#Forums Suck

[sixth-light]

I have had these thoughts bubbling away in my head for like...eighteen months or so now (it will become very obvious why shortly) but the discussion in this post has pushed me to write them down: I think societally we HUGELY underestimate how motherhood for primary caregivers, particularly first-time motherhood, can be a source of vulnerability to radicalisation.

There is obviously huge cultural variance here, but for a lot of cis women becoming primary caregiver to an infant in a capitalist Western society represents a time of immense vulnerability because in general you are:

Incredibly sleep-deprived (which has well-documented knock-on effects for your judgement, mental health, etc)

If you gave birth, recovering from a significant challenge to your physical health (even in the best-case scenario)

Isolated from your previous networks and communities of people in full-time work

Completely separated from the context of your prior career goals and achievements

Under huge amounts of stress to learn how to care for an infant (don't get me started on breastfeeding)

And on top of this, you are also be experiencing a huge amount of messaging about how all this is natural, wonderful, something you're meant to do, something you should love doing, and something that you must do for the welfare of their child. It's a huge amount of pressure and life change even when everything goes right and there's very little cultural space to express negative feelings about it.

Any group of people who offer community, support, and affirmation to cis women in this situation are going to have a really good shot at radicalising them into some very weird and dangerous headspaces and in fact we see this happen all the time - think antivaxxers and TERFs. It flies under the radar because of the hazy positive glow that associates with motherhood and babies and also because we don't take the radicalisation of women seriously I guess because they rarely shoot anybody, but...yeah. It is such a vulnerable time!

[animation-by-jam]

[Vent]. My thoughts. I'm not indigenous, so I can not relay the experience as if I could, and their voices matter more than mine. My heart goes out to the people of the letter. I'm writing as a fan who wants to just let out my feelings.

I don't know if it's just me. But I don't know if I can watch another rtvs stream with the whole crew until the rest of them issued their apologies over what happened or actually do something about the hurt they caused. It's obvious by the fan reaction that they're not just friends on the internet anymore and can't just shield themselves to be awful with criticism. Especially over fucking racial discrimination critique.

Especially Mike. Like everyone's initial responses and apologies at the time were bad, but man, that one was just REALLY BAD. Like if it wasn't limited to a discord server, the average rtvs viewer would have just been appalled by the comment and done worse reputation wise level bad. Not even the most dedicated sweep under the rug fans could argue that wasn't good. (Though I did scroll to read the entire situation, and few people tried). But, nope. It was bad. I still don't understand how he could go immediately to a 100 with that. I could give him the benefit of the doubt and say he probably had a shitty day (gamer moment level of exuse. I can't defend that), or idk he was just too aggressive with wanting to defend his friends. But, at the end of the day, that's an excuse, and the words were still typed and caused hurt. The action was still taken, and unfortunately, even *if* he feels terrible over it, he can't take it back. What's done is done, and just make up for it now.

But like I said, even with other mods and members doing the work behind the scenes. And I really hope to god that they do actually address this shit publicly. The longer it could go on, the more people will feel so betrayed (rightfully), and the more fans it will reach to demand something. Like this isn't the hlvrai days anymore rtvs, they have fans that can donate thousands to charity and sell out merchandise within hours. They want to unify the brand together? so they have to GET IT TOGETHER. Act maturely next time. If they aren't able to properly rectify a situation with a problematic sponsor or collaboration in time, then just apologize and listen to people's suggestions. God damn. How hard was it to read a letter that wasn't attacking them. And if anything, they tried really hard to give them so much benefit since it was from Fans. And even if not from fans, still don't treat indigenous people like this (common sense, no?). I know some of the crew are white and, or at this point, privileged to do what they can and probably never had to deal with the unique oppression indigenous people do as most humans never will. But, still. They have to get over it. Read the letter and understand it, and stop trying to act like any criticism is the end of your world/jobs. It will be if most of them don't learn from this incident.

[creepyscritches]

This may be an over-generalization but I think a lot of misguided home remedy type people are interested in options that work (or appear to work). And by that assumption, showing them things that actually work or showing them how their current methods lead to the opposite desired outcome can sometimes open the curious door to better resources. Idk, I don't think people are stupid. I think people can do stupid things, especially when they're scared. And when you're scared of a health issue, you may end up doing stupid shit like offering special tea to a loved one bc you think it'll cure their cancer. Arguably you would like better for this person, and the only tool you have is tea that doesn't work at best and at worst nullifies medicines. In my experience, meeting someone where they're at can look like asking what they know about their remedy and what they want from it.

Maybe they were on the right research track and got pulled into a snake oil rabbit hole. Kill the snake oil salesman but help the person tricked into buying snake oil. Did you know the USA's breadth of cancer knowledge is published publicly for anyone to access? We also have our international knowledge pool available. There are patient verbiage versions so you don't have to learn a quarter of oncology to follow their explanations. Did you know snake oil sells best when the salesman knows you are scared bc you haven't heard the medical GOOD news? Scientists have a shotgun in cancer's mouth, girl. My grandmother was able to beat cancer in 7 MONTHS bc of trust in her awesome doctors. Any "doctor" trying to make a sale with a treatment may as well be Dr. Kellogg to me.

Idk! I live in the south and work with the Affordable Care Act patient population so I spend lots of time demystifying and encouraging (very conservative) people to explore their options. In my experience, I discover most times that while conservatives are not more or less doctor-averse than others, they ARE more likely to have been misinformed about a health remedy (often by someone close to them who didn't even know the remedy was fake!). You cannot treat gout with cayenne and apple cider vinegar. The temporary relief may make you confident that your money saving solution works, but the disease process will continue to worsen and you will find yourself looking down the barrel of necrotic tissue + amputation. You cannot lose weight by injecting pregnancy hormones. A doctor charging you $1500 a month for a disproved "treatment" does not care if you gain weight or get sick from it. You do not have secret intestine parasites. You do not have secret toxins.

You are working so hard to ensure good health, but you are securing an early decline. At the very least, let me leave you with a list of trusted, peer-reviewed resources. You have the investigative initiative and the drive to make healthy decisions, so try applying those traits in a sphere that does not have anything to gain from lying to you about treatments.

People very rarely change their minds in front of you. Let me leave an objectively helpful foothold for you to explore other options. You stopped researching too soon, try these options next time you want to look again. Also you should know that special tea might kill your friend - - I have some dot gov sites with helpful charts you may appreciate.

[doberbutts]

Also it's still very funny to me when I say "I like Rings of Power" and someone sees it and says I'm not a true fan of Tolkien's works and must not know anything about his writing and then I post a picture of my bookshelf. Never gets old.

[fratboykate]

YOU'VE BEEN HERE SINCE 2007???? Damn that's the year I was born 😭

thank you ive actually never wanted to kill myself more than right now. how are you not in diapers? 😭 but yeah tumblr started in 2007 when i was a senior in high school and i signed up basically as soon as you could lol. im a legit OG. i remade i think in 2012 but ive had this same one since. there's people here who have been following me for almost that entire time. we're all trauma bonded at this point lol.

[somecunttookmyurl]

peace and love to anyone wanting to migrate away from tumblr but i will simply not be doing that. when the lights go off the only place i'm migrating is to my to-do list

[elbiotipo]

I'm so tired of the Middle Ages addiction in strategy gaming, I've done several posts about it but I'm still mad that Europa Universalis 5 has thrown back its starting date to fucking 1337, virtually the Middle Ages, all to appease the Byzantium fanbase. It's a game supposed to be about the Rennaissance and Early Modernity! It's about global trade, colonialism, religious conflicts, the rise of capitalism and liberalism, all incredibly interesting things to explore, and not only that, a game with a global perspective that can let you play American, Asian, African cultures that don't get as much interest in popular history.

But no, we gotta make the byzaboos who want to live out the Byzantium, oh sorry, Eastern Roman Empire (because they were ROMANS didn't you know they were ROMANS) fantasy happy instead of exploring all those historical dynamics. NO SOUTH AMERICAN PATCH FOR YOU, WE GOTTA GIVE CONSTANTINOPLE MORE WONDERS!

[kylejsugarman]

there are people who won’t watch breaking bad because “guys who watch it hero worship walter white”. like well ok true but u don’t have to hang out with those guys while u watch it urself and also walter white is Made Up

[victor-v]

you don't understand how much i need to kill the president

[torchickentacos]

The pokemon anime subreddit fascinates and frustrates me on equally deep levels

[yekokataa]

i used to hang out on a dumb fandom forum where, without fail, everytime the topic of de came up, someone would come in like 'i refuse to play that game because the characters and art style are positively ghastly! no matter how much it's recommended i simply cannot subject my tender eyes to that affront to style!' like every fucking time it came up they would barge in to remind everyone of their wounded aesthetic sensibilities. so like when you guys are dunking on one tumblr post that thought harry was ugly, you have no idea how much worse it can get

[aquazip]

she looks so different in game it makes me mad

wlikewho the fuck is thattttttt thats not my sim bruh 😪

anyway lookbook

[raddest-laddest]

ah. a random bout of anticipatory grief.

[bosmer]

the death of forums will really kill all the wacky fanlore references from previous tes games. like the random shit in morrowind that came about because of bethesda forum in-jokes? there's gonna be none of that in vi. not 2 b a hater or anything. say what you want about if the fishsticks references are funny or not but it's evidence fan spaces and creators used to be way more closely linked

[raddest-laddest]

i don’t want to go to work. i would rather do anything else with my saturday than rot in front of a grill for 8 hours.