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I had an Experience today folks

I walk into a coworker’s office to get some flyers printed for an upcoming event. As they are being printed at an agonizingly slow pace, she turns to me and asks “Hey Taylor? Are you friends with any artists?” I respond yes, I know some people, what exactly are you looking for? She begins to tell me a story about how she met a student a few years ago who gave her some drawing samples and said she could illustrate a book. This student has 3 jobs and a full coursework load- definitely not enough time to do commissions. 

“But her artwork is so beautiful!” my coworker laments as she takes out a sketchbook the student gave to her years ago. Now, I do not know what I expected to see. What I do know is that I did not expect to see manga-style furry artwork. Like, the exact style you would have seen on Deviantart back in 2009, complete with pencil smudges? Lovingly scanned using a library printer? And a caption that would read “XD Smexi~~~”? Something vaguely like this:

You get the point. Anyways, I smile and ask what her book is about- attempting to hide the fact that I am frantically trying to figure out at exactly what moment I had left the administrative office of the history department of my high-level research university and crossed over into the Twilight Zone. A Twilight Zone where grandmothers in university administrative positions hand you the ghost of deviantart regrets past. She looks me dead in the eyes and says “Fornification. I am going to teach the young people about fornification.” At this point I’m rapidly losing my grip on reality. But that was okay because she launched into a 45 minute lecture about why she wants to write the book. Her lecture she gives spins a rather confusing web- linking the history of anti-black racism in Europe with Chinese politics in less than a 3 minute span. I am still holding a pencil drawing of a catgirl in my hands. My flyers are still printing.  I am almost dissociating by the time she tells me she is going to make Christianity the framework of her book. That’s it, I think, I’ve lost it. I grip my keychain, a gift from my boss, in my hand as if it is my last possession from a former life. I am vaguely congnizant of the fact that she asserted that there is not a single person on the planet who does not believe in a god- and those who are not Christians are just afraid of accepting the existence of Jesus. I don’t argue, I am too tired. I am a broken woman already. I am still gripping a catgirl and my keychain.  She says she wants to teach the young people about all of this so we can all unlock a better future together (with Jesus). She says she know she will be effective because she can see the gears turning and switches flipping in my head. She’s wrong, I’m actually fairly busy astral projecting into the beach scene painting behind her desk. But she wants the illustrations because she wants the book to be fun for the young people to read.  I tell her she should contact some people in the art department. 

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Theresa Fractale

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Giant Isopod (Bathynomus sp.)

(source)

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jonas brothers on the radio… people watching fruits basket… it’s really 2009 again huh 

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Minuscule

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A capybara running along the bottom of a river  

(source)

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💥hey yall!!!! not to be dramatic but i have outstanding invoices that have been due for 2 months and im like 95% sure im going to get fired in like 45 min SOOOOOOOOOO HERE’S THE COMMISSION ONE-SHEET I PROMISED FOR TODAY!!!💥

⚠️ETSY GOES INTO LIMITED AVAIL AFTER TODAY!⚠️

🛑MORE INFO🛑

thank y’all for any signal-boosting!!!! 🤡💚

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every day

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ah yes they call me “No Queue” Jones because I post everything I reblog at once with no breaks in between and then vanish into the night for extended periods of inactivity

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Don’t Trust Tumblr, Please

So I’ve seen this post floating around a lot, and the pictures in it are immensely powerful. And almost all of them are real. 

Almost.

One picture, though, bothered me—not because it looked fake, but because it looked like the moment before a truly horrific tragedy, and I was troubled by the idea that I was looking at something that perhaps only moments later resulted in death. It was this picture: 

So I did a quick image search

and found that it was all over pinterest and twitter and such, which are… unhelpful sources at the best of times. But I did see the picture posted on Reddit, which is a cesspool but usually is pretty good about sourcing its shit. And: 

Sure enough, when I looked up the trailer, here was that exact moment:

Welp.

But why does this matter? In the dozen or so pictures of that really great post, one of them wasn’t a genuine moment of protest against or confrontation with an oppressive, bigoted authority. That’s not a big deal, right?

Maybe not. But it shows how easy it is to sneak in fake information, misleading information, or just wrong information into posts that are largely accurate. And if you’re scrolling through and think “90% of this is stuff I agree with, the other 10% is probably fine too,” you’re more apt to digest the fake stuff along with the real stuff. 

This is particularly important right now, when we’re on the eve of US elections that will quite literally decide our country’s fate for the next fifty years; we cannot, CANNOT trust the things that are reblogged onto our dashboard, even by our good friends (the person who reblogged this onto my timeline is a friend who is imminently trustworthy, for example). We have to be mindful, we have to check sources, we have to consider what we’re looking at.

And that’s not fun! That’s not what tumblr is here for, for most of us; God knows I’d much rather reblog the 1000th gifset of Schitt’s Creek or some shit. But unfortunately, social media isn’t just a place to have fun anymore; it’s been weaponized, quite literally, by people who want us to believe shitty things and are very, very good at sneaking those shitty beliefs into places where we won’t notice them until they’re part of our own ideology.

This isn’t a command that you have to source every single picture or bit of information you reblog; but it is a request that you stop to think. Humans tend to chase the feeling of validation and confirming their own beliefs, and that’s totally understandable. But don’t mistake validation for the truth.

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Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018) dir. Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, & Rodney Rothman

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wrath

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secret government agent: say it me: *spits blood at agents feet* secret government agent: say the weed number

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i’m really bored with my first name 

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Me: haha ur so tall.... like how tall are you

Pyramid head:

Me, twirling my hair: haha ur so funny