i thought my heart was going to explode inside my chest, i could literally hear my heartbeat resound in every part of my body. it took me a bit to calm down too. anxiety is the worst.

what you said about not being so hard on myself and protect my peace, thank you so much for that. now that i'm writing this i'm also realising how i shouldn't burden myself too much. thank you also for wishing me luck with finding my people irl. it really is hard, but i won't lose hope! (after all still i'm young, and hopefully i have many years in front of me for this too) i do have a close friend that currently identifies as asexual, i'm very grateful for her, but i do crave more queer connections, i feel you. so i'm also happy to find a fellow demiromantic!! i couldn't agree more about how isolating the experience can get. i've been trying to understand if i am demisexual too for the longest time... i probably am to some degree, it's not that easy for me to experience sexual attraction, but still it does happen easier than with romantic attraction. i have experienced sexual attraction to not many but more that a couple people until now, i realised what i used to call "crushes" are me being attracted to them sexually, not romantically. on the other hand it's really is hard for me to develop romantic feelings, the realisation was mindblowing.

"(and honestly the jury is still out on that one - is this romantic attraction?? is it a reallyyy strong desire for emotional intimacy ie. qpr?? why can't there just be a litmus test for such things lol)." THIS IS SO RELATABLE!! i've only really experienced romantic attraction towards one person until now, my feelings for them lasted a few years and i don't think i've ever felt that way before, it was so hard falling out of love too... but i still have doubts yeah 🤡.

i agree with what you said about the lack of in-person identity sharing and the intersection of identities. again, it's hard but we shouldn't lose hope.

i can't thank you enough for answering to this! it made me feel really great talking with someone that shares my experience <3 i wish you all the best!!

i feel like opening up about something that happened.. kinda ranty, pretty queer.

i'm following a course at uni called 'psychology for intercultural communication' and the main focus is prejudice studies (the irony of it all). my professor - she's not queer, she's cis and hetero - asked how come gen Z in particular feels the need to use and create so many different labels for their identity, especially queer people. she didn't use a judging or mocking tone, she had genuinely curiosity, more the spirit of a scholar who wants to understand a certain thing, you know? so that felt a bit reassuring.

no one responded in the beginning (we were like 50/60 people in total in that room). then a girl opened up about being poly - she's cis hetero though - and how she partecipated on a podcast with a queer friend and they talked about asexuality, something she didn't know existed. other people started to mumble, the professor and her assistant asked what it meant. they didn't know what asexual was, let alone aromantic or other more "obscure" identities.

as queer myself - currently identifying as demiromantic bisexual - my mind had instinctively started to form an answer to give from my point of view.. but then i got incredibly anxious to talk because, not only i have anxiety and even though i push myself to intervene when i feel the need to - not doing it and regretting it later feels worse most of the time - it's still hard, but how the situation got made me feel so alone.

even though i wasn't going to come out to the entire class - i'm a very private and reserved person in general, i prefer to keep these things to myself and my inner circle.. i also experienced bullying as a kid and as a teenager so there's trauma fear that comes with that as well - exposing myself got even scarier.

in my daily real life i'm very alone in my queer identity. i don't really know many queer people, i'm surrounded by people with a conforming identity, and those few queer i know i don't have a close enough bond with. sure, i have my group of close friends that are really accepting... but i don't have an explicitly queer safe net for my queer identity to run to and talk to about my feelings and experiences as a queer person that talks with other queer people who can understand and sympathise with me. i dream of that. of an heartstopper kind of thing.

i also realised how much i actually consume and live on the internet. for me all the words and definitions and labels felt so familiar and natural because of how used i am to come in contact with them daily through the internet, but it's not the same for the majority of people even of my own generation. it was kind of alienating realising of how much i've been living inside my own bubble.

if it wasn't for the internet, it very much probably would have take me a longer time to find out that my feelings, behaviour and experiences meant, in fact, being attracted to girls the same way i am to boys, and it wasn't just "how female friendships are". i was so confused and lonely in my feelings, but then internet showed me that it's something that's real and has a name, and that people like me exist out there.

in that class maybe there is someone like me, queer and with an answer to give but too scared to do it, who knows. and maybe one of us should have courageously opened up for us to find eachother. maybe it was a missed opportunity.

i'm writing this here and not only in my journal because i think i'm hoping for more queer people to answer and share their experiences, if they feel like it of course. i'm in need of feeling less alone i guess, even if it's through the internet again, but it's the only outlet i have for it atm.

(i should probably add that i live in a town in the countryside in italy, and currently it's not very easy for me to often reach bigger cities, so it's easier to get lonely)