#which i NEVER see any of these internet activists do

[nugatorysheep]

To all the spam bots sending garbage about Gaza or Palestine to my inbox you will get nothing and I have all those tags blocked. Go pester someone else for money, maybe you'll find some keyboard warrior stupid enough to fall for your scam

[drdemonprince]

Yo! I'm writing a class assignment on why Internet Archive is so right for breaching copyright laws and why the court is so so wrong for siding with publishers, and I wanted to talk about some authors who encourage others to pirate their work because so little of the money from book sales actually goes to the author.

Do you have any writing on this philosophy?

Thanks!!

I don't have any formally published writing on it, but you can site this message as "personal correspondence" (yes that's a thing in APA/MLA/Chicago style whatever).

I encourage people to pirate my work because I care first and foremost about the ideas within the books to reach an audience. I started writing for a general audience because I cared deeply about making information more accessible, and removing financial barriers to access is a core element of that. I also write work that targets populations that tend to be very poor -- disabled people, queer people, overworked people, and so on. It's vitally important to me that they can read the books, which means not requiring that they pay. Philosophically, I recognize that my ideas come from a long lineage of scholarship from other thinkers, including many disabled activists who always made their work available for free, and I don't deserve to profit from that thinking while others can't. I don't believe an idea can be owned, and like all forms of property, I believe intellectual property to be theft.

The act of writing is labor and I do think that deserves to be valued and compensated -- to wit, it bears mentioning that most authors do not earn any money from book sales. In order for an author to receive royalties, a book must first sell enough copies to "earn out" its advance, which may require selling anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 copies, depending on the size of the advance payment. And 95% of books sell fewer than 5,000 copies ever. This means the vast majority of authors never see a single cent from a book sale. Even if their books do "earn out", they are only looking at about 12.5% of the profits in royalties after that point. So it's hardly a lucrative venture. There's really no reason for me to be invested in the commercial success of my books, from a labor rights perspective, and certainly not from an intellectual or scholarly one. So I always tell people, steal, steal away, with my blessing.

[skadren]

so. let's talk about exoticism.

for those unfamiliar with the concept, exoticism involves the mystification and stereotyping of the culture being depicted. it's closely linked to orientalism, which in academic discourse is used to describe a specific eurocentric attitude or obsession directed towards the "eastern world", or the "orient".

(for reference, referring to that region as "the orient" or "oriental" is considered in extremely poor taste these days.)

this attitude places outside cultures as the "other", the "exotic". it posits that things from these cultures are fundamentally different; they do not belong and never will.

these things are seen as fascinating, but always lesser; something to be observed and made sense of, but in a way that results in subjugation and exploitation. instead of understanding the subject in its original context, it is taken out of place and forced to conform with a preexisting western understanding of the world. it is, essentially, stolen and put on display for clueless gawkers for the displayer's own benefit.

crucially, the person doing it is often oblivious to their own biases. they believe they are being objective and apolitical. but their interpretation of things is inherently biased, informed by their own preexisting worldview-- particularly when they are trying to impose their own understanding within the bounds of said worldview, rather than being willing to venture outside of it, or even simply accept that things can exist outside of it.

fandom of east asian media has a problem with exoticism-- specifically, in othering, stereotyping, and willfully misinterpreting various east asian cultures so they can cite it as an authority for more fandom credibility points for their preferred interpretation of the source material, telling everyone that's what it actually means, source: trust me bro. unfortunately, people eat it up every time, because most of them simply don't know any better.

i think on some level, that's why these people do it; subconsciously or not, they know that it will be difficult for people to question them or prove them wrong, given both the language barrier with the source material and the current internet landscape. they want to seem smart and culturally aware, and rely on their audience's cluelessness to sell their otherwise illogical or paper-thin argument.

i see it everywhere, gone unchallenged because no one seems to notice. and when you say anything it's "why are you ruining other people's fun" and "you're just being too sensitive" and "it's not that serious, it's just fandom" and "well you KNOW what i really mean (i'm a good little internet activist and therefore i can't be racist!)"

and it's harmful; a lot of discussions in these fandoms promote racist stereotypes, including the demasculinization of east asian men and the infantilization of east asians in general. they perpetuate the idea of our cultures being inherently more pedophilic, incestuous, or predatory. they cast us as being inherently strange and foreign, mystical and incomprehensible, who think in fundamentally different ways from you, who are normal.

no one seems to think that a fandom built around purportedly liking an east asian creation can be pervasively and overwhelmingly racist towards its very culture of origin, but that brings us back to the original definition of orientalism: a fascination, an obsession-- one that inherently degrades the object of that fascination.

regardless, i have argued in the past and will still argue that it's crucially important to engage in the cultural context around a work when trying to interpret it. it's just that when trying to perform this sort of analysis, some important questions to ask first are: is this overgeneralizing or stereotyping an entire group of people (or more)? is this actually applicable in the context of the media i am trying to analyze? is this sensationalizing a certain belief or practice that i don't fully understand?

is this what it actually means, or am i imposing my own standards of what i think it should mean?

[woman-respecter]

okay one last rant about chappell cuz i'm sure you're sick of herr (same):

i'm soooo tired of white people. i hate how chappell acts about palestine because it's SO "i learned activism from the internet and i have insane white guilt and i feel guilt for being a privileged white american" and that helps no one. bonus: she has republican parents so she has to force the activism even harder to compensate for her shitty family. i hate both sides as well but i'm not a stupid ass white person who won't be affected as much by not voting and not backing kamala.

chappell is so embarrassing like even taylor swift said i support kamala. her internet activism means that she would rather say guyssss both sides bad :/ than actually do anything of any value (it feels like she wants to be leftist so baddd that she ends up a fool... "all presidents bad i can't support any" girl you're high up in the evil capitalist music inudstry i wouldn't judge too hard if i were u..) but that's current activism for you doe. why make any change when you can just complain and do nothing? besides, leftists rn would tear any change apart to shreds cuz they expect everything to be fixed immediately. i've seen so many leftists get upset seeing progress of anything rn because because g-g-genocide!

leftists: you evil white gays celebrate improved gay rights in a red state ur so evil ugh a genocide is happening and ur happy? you need to blow yourself up to prove your loyalty to palestine and to understand what they're going through!

lastly everything chappell and ethel cain does for palestine is so forced and fake lol. it's all to make them feel better about being white and privileged. ethel cain makes jokes about killing the president girl! 🤔 youre enjoying your nice white life in a comfortable position in the music industry...you'd never give that up and stand on business cause ur all words no action..

ethel made a song for palestine and it was good but since she graduated with honors from the school of internet activism i cannot take it seriously. everything she does screams "sorry for being white :("

and then hunter from euphoria got praised for getting arrested at a JVP PROTEST (LMAO). like that rich white girl getting arrested and then nothing happened to her is not revolutionary it's actually giving kendall pepsi ad ! i will say it's more than ethel and chappell put together but still pathetically whitee.

lastly hayley from paramore ethel hunter chappell none of them actually support palestine. they try so hard to be leftist and activists which is ironic because they are capitalizing on palestine to look good, to overcompensate for their whiteness and privilege and because of guilt. their "support for palestine" are just large pr stunts that bring them more fans and more money. look at ethel. she LOVES florence (i believe they are good friends) and florence is besties with taylor swift and endorsed kamala. all bark no bitee :)

i HATE all of the performative leftist celebs you mentioned (except hayley from paramore) so fucking much. it’s obvious that their priorities are getting rid of their white guilt, being edgy, and winning clout points with the online left. they do not give an actual shit about palestine. the funny thing is that if taylor’s endorsement really does help keep trump out of the white house she will have done more for palestine than all those losers combined. sorry!

and yeah its funny that ethel, and almost every pop girlie, is at most like 2 or 3 degrees away from someone who is friends with taylor or idolizes taylor. sorry haters it really is that way. she’s your favorite artist’s ACTUAL favorite artist

[yooniesim]

this as a prime example of what is wrong with simblr (and tumblr in general). this ask was sent to me within like less than a day of that post about cf going up, while I was away for the weekend and not at pc for days. I did not even see the post until right before I got this ask. yall are so damn terminally online that you lost the gd plot and cannot comprehend someone not keeping their finger on the dying pulse of the performative activism headquarters of the internet. and you definitely can't comprehend waiting for complete info or maybe just a full day before starting some reactionary bs. just peeking in here since yesterday i see that simblr is yet again so hyped up on smelling its own farts that it's turned an issue of genocide into yet another dick measuring contest of who can reblog more posts than one another the fastest so they can look more empathetic and better than anyone else. and call themselves "real activists" for being able to click the reblog button. not to mention the usual spamming anons to random people minding their own business. yall are weird as fuck and need to get a firm grip on some grass. stop making the horrific suffering of others about yourselves for once.

that being said, let me get serious for the people on here that are actually normal. for those that don't know by now, this anon seems to be referencing this post about cf, which talks about overwolf (the company that owns curseforge) donating to the IDF. But I also found this tweet by OOP made after that post that explains they have since received DMs from Overwolf stating that they have shifted their relief efforts to aiding victims that have lost their homes from the Hamas terrorist attacks exclusively and do not fund the IDF. this is a much better cause as the victims of terrorism definitely deserve to be helped, and it makes sense they would do this as an Israeli company. The DMs also clarify that it is donation based and nothing uploaded to cf (cc/mods) contributes to this effort whatsoever. As well as Overwolf/Curseforge revenue in general. So simply using curseforge does not mean that you fund or endorse genocide. OOP calls their new efforts commendable in that tweet but I am still looking into and keeping an eye on this matter since, as we know, more information could come out later that contradicts this. And since I have been away im still catching up on everything that has been posted relating to cf.

here are the pics for those that may not have Twitter. do I still support a boycott for those that want to? oh, absolutely. I know that many will still want to boycott regardless, and I'll be working to add alt links to my cc uploads as soon as possible (the ones that don't already have them) for those that don't want to use it. However, everyone I've seen wanting to boycott seems to want to do it because a) they believe overwolf is funding the IDF (apparently is not true) b) they believe having their uploads on cf or downloading from there will fund the IDF (apparently is not true) or c) overwolf itself is an Israeli company (is definitely true). therefore based on the new info we now have some may decide not to boycott after all or will still do so, it is a personal decision. will I be deleting my account there? for now, no.

to be completely honest, I'm in a really bad place financially right now, and while it isn't much, the little bit I get from cf downloads has been exclusively going towards my meds and dr appointment bills. I don't have the option right now to turn down the small amount of added income when I am currently living day to day, especially with the updated knowledge that simply having cc uploaded there does not contribute to their donation efforts in any way. I do not paywall my cc and never will and I do not ask for donations myself, so my options are somewhat limited. although I do not make cc with the aim of getting paid, I ultimately wouldn't be able to justify the sheer amount of time I spend on it if it wasn't helping me with my medical bills currently, as I am already caregiving with the majority of my time. I'm not reliant on cc making or cf to live, and I never want that to be the case god forbid, but in full transparency it is helping me with my healthcare expenses atm and I cannot afford to neglect my health anymore than I have. especially since, as established earlier, using cf does not contribute to the IDF in the first place. so I personally do not judge anyone that continues to use cf for this reason.

also, for the record so there is no confusion on my personal views, I fully support the freedom of Palestine and condemn genocide first and foremost, as well as terrorism and antisemitism. The current situation in Gaza is abhorrent and I encourage all my followers to not only reblog posts, but educate yourselves on the situation and bring it irl as you are able. Speak with the people you love as well as those you are acquainted with and bring this to this to their attention (if you feel safe to). Attend protests if you can. If you cannot, make the calls and emails to your representatives, sign petitions, and donate as you are able. I have been seeing that even spreading Palestinian culture among your loved ones and peers is helpful. So even if you are in a bad place mentally, that may be an option to spread the positive message of the Palestinian people in your everyday life. I'll be reblogging the posts I already did earlier and some new ones too so you can find those updated links. I will be tagging it with palestine so that it can be found easily on my page.

In addition, be kind. To others and yourself. Try to see the full damn picture instead of a snapshot. What someone posts on tumblr of all places does not reflect an entire person's being, or their efforts, or their heart. Yelling your head off on this dying website does not equal activism, and running your mental health into the ground taking on the weight of the world doesn't give you any more control over the issues we face- I learned that the hard fucking way, believe me. By all means share as much as you like, every bit helps (especially if you have a lot of followers), but keep in mind that it certainly doesn't make you better than anyone else. I know it's extremely difficult to feel helpless and you want to feel like you're doing something, but just make sure you're doing the right things for the right reasons. Please do not fucking attack random people for not responding within one business day of the latest info coming out. And take time away from all this shit to breathe. You can't help anyone if you're fucked up yourself. especially for those of us that already face discrimination and bigotry every day irl, I know it is exhausting. Remember to also care for yourselves through all this.

[ceasarslegion]

Im gonna say something that a lot of online "activists" arent gonna wanna hear or face the reality of, but your little twitblr calls for "boycotts" from top shelf popularity products and media arent doing shit about anything, and in many cases are harming the movement youre claiming to care about.

I put "boycott" in quotes because it's never really a boycott, it's just a plead. Real, actual boycotts imply some level of mass organization, campaigning, advertising, and for the everyday person to be aware of and to want to follow through on. Screaming at random tumblr users for still having netflix accounts is not a fucking boycott. Screaming at the internet void that theyre pieces of shit for pre-ordering pokemon games because of how the devs are treated is not a fucking boycott.

And here's the other part youre not gonna wanna hear but you need to: boycotts, more often than not, don't work even when you can orchestrate an actual boycott. Theyre highly dependent on the context of your fight and that's why you need to LISTEN to the people who are in the real front lines of a demonstration before you just decide for them what they need from their supporters. That's why the WGA didnt tell you to cancel your streaming services or stop going to the movies: boycotting all hollywood work would have HARMED them because they needed tangible proof that the studios need them, which they couldn't do if you suddenly cut off the demand.

And you have to acknowledge that there is a point of wealth and popularity where boycotting does absolutely fuckall in any possible scenario. I'm gonna be honest here and say that I don't think JKR, someone who's BEEN richer than god and wrote the most popular childrens books of the 21st century (which is a FACT that you HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE if you want to do anything effective against her. Sorry!) is feeling any loss to her coffers from any sized group of peoples decision to buy or not buy harry potter merch. I know she makes snippy comments on twitter about it, but you guys have got to learn to recognize a troll when you see one and stop fucking feeding it and taking her at her own word.

Just... you GOTTA stop focusing on the symptoms and start acknowledging that the disease exists at all even when it's hard and you don't want to and the things that work are not as much of a glamorous spectacle as it is to just scream at people for the unforgivable crime of purchasing one of the most popular games ever published. Wow im sure that one copy was really felt by the pokemon company and not immediately picked up by the next person who walked into gamestop on release day. Be realistic here.

[capoteera]

So I see this morning that some people are using my words to look cleaver and act like it’s a gotcha. And are confused as to what I was talking about when I said that maybe she was sad because she moved here and her whole family wasn’t here and things like that. Yes she was living with him in 2022. They were dating, but when you’re dating someone and going back-and-forth to the country in which you lived your whole life a lot more than you probably are now because your life is fully here now and you get married you realize well I’m permanently here. This is where I live Massachusetts and everyone I’ve ever known, everyone I’ve ever met lives in Lisbon. I can’t just go to my mom’s house for four hours to talk about random bullshit because she doesn’t live right near me anymore. I can’t just call up my best friends and be like hey you wanna go for lunch because I’d have to fly over there. every one of the people around her now are his friends she doesn’t really have her own people because they are all in Portugal. That’s what I was saying, that maybe because I guess I have empathy and I’m not a hurtful, heartless bitch like the rest of you fucking crazy people in this fandom who are just concerned with I was one dog park meet cute away and you can keep saying that that’s not the problem but that is 100% the problem. And the more you say it’s not the more I think the lady doth protest too much. I don’t know that that’s how she was feeling because I don’t know her and I don’t pretend to know her. I was just spitballing a reason that would make me feel like that and that maybe that was what she was feeling too. Maybe it was any number of things maybe it was because you hateful bitches keep going on the Internet and calling her great grandparents Nazis and calling her best friends Nazis and telling her that she’s this that the other thing and maybe it’s because you’re telling her that she’s a camgirl and she slept with her bosses to get a job or because, she’s a yacht girl or a hooker and selling her feet pics on Facebook like that could be why. I know that would make me sad, some lonely losers on the Internet condemning me without knowing me and saying all this hateful shit that all the people in my life could read. You know people like his mother and his family and her family,marrying into and going to permanently live here and having to do holidays without your family and they’re gonna think all these things about me that I’m on a porn website and I’m sleeping with old men in Portugal while selling my feet pics on the Internet, that would make me a little sad that would put me in a depression. But I guess when all you’re concerned with is being a fake activist crying about how you hate her because she’s racist (never proven) antisemitic (never proven) and you don’t even know her, nor did those words come out of her own mouth, but you still blame her and judge her for those things and call her all kinds of names and make fun of the way she looks could be part of the problem. But then get mad when people call you crazy( you are) once upon a time I was one of you hateful bitches and I’m sorry for that. It was so wrong and uncalled for and I wish I could take it back, but I can’t what’s done is done and I know that it’s wrong and I won’t be doing it again. Unlike all of you. And newsflash just because someone is sad in general about some thing that’s going on, doesn’t mean they’re sad in their marriage or their relationship. Those things can be separate entities but I don’t expect you guys to understand that because you’ve probably never had to separate the two because that’s why you’re sad, you don’t have a relationship and that’s where in lies the problem.

[christina-hartley]

Blog Post #9

What are some limitations of social media?

One major limitation of social media is the algorithms. Algorithms affect what we see and how we see it. This can be both positive and negative. Another limitation is misinformation or fake news. Misinformation is something that has become more prominent in society today, as we now have AI that can pretty much make up any kind of information we’d like and ask it to. As we know, when information is put out, fake or not, it never goes away, even if it was buried down, it can still come back years later. So, once misinformation and fake news gets wide spread, it is hard to get rid of it for a while. The final limitation is the lack of emotional connection. Many people prefer to have conversations over text or call because it is easier than being face-to-face but with this, we lose the personal connection between people. This also means that we may not know if we are talking to who we think we are talking to.

How do these limitations of social media affect internet activism?

In the article written by Vegh, it mentions that there are three main categories of internet activism: action/reaction, awareness/advocacy, and organization/mobilization. The first limitation, algorithms, affects activism on the internet because we may not see every part of a specific story because it doesn’t align with our algorithm. This goes hand in hand with the next limitation, misinformation/fake news because our algorithms may put out the wrong information to an important event or issue which can cause us to believe the wrong things. Fake news/misinformation affects internet activism because when we start to receive information that is flawed, we may start to believe it to be true and go against what the activist is truly going for. Internet activism is also affected by the lack of emotional connection that social media provides. When there is a lack of connection between people, we are at risk of losing the true meaning of any activism movement and what they fight for which can cause us to brush them off.

If we didn’t have to worry about limitations, would activism be a bigger topic?

I think that if we didn’t have to worry about such limitations, we would have more freedom of how we share information and what we share. We’d be able to expand our beliefs and hear what others have to say without any push back.

How does activism differ between social media platforms?

Activism on instagram and vastly different than activism on tik tok. On tik tok, it is easier to reach a large amount of people (with help of the algorithm) and personally, I think people are more likely to sit through a sixty second video about an issue than they are to read a caption that takes about a minute to read on instagram. Instagram is also more follower based which limits how much activism information we receive unless it is passed through your followers or you are scrolling t=on your explore page.

Vegh, Sandor. Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice

[olderthannetfic]

Re, this anon: https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/719669829313953792

Yeah, well... that's the point of a bunch of internet activists: they throw the stone and hide the hand, screeching that, if you're doubting their innocence, you're an imperialist racist who should never be allowed on the internet.

Stitch, the person they're picking up a lot of their schlock from, is a master in this: they attack people, and the moment those who got attacked ask what they've done that's wrong or ask to have a one-on-one conversation with them, they shut everything down, screenshot whatever they received, block the person, and then go on Twitter whining about being a victim of racism because their words weren't listened to like the Gospel. Over and over again.

After the TOG racefaker scandal broke, I went through her blog and, just as I had expected, she too followed the same modus operandi: attack, screenshot, block, cry about being a victim of racism because people didn't let her insult them and demanded explanations about her ranting, wannabe-academic, posts.

They're not the only ones who do/did this, but these are the two examples of constant "harassment is good if I do it, but I'm the only victim and the others deserved it" cycle that come to my mind as of now.

When you're looking at End OTW Racism, you have to expect the same thing. They don't have answers, they don't want to have answers. This whole movement (horribly organized, horribly promoted, horribly everything) is nothing but a huge stroke of ego for its organizers.

You know how antis accuse others of being racist or pedophiles or whatever else because, that way, the accused cannot defend themselves? This is the same thing: if the OTW doesn't address their manifesto, then they're racist because they refuse to acknowledge it; if the OTW does address their manifesto, then they're admitting that they didn't care about racism until the moment they were called out on it and their concern regarding racism within the OTW is manufactured.

It's a win-win situation for them because, no matter how much you try, if you don't fully and absolutely agree with them, you can be branded as racist.

If you scroll through the End OTW Racism tag on Twitter, you'll see plenty of people (and especially the organizers), tweet stuff in the same vein as "I went to olderthannet's Tumblr and oof," not so subtly accusing all the people who raised valid concerns and asked valid questions of being racist.

I'm also not the first person who mentions this, but Stitch does seem to be heavily involved with the project, and even if they weren't, their words have been used to build the manifesto, and they amplified this crap through one of their Teen Vogue articles.

Now... not only Stitch is known for acting in bad faith, attacking creators of colors, branding them as Uncle Toms, purposefully making fun of them if they don't agree with them and sending their followers to attack and harass, but, just in April, they were being dragged because of another article they wrote, in which they compared writing fics about bad fictional characters to worshiping serial killers. Weeks before that, they were being dragged because their fanbase of antis discovered that their fics included incest, something that goes greatly against their preachings.

How big of a coincidence is it, that Stitch needed to have their image cleaned of all sins and suddenly a group of people drops a manifesto and hashtag about racism in fandom, founding a movement Stitch fully and absolutely agrees with and can rave about for days on end? A movement that offers very vague answers and plans, and those creators attack anyone who doesn't immediately agree with them, to the point that no questions can be ever asked about it?

Unless I'm shown actual evidence that Stitch isn't involved with this, nothing will convince me that End OTW Racism was launched for any reason that isn't to rehabilitate Stitch in the eyes of their chronically online audience.

--

[cookinguptales]

I will say, though, that sometimes you try to talk yourself out of your feelings for a long time and then you talk to someone outside of the situation and they're like "what the fuck" and you're like OH okay I have a right to feel weird and bad and stressed out.

I guess it's easy to feel stupid because you actually are affected when people are actively trying to affect you, especially when it's something like writing on the internet, which is just... always going to get harassment. Like when I say I've gotten messages about how people like me should be euthanized in the past over tumblr posts. :')

So you're like "oh, random shitty people is just something that everyone deals with, I should shut up and stop being a baby about it" and then you actually show the messages you're getting to someone and they're like ???? what????

Like I shared my inbox with my hairstylist when we were chatting a few days ago, and he was like ???? This man is not in fandom, so when he saw the kind of shit I was getting over not liking a finale of a tv show, he was shocked. Which... was kind of gratifying. It made me feel less crazy. lmao

Kind of reminds me of when I wrote this really personal essay about disability a few years ago and it won a contest. The people running the contest gave me uhhh quite a bit of money and asked me to keep writing for their site for more money. Like when I tell you I was literally on IRL conference calls with these people asking me why I stopped writing for them.

And I was finally like "...well, there's this feature on your site where you can tag other users in your essays, and after I won people kept writing their own essays about how much I didn't deserve to win, about how "lucky" I was to have a sob story that was attractive to the judges, about how whiny I was, people questioning my disability, etc. And since they tagged me, this was filling my email inbox and it really stressed me out. But if you look at the actual comments on the story, you don't see any of that. So it was kind of invisible harassment."

And the rep was horrified. She had never even considered that someone might use the feature like that. She was like WE'LL INVESTIGATE THIS and I was like. sure, okay. But getting that taste of the spotlight was already enough to make me peace out for good, tbh. Even though I knew that a lot of it was just sour grapes because they wanted to win themselves, and I knew that a lot of what they were saying wasn't valid, the sheer force of the animosity against me was overwhelming.

Like... it's not a crime to have your feelings hurt when someone is actively trying to hurt your feelings. It's natural, I guess, even if you feel kind of stupid about it.

I guess it's kind of wild to me that we just take it for granted that anyone who speaks up is gonna get yelled at online. Any prominent writer or activist you see is probably getting daily cruelty, if not outright death threats. And you just -- you have to have such a certain temperament to deal with all that. And I don't have it. I get easily overwhelmed and stressed when people are mad at me and I know it's not ideal but it is who I am. I joke about it, but I really kind of do feel like a small nervous dog sometimes.

And I wonder, sometimes, how many great voices we never hear from because of this expectation of harassment. Someone says something, gets some shitty trolly comment, then goes back in their hole and never talks again. Or they see the way other people get treated and they never speak up in the first place.

idk, I don't mean to be a martyr about this and I'm sure other people are getting the kinds of messages I am but like. God, it is so weird and disheartening to realize that a few people have been sending you nasty messages for literally months when you block an anon from your inbox and you see what else disappears. There are people who are so mad at me that they've sent me angry messages for months. Because I don't have the same opinions they do about a tv show.

It kind of makes you want to never talk about anything ever again. :(

[storm-of-feathers]

cant sleep gonna say my thoughts.

I think what a lot of people miss about tumblr (and especially unfocused blogs that, say, aren't fandom oriented) is that it's essentially an open journal. it's a microblogging website, and all blogging micro or macro is fundamentally a web log (where the term comes from!). if it seems like I'm not talking ab something enough, it's not because I don't care at all.

It's because first and foremost, this blog is a piece of my soul that I am choosing to share. I'm not trying to be an activist on the internet, I'm not trying to sway anyone to my opinions. I'm saying the things I think and feel. If I talk ab american politics too much, that's because im american. if I'm writing frustrated posts about performative internet activism, that's because it feels exhausting to be out there doing the work (because that's what it is. Its work. Its boring and taxing and it feels like youre getting nowhere. Until you see how far youve come) and having to come to tumblr and seeing people say I didn't talk about [disaster 30000 of the past ten years] enough.

if I seem angry and upset and scared and irrational, its because i am those things. you have to understand. in spite of my rather large follower number, this blog is, first and foremost, for me. I am writing things down and allowing strangers and friends and wanderers to read it. I won't call it a privilege that can be taken away, bc its not like some of my thoughts are exactly a treat, but it is something to keep in mind.

if you ask me why I'm talking about the supreme courts recent decisions but not similar decisions in other countries, the answer comes down to "one of those directly affects me, and therefore i can fight back."

but I shouldn't have to announce where and how I'm fighting back. if for no other reason, my own fucking safety. but also bc this blog isn't any sort of guide to activism, it's not any type instruction. it is, at best, my diary that I published.

and that isn't a bad thing!! and it shouldn't be!!! that's why I harped so hard on the carrd post. that's why I'm vaguely annoyed with my reddit posts. that's why I shared my marital status and sexuality for a long time. that's why i have a rwby icon. that's why my blog title which hasn't changed since 2018 is what it is.

I understand that sometimes I have opinions people don't like. oceangate in particular has proven to be a fantastic example of that. But i am, at the most basic terminology, venting my thoughts and feelings.

that's why I'm talking ab the supreme court and their awful decisions. why I may not be talking about issues that don't directly affect me, but might affect some of you. it's not because i don't care. It's never because I don't care.

It's because my target audience is a mirror.

[deramin2]

I've started actively blocking people who are like, "Either you care about every problem in the world so much that it destroys your ability to cope with or you're a fake ally and complicit!"

It breeds scrupulosity OCD, as in explicitly seeks to induce a debilitating mental illness in people to perform purity on social media. It's also totally ineffective from an activism stand point. It spreads you so thin that all you can do is share social media posts you haven't fact checked. No one actually has time and bandwidth to care about everything. Our brains were never built to hold so many relentless horrors. We burn out and can't handle any of it at all because we do actually have limited energy.

If you want to be effective instead of performative, you have to pick one or two things to really care about and put your energy into really understanding what's going on and what steps we can take to make that better. Sometimes those are incremental inadequate steps because that's what you can persuade people to spend resources on right then. But those changes can matter a lot to people on the ground even though it doesn't fix everything. And then you fight for the next step. And slowly you change things. Sometimes you win big. (And then spend a lot of energy convincing people that isn't a discrete happy ending and you have to keep fighting for more.)

I highly encourage people to pick issues that aren't getting a lot of attention and need hands the most. You can also think about how a fight you're not focusing on is intersectional with what you are doing and how to support other groups through your work. Like if you're working on supporting your local queer community but are concerned about the Sudanese genocide, you might see how your resources or networking or grant writing skills can support Sudanese immigrants coming into town. Or work to support organizations like Doctors Without Borders that has over mission but supports many places through it.

Which is not to say you ignore everything else in the world and go into a bubble. But you have to forgive yourself for being human and having human capacity. You CAN'T know everything. You CAN'T absorb every horror of the world. You have limited time to actually work on things. Being a witness can be useful, but if all you have time for is watching the horrors helplessly then you aren't actually helping. Absorbing less but doing more is way more effective.

There's certainly something to be said about who actually gets attention and help and how that plays into biases and people only helping themselves or their in group. But destroying your ability to cope with the world to the point of constant guilt spiralling is not an effective solution to that problem. If you want absolution, care more about less.

So I'm done with internet armchair activists who think guilt tripping will change the world. They're not just useless, they're actively harmful. Don't follow people just because you think you deserve to be yelled at constantly to absolver your sins and keep you on the straight and narrow. Figure out how you can make a real impact in people's lives.

[synthient]

Knock at the Cabin and reproductive futurism

As I was processing the ending of Knock at the Cabin the other day, an anon suggested looking into Lee Edelman's work on reproductive futurism. I'd heard the term before, but I'd never actually read the original source.

I'm about to summarize Edelman's essay "The Future Is Kid Stuff," which you can read in full here. (If you want to pick around the Lacanian word salad, you can pretty much skip pages 6-10 and 23-26. If you're a Lacanian word salad enjoyer, go forth and prosper)

In a nutshell:

Reproductive futurism is the idea that having children, and being able to imagine a future through them, is the one thing that gives life meaning.

Reproductive futurism offers an illusion of immortality: after you die, you'll live on in your descendants forever.

It's also a justification for never changing our society too radically. We have to keep the world more or less as it is, so we can hold it "in trust" for the symbolic, innocent child.

The rights of real, living people in the present are denied for the sake of that symbolic future child--even though that future child will never "actually" be able to claim the protections we're supposedly saving for them. Once they're born/grow up, they'll just face the same oppression in the name of the next generation of hypothetical children.

Queer people, along with feminists and abortion activists, challenge the concept of reproductive futurism. That means they force people to face their own mortality, and they threaten the underpinnings of society as it exists. Culturally, queer people represent death and the end of the world.

When we advocate for civil rights, the obvious impulse is to deny that idea. Of course we're not a threat to The Child or The Future! Gay people can be parents too! We can assimilate into society without fundamentally changing it!

Edelman argues that this impulse is a mistake. We do pose a challenge to the social order and the illusions that keep it running, and we should lean into that. We are the end of the world.

At one point, Edelman discusses a scene from the movie Philadelphia. After the main character dies of AIDS, we see his wake, which is attended by children and pregnant women. As we watch a video of the main character as a child:

...the tears that these moving pictures solicit burn with an indignation directed not only against the intolerant world that sought to crush the honorable man this boy would later become, but also against the homosexual world in which boys like this eventually grow up to have crushes on other men. For the cult of the Child permits no shrines to the queerness of boys and girls, since queerness, for contemporary culture at large as for Philadelphia in particular, is understood as bringing children and childhood to an end. Thus, the occasion of a gay man's death gives the film an excuse to unleash once more the disciplinary image of the "innocent" Child performing its mandatory cultural labor of social reproduction. We encounter this image on every side as the lives, the speech, and the freedoms of adults face constant threat of legal curtailment out of deference to imaginary Children whose futures, as if they were permitted to have them except as they consist in the prospect of passing them on to Children of their own, are construed as endangered by the social disease as which queer sexualities register.

...the Child who might witness lewd or inappropriately intimate behavior; the Child who might find information about dangerous "lifestyles" on the Internet; the Child who might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library...On every side, our enjoyment of liberty is eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of a Child whose freedom to develop undisturbed by encounters, or even by the threat of potential encounters, with an "otherness" of which its parents, its church, or the state do not approve, uncompromised by any potential access to what is painted as alien desire, terroristically holds us all in check and determines that political discourse conform to the logic of a narrative wherein history unfolds as the future envisioned for a child who must never grow up.

...And so, as the radical right maintains, the battle against queers is a life-and-death struggle for the future of a Child whose ruin is pursued by feminists, queers, and those who support the legal availability of abortion.

I'm of a couple minds about how to apply these concepts to Knock at the Cabin. On one hand, maybe you could read the movie as fully aware of all these complexities around queerness, the child, and the apocalypse. Maybe it's Encouraging Us To Meditate On Them. Maybe we're supposed to walk out of the theater with a nagging feeling that the sacrifice wasn't worth it--that if gayness represents The End Of The World As We Know It, then the world as we know it could stand to end.

But if I'm being honest? I think there's less support for that reading in the actual text, than there is in my desire for it to be true. I don't want to believe the alternative: not coming from a clearly sympathetic filmmaker, in 2023, in the middle of a queerphobic backlash.

Still, I think it takes more mental contortion to understand Knock at the Cabin as some kind of 4D chess critique of reproductive futurism, than it does to recognize the more obvious read: the sacrifice is supposed to seem tragic, but correct. "Any" parent should be willing to do that for their child, and by proving that they're just like any parent, the gays are validated.

And--probably inadvertently--so is queer suicide. So is the worldview where queerness is inherently in conflict with, and a necessary sacrifice for, The Child and The Future.

[verecunda]

Hi, it's been a long time since we "talked" and I would have liked it to have been done under different circumstances but life has taken a different path: I saw that you reblogged certain posts that I considered as zionist propaganda and genocide/war crimes apology, notably the anti Hamas article.

I assume that you agree with the posts you have reblogged at least partially and that you are well informed, in which case, there is no way for us to remain mutuals because the condemnation of armed resistance carried out by oppressed peoples who will most likely never get justice for the genocide of which they are victims, and which have killed and mutilated 25,000 defenseless civilians mostly children, women and disabled people is for me a red line, without exception.

Let's just stay polite in memory of the good discussion we had about Tolkien, which I encourage you to reread again especially the moral he tried to convey about wars and the desire for domination and what they do to people. Try to rethink the lives of Palestinians from their point of view using their testimonies and some history books, there is a lot to learn from this massacre (how and why it started).

If I'm wrong, please let me know: I'm sorry.

If this is not the case, we must not regret it, it is better to be clear about our commitment and our limits. Let's just unfollow and block each other to keep peace between us.

Hi. I appreciate your remaining civil.

I assume you're referring principally to this post, which is an article written by a Gazan and pro-Palestine activist. I just can't see that as zionist propaganda in any way, shape or form. One person can't represent their whole people, but if they have criticisms of Hamas, I believe that's a point of view worth listening to.

I don't believe I've been repeating any zionist propaganda here on my blog. I've certainly reblogged things pointing out that Jews and Judaism as a whole shouldn't be conflated with the atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli state, nor should we let Israel and the western powers that support it perpetuate a narrative that to condemn these same atrocities is inherently antisemitic.

I'll be the first to admit that though I am wholeheartedly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, I'm not as fully informed as I'd like to be. I try to keep up, but the internet is such a mire of misinformation, I try to tread carefully. But this I will say: as a student of history, I'm well aware that violent colonialism leads to violent resistance. But while that's perhaps inevitable, I don't think groups like Hamas warrant hero-worship, any more than the IOF do. I don't think I'm entirely ignorant and naïve in this case, either: I come from a Catholic family with links to Northern Ireland, and I can see very clear and obvious parallels with the Troubles. You can understand how something came to be, without applauding it.

I'd be sorry to lose contact, because I have enjoyed our fandom talks in the past, but fandom should never come at the expense of real life, and if you would prefer to part company, that's fair enough. I won't block you, simply because that's not something I do very often, but if you prefer to block me, I understand. Do what's best for you.

[boreal-sea]

Gentile here with a good faith question. But also, please feel free to dismiss. Take care of yourself first. Sorry for the coming wall of text.

I’m shooting this your directly because I find your blog thoughtful and informative, and I infer you might have some pertinent knowledge based on your posts.

I see a lot of my (also gentile friends) engaging in activism that concerns me. I understand the desire to do something — anything — to help those who are suffering in Palestine, but their rhetoric is antisemitic, almost cult-like, and as several Jewish tumblrs have pointed out: is that activism actually doing anything to help Palestine, or is it just hurting Jews?

And, I’m not immune. Yes, there are avowed and self-aware antisemites and that’s not me, but I feel like a lot of us are getting swept up into it without realizing it. A wave of a wand, call it anti-Zionism instead, use rhetoric that resonates with leftists. Like, I’m very worried that some of that thinking has infected my own world view, even as I try to unpack and dismantle my own antisemitism.

Which is to say, I don’t know how to trust my own gut right now.

I want to DO something that helps those who are suffering, and doesn’t harm Jews. Ideally I’d like to find good aid organizations to donate too, I’m really not sure what else I CAN do.

But which organizations, that’s the rub.

Take Medical Aid for Palestinians, which I was looking into because I stumbled across a itch.ion bundle supporting them.

On a google search, most of the hits seem to indicate they’re legit. A notable exception was the NGO monitor, but as I looked into that site, according to some sources NGO monitor is a right-biased Israeli organization with links to the current Israeli government. Since they’re the only source I’ve found so far decrying MAP… does that mean I can disregard their complaints and safely donate to MAP? Or, is my reluctance to trust NGO Monitor unfounded, and routed in my own ingrained antisemitism?

And to make matters worse, hey this is all just text on the internet, fake sites can look very official, and ever robots are writing half of this shit now so what’s a queer to do?

So, how do I sift through the legitimate organizations that are providing aid and/or working towards peace, from the ones that are just fronts for terrorists?

More than just a list of ones you already trust. I mean, I won’t turn that down, but I want to learn how to figure this for myself to so that when I encounter things like this bundle, I know whether it’s safe to donate or not.

Thanks for reading this. If you’ve got some wisdom to share I appreciate it. If not, or if you don’t have the energy to spare, again, please take care of yourself first.

So I always preface these asks with the fact that I am only a convert-in-process, so I am still learning and I don't know everything. There are some things I will never know, not being a Jew from birth, not being Israeli, etc.

To your first question: does the antisemitic rhetoric employed by some pro-Palestinian activists help Palestinians? No, it does not. Being bigoted towards one marginalized group cannot benefit a different marginalized group. All it does is add more hatred to the world. The only thing antisemitic "pro-Palestine" rhetoric does is hurt Jews. Hurting Jews does not benefit Palestinians.

As for MAP... my advice is first to look at what NGO is saying is untrustworthy about MAP, and compare that to what the other sites say about it. Then you need to consider NGO's motivations and political leanings, which you've already started doing. Think about what reasons could they have for discrediting MAP. Do they have any Palestinian aid organizations they do support? What do the other sites you used have to say about those other organizations? If you're still not sure, it's generally good advice to go with what the majority of the charity ratings sites say. If NGO disagrees, and you've found reasons it might have its own biases, then you treat it like an outlier and depend on the consensus of the other sources.

There are right-wing organizations and people in Israel who hate Palestinians. There are organizations in Israel that are biased. There are Arab organizations that are biased. Country of origin means nothing. If multiple other sites are calling a particular org out, there's probably a reason. You will unfortunately have to put in the effort to double-check everything.

For searching news sources specifically, the MediaBias/FactCheck website is highly regarded.

Note that no source you use is ever going to be free of criticism; even MB/FC has detractors. Reliable sources can sometimes make mistakes. No one is perfect.

Media literacy is a huge problem right now and you're not the only person struggling with it. My best advice is to do exactly what you've done: read multiple sources, compare that information, and then make your decision. It is not your fault this stuff is difficult to navigate.

[reborrowing]

I don't usually write gt pet stuff because it's such a pain to get something compelling and believable that still has room for characters and plot, but there is a worldbuilding variant of it I keep kinda idly chewing on.

obvious content warning for pet trope discussion under cut

Basically "pets" were sold at some point in the recent past, marketed as somewhere between a toy and a pet and branded as an ingenious, but artificial, development. There's some initial backlash but overall, tinies are branded as especially convincing mimics by a family-oriented company that has an upstanding reputation. The “pets” catch on as a fad and a good chunk of the population has or wants one.

Over a couple of decades, it gets fairly normalized until it eventually comes out that no, the backlash was entirely warranted, these are absolutely, unquestioningly people, not clever simulacra. They were shrunk down by whatever HandwaveTech and sold off after conditioning. Public outcry continues to build, the involved companies are investigated and ultimately shut down. It takes longer to set up any real protections or entirely outlaw the process.

But more than that, there's no real way to find and reach out to victims on a large scale. A good number of them were initially sold as toys, there's no paper trails, and there’s no definite estimate as to how many are out there. Awareness campaigns and advocacy organizations crop up to help ex-pets escape or to provide shelter, but (especially before everyone had multiple phones/computers perpetually hooked up to the internet) it isn’t too difficult to keep a tiny in the dark about what happens beyond your property line. Once the issue has had its five minutes of fame, aid programs quietly fizzle. Anyone involved essentially gets to deal with it on their own.

So you end up with the usual g/t problems from being out of scale and unequal and can grab at the trauma and uncertain personhood from pet trope but it’s not quite as straightforward as victimized pet-race, oppressive giants, and protagonist-coded rebels. You can get younger tinies who've lived their whole lives free and tinies who have seen the horrors of what people will do to someone who can't fight back and tinies who've "gotten over it" and are good taxpaying citizens who absolutely refuse to talk about it and tinies that still believe their best bet is to find a caring not-owner-because-that's-illegal-now, who've only ever experienced kind dehumanization and can't fathom surviving any other way.

You can skip over good-aligned humans reasonably encountering tinies for the first time and going “oh my godddddd it never occurred to me that the tiny people-looking things might be tiny people, it’s time to do a 180 and become a white knight about this.” To an outsider, the problem’s already been outlawed and solved and they shouldn’t have to think about this tragic thing that happened, past tense. You can have mixed-size groups of activists without humans in the group Rejecting Societal Norms and getting stuck with samey character traits. There’s still space for characters who are ambivalent or fine with the idea of pets without coming across as off-the-wall evil because 20 years ago it was normalized and they never questioned it. In-universe, it would be more like an old guy being unapologetically sexist: unacceptable, but not entirely unexpected.

idk just like. Reflects some gray areas a little better than "collective humanity saw little guys and put them in cages and no one thought that was fucking weird until you, random nice guy protagonist" which is something I feel like I see a lot of.