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aspd-culture · 2 years ago

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Aspd culture (and just general mental illness culture in general) is not being allowed to make jokes about your disorder because people will pearl-clutch about how you shouldn’t pathologize everything about yourself and how tiktok is ruining mental illness awareness. It is but also this isn’t that and stop assuming everyone ever who talks about things super blasé and nonchalantly is tiktok poisoned, I am literally just a silly guy who makes jokes, maybe get off my dick because it isn’t a replacement for the stick you have up your ass

On the one hand, I agree with 90% of your ask.

But also, there's the fact that tiktok isn't ruining mental illness awareness. People said that about tiktok, tumblr, and honestly every place that any semi-large community has ever talked about mental health.

That talking point is complete bs and stems from people who don't want to risk admitting that mental illness is very common and specifically originated in two groups as far as I've seen.

The first was older (like boomer to gen x), abusive adults who did not want to acknowledge their spouses and children were sustaining life altering damage from the things that came out of their mouth and common abusive punishments like removing a door. If they acknowledged mental illness, how common it is, and the science behind what causes it, then they would have to admit what they did was abuse even though they "never raised a hand to them", as they love to point out.

The second is people being sexist and infantilizing and just plain attacking young people, particularly girls and lgbt ppl. They don't want to admit children and young adults can ever have real problems, so they spout this idea that people who talk about their mental illness on social media (sites that are statistically more appealing to mentally ill people, teens, and young adults, especially afabs) are somehow invalid or "romanticizing mental health problems".

Are there real people who do that? Of course. But they are not a product of tiktok, or tumblr, or any social media site, or the internet.

For as long as there has been any discussion about mental health, there have been people romanticizing, sexualizing, demonizing, and invalidating it.

But that doesn't suit the talking points of the people who want to invalidate the harm caused by non-physical ahuse, nor the talking points of those who wish to silence young people. So instead, they continue to attack tiktok - a site which has not spread significantly more misinfo than this app we call home or any other social media site or even just... any group of semi-educated people talking anecdotally? - but has been proven over and over to have helped a huge wave of people find out information that led to diagnosis and treatment of disorders, especially obscure disorders (both mental and physical), in people that never would have otherwise known there was a name for their problem.

That is huge. That is a great thing.

I first heard the word (tw) sociopath when I was about 13. I ignored how much the book in question (actually about ASPD) fit me, and moved on because I thought "that's too rare, I must be misunderstanding it", and even then it was only because of my special interest in mental health that I found the book to begin with. Then I saw it spoken about again on here and on tiktok, and I realized I needed to research this again and not be afraid of it, and here I am professionally diagnosed.

I never knew before a few months ago that I even *might* be autistic. Guess who taught me? Tiktok. For 3 years I have seen bit by bit, video by video, symptom by symptom, tiktoks that I related to way too much from people (both professionals and regular autistic people of various ages, genders, etc). I unlearned so much ableism and stereotypes about autism that I internalized from the idea that only little white boys have it, thanks to tiktok. So, when my therapist brought up wanting an autism evaluation for me, I wasn't blindsided. And when I found out I had it, I had been suspecting that was the case for a while. I might not have handled the process of a new diagnosis so well had I not known it might be coming.

Tiktok is advancing awareness and respect for people with mental and physical disorder that the public hasn't heard of. That's not "romanticization", that's destigmatization. Two very different things.

/nmay nor is all of this really a direct reply to you. This ask just gave me a reason to talk about something I've been seeing on here and not liking for a while. We're not better than people on tiktok, and that in itself is elitism.

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delusion-of-negation · 3 years ago

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top 10 (ish) ridiculous or annoying FAQs:

(click at your own discretion)

1) "kids today rely on others to do everything"

ah yes, damn those participation trophies! if it wasn't for them my hands wouldn't be fucked, and I wouldn't need people to write for me. but seriously, stop reading boomer comics, and go outside to meet some actual young people.

2) "sus that a non-american says mom"

yeah, because it's clearly the superior version, and I'm not too patriotic to concede a defeat.

3) "sweaty, the victims of abuse by catholics are real people, stop appropriating their pain just because you want to hate catholics; plus teachers abuse people just as often anyway"

so firstly, I don't hate anybody. and secondly, regarding the fact that victims really do exist, [insert "of course I know him, he's me" meme here]; although I don't often talk much about the abuse I went through or what my religious beliefs are. but, more importantly, statements like "survivors are people" can be phrased like "some people are survivors", and when you're unable to act according to the latter (like when you don't even consider that somebody might be one) then you display a failure to recognise the former - you're projecting; a survivor can't be appropriating their own pain, but you can be appropriating it to silence one. and thirdly, teachers do abuse - the problem isn't and has never been purely religion, rather that abuse is often done by somebody in a position of trust, power, and familiarity; and that the lack of a global minimum enables totally legal abuse on top of the illegal stuff. people with access and respect have more opportunity to abuse than those without, and that goes for teachers too. but, once again, you can be appropriating the pain of survivors to deflect and silence people. please remember this before you say that shit.

4) "get help/therapy"

way ahead of you - years ahead of you. but it's not magic - people who say this often act as if you'll start behaving differently overnight. not only are some things simply beyond the ability of talking therapy to completely rectify, it also takes time and has to be selective. you've got to pick your priorities, and that's definitely not whatever ship or joke you're mad at me about today. therapy is a slow, arduous process that can't guarantee results - it isn't "anti-recovery" to recognise that, it's honesty. while I've been in therapy for a long time, it is not necessarily going to change whatever you don't like about me - whether that's because it can't, because my focus now is on more important or urgent things, or because I don't want to change that.

5a) "tell your family you ship incest, see how that goes; normal people find it disgusting"

actually, some know, and they're fine with it. in fact, one prefers sibling pairings in fiction to all other dynamics because, to paraphrase, "it's a deeper level of messed up co-dependence". so unfortunately for you, my remaining family (by which I mean those not dead or cut out of my life after abuse and so forth) actually are able to distinguish between fiction and reality. plus, my reasoning for caring if they find it gross or not pertains only to recommending books and such - their opinions do not dictate my tastes.

5b) "don't sexualise/appropriate incestuous abuse" and "I bet you enjoyed being raped" and other attempts to upset me over 5a

firstly, as I've already said here, survivors can't be appropriating ourselves. in addition, you're not owed people's history or trauma - it's not okay to require people's personal information, or else you'll send anon hate and accusations of appropriation. secondly, I'm not sexualising our abuse (not just because I write horror, and so a lot of my writing is intended to be creepy, not sexy); these stories aren't about us, they're not us at all. entire dynamics/people (fictional or otherwise) aren't all going to be applicable to us or identical to us, just because they have something in common with us; they're not us and they're not accountable to us. thirdly, the fact that people send this stuff (attempting to trigger people's trauma over ships) is so much more worrying to me than somebody making our communal imaginary friends kiss. you're trying to hurt people. and finally, to the "I bet you enjoyed it" crowd (if you're at all serious): do you think you'd enjoy being in a real zombie apocalypse, alone, afraid, and really at risk of being eaten alive? a fictional scenario does not feel remotely the same as a real one. this isn't rocket science - things that look like you aren't you; fiction isn't reality; don't send anon hate. (edit: comparable "just leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone" sentiments for yandere stuff, and anything else you decide I'm naughty for.)

6) "you'll be sent off to do manual labour once your communist revolution happens"

while I don't know why people think that I'm a communist, a dictatorial regime probably isn't going to want me to do manual labour. they're more likely to just shoot me; I'm useless and a liability. call me crazy, but something tells me that "ah yes, we shall give ze deranged cripple ze power tools" isn't the communist position.

7a) "they/them can't be singular pronouns"

yes they can, and they're used as such in both shakespeare and the bible. but you don't have to say this - I'm also okay with he/him, so you could've just used those and chilled out. also, do I look like somebody who views the rules of grammar as fully immutable and imperative?

7b) "enbies/aros/pan/etc aren't valid"

do you really think that you're going to change any hearts or minds by putting that in my ask box or under my funny maymays? chill out, it's not worth the effort - you could be planning a party (in minecraft) and having fun instead. it isn't worth my time to rant at everybody who's saying something isn't valid, updating how I'm explaining it as my opinions grow and general discourse around it evolves; I'm just who I am, somebody else is who they are - why bicker in presumptuous ways about if that's enough? it ultimately is valid, in my opinion, but that isn't an invitation to keep demanding that I debate. (edit: old posts of mine probably don't phrase things incredibly, on this or anything... I tried.)

8) "what are your politics?"

my politics are informed first and foremost by the knowledge that I'm not cut out to be some kind of leader - I don't want to be the guy who tells everyone else what to do, I just offer what seem to me like valid criticisms of how we are doing things now, and general pointers on the values and ethics that I would prefer to move towards. things like individual freedom, taking the most pacifist route where possible, trying not to give excessive power to small groups of people (governments or corporations), helping those in need even when they're not palatable, and letting me suck loads of dicks. but please refrain from decreeing me something - there's not enough information in what I said, so you'll just be filling in the blanks with assumptions. (edit: workplace democracy seems cool to me; benefits are good; fair fines and taxes; and the "sperm makes you loopy" saga: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

9) "you're a narcissist"

no, I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. joking on the internet that you're hot doesn't make a person a narcissist. the fact that I've chosen to keep my actual self-esteem issues to myself is not proof that they don't exist - you're just not entitled to that information about me. but it's also not narcissism to really like how you look. (edit: don't throw labels around carelessly too.)

10a) "kin list?"

the fabric of the universe, a zombie, dionysus, maned wolf/arctic fox hybrid, a comedian, big gay, big rock, ambiguously partial insincerity. (edit: kin list may or may not be incomplete.)

10b) "kin isn't valid/that's just being insane"

haven't we established that I'm deranged, and that sending stuff like this on anon is simply a waste of your precious time? besides, I do not care if it's invalid or insane - it's fun, I'm happy. (edit: see 7b for my opinion on sending me yet another ask with "that's invalid" in it; I'm not in the mood to discuss the nature of validity.)

bonus: "it gets better" and "trigger list?"

as I've said before, things just don't always get better for everyone - sometimes things can't be cured or even treated, sometimes they kill you; in some cases it could get better if not for a blockade or lack of time. the world is messy. it needs to be more normalised to reassure or comfort people without relying on saying that their issue will get better or be cured. it does suck to be this ill, but it also sucks to be made out to be a lazy pessimist, just because I have the audacity to not play along. and as for the trigger list, I don't like providing people with an easily accessed list of ways to hurt my feelings or harm me - upsetting me is supposed to be challenging, and thus rewarding. if you want a cheat sheet then you're out of luck, I'm afraid.

bonus #2: "FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, it doesn't need that s at the end!"

yeah, I know, I just enjoy chaos and disarray.

bonus #3 (edit): "what are your disabilities and how exactly are they incurable and/or deadly?"

again, I don't tell the internet everything about me, especially when it poses a risk, especially not as an easily accessible list for you to refer back to whenever you feel inclined to hurt my feelings. that is understandably a sore subject. (edit: that includes physical health issues btw.)

bonus #4 (edit): "so we shouldn't be critical?"

if it wasn't clear from my answer about politics or my post in general, you can have opinions about things, and you can voice that. it's just not realistic to exist at extremes: to think that you alone should dictate what exists in fiction, or to think that people shouldn't be expressing disdain or criticism of any calibur. say how you feel about things, that's fine, but it's also fine if people find that they don't value your input. plus we're all flawed, we can all be hypocritical from time to time, we all get bitchy, and we all make mistakes, or even knowingly fuck things up. that's important to keep in mind, whether we're talking about the one being criticised or the one doing the criticising - poor choices of words, imperfect tone, or contradictory ideas are inevitably going to happen occasionally.

congrats on reaching the end! if you have, at any point, said one of these to me, you owe a hug to your nearest loved one (once it's safe).

edit: might add more links/bonus points in the future when I think of things, but it's late now. (sorry for links where prior notes in the thread have my old url, that may get a tad confusing; also, not all links are my blog or my op, since it is to illustrate points/vibes, not to self-promo.)

#don't take life too seriously #nobody gets out alive anyway #tw abuse mention #tw csa mention #tw incest mention #tw for any tws I missed #idk why I did this

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aclosetfan · 4 years ago

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This is a really incomplete idea BUT it’s about Brick’s hat(s). And hopefully someone else finds this and enjoys it! More under the cut, it’s a long post :)

I think it’d be funny if boomer and butch get him a shitty novelty hat for birthday/holidays/etc because 1) they don’t know what to get him 2) they’re like 12 with four buck to their names. so they just go from charity shop to charity shop looking for ideas. Brick probably doesn’t ask for much (I don’t think any of them do. poor kid syndrome amiright? I personally never think they’d be well off in childhood).

So anyway butch and boomer are bumming through the charity shops and boomers like:

“Holy shit, Butch!”

“Wut?” Butch looked over pulling the charred and ruined Halloween mask that someone had donated for god knows what reason off his head.

“Dude it’s perfect!” Boomer came running from three aisle over, waving a garment around in the air.

“It’s a hat.” Butch pointed out bluntly, unimpressed, and pointed to the mask atop his head, “I think we should get this.”

“But it’s red!”

“He’s got one of those. Wears it frequently.”

“But not like this!” Boomer boosted, “See.”

Boomer turned the hat around, so Butch could see the bill of it. It was one of those novelty snapbacks, inscribed on the front was the playboy bunny logo.

“Dude.” Butch smiled, giggling with Boomer, albeit a little nervously.

He was familiar with the playboy bunnies work, it wasn’t like he was a virgin or anything (except he secretly was), but he had never actually seen a genuine centerfold spread like some of the older boys at the detention hall had talked about. When he thought of playboy, he thought of the Victoria Secret models he saw plastered to the side of the store at the mall. They made him feel weird and his hands would get all sweaty, so he tried his best not to look too closely.

“Dude we should get him this!” Boomer continued to smile, “It’d be, like, so funny.”

“Yeah.” Butch nodded, as his smile grew. He didn’t 100% get why it was so funny, but the idea of having something with the playboy bunny logo on it seemed cool to him. It made him feel kind of like one of the older boys.

Him and Boomer snickered all the way to the cash register, and when it was their turn to pay, Boomer nudged him ahead, ducking behind him with a giggle. He glared at his brother over his shoulder, but allowed Boomer to twist a nervous hand into the fabric of his oversized sweater (the one his brothers had bought him last year. They bought it 3 sizes too big cause he kept growing out of everything too fast. It was 1 size too big now). Boomer liked latching onto their sleeves when he got nervous.

He didn’t get what the big baby was so nervous about though. They were just buying a stupid hat. The lady cashier watched them with thinly veiled boredom and Butch threw the hat down on the counter.

Raising a penciled on eyebrow, the older women examined the hat, “Playboy, huh? You even know what Playboy is kid?”

The question made the back of his neck burn. He had never heard a lady say playboy before, it was weird. From behind him, Boomer pressed his face into the back of his sweater to muffle another giggle.

“Uh, duh.” He sniffed, “We know, lady.”

“Have you actually seen a playboy before?” The cashier snorted, ringing them up, “Not just the logo?”

“Yes!” Butch huffed, defending himself, “The Internet!”

(It was a semi-lie—they had tried looking it up on the internet, but Fuzzy didn’t have a computer at his cabin, HIM wouldn’t let them use any of his flashy spy monitors, Mojo was lame, and the library had parent controls)

“Surreee.” The lady drawled out and rang them up, “Dollar fifty.”

He didn’t make eye contact with her as he handed over a crumpled dollar bill and took two quarters from the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny. When she gave them back the hat, they ran out of the store like they had committed a bank robbery.

When Brick opened the present two days later, he threw the plastic bag it had come in to the side and frowned.

“A new hat?”

“Yeah,” Boomer nodded, putting down the cheap Polaroid camera Butch and Brick had shoplifted from a secondhand shop downtown (still too expensive to actually buy), and reached for the hat, turning it around in Brick’s hand, “but look!”

Brick’s smile grew, as the logo registered in his head. “Oh, shit,” their brother laughed, “is this playboy?”

“Betcha you won’t wear it.” He goaded his brother on as he tossed the new (used—looked like it was taken from Pokay High’s sports department) rugby ball from hand to hand.

“Betcha I will.” Brick shot back, carefully removing the ratty cap he had had since forever and replacing it with the new one.

“Sorta big.” Their brother murmured, adjusting the strap.

“Your fat head will grow into it!” Butch joked and Brick punched his arm.

“Shut up, dipshit.”

“Do you like it?” Boomer beamed, ignoring the bickering.

Brick looked at their brother with a smile, precious anger dissipating, “Yeah, dude, it’s funny.”

———————————————————

Then it becomes a thing//like Brick really loves his hat collection:

“Truckin’ ain’t easy.” Brick read out loud with a snort, and replaced the hat he was wearing with the new one.

He thought for a moment then shook his head no, “nah. Not today.”

He had so many hats to chose from, it was almost overwhelming. They were all basically offensive on every level and he tried to wear them all as often as possible. The highlight reel included:

Kitty gang

Swag.

Yolo.

Lmao.

Weed jokes. Lotta weed jokes.

Thrasher.

Fish love me. Woman fear me.

Met god. She’s hot.

Blow me for luck.

Beer drinkers get more head.

The carpets do match the drapes

FuCk

Birthday Bitch

Deadass fuck thots on god

Hello I am Mr. Cunt

Master Baiter

Drive fast. Eat ass.

At 17, he had a vibrant hat collection. Anytime his brother’s saw a red hat with a shitty gag, they snagged it for him. Recent political events had bestowed upon his brothers a plethora of new material:

Make racists afraid again.

My other hat’s tin foil

Made you look

The list went on. His fuck cops wasn’t popular with local authorities. And how could he forget his most favorite powderpuff girl cap. That pissed them off to no end.

“Brick!” Butch yelled down the corridor. They were at Mojo’s this week, “Hurry up!”

“Uuhhhhh,” he mumbled to himself, as he stared at his wall, ignoring his brother. He hung them all up to make it easier to chose. His collection covered the wall.

His hand floated left to the one that said FuCk, but the one that said bad hair day caught his eye and his hand twitched to the right, “uuuuuhh, hmmmm.”

He floated toward the ceiling to look at the top of the wall, “welllllll...”

They’d be fighting with the girls today and because he liked making Blossom mad, he figured he needed to chose something more crude.

“Oh my god!” Butch cried outside his bedroom door, “Just fucking pick one!”

“Mmmmm.”

“Brick!” Butch pounded on his door, “I swear to god, I’ll burn them all if you just don’t pick one!”

“HMMmmmmmm!”

“Brick, it’s been thirty minutes!” Boomer whined, joining Butch, “The girls are waiting, we can’t cancel on them again! We’re bad guys, but we aren’t bad guys.”

“Ahhhhh—“ he sucked on his teeth in thought, “five more minutes!”

His brothers groaned in unison from the other side of the door.

“This is your fault, Boomer.” Butch whined.

“How?!” Boomer protested.

“Cause I wanted to get him that mask.”

————————————————————

His hat—his first hat—is lovingly preserved. He can’t risk losing it or damaging it any further. Before they started buying him new hats, most of the boys misadventures (the chaos they did NOT plan) were dedicated to saving Brick’s hat from the clutches of (insert one-shot villain here). It’s his security blanket. He breaks it out on the lazy days in.

He does though often lose his novelty hats. A violent gust of wind will rip one from his hat or a fight will cause it to disintegrate. But because Brick considers being the hat guy a personality trait, I think he’d have a spare one on hand at all times:

“My hat!” He cried, as the tornado-like monster blew through Townsville, ripping his hat from his head, and then disappeared into thin air, “the fucker took my hat!”

“Brick!” Blossom cried over the wind, “calm down! It’s a hat!”

“Yeah my hat!” He argued back. He wasn’t fond of the idea that him and his brothers and the girls now had to cooperate with each other, but desperate times called for desperate measures. “Butch! Boomer! I want my hat!” He hissed and his brothers nodded, understanding immediately what he meant.

“Right!” Butch dropped Buttercup, forgetting whatever fight the two had found themselves in.

“Got it!” Boomer jumped up from where he had been sitting on Bubbles, squashing her to the ground.

“What was that thing!” Brick barked at Blossom and she wiped the blood from her nose.

“I only know as much as you do, considering it literally just happened. Maybe it has to do with air—“

She cut off and looked at him, as he adjusted his emergency back up hat onto his head.

“What!” He hissed when he realized all three of the girls were giving him odd looks.

“Dude,” Buttercup asked from the ground, “do...do you just carry extra hats around?”

“Of course I do!” He spat, disgusted that they’d think so low of him not to, “Extra hat,” he pointed to his head, “emergency beanie,” he pulled one out of his pocket, “and extra hair ties,” him and his brother lifted up theirs wrists. “We live by the aesthetic, we die by the aesthetic, anymore questions?”

“Yeah!” Boomer huffed in his defense, “what’s it fucking matter to you anyway!”

“Don’t you three have bigger issues to worry about then our business?” Butch hissed, kicking at Buttercup.

Buttercup rolled away from the kick, dodging it with a laugh.

“What’s so funny!” Butch demanded and Buttercup shook her head, ignoring Butch and pointing up at her sister.

“Holy crap! He really is your counterpart, huh? You guys are perfect for each other!” She laughed wheezing.

“Hey!!” Him and Blossom bristled together, “Shut up!”

————————————————————

When he learns that over excessive hat use can lead to hair breakage and premature balding his heart breaks, so he starts buckling them to his belt loops instead when he remembers to give his hair a break.

#rrb Brick #ppg Brick #head canons #fic drabbly #theyve got a bad sense of humor #but so do i #:)#trucker hat jokes are peak comedy #you can buy any of the hats i mentioned on amazon

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ravenramblings · 5 years ago

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why we should cancel cancelling

Oh ho ho, what a light topic to discuss on this beautiful day, right? Well, it isn't. I had a lot of doubts about even writing this, and I am mortified by the idea of posting it. But this is a really important topic to me, and I think we should open a discussion about it. Well, what is cancel culture? Call-out culture (also known as outrage culture) is a form of public shaming that aims to hold individuals and groups accountable for their actions by calling attention to behavior that is perceived to be problematic, usually on social media. - wikipedia We sort of saw it become more prominent with the #MeToo movement, where people who had done pretty disgusting things were brought to light. But from then, it spiraled into being an all-losers game, where people blow up so-called "problematic" behaviour and shun the accused from all social media platforms and public life, in general, with no regard to proportions and facts. Why is that happening? People who might have never gotten the chance to speak, usually minorities, now have a platform to make their voices heard and form communities. Which is great! It's one of the many benefits of the Internet. But, knowing the injustices happening out in the real world, these people might be quick to jump on others who attacked their community or said something ignorant about it. The dynamic of power has changed, at least in the online world. We finally get to have our revenge on those groups of people who have hurt us time and time again. Which is great, right? Well, not really. The shame in public shaming Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the accused. You posted something, not really thinking twice about it, and now your "cancellation" is being celebrated. "I kept telling you guys, but you wouldn't listen. This person is a bigoted piece of shit.", one of the people says, adding a collage of all the problematic things you did. Why did no one tell you about it? These things seemed trivial. What did you do wrong? The angry mob is closing in on you, threatening your family or friends, making anyone ever associated with you release statements cutting all ties they have ever had with you, personally or profesionally. You feel, well, alone. Really, really alone. You made a mistake, which no one bothered to explain to you, and now you're faced with the end of your career. But worst of all, you are faced with being terribly, terribly ashamed. I've recently read Brené Brown's book, "The courage to be vulnerable" (which should definitely be on your tbr pile), and one aspect that really stood out to me was the connection between shame and anger or emotional distance. A really important distinction she makes, which i think is essential to any discussion about cancelling, is between the terms "shame" and "guilt". In her terms, the difference is: Guilt: "I did a bad thing" Shame: "I am a bad person" Guilt allows the possibility for growth and learning, while shame makes us want to go to a corner and hide from the rest of the world, knowing deep down that we aren't worthy of love or human connection. Ding ding! Your worst fears of being unworthy have just been confirmed, because you are obviously a horrible person that doesn't deserve the chance to speak. This isolation aspect is perhaps the worst thing. You don't get the chance to learn about what you did wrong and now you've been kicked out of maybe the only community that supported you. That's right. I'm not talking about the big social media influencers, although they are certainly affected by this too, through the simple fact that they are humans. I'm talking about the trans kid with a moderate audience that said something wrong one day and went from being loved and accepted for who they really are, to being called all sorts of horrible names and being considered an Enemy. All they feel is a stomach-turning sensation of shame at having lost the only support system they had. In the good scenarios, they find great strength and get through it, eventually coming back. In the bad scenarios, well, we don't like to talk about that, do we? Anonimity Ah, the world's wild west. A place where you can fulfill all of your dreams under an impersonal username and profile pictures. But we forget that under the cover of those other anonymous profiles hide other humans, with fears and hopes. Bla bla bla, the internet turns us into monsters, bla, bla, bla. Ok boomer, we've heard it all before. Well, let me tell you what depersonalisation does. It reduces a person to a set of posts. It makes those posts much, much easier to criticize, that stone much, much easier to pick up. Because on the Internet, you have never posted anything that could hurt anyone. Not anything that isn't deleted, at any rate. On the Internet you have that sweet, sweet moral high ground, and damn it all if you're not going to use it. And what is your one post going to do, anyway? The power of a crowd Nothing. Unless you're a celebrity, but let's suppose you're not. Your one post is absolutely insignificant. And so are the other thousands of posts, individually. What that means is you can sleep quite peacefully at night, knowing it "isn't really your fault". It removes responsability. You don't have to step in the ring and punch the other person, because thousands of pokes will have the same effect. The "crowd" is the big machine, and of course I am a part of it, but without me it would do just fine! Burying a community alive, leader by leader "Surely", you'd say, "you're not accusing me of wanting to hurt my own cause, are you?". Well, no. I know you don't want to. But I also know you are. When someone is the leader of a community or is seen as a speaker for it, there are tons of opportunities to be wrong. There are tons of opportunities to ignore some part of the community and spread misinformation unintentionally. But cancelling that person, who has the community's best interests at heart and has consistently been a great activist for its rights and recognition, is not a solution. Or, at any rate, not the solution we should be turning to. This will only hurt your cause. What can we do? "Well, now i feel guilty about all the times i jumped on the cancelling bandwagon" (believe me, i do too). That's good! Feeling guilt is the first step to changing your way of interacting with others on the Internet. And i have just the tips for you 1. Stop cancelling people. Stop using the term or any bloody term associated with it. People aren't just opinions, and you can cause serious harm by attacking a person for who they are, and not for what they said or did. Remember, you are trying to cause opportunities for growth and learning, not for isolation. 2. Leave the person room to breathe. Do not expect an apology in 0.2 seconds. Spoiler alert, nobody educates themselves about systemic racism, the treatment of LGBT persons or any other thing you are talking about in those 0.2 seconds. Fast apologies aren't the same as sincere apologies, and a delayed response is a good thing, actually. 3. Educate! Educate! Educate! Don't only shove statistics in their face, but expose them to the real-world hurt their actions may cause, or share your stories on how that particular issue affected you or another member of the community. If you know that person in real life, that's even better. You'll know what things might get through to them. Be empathetic, and try to understand their background. 4. You are allowed to be hurt and angry! You're probably experiencing shame and betrayal. You trusted this person and even thought they were great, but it turns out they did something really bad. Let yourself breathe as well. Work through those feelings. Why are you angry? Is this anger going to help you? (no, i'm afraid) Acknowledging your vulnerability is really important. 5. Assess whether you can or can't help this person. Protecting yourself is extremely important. If you feel like you don't have the patience or the emotional resources to do it, that's perfectly fine. You don't have to be the educator, but cancelling makes others who could be back away, for fear of being cancelled themselves. Let them speak. 6. Treat others with kindness. They're human beings too. And who knows, you might be the person that deradicalizes them. You might not, though. And that's ok. You were respecful and followed your moral principles. You did good. I'm proud of you. resources: did you think i'd have a whole bibliography? nah, not really. you can access brené brown's ted talks here and here. i'd also encourage you to read her book, "the courage to be vulnerable". it can be life-changing. this post was inspired by natalie wynn's video, which you can find here. she's pretty damn awesome.

#cancel culture #cancelling #cancel #sjw #social justice #equality #activism #political activism #human rights #social media

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turqrambles · 4 years ago

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I watched all 26 episodes of an obscure Australian cartoon in one week and I’m not okay - My journey with Wicked! (2001) PART 1

Here it is, the reason I started this blog in the first place. I need to talk about this cartoon I ran into completely by chance.

It all started, like you would, with Tubitv.

Good ol’ Tubi, the free streaming service that makes you either an expert at being able to find diamonds in piles of garbage or a connoisseur of said garbage. It’s thanks to Tubi that I put down that I watched Alpha and Omega: Family Vacation on Letterboxd for all to see and judge, but it’s also thanks to Tubi that I finally ended up watching Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

Anyhoo, one day I was browsing their family film selection when I ran into this selection. And that was the day my life changed forever.

What you see before you, posted to a streaming service accessible in the United States, is the movie adaptation of an Australian TV show that never made it to the United States, which is based off a series of Australian children’s books from the 90′s that also never made it to the United States. It made it to other territories like Germany and the United Kingdom (and it apparently did super well in France but don’t quote me on this) but the TV show ran for one year and then disappeared without a trace after one 26 episode season.

How obscure is this franchise? Well, for starters, at the time I’m writing this in 2020, the books, the TV show, and the movie all don’t have a single Wikipedia page to call their own, and the easiest way to get info about this thing is to find the (rather tiny) TvTropes page.

Let’s just get right into this shall we.

What is Wicked!?

Before you try to be all cute and make any references to the hit musical, there’s a reason I’m putting that exclamation mark there.

Wicked! started out as a series of six children’s books written by Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman. I actually grabbed a kindle copy of all six books (because I’m in this thing too deep and I wanted to see how the cartoon compared with the source material) and I gotta say, they’re very charming.

The best way I can describe them is that they’re in the kid horror genre, but they’re less Goosebumps and more The Weenies book series by David Lubar in terms of gore and child endangerment. Wicked! has some artful depictions of blood and gore, but in a way that can be digested by the grade school crowd.

Being a former child, I can proudly proclaim that I would’ve adored this series when I was younger. Just look at these covers!

The plot of the books is that there’s a widower with a daughter and a divorced wife with a son who get married, and the two new step-siblings Rory and Dawn absolutely hate each other. They can’t stand the fact that their parents are getting married! Gross!

But then, on the day of their wedding, creepy things begin to happen after Rory receives an appleman doll in the mail, and then, over the course of six books, a deadly single-minded virus that feeds on hate and is targeting Rory’s bloodline begins to spread across wildlife, creating crazed mutant animals that try to kill everyone in the household. It’s up to Rory, Dawn, and Dawn’s grandfather Gramps to stop this virus before it kills Rory and his mother, and to do so, they have to seek out Rory’s father, who seems to be the mysterious cause and/or the solution to the virus.

I’m not sure how well these books did, on account of the whole “not Australian” affliction I seem to suffer from, but they seemed to do well enough to get a TV show adaptation.

And surprisingly, the TV show is a very close adaptation of the books, only they changed the plot in two big ways so that it fits an animated series with a “monster of the week” setup.

The first big change was that, of course, they toned down the blood and gore and removed the deadliness of the virus, choosing to go with a more cartoony mutagenic approach. Rory gets infected by the virus several times in the show, just like how he does in the books, but unlike the books, he never thinks that he’s going to die from it and it’s definitely treated as a more temporary thing. There’s no race against time either. Everyone is trying to live their lives except every so often, the virus shows up. A wacky cartoon virus with cartoony stakes.

That brings me to the other main change that they make in the show. Unlike the books, where the main villain is a mindless virus that feeds off of hate, an invisible foe that can only be defeated at the end of the last book with the help of Rory’s father, the TV show decides that that’s no fun and instead makes a main villain out of one of the main plot points in the books. Say hello to The Appleman. (Apple-Man? Apple Man? Fuck it, I’m going with the first one from now on)

Instead of having the virus mutate mysteriously and having the main characters constantly hypothesize what’s going to happen next, the TV show made a main villain who constantly reinvents new strains of virus in a laboratory that he set up in an abandoned refinery.

What then happens is a basic plot set-up that the show follows pretty consistently in every episode. The family is trying to do something, we get the theme for the episode, and The Appleman, who is a spiteful bastard who is trying to ruin this one family in particular (and I’ll get to that), decides to make a virus that will infect the theme of that episode.

Pretty standard cartoon stuff, right? Ah, but then you don’t realize the beauty of this show. But first, I gotta introduce the main stars of this show.

The Characters

(quick note: this bus is incredibly important to the plot, but only in the books)

First we have Rory (the boy holding up the tin) and Dawn (the mad red head).

Dawn is the step-sister who lost her mom, a bus driver, in a gruesome bus accident, Rory is the step-brother whose parents got a divorce and then his dad went missing, believed to have run away from his whole family. Both of them are meant to be the dual protagonists, but I feel that there’s just a tiny bit more focus on Rory. There’s a reason for this that I will mention later.

What is interesting to note is that they make Rory the smart, non-athletic little nerd that gets picked on a lot at school for being a dork while Dawn loves sports, is failing science, gets made fun of for not being as girly as the other girls in her class, and likes violent computer games. I wouldn’t exactly call them “fleshed out” but they did enough to make these kids feel like actual kids.

Also, they fight. Constantly. This is the main complaint of anyone who actually looks into this show judging by my brief skimming of Internet comments because these two constantly bicker and insult each other and that makes up like 40% of the dialogue in any given episode. While this is one of the main story conflicts and they’re like this in the books too, it just feels super exhausting to see these two constantly at each other’s throats in every single episode.

They get mean too. Which, surprisingly, makes them both more realistic (I babysat multiple times and kids can be pretty verbally awful to each other) while also making them just a tiny bit unbearable at times. Here’s some actual dialogue.

"My dad sent it to me!" "Gee, he must think a lot of you to send you a doll full of worms." "Your mum thought so much of you she drove this bus over a cliff and into the river to get away from you."

GEEZ, guys...

Eileen, Rory’s mom.

It feels out of the three adults in the family, she gets the least amount of character development, but she does get a fair amount of screentime, so you can’t really say they’re intentionally ignoring her. She divorced her previous husband and works as a mail courier. Instead of owning a car, she drives a motorcycle, and, in the first episode, even drives it to her own wedding while dressed in a bridal gown. Rory’s mom rules.

She tries to bond with Dawn because she always wanted to raise a daughter, but Dawn clearly doesn’t like her new stepmom very much. Dawn is also afraid of the motorcycle and it comes up a couple times in the show.

Eileen is the adult that gets targeted the least by The Appleman’s schemes. There’s a very pointed reason for this, and I swear, I’m getting to it soon.

(quick note: yes, the show uses real photos to put in picture frames in the backgrounds and it’s real weird and never addressed)

Jack, Dawn’s dad.

Jack is a sheep shearer, just like in the books, and he’s a big easy-going dope that is hard not to love. Look at him hammer in this carpet. A true champ.

Out of the three adults in the family, he seems to be the one that nearly dies the most, with The Appleman going out of his way to specifically target Jack in some episodes. If you know Appleman’s backstory, this reads as absolutely petty spite and I love every minute of it.

Gramps, Dawn’s grandfather and Jack’s dad.

He’s an aging WWII veteran (one that has killed people in combat no less) who radiates constant Boomer vibes and, unlike Eileen and Jack, he actually sees some of the crazy shit that happens and will sometimes sense when something is infected with virus when the other two adults can’t.

In the books, he’s suffering pretty badly from dementia, but thankfully the cartoons drop that completely. I’m glad too, because I don’t have the confidence that they would’ve written it with enough sophistication to make it not seem ableist. Instead, he’s just your typical kooky cartoon grandfather.

He’s probably the adult that gets the most screentime because he will actually help Dawn and Rory out. Again, this ties into the books, where he was the main adult ally for the kids.

He says a lot of army-themed catchphrases. It’s a tad overplayed but it never really gets to a point where I would call it “annoying”. Also, instead of living in the house, he lives in a tiny granny flat on the property. Sometimes Rory spends the night there.

Last but not least, we have the star of the show, and the reason why the easiest way to find information of this show is to google “Wicked The Appleman”.

The Appleman, as explained, is the main villain of the story. Dressed in a very fancy suit complete with dress shoes and a nice blue tie, he lives in an old refinery full of rats, bats, and giant worms (called Slobberers), and he’s rocking a voice that can be best described as “Australian Mark Hamil” with an absolutely heavenly evil laugh. He has gross clawed hands, a rotten apple for a head, and likes making people miserable, because he’s basically the living puppet for a virus that feeds off of negative emotions. The main goal of each episode is to either defeat him or to stop the mess he’s made. Usually both.

Since all of his minions are non-sentient animals, a lot of his dialogue is him lurking behind something while he monologues to himself, sometimes turning it into a creepy little rhyme. He’s a pretty lonely guy, so him hanging out with this family can be seen as a very non-subtle cry for help.

The best episodes are the ones where he tries to lurk about in public with a very poor attempt at disguising his hideous features. Somehow it always works, you know, despite the fact that he has yellow eyes, the skin like a moldy apple, and no ears.

What Makes Wicked! Unique

(no, The Appleman doesn’t actually use that axe)

The first thing this show does that most of the formulaic shows don’t do is that it does, in fact, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s why this show was packaged into a full-length movie - you can glue scenes together and actually make a pretty decent narrative, even if the resulting movie definitely had a “glued together TV show episodes” feel ala some of the bad Disney sequels like Cinderella II and Atlantis II.

This show even has some plot-heavy episodes that dive into just why this whole Appleman situation is going on and why he seems to have it out for this one family in order to flesh out the characters more.

Because that’s a thing that this show does. The Appleman is a cartoon-y villain who cackles in his lab and constantly invents new strains of viruses that can mutate things like animals and household appliances, but he doesn’t do it to take over the city or to “destroy the world”. He does it purely to inconvenience this one Australian family, who he stalks pretty regularly. This is a thing that comes from the books and honestly, it’s a thing that elevates Appleman from “ugly-looking cartoon villain” to “pretty damn creepy, if also still cartoony in execution”.

Sure, a lot of cartoon villains target the main protagonist in their evil schemes, but this one is definitely more personal.

He regularly follows Rory and Dawn to school and, when the family goes on a camping trip, he comes too. If Rory decides he’s going to hang out in the wrecker’s yard, The Appleman will be cackling and hiding behind totaled vehicles. If Gramps takes the kids out to the bay to go fishing, The Appleman will pull an ice cream truck out of his garage and follow them there. That’s how the main conflict is really set up.

I think if a scarier cartoon tried, they’d make him out to be this grotesque stalker, but instead, since this show is kinda goofy in execution, he’s like the shittiest cryptid in the world, constantly crouching behind trash cans and on top of rooftops while constantly cackling about how clever he is and how, miraculously, no one notices anything’s amiss.

This alone would make this villain interesting, but then they set up something about this show at the beginning if you watch the intro and the first episode and put two and two together.

Right from the start, the opening shows that The Appleman was once human by depicting his transformation by the virus. They don’t even try and pretend that he’s some demon or some sort of supernatural monster - he’s specifically a blue collar worker who had a nasty run-in with fate and mutated into this hideous apple-headed creature that now has to hide out in an abandoned refinery. You see why he’s dressed like that - he’s still wearing his work uniform.

Right after you watch that intro, the first episode of the show has Rory receiving a mysterious package from his father on the day of his mother’s wedding. It’s the first time that Rory and his mom Eileen have heard from their dad after he mysteriously vanished years ago.

What’s inside? An apple-headed doll, which contains the first virus-infected monsters, The Slobberers.

When The Appleman makes his first dramatic appearance, he never says Dawn’s name, but he does know Rory’s name.

And, in case you didn’t pick up the hints from the first episode, the fourth episode really drives it home without spelling it out. Then the last episode of the series decides to say it out loud.

That’s right. Rory’s father, the man who mysteriously vanished from Eileen and Rory’s lives, is still an important part of the cartoon’s storyline, but instead of being the man who appears in the last book that knows how to cure the virus while also being the first victim of the virus, he’s the main antagonist.

The Appleman is Rory’s father.

And honestly, because of this little plot point, this show becomes a much richer experience once you look at the unhinged appleman who keeps unleashing horror on these kids and realize that he’s a divorced dad who constantly keeps tabs on his ex-wife's unstable dysfunctional family in order to make them more pissed at each other because that feeds the virus that mutated him.

This is a very cool concept. This is where Wicked! shines when, for all intents and purposes, it is otherwise a pretty average turn-of-the-century Australian cartoon that can be best described as “it’s okay, I guess” in terms of quality.

Because that’s really the rating I can give this show. It’s Okay.

It’s a very solid Okay, but I think any adjective more powerful than “Okay” is really pushing it. It’s not Great, it’s not Amazing. It’s Okay. Alright. Kinda Good.

But man, is it a wild ride.

Next time, I’m going to start discussing the actual episodes as well as this show’s pros and cons. Dividing this up into multiple parts partly because I feel like these things are more easily digested in smaller chunks and partly because I’m pretty sure tumblr now has a size limit on posts soooo...yeah.

Follow this handy link for Part 2 - The Actual Review!

#Turq watches a cartoon #Wicked! (2001)#Wicked!#The Appleman #Turq Reviews

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bill-the-baker · 5 years ago

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I’ve also decided to finish this decade with something more light-hearted, detailing the many trends that one can associate with the past ten years. I styled this picture in a similar fashion to those gaudy collages you have relating to the 1980s and 1990s, with this mainly being reflected in the style of this picture. The title of the picture holds a very minimalist design, and is shown from inside a phone, whilst the rest of the poster has a dull white background. These main design choices were added to reflect the omnipresence of smartphones in this decade, as well as the general trend of Minimalism, which has been followed by many companies in recent years. The decision to make the background seem plain was not completely because I’m feeling lazy, but because I tried to follow the trend of minimalism, a trend I personally hate because of how boring it is (I probably would have added in a pretty pattern if there was some other major design trend).

Beyond this though, there are a few other things I chose to add in to reflect the 2010s:

-Ragecomics- The basis of most early-2010s memes.

-Skrillex (or rather Dubstep in general)- A key figure in a genre of music that you either loved or hated.

-Obama- A fantastic President who laid the groundwork for change that will hopefully be built upon in the future.

-Hipster culture- Fresh-out-of-college rich kids who made avoiding the mainstream a mainstream trend.

-The Occupy Movement (“We are the 99%” sign)- A promising post-Great Recession movement with disappointing results.

Gay Rights- Gay marriage is now legal in places like the United States, and homosexuality is more accepted the western world, so much so that companies are now no-longer afraid to pander to them whenever June comes around. Still, other parts of the planet have yet to change their outdated ways.

Trans rights- With people like Caitlyn Jenner and Leelah Alcorn, Transgenderism has arrived into the forefront of social issues, though it remains a strongly divisive issue throughout the decade.

Drones- Like helicopters but smaller and cheaper.

Overwatch- An interesting game that offered a unique personality to the shooter genre in a decade oversaturated with annual Call of Duty releases.

Cuphead- A challenging run-and-gun platformer with a Golden-Age animation-style, showcasing what can be made through video games these days.

Minecraft- The game that doesn’t die. It defined the childhoods of many gamers who fondly remember the early-2010s, and has since made a major resurgence in the decade’s end.

Steven Universe- A much-loved show that offered many unique and progressive themes, which I can admire despite my mixed feeling for the show itself.

Gravity Falls- A show aimed at children didn’t have to be this immersive and interesting, but Alex Hirsch and his team did it anyway and offered the world two seasons of hilarious and yet gripping television.

Political correctness/Woke-ness (“That’s Offensive” speech bubble)- Something that has been pushed to death among the political mainstream, but especially by the Left, as people are silenced whilst others demand safe spaces to keep their precious feelings from being hurt. Political correctness is a somewhat-trend that is better off staying in this decade.

Shrek- Whilst the 2010s have been starved of a new Shrek film besides the contested “Shrek Forever After”, the “Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life” greentext story, despite its crude subject matter, has made the brutish but kind ogre a mainstay in meme culture, whilst offering people the opportunity to explore the nuances of the franchise, after growing up with the character.

Pewdiepie- Starting out strong in the decade, making a name for himself as “that funny Swedish guy who screams as scary games”, an incident in February 2017, in which he was called a Nazi by the mainstream media, resulted in him becoming a more independent and politically incorrect figure, before going on to unite the internet in a battle for the most subscribed YouTube channel against a corporation. He lost in the end, but it was fun while it lasted.

Tyler, the Creator- Offering a unique sound among waves of forgettable Pop music, Tyler evolved from an edgy but somewhat humorous rapper, to an interesting and poignant singer in this past decade, achieving near-mainstream success.

Marvel Cinematic Universe (Endgame logo)- Many mainstream cinemagoers are bound to have seen at least one of these groundbreaking movies in cinemas, with their intense action and perfectly balanced humour, all culminating in the outstanding films “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”.

Death Grips- Unlike anything that has ever been popular among general audiences, the exciting tunes concocted by MC Ride and Zach Hill have remained in the minds of many younger and more alternative individuals.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic- Arguably the most unlikely of fanbases to come around in this decade, this re-imagining of an 80s cartoon series had a style of humour and storytelling that peaked the interests of a group of adult men known as “Bronies”, who’s reasons for being interested were questioned and much of the internet hated them, but they were certainly something to behold throughout these years.

The 2016 Presidential Election (Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump)- A time many can regard as the branching-off point between the first and second halves of the decade, as the extremes of both sides were exposed to the world with astonishing results.

Vine- A social media platform that has since disappeared off the face of the Earth, but brought about many notable celebrities and memes that are often remembered by younger generations.

Vaporwave- Alongside Hipsters, Vaporwave was perhaps one of the few examples of a concrete “counter-culture” movement, offering an anti-Capitalist message within its use of music and iconography from the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, it is best known for offering a warm and interesting “aesthetic”.

Pepe the Frog- A frog best known for saying “Feels Good Man” earlier on, was later used by certain Right-wingers and has since been touted as a symbol of hat. But, with a smug grin like that, it appears that he doesn’t seem to care about what others say.

Social media- It already played a massive role from the mid-2000s-onwards, but now, the scale of social media has grown exponentially, with people moving away from mainstream news and entertainment and instead choosing to get their kicks on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. This focus on gaining the news from social media has held some negative consequences as fake news continues to fool gullible Boomers.

Hyperbeast fashion- In terms of fashion, the Hypebeast is the late-2010s’ version of the Hipster, though unlike Hipsters, who are financially-independent rich kids who make questionable purchasing decisions, Hypebeasts are often preteen/teenagers who suck money out of the credit cards of their rich parents.

Adventure Time- A rather interesting cartoon that started off as a fun show to get high to, but evolved into a gripping epic with an expansive lore and interesting world.

Minions- While they were rather annoying to older viewers following their introduction in the otherwise top-tier film Despicable Me, children and especially 40-something year-old Facebook Mums couldn’t get enough of these wacky tic-tacs.

Brexit- A subject that I, as a Brit, couldn’t seem to get away from in the past few years, as politicians refused to move forward with the people’s decision. But, with the Tory majority in Parliament, as depressing as that sounds, it seems possible that we can finally move on as a country to more important matters.

Vaping (Juul-smoking mouth)- Recovered chain-smokers and rebellious teens have made this trend a popular pastime, though its popularity has waned recently over health concerns.

Doge- Whilst it began as a singular image of a cartoonish-looking Shiba Inu making a weird face, as brightly-coloured Comic Sans surrounds her, this dog has become the subject of many surreal and unique memes, taking on many different forms, solidifying the transformative nature that all memes should strive for.

Hoverboards, Fortnite, Dabbing, and Fidget Spinners (The monstrosity on the bottom-right)- What do a handle-less Segway, a more cartoony (but somewhat better) version of PUBG, a dance based off of post drug-taking sneezes and small bits of metal for Autistic children have in common? They have all ascended to levels of annoying trends that at least some people have had fun with.

Undertale (Sans)- An interesting game that has gained a heavy degree of fame for its interesting themes and interesting characters, some of which have been admired a bit too much by certain teenage girls.

As for my personal experiences of this decade, I can say that, whilst I was born in the early-2000s, I was definitely raised in the 2010s. Much of my memories of the previous decade are rather minimal, and I didn’t follow that many trends considering I only lived on constant repeats of SpongeBob by the start of this decade. Since then, though I have gained many impactful memories from these past few years. Some good, some bad, some great, all of which were a part of growing up. In about two-weeks’ time, I will finally become a legal adult, and shall begin the rest of my life. So, I wish you all well, and hope your Twenties are truly roaring!

#2010s #2010s nostalgia #collage #retrospective

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babygreenlizard · 3 years ago

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They're refusing to except blame because a lot of this, everything they complain about us is literally they're fault. Let me tell you, Gen Z and Millennials:

Didn't invent the internet and using the biggest source of information and communication would fucking save your life way more than being stuck with just water, suffering.

They didn't create cellphones

Texting and chatting long distance using phone is the exact same thing as sending a fucking letter but faster

Blocking an ex? Dude, kings beheaded their wives for not giving them sons. Refusing to communicate or see your ex is literally the better option than murdering them.

Also "Slow Children Texting"? That poster males no goddamn sense. Why aren't we outside? Maybe cause the Boomers fucked up the environment, gave us concrete instead of grass, charged/scolded us for literally hanging outside aka the whole 'loitering' bullshit, and we're afraid of being fuckin murdered/raped/kidnapped because you allowed these criminals to get away scotfree.

Every generation has been hiding porn, rather it'd be Playboys in a hollowed out tree in the woods, or stuffing them under your mattress, it isn't new.

I don't get the whole selfie stick hate from any generation. It's a fucking tool used to take pictures with more people, the fuck is wrong with that? (nothing)

And the whole child pregnancy thing? Yeah, that isn't our fault, you fuckers praise pedophiles, you guys refuse to acknowledge rape and pretend sex trafficking doesn't exist.

We aren't born into a world we made, we're thrusted into a world you created, and let me tell you what, there's a lot more of us fixing your fuckups than you.

Honest Posters of Our Relationship with Technology

Designer Ajit Johnson, living in England, has imagined a series of posters called “#This_Generation”. With honesty, the posters show anecdotes linked to our daily relationship with technology and social networks.

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laidbackmarco · 6 years ago

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Trinkets of a Different Time

As a kid I remember rifling through my dad’s nightstand to find small pocket knives, trinkets, and various other personal articles. As a romantic and philosopher I believe the inanimate objects we interact with everyday tell us a lot about ourselves, and have deep vast stories hidden with them. One could argue that they are as much a part of this living breathing universe as we are. The imagination of a child allowed me to daydream of a life lived before I came into the world.

How much do I know of being a minority in the 60s, 70s, 80s? What Tacoma was like, the stories of Kansas and Virginia which always seem to not be long enough for me to know anything. Or on my mom’s end how could I know what it was like to lose my father at an early age. To grow up in a third world country miles away over the pacific ocean. I hear short snippets of each of their lives through oral stories passed down from one generation to the next. But it’s often strange to think about how little we know about the people who raised us, and often weirder thinking that they have as little of an idea of what they are doing as you do.

Strangers With The Same DNA

My mom being a party animal, my dad being some sort of geek. . . If I met them on the street would I recognize them? What I would give to be Marty McFly and meet and observe my parents in their youth. My knowledge is so limited I have troubling remember what happens in a day if I don’t journal. The images I have of my parents are constructs in my mind that change and shift with every passing moment. Remember the image you held of your dad when you were five, its probably the way my elementary school students think of me now as a 23 year old adult. Up till seven I thought my dad was some sort of flawless super hero. Of course that image has since changed, but as I grow into adulthood and discover how hard it really is, I can once again say that I am amazed by the things my dad has accomplished on his time on this earth. The flaws my dad has only make him more relatable, and overcoming some of them is a testament to how much he cares.

Parents lie to their kids all the time, I think my parents lied about their past as much as they tell the truth. Of course they could be lying on accident due to the lackluster perception of self present all humans. (including me the author)

Most of my parents lives I was not a part of . . .the time I spent with them is less than half of their lives. I know mostly nothing about the people that live under my roof with me and have guided me through the world that they too had to figure out and find meaning in.

The Same Name

Maurice Vincent Harris

My dad and I share practically the same name, but I have never once called him Marc or Maurice, to do so would just feel wrong. Even calling him dad for the sake of my “audience”(thanks for reading really. . .and most of you are English speakers I’m assuming?) feels so unsettling. Because to me he has always been Tatay. Hearing that word in my head makes years of memories fly through my mind. Recently he’s picked up the name Beefo, a name my little sister has knighted him with. During my time in high school my friends had come up with a name for my Tatay that is the most fon for me to use Black Mario.

Black Mario felt just as right as Tatay and is less intimate so for the sake of this chapter let’s call him Black Mario.

Things Only I Know

What can I tell you about my dad that no one else knows? He’s afraid of dying just like everyone else, he hates his job although he appreciates all that it’s provided for us, his favorite cigarettes are menthol lights, he worries all the time about all his kids. Karina, Cristina, me. . . But he worries about Karina the most. . . Because they are scarily alike. He is very old fashion and rarely cooks, cleans, or does the laundry, but he does like to do yardwork and keep all the vehicles in working order. Some of his bad habits are gambling, smoking, and road rage. It’s hard to sleep around him because he snores very loudly, and once he’s out it’s hard to get him back up(yay for sneaking in xbox time). He’s not afraid to express what he feels at restaurants, but for some reason can’t get in touch with his sensitive side. He misses the days when I was little. His mind is always on the future, but is sometimes impulsive. He doesn’t sleep much, but he can sleep for a while when he finally retires to the bed. He’s not as fast up and down the stairs as he used to be even just ten years ago when the regular pace of the slight jog going up the stairs has turned into a labored and offset slower paced climb up them. He expresses his emotions in weird ways like some sort of anime tsundere.

That’s my image of him now, but I know with all things this wasn’t how he always was.

I remember growing up I used to tell people I was black and they wouldn’t believe me until they saw my father. Trying to describe my father to someone who had never seen him went as follows. Well he’s a tall black guy with a mustache, who always wears a hat, and blue Boeing coveralls. He is a plumber/maintenance worker. A description closely matched by one of the world’s most famous Italian plumbers in the world. Mario. . .

Slice of Life

Although Black Mario is my father, the knowledge I have on this specimen is, only a slice of his life. Most of his existence remains shrouded in mystery.(If I ever have kids they can literally search through my teens and twenties, and even further back if I get around to scanning and uploading our photo collection) They need to hurry up with that assassins creed machine Animus please. I know his birthdate by heart thanks to all those damn how old are you things on the internet for mature games not porn I swear. I always put in my dad’s date of birth for some reason so my Xbox live account says I’m in my sixties. I always think about Alan Watt’s description about how we describe a beginning, did my father’s life start when he was born, when he was conceived, or when he was an evil gleam in his father’s eyes?

Baby Boomer

Black Mario is a baby boomer born on December 31st 1954, being part of a military family he was born on the other side of the country in Virginia. Dave and Patricia Harris. Like many, my grandfather had served in Second World War another young man thrown into a battle that shed much blood, but also brought the world together. When the war was over he was in his late teens and met a young girl from the Philippines who returned with him to the states. In the Philippines due to the lack of documentation it was possible for my grandma, who was actually 14, to lie about her age. Perhaps America was the land of opportunity and a chance for her to seek adventure out of her small province. Due to the different cultural values of both the time and the region, it wasn’t strange for people to be settling down and having families at a young age. I mean the concept of “adulthood” is a construct created by culture. Using an arbitrary number such as one’s age to determine responsibility is pretentious, preposterous, and absurd. There was a time when people settled down much younger in life due to the short life expectancy. In other cultures the marriage ages vary to some degree as well, and for all you Christians out there, Mary was like fourteen so . . . Yeah.

Two teenagers went about raising a family . . What could possibly go wrong?

My Grandpa was a short tempered, sharp tonged, sometimes violent man. . . God. . . He’s starting to sound like the stereo typical African American T.V. Dad. Although I imagine being in the military during war time will change you, being African American his role was limited to a cook. He was damn good at his job too often getting requests from generals and officers to have him be the one to prepare their meals. I can’t really speak much about Grandpa Dave as I know almost nothing about him.

Mark In The Middle

My dad is a younger middle child of a large family. . . 12 kids I believe, Lola tells stories of never ending cooking, cleaning, and laundry. . . My worst nightmare. . . Laundry. The values at the time consisted of a breadwinner and the stay at home mom. With limited education and the high cost of daycare what choice was there for Lola. Did she have any bigger dreams than that? For someone like me with delusions of grandeur I often forget that some people’s dreams is to provide and care for a family.

My dad’s journey began in Virginia, where there are a lot of other Harris family groups, but I have never been to the big Harris Family reunion so they might as well be aliens with similar D.N.A. My dad himself doesn’t seem to remember much about Virginia as the earliest stories he had was the drive to Kansas itself. With no freeways, it must have been a traumatizingly long journey for a kid to remember it. When I was a kid when I thought of Kansas I thought of the Wizard of Oz and little house on the Prairie. But included in my dad’s memories are a packed station wagon full of stuff and kids. The American Road trip has some what of romanticized image. With no smartphones the entertainment you had was the people with you and watching the world fly by you.

Kids tend to complain when enduring such things as their perspective on time is much different from a fully grown adult, since time is a relative function 1 year to a five year old is 8 times longer than it is for a forty year old. They would have complained but I imagine grandpa would probably say this when he was at the end of his nerves. “Stop complaining before I give you something to complain about”

The thought of a Parent striking a child is something that I’ve been protected and shielded from for the most part. Sometimes black Mario would spank us or give us a light tap on the head. . . But never beat or strike us with full force. . . Apparently his dad would “beat the shit of of him” and his siblings sometimes. . .I don’t know if this extended to my grandma as well. The terrifying thought and reality of a child being abused in any way isn’t something we like to keep in our minds, but it happens I can only wonder what kind of feelings Black Mario must be harboring about that, he never talks about anything, so that’s not how he expressed it. Perhaps in some journals in the garage somewhere I can find an answer. (Although I’m one of the people that thinks kids are too soft now a days, I mean I got spanked and I turned out somewhat fine. . . Right?)

I doubt that Black Mario has many memories before he was ten, because I’m a third of his age and I have barely anything up there, but from what I can gather about Kansas is that its flat, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and there are tornadoes. Being stuck in the basement of a house sounds like as much fun as a being millennial in a power outage without cell service.

The Place Where I’m From

When Black Mario was in the third or fourth grade he moved to the City at the Center of my heart. The 253, T-Town, the city with the famous aroma. . . The city of Tacoma. And his family lived in the one place they could afford a home, Hilltop. Which if you’re not a local has a bad rep with being a not so good area to be in, Tacompton. Although neighborhoods were not segregated by color in essence with the way housing prices were in certain areas they might as well have been. Speaking of Black Mario experiencing racism in his youth. It’s not a matter if he did, the question is how much and when he met these challenges and from whom. Being a mixed raced Filipino sometimes it’s hard to fit in with either group and you end up in this limbo between races. Thankfully being in the pacific northwest the harsh treatment was padded to a certain extent, but not eliminated.

I find it extremely odd that events I’ve read about in history books like the moon landing, JFK, Nixon, and all the fantastic things that were happening with the red scare and the cold war were experienced by the teenage version of Back Mario. I ought to pester him and ask him about that one day over a beer. . . Or a joint I mean I’m in Washington let me pick my poison XD. I get these stories but, there are certain things that don’t come to the surface when hearing these stories. It’s so hard to interpret another’s worldview and the personal experiences they have that shape the way they see things. What kind of ten year old was he? A shy quiet one, or the ever rambunctious loud type. Being the younger of the boys of his family, I can speculate that he was given a lot of hand me downs, having the nickname buck(for bucktoothed) probably means he was the one getting teased by his older siblings. Being that my dad is like me and has trouble communicating and keeping friends he and my uncle Cisco or Coach were probably really close.

One thing I know about my dad from his stories is that he is a hustla. He used to shine shoes or sell things to the businessmen of Tacoma downtown, he had a paper route, and he worked in the school cafeteria. Which has a number of benefits, extra food, free lunch, and cash. But it was probably hard for him to make friends if he was working while most kids bond over things like meals. He went to Jason Lee middle school where he played in the drum line and was a bench warmer in sports. To be honest being a black kid in America you’re expected to come out of the womb dribbling a basketball, but luckily for black Mario he enjoyed basketball, but where he actually played the sport I have no Idea.

East Side

Sometime during the teenage years the family moved from hilltop to the East side of Tacoma. The house they lived in was very small for the amount of people that were housed there, but you have to make do with what you have.

This house is very close to the original home in east Tacoma, shown here is my uncles place

When Black Mario hit high school age he went to Stadium High school where he once again played the drums and remained on that shiny bench keeping them nice and warm for the starters. Black Mario didn’t actually graduate from stadium, although he did get his GED. During this time I have stories of him getting caught underage drinking with his stadium friends in northeast Tacoma, when apprehended by the police, he was met with the terrible consequence of pouring the beer out “I had to pour out a whole 30 rack once it was the saddest thing as the cop made us pour them out one at a time”.

When he joined the Military in 1972 as a young Kid. Often hearing his disdain of the government it’s really surprising that he would ever join the military, but I guess you can’t argue with a job with decent wages that provides meals and housing for its soldiers. Not to mention that being in the military teaches values such as work ethic, the importance of time, and some other valuable skills. Other than the whole training you to kill other human beings thing, it’s a pretty good deal. With the military he was able to go to Germany and Korea. Those memories unforgettable as he still talks about the days abroad.

My favorite story is after a night of drinking his best friend Rodney began to put his uniform on.

Black Mario: Nigga why you putting your uniform on Rodney: They serve midnight chow and you gotta be in this here uniform to get some chow. Black Mario: Hey wait for me I’ll put my uniform on too.

While he was in the military Black Mario did some real evaluating and thinking. He calculated the amount of money he got paid per hour to be a solider and compared it to what they were making at Boeing. In 1977 he was honorably discharged from the military achieving the rank of Sergeant. His stint with the military gave him priority for getting a job at Boeing. The company he’s still working for into his sixties. Unfortunately his first relationship didn’t last as long as his job, and neither did his second, but he did have kids and I got extended family members out of the relationship.(well more like they got me because I was to come later) What is a mystery to me is what he was like through the 70s and 80s.

The Big Mystery is What was he like?

His vocabulary and humor makes me feel like he experimented with drugs, I mean that 70s show and Cheech and Chong are funny for most people, but the green guys n gals find it more funny. He and his friend Bobby used to Deejay, but what kind of records did he spin house, hip hop, disco, techno? We get snippets of the music he liked, Funk, Disco, Old school Rap, disco. Did he like dancing and stuff going to the discos?

Having owned a Harley, a Firebird, and some other cars like an RX7, he must have enjoyed motorsports as much as I did.

I think he was a geek, because I remember he had a NES, a Nintendo entertainment system, and so many nerdy toys from the late 80s that he has to be a nerd. Not to mention he beat the Mario Arcade Game, he knew the Pacman Pattern at one point, and he is insanely good at Bullet Hell games. I felt like he went to the bar and played the arcade games and pool, more than socializing or drinking. His memorabilia includes Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so like me he was a grown man who watched cartoons did he read comic books as well?

Family Guy

My dad has fond memories involving my three cousins Ja’nielle, Jarod, and Jon Jon, where he was that cool, weird uncle who lived next door. There was probably a part of him that longed for that family life after his relationships didn’t work out as he had hoped.

Life changed for Black Mario when he went to either a party or a bar one night, he would encounter the most dangerous thing known to man. . . A pretty Woman.

If anyone wants to learn about where I come from this is an article that's about a millenial kid thinking about his boomer dad #babyboomer #millenial #family #kids #dad #father #black #mario #autobiography #tacoma Trinkets of a Different Time As a kid I remember rifling through my dad's nightstand to find small pocket knives, trinkets, and various other personal articles.

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shanedakotamuir · 5 years ago

Text

“ok billionaire”: Elizabeth Warren is leaning into her battle with the super-rich

Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a North Carolina campaign rally in November 2019. | Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

Psst, rich guys: It might be better for you if you stop talking about Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not shying away from the parade of ultra-rich guys fretting about her in the press — instead, she appears to be egging them on. From a tax calculator meant for billionaires to a new campaign ad, a twist on a popular meme, and campaign coffee mug reading “BILLIONAIRE TEARS,” the Massachusetts Democrat is leaning into her billionaire battle.

It’s a way to fire up supporters and a signal of her campaign’s calculation that billionaires complaining about her helps and doesn’t hurt. At the current moment, the word billionaire is accompanied with almost a villainous connotation among much of the American public, especially on the left, and Warren appears to be trying to capitalize on it. And taking on billionaires is also a way to remind voters of her past as a longtime critic of the financial industry, Wall Street, and the big banks.

On Wednesday, Warren’s campaign launched a new ad titled “Elizabeth Warren stands up to billionaires.” It features Warren on the campaign trail touting her proposed wealth tax and remarking, “I’ve heard that there are some billionaires who don’t support this plan.” The ad then cuts to excerpts of interviews with billionaires talking about her in interviews — hedge funder Leon Cooperman, TD Ameritrade founder John Ricketts, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. And it takes shots at them — Cooperman’s settlement on insider trading, Ricketts’s Republican donations, Blankfein’s earnings during the financial crisis, Thiel’s ties to Facebook and Donald Trump — all while noting their net worths.

youtube

What’s notable about the ad isn’t just what’s in it, but also where the senator’s team is placing it: on CNBC. The financial news outlet reported that the ad was going to be shown during two of its most popular shows on Thursday. Warren is taking aim at rich guys, and she wants them to know it.

CNBC has been fanning the flames of the billionaires vs. Warren narrative, perhaps especially when it comes to Cooperman, who spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs before starting a hedge fund, Omega Advisors, that he has since converted to a family office. In September, Cooperman told CNBC he thought the stock market would fall by 25 percent if Warren wins the presidency, if it opens at all. The pair have been engaged in a war of words since, much of which is occurring on CNBC.

In response to Warren’s new ad, Cooperman told CNBC’s Brian Schwartz that Warren is “disgraceful.” He continued, “She doesn’t know who the fuck she’s tweeting. I gave away more in the year than she has in her whole fucking lifetime.”

Warren’s team responded to Schwartz’s tweet with “ok billionaire,” a play on the “ok boomer” meme rampant across the internet.

ok billionaire https://t.co/G7TMoxko0W

— Team Warren (@TeamWarren) November 13, 2019

And Warren just keeps getting in digs. Her campaign is now selling mugs that read “BILLIONAIRE TEARS.” The nicer read: It’s an anti-elitism take on a well-worn meme that spans the political spectrum. The meaner interpretation, though, is that it’s a reference to Cooperman, who in an interview earlier this month on, yet again, CNBC grew emotional when talking about the 2020 election and Warren.

Last week, Warren’s campaign also unveiled a “calculator for billionaires” that lets people estimate how much they would pay under her wealth tax. It name-checks Cooperman specifically, as well as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is considering a presidential bid, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who joked about the wealth tax and asked whether Warren was “open-minded” to meeting with him last week.

Welcome to the race, @MikeBloomberg! If you're looking for policy plans that will make a huge difference for working people and which are very popular, start here: https://t.co/6UMSAf90NT

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019

Rich guys might be better off staying mum about Elizabeth Warren

There has been a plethora of stories about how Wall Street and rich people are afraid of Warren — including one I wrote — saying the choice between Warren and Trump is like the “decision between sickness and death” and calling her the one candidate who is “toxic for the business community.” And news outlets are leaning into it — why not get some comments from billionaires bashing a presidential candidate? But for their purposes, it would probably behoove guys like Cooperman to stop taking CNBC’s calls.

Warren and Bernie Sanders are the two most progressive candidates in the 2020 Democratic primary, and their bases are not, well, fans of billionaires. On the campaign trail, Warren talks about a “rigged system,” and Sanders has throughout his career railed against the “billionaire class.”

By playing up how much billionaires don’t like her, Warren is also playing up her progressive credentials as someone who is on the side of the little guy in the face of powerful interests. It might also be an attempt to appeal to voters who are also enticed by Sanders’ adversarial stance. Warren is pointing out that there’s a reason the Leon Coopermans and Jamie Dimons of the world don’t like her — they think if she is in the White House, she will make life harder for them. And they’re not the most sympathetic characters. But it appears many billionaires just can’t help themselves when it comes to criticizing her.

On Thursday, Blankfein, who has also been publicly sparring with Sanders for years and in 2016 was also shown in a Trump campaign ad, responded to Warren’s billionaire video on Twitter. “Not my candidate, but we align on many issues,” he wrote. He also made a thinly-veiled reference to Warren’s claims of Native American ancestry.

Surprised to be featured in Sen Warren’s campaign ad, given the many severe critics she has out there. Not my candidate, but we align on many issues. Vilification of people as a member of a group may be good for her campaign, not the country. Maybe tribalism is just in her DNA.

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) November 14, 2019

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2ObNZ9Y

#Vox - All

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timalexanderdollery · 5 years ago

Text

“ok billionaire”: Elizabeth Warren is leaning into her battle with the super-rich

Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a North Carolina campaign rally in November 2019. | Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

Psst, rich guys: It might be better for you if you stop talking about Elizabeth Warren.

youtube

Warren’s team responded to Schwartz’s tweet with “ok billionaire,” a play on the “ok boomer” meme rampant across the internet.

ok billionaire https://t.co/G7TMoxko0W

— Team Warren (@TeamWarren) November 13, 2019

Welcome to the race, @MikeBloomberg! If you're looking for policy plans that will make a huge difference for working people and which are very popular, start here: https://t.co/6UMSAf90NT

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019

Rich guys might be better off staying mum about Elizabeth Warren

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) November 14, 2019

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2ObNZ9Y

#Vox - All

0 notes

gracieyvonnehunter · 5 years ago

Text

“ok billionaire”: Elizabeth Warren is leaning into her battle with the super-rich

Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a North Carolina campaign rally in November 2019. | Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

Psst, rich guys: It might be better for you if you stop talking about Elizabeth Warren.

youtube

Warren’s team responded to Schwartz’s tweet with “ok billionaire,” a play on the “ok boomer” meme rampant across the internet.

ok billionaire https://t.co/G7TMoxko0W

— Team Warren (@TeamWarren) November 13, 2019

Welcome to the race, @MikeBloomberg! If you're looking for policy plans that will make a huge difference for working people and which are very popular, start here: https://t.co/6UMSAf90NT

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019

Rich guys might be better off staying mum about Elizabeth Warren

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) November 14, 2019

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2ObNZ9Y

#Vox - All

0 notes

corneliusreignallen · 5 years ago

Text

“ok billionaire”: Elizabeth Warren is leaning into her battle with the super-rich

Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a North Carolina campaign rally in November 2019. | Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

Psst, rich guys: It might be better for you if you stop talking about Elizabeth Warren.

youtube

Warren’s team responded to Schwartz’s tweet with “ok billionaire,” a play on the “ok boomer” meme rampant across the internet.

ok billionaire https://t.co/G7TMoxko0W

— Team Warren (@TeamWarren) November 13, 2019

Welcome to the race, @MikeBloomberg! If you're looking for policy plans that will make a huge difference for working people and which are very popular, start here: https://t.co/6UMSAf90NT

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019

Rich guys might be better off staying mum about Elizabeth Warren

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) November 14, 2019

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2ObNZ9Y

#Vox - All

0 notes

polkadotkat · 8 years ago

Text

I’m an INTJ Woman and I’m not cold

To those who don’t like verbosity, I apologize, but I make good points, so please read on.

I keep reading all these articles about INTJs and how cold and calculating they are. How they’re distant and private people. How they take a long time to open up to you...This pisses me off and I’m going to tumbl all over that nonsense. First of all, I was raised by ENTPs. My family is full of NTs, and NPs in general. This made my J stand out like CRAZY. And it made me feel a lot of feelings as a teenager because NO ONE would hear me out (and by that I mean, listen to what I had to say and agree that my logic was irrefutable). They’d all tell me I was flying off the handle (and let’s be honest, y’all, any J is apt to fly off the handle when injustice slaps them in the face AND they’re hopped up on puberty hormones for a few acne-studded years). This was incredibly frustrating, but it did make me very aware of how my emotions would manifest themselves around issues of injustice and leadership. I became highly skilled in examining my emotions and sharing my thoughts and feelings in a detailed manner to help me argue my points on both rational and emotional levels. I learned to look for and ask for compassion so that people would listen to me long enough to see my side before shutting me down right away. I had to do this because a lot of people would just stop listening when I reacted to injustice in a passionate way. They didn’t like my passion or interest in leadership (often because I am a woman), so I had to show them my ability to empathize in order to be seen as a nurturing leader (the only type of leader women were allowed to be in an evangelical environment, for instance). And in many ways I am a great leader - I am great at showing people how to improve, giving them feedback on overarching patterns in their behavior, and recognizing systemic issues that affect all people involved in a process/system - but I had to learn how to do this in a tactful way for anyone to be able to give me leadership opportunities. I had to show that I could train new people well without expecting too much too fast for people to trust me to take on that kind of a role. There was a lot expected of me that wouldn’t have been expected of a man who was trying to do the same sort of thing.

And guys, it wasn’t that freakin’ hard to do. I just practiced talking out my thoughts and feelings to the people I trusted. I had a good inner circle, my whole life, because I needed people to talk to when I encountered obstacles that prevented me from taking on the leadership roles that I wanted. I also asked these friends to keep my ego in check, and they do. They tell me when I’m expecting too much of myself, when I’m beating myself up for not being good enough, and when I’m acting mightier or holier than thou. It’s good to have people you can trust to do that. And sometimes I react poorly to their feedback in the moment because I’m hurt, but I always say thank you and apologize soon after--I’m always immediately regretful of being mean about the feedback too, but sometimes my wounded ego takes a few days to heal before I apologize. I’m sick of reading INTJ profiles that act like INTJs are incapable of this. That’s BS. If I can do it, you can too, so stop your bellyaching, INTJs. If you want help, contact me. Or ask your favorite INP, they’ll give you a lowdown on how you hurt people and ask you questions until you figure your sh&t out.

I feel I’ve always been an open book with people, because I really have nothing to hide. I don’t like hypocrites, and I want people to call me out when I am one. If I expect people to be forthright about their issues with me, I’m going to be the same. If I have a problem, I’ll tell you and I am really not afraid of conflict. If we’re friends, I’ll share first about most aspects of my life. I know myself well, I reflect a lot, and I ask good questions that get both parties thinking and reflecting. I’m not at all a cold person. I’m blunt, but not cold. I’m serious, but I’m not cold. Nothing about me comes off as cold. Why does every INTJ profile say COLD!?!? I’ll get in a conflict with you and stay in it until we are both satisfied with the resolution - does that make me cold? I think it makes me stubborn as an ass, but not cold. Sure there are things I might be shy to open up about (they’re what most people keep private, like sex or money), but I push myself to share in those areas with a trustworthy person because I know that others will probably benefit from my story of pain/suffering/challenges/overcoming and I recognize that the shyness is mostly rooted in social norms and not logic/reason anyway. But you all, I really don’t see my story showing up in other INTJ stories. And maybe it’s because I’ve tried to be more of a servant in order to become a leader and avoid some of the pushback that comes with just jumping right in, but I still feel like these other INTJ profiles, even other women INTJ profiles, leave out some of the skills and traits I’ve worked really hard to develop in order to adapt in the 21st century world. Maybe it’s being a millenial, who grew up within a very differently gendered society than the Gen Xers or baby boomers? But I’m definitely curious if other INTJ women (especially millenials) have felt similarly (please let me know!)

One reason I think I developed my F side so much was because in my most formative pre-teen and teenage years I was communicating mostly via instant messenger. For my Ni Te Fi functions, this was the perfect form of communication. I could intuit and feel alone, but think out loud with another person. I could turn my feelings into thoughts to share them and instantly read and interpret how others understood me. I was really comfortable interacting, because it was through a text medium and that was second nature to me. I was (and am) a very fast typer, and an even faster thinker. I could almost keep up with my thinking. And when I got bored, there were plenty of other interesting people or websites to interact with. Drama was always a few steps removed because I’d be able to walk away/sign off/block. It was great. But the people to whom I was loyal, of course, walked me through how to be a better friend. I was always drawn to NFPs (and a few NFJs, though they were hard for me to identify at age 12) who would teach me about being compassionate and get me to understand my hurtful behaviors. Sometimes it was them overreacting, and sometimes it was me not listening, but I worked hard to settle our scuffles because I loved them. Over time, I think I managed to adapt an E like personality for internet relationships - I’m dynamic and funny and good at keeping in touch over email or messengers. I also feel like I managed to adapt my F to be a bit more of an empathetic and listening person. I also learned to love stories and center people’s voices and stories through everything. Being a sociology major in college helped immensely with this. Listening to the Moth podcast helped too. This trait has made me especially in tune to the idea that systems exist to serve people, and the moment a system stops serving people are starts serving itself, we need to work as swiftly as possible to change it. A wise INTJ will recognize that the way to investigate whether or not a system is in such a pickle is to actually listen to people’s stories about the system. Being a (Spanish) literature (and Sociology) major really helped me understand this as well. I recognized that bureaucracy and inefficiency were most easily recognized by listening to people’s stories about their interactions with systems. If an INTJ is so absorbed with making systems more efficient that she doesn’t listen to the stories of others about how they’ve been wronged by the system as it is, she won’t be a very effective leader, and she’ll fail to make any long-term changes that people actually buy into. It seems pretty obvious to me, since systems exist for people, that people need to buy into how the system will change in order for it to change, AND that systems need to benefit people (and not themselves) otherwise they’re ineffective/inefficient. OK? Great. Obviously there is a lot more to a person’s personality than just what the MBTI can tell you. Your gifts, skills, and adaptations are all developed and shaped by your experiences throughout your life, your relationships, and the environments in which you find yourself (where you’re most comfortable and least comfortable). For me, I was lucky enough to adapt feeling skills and masquerade as an I/ENFJ (who strangely never makes [big] decisions based on feelings). I’m definitely a passionate and strong personality, with enormous leadership potential and will rail against bad leaders until I’m blue in the face. This doesn’t make me a whole ton of friends. I’m easily frustrated by injustice, stupidity, unquestioning obedience, and inefficiency, which annoys the hell out of those around me when I actually express such feelings, because I can’t let go of how wrong things are. I also can’t stop examining and analyzing what could be better, and people who don’t see why these things matter to me can be easily hurt by it. But overall, I think I’m a lot wiser, a lot gentler, and a lot more feeling and willing to feel (I cry at least every three weeks, which is a TON for an INTJ, and I have no idea if it’s often for INTJ women, but I’d bet so) than the average INTJ, and certainly than the average INTJ depicted on most personality websites or even in articles written about INTJs by INTJs. So, tell me. Is anyone else out there like me?

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