waywardskychaser

[waywardskychaser]

Faves ♥️

I like seeing their silhouettes

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People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter

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If this isn't overstepping, do you have any advice for not falling into defeatism? You seem good at having hope.

yeah of course let's go

1. Starting off with this one because it’s the most important: you HAVE to remember that genuinely, honestly, relatively, ONLY A SMALL PORTION OF HUMAN BEINGS ARE FREQUENTLY ON THE INTERNET. That means any random statistic you see about people frequenting websites and posting about certain things is ONLY taking into account everyone who's online, and not the literal millions of people who are offline or only online for maybe 1-2 hours a day.

An example: I saw a tweet the other day being upset about how doctors don't take women seriously. The OP would go onto reddit and see a subreddit with countless posts from doctors complaining about their female patients. The OP was very upset and using that source to educate people on this genuinely sadly very real problem. I don't want to invalidate OP's distress, especially because it IS a thing that does happen and should be talked about, but for THIS specific case about the subreddit where the doctors would complain about their female patients, you have to consider: do you think that just because there's a subreddit like this, that means that EVERY SINGLE PRACTISING DOCTOR IN THE ENTIRE WORLD belongs to it and is posting in it? Of course not. Normal, nice doctors probably aren’t posting anything about their jobs online at all. But because you aren’t seeing that, all you see are the bad doctors publicly complaining, and suddenly it starts to skew your thoughts towards all doctors being bad.

And the above example is true of any group of people you can think of. Rudeness and prejudice and stupidity exist everywhere and we shouldn’t ignore that. But the majority of people are good. Most people are kind, and well-meaning, and smart, even if they’re ignorant about certain things. You cannot look at people on the internet being cruel and trick yourself into thinking that because lots of people on the internet are cruel, that means the exact same ratio is real offline too and you should be wary of everybody without actually getting to know them. Most people are good. Humanity is inherently good. People who are upset or mean are just more likely to be loud about it—it doesn’t by ANY means make them the majority.

(Another useful way to think about it that’s stuck with me into my adult years: in one of the HTTYD books, the Romans are the bad guys, and Hiccup says, in response to Fishlegs bitterly saying that Romans suck, “There are probably loads of good Romans, it’s just that all the good ones are sitting at home minding their own business.” And that’s true of literally every group of people imaginable.)

2. This is a given, but seriously. Reduce the amount of time spent on websites where you hear a lot about current events and news.

Finding the balance between "staying informed on current events so I know how to combat the bad things" and "looking away for the sake of my own mental health" can be tricky but the gist of it is make sure that whatever you're reading is useful to you. If it's actually giving you inspiration and strength that drives you to action, then wonderful! But if it's just a lot of people saying the same thing over and over again in a loop and you keep worriedly looking because you're desperate to find at least ONE good thing and end your scrolling on a high note...you have to cut yourself off. If you’re caught in an unproductive anger or despair spiral that’s not actually doing anything except making you upset, then you’re wasting your time. You have to stop and go to something else that makes you happy. If anybody tries to guilt you into continuing, that’s their own problem, not yours. Don’t completely shut the bad parts of the world out, but you have limits. Learn to not cross them.

3. A little bit is better than nothing.

You are only one person, and even if you dedicate your whole life to the activism of your choosing, you will only ever make significant strides in that one thing. You cannot solve global warming, racism, and capitalism all on your own. But you can make small changes in your life that are not worthless at all. Every time you refrain from buying a product that ultimately funds something evil, every time you give five dollars to charity, every time you educate a friend on why them using chatgpt is bad, every time you spend 20 minutes on the exercise bike or encourage someone to make a better life choice or leave one kind comment on a worried person’s post, you’re making the world a better place to be in. You didn’t replant an entire forest, but you’re taking care of a single plant, which is better than tons of people who have no plants at all. You can’t afford to donate much to charity, but you still donate a little bit, which is better than people who don’t donate at all. You only work out 15 minutes every week, but that’s better than people who don’t work out at all. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.

Personal anecdote: when I was in my first year of university, I complained frequently that we didn’t have a compost bin in our building, and when I showed up for my second year, WE HAD A NEW COMPOST BIN. It didn’t take much! Just the power of being persistent and annoying!

And, the most important part, which is a mix of all three of the above points:

4. You are not the only person in the world who wants a better future.

There are people ALL OVER THE GLOBE who are doing good things that you don’t see. There are people working to fight plastic usage and pollution and deforestation, to educate others on history and other cultures and forgotten important figures, to entertain and keep people’s spirits up. A man named Tim Wong single-handedly managed to save a butterfly species, because he cared. Another man named Tom Brown has spent his retirement preserving apple varieties, and has managed to save over 1000 of them, because he cared. Fuck, I’m seeing more posts on twitter saying that watching the new Superman movie has made them want to go out of their way to be nicer to people, and that’s just from from watching a movie and being inspired by it. There are people learning to develop ways to clean water & reuse plastic & end world hunger and fight evil politicians for our human rights and create spaces for minorities to feel safe & flourish and teaching other people useful skills and entertaining others to keep their spirits up and hosting charity live streams and maintaining gardens and funding research projects and taking care of the elderly and disabled and rescuing feral cats and making movies with inspiring messages and so many other good things. Nobody is alone, and the majority of people on planet earth want world peace and a happy & healthy planet.

So, to summarize:

1. Only a small portion of human beings are frequently on the internet

2. Dedicating significant time to reading about bad things on the internet with no actual productive goal is a waste of time

3. Doing a little tiny bit of something is better than doing nothing at all

4. The vast overwhelming majority of human beings are good

And some final additions:

Think for yourself and make your own choices, not choices that you are guilted into by self-righteous people online

Keep an open mind and don't be afraid to challenge your own views and change your mind if new perspectives introduce themselves to you

THINK. JUST THINK. USE YOUR BRAIN. QUESTION. DISCERN. ANALYZE. BE KIND TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS.

And most importantly: make a lot of art about it, because it's cathartic AND will inspire people at the same time

thank you for listening

[waywardskychaser]

Also I've said this before but advertising is an industry that should be considered as pointless and harmful as fossil fuels.

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statements like "It's wrong to masturbate about a person without their consent" and "It's wrong to do something that quietly arouses you while you are in public even if no one can see it" show that a person's understanding of morality basically involves magical thinking. like I wrote this post on the toilet. That's not the same thing as me literally shitting on you

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sharks every time theres a cataclysmic extinction event: damn thats crazy. anyway

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writing a book is so stupid. first you gotta cut yourself open and find words in there. then you gotta put those words in an order no other human being has ever put words in. then you gotta decide that the brand new order you put those words in isnt a good order at all actually. then you gotta find new words in there. and then you gotta do that over and over and over again until there's a deadline. and then you stop doing it and you go put words elsewhere. who invented this.

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all public transport should be free unconditionally and I'm TIREDDD of pretending this is a radical idea

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“Why was hiccup wearing lipstick?” Mind your business

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try not to unlearn all your shame in case there's something good stuff in there that you can sexualize

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there is no good way to ask this but does anyone remember a japanese fanartist from around 2012 who drew pictures of anime boys as weird mammalian creatures nursing each other. i definitely remember their hetalia fanart being reposted here at least once

it was just like sort of impassive human heads on cat bodies in a simple art style. its making me feel insane that i cant find it

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*through gritted teeth* the world is GOOD. people are kind. Humans are NOT inheritly selfish. you will make it through this year. recovery is possible. people you don't know yet will love you. You are going to do things you can't even imagine right now. You are going to read a rlly good book. You are going to eat some rlly good food. You are going to experience joy again. Things can get better. Situations can change. You can choose to be kinder. The world can change for the better.

[waywardskychaser]

RANT: THE AO3 AI GENERATED FICS FOR THE TOP 100

Not something I would usually post here on this blog but here we go!

It has been revealed that one of the ships got it onto the top 100 ships on AO3 by someone utilizing ai generated fics to spam the tag.

It's honestly disheartening that people (usually my age) view AO3 as a fucking social media app rather than an archive where hundreds if not thousands of user dedicate their writing to something they genuinely love.

Polluting the website with ai generated fanfics that no one will read nor was written by anyone is truly a new low and for what??? A ship??? Are we DEADASS??? You only care about the fuckass numbers that shouldn't mean THAT much to you, it's honestly pathetic and sad.

Seriously I get you for loving a ship so much but are we really going to dickride the living shit out of a phony ass bot to make u a gazillion amount of fanfics just for some ranking. It's actually frying me omfg what the fuck.

Thanks for reading my rant I suppose, normally I would be a lot vulgar when it comes to my rants but I'm just honestly heartbroken that someone did this

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I think that If merlin ever got the chance to freely explore his magical abilities, it wouldn’t take long before he started hurling random spells at people just to see what happens

Arthur would just have to follow him everywhere and trying to minimise the damage