#Just the other day

[pleuvoire]

significant percentage of people on here who are like "of course i love and respect trans women but they can still be bad people sometimes and when they are bad people i can and should insult them and heckle them and harass them and tell them to kill themselves painfully" and then their definition of "bad person" is coming down on the wrong side of some insular hairsplitting discourse. perhaps it is you who should kill yourself painfully

[ernmark]

Much as people like to say that "nobody wants to work anymore", I've been stood up for two separate phone interviews with two separate recruiters/HR reps in less than a week.

Water is wet and all, but it kinda gives the impression that the labor force might not be the source of the problem.

[perfectlynormalvelocipede]

tfw you've watched something unsettling at night so you turn on a comfort show to calm down from it and then it just so happens to be on the ONE Haunted-House /Stranded-On-Creepy-Island Episode™ every show decides to have like wow not even you're there for me like.... the audacity

[theohnocorral]

I'm so close to being back on my bullshit and posting crazy shirt chapters one after another but am somehow holding myself back.

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[civetcider]

[july-19th-club]

seriously have been thinking about this all night long. call me autistic but the fact that 90% of workplaces the point is not to get your work done and then be done doing it but to instead perform an elaborate social dance in which you find something to do even when you're done doing everything you need to do in order to show your fellow workers that you, too, are Working . because you are at Work . disgusting why cant we all agree that if there is no work immediately to be done. we just dont do anything

[krasnyel]

regular ascot-loving-mystery-solving family

[ronanlynchbf]

tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

[glaringapollo]

Thinking about Bryn hours hitting HARD tonight

[batshaped]

the continued adventures of an internet user who was frozen in 2004 and defrosted in 2021: some things are just the way you left them

previous 2004 internet user comics are here: one, two, three, four, five; or just in my 2004 tag

[ponpasta]

they’re in my home ruining everythig

[not-so-rosyyy]

they keep baiting her but she said:

[akantorrr]