#because yes this is an autism moment!!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

birdantlers · 1 year

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A heartfelt and grievously expanded-upon update to this—please, please read the whole thing if you can. reblogs much appreciated.

(DISCLAIMER, for all who are saying reasons like abusive parents/legal stuff/toxic ex/triggering memories/page got deleted/job/stalkers/bullying/[[insert any other shitty life thing]], This is not concerning that—personal safety & health ALWAYS comes first, and is worth more than any media ever could be. This is my biggest reason for defending that autonomy. I would be a hypocrite to say I hadn’t deleted triggering posts of mine or ones that got me in trouble with my family.)

it genuinely makes me sad and kinda upset when someone purges all their old art off the internet like. barring harmful content what if someone liked that. What if someone would have. And now nobody will ever know and it's just gone. even people's old invader zim askblogs or whatever getting deleted feels like a micro alexandria to me and that's just something I made up. I wasn't even thinking of a specific one it just stresses me out. Is this the autism I don't get why nobody else seems to freak internally abt it like I do. I see artists whose blogs I've never even looked at go like "man so glad I deleted all my old stuff it's so clean" or saying they throw out art from when they were kids I'm like. how are you not hurling. How is that not distressing that is literally your tree rings why would you do that. I want to see what's out there. people want to see it I promise someone out there likes it

...don't they??? Does everyone get quietly irrationally upset by this as me, or is this just hyperfixation/autism/some amalgam of the two. I'm not a hoarder or obsessive compulsive or anything like that so i wonder..

Anyways. reblog if you had a favorite amateur youtube animator in your childhood whose channel got nuked without a trace one day that you still think about.

I wanted to attach this video because it condenses my point very well. A TLDR of sorts. Please watch the whole thing, it genuinely changed the entire way I think about art as a concept.

(2nd vid is "Subjectivity in Art")

“The moment your art touches an audience, the ownership shifts in an irreversible way. [They're] not having an art experience with you and your intentions. They're having an art experience with the art object.

“You can't just burn your past; it's not even your past to burn anymore. It's other people's history as well. Whether or not you like it, that art is already bonded to somebody's soul, and if you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it.”

The digital age makes it very easy to distance or detach yourself from the impact your work has—be it art, fanfic, videos, even memes. Online content is as important to people now as any other media, if not more. But it's also by far the easiest, fastest, and most effective form of it to erase from public access. Media so unbelievably important to people and in general. Yes, you—with the 2010s purple sparkle dog speedpaint. I still think about that speedpaint all the time, because it was the first time i learned that you could draw on a computer, and I thought it was cool as hell. I still do.

I do wish there was a stronger culture of preservation and consideration for this, because every time I see people talk about snuffing their stuff because it doesn't personally resonate with them anymore, I just think ...what about all the people it did?

I've seen lots of people saying "get over it, it doesn't even matter," but it fucking does. It does matter. Even if I didn’t make it, even if I don’t have to deal with being the one who made it, even if I'm naturally inclined to be distressed by it—It still matters. And there’s nothing you could ever say to suddenly make it not matter, because there’s nothing you could ever say to make it not matter to me.

Don't devalue the act of creation. Don't dismiss something you made. It's out there, in people's thoughts and hearts and souls, and that is real. Even if you don't know it. Especially if you don't know it. Especially in a world where physical media is being snuffed out, the internet is constantly dying without any physical remains to recover, social isolation is rampant, and simply because independently produced content online is still media.

Fanfiction can hold equal or greater significance to someone as a book, but you can’t unpublish a book. Authors don’t have a button that can vaporize every copy of their work across all time, but fanfiction authors do. I’m not counting people who download fics either—when you buy a book, that transaction is over. But online, you have the power of unending transaction that can be terminated instantly at your will. The process of publishing fanfic vs. publishing a book may be different, but people’s connection to the art is the same intensity.

So yeah. I do get depressed about the Internet being a constant Alexandria, but the times I get the most depressed is when I click someone's page and see that all their work is gone because they're ‘curating a new aesthetic’ for their page or some shit. Or weeding out all the "ugly" art. Or just went on whatever the hell 'thrill deleting' is, because they just get a kick out of it.

Fuck it—yeah! It upsets me! I’m not wrong to say that. I’m saying it!

Under the cut, because it got long as shit! Also don’t worry the ending is way sappier and more ‘beauty of human nature’ vibe so it’s not all doom and gloom lol

What if that was someone's favorite art of that character. What if someone read that 'cringe oneshot' on the worst day of their life. What if that Warriors meme vid is still burned into a college student’s mind despite being gone for 10 years. What if it's actually not just you and the ones and zeros you rent out to the world—secure in knowing the original will always be on your computer for you to do whatever you want with it.

I really, deeply wish there was more of a general awareness of this, because even though social media can be used like a diary, that’s functionally the opposite of what it is. It’s social media. When you post, it’s no longer in a vacuum, even though you can’t see the real humans that content touches—often deeply.

Media is history. You shouldn’t burn that history just because you personally believe it isn’t worth saving.

Because it’s no longer just your personal opinion. It’s no longer just your personal work. it’s. history. Memory of media is not a suitable replacement for the media itself. If it was, we wouldn’t save anything at all. Nostalgia is an agent of that. The definition of nostalgia is grief for moments of the past that are inaccessible, and the biggest balm for that pain is accessing a physical reminder of those moments. That opinion of yours is no longer personal. It’s weighed against uncountable people across all time that your thing is ALSO personal to. People who would, and will mourn its absence.

How many times have you joined an older fandom only to discover that some of its most popular works are gone? How many times have you routed through random blogs looking for scraps people hopefully reblogged? how many times have you used Wayback machine desperately praying that a fan fiction or a YouTube video will be there? How many times do you look up crunchy old vines or YouTube videos or anime AMV‘s? How many times do you remember old fanfic.net sex that impacted you in middle school, only to shake your head and go ‘probably no point even looking.’

i mourn the absence. No, people can’t and shouldn’t have their agency over what they post revoked, but they should be conscious of that weight. If you’re reading this and getting extremely annoyed, and you’re not in the pink text above,,,, good.

I honestly do hope it gets under your skin. I hope it sits with you. I hope you feel it every time you hit that button, and whether or not you do hit that button—if you hesitate, if you remember this, even spitefully, I’ve done my job. I am howling into the void. And I may not want an answer, but I do want my anguish to be heard and remembered. Because it isn’t me just being melodramatic.

I know I sound that way writing so much, but if my favorite writing YouTuber can drop trow this week and go, "yeah, sorry, all my video essays from less than a year ago that you listen to in the car all the time? I'm "rebranding" my content so i deleted them. besides, my personal views don't really agree align with the analyses i did, or the techniques i taught in them anyway. Sorry if some of the literal tens of thousands of you used them, but I don't want to feel shackled to having youtuber "classics" tied to me”

….then i guess I'm just going to have to sound dramatic! That fucking sucks! Hours of work and knowledge gone! This was a new channel too. It’s very likely there’s no archive of any kind, because who would think someone who worked hard enough to write, record, and edit hour-long videos, would just turn around and nuke it all? I definitely didn’t see it coming, but I did just start a new screenwriting class a few weeks ago, so I’ll tell you at least one person is REALLY missing those fucking videos right now. Because a lot of them were about specifically screenwriting, which I know jack shit about. and that specific person’s pace, editing, and style of breaking down information was the best suited style I found that I could focus on and absorb. There’s no replacement for that. No alternative for his individual perspective. his jokes. his opinions.

No, they may not resonate with him now, but in this decision, he’s put up a big middle finger to everyone who might have. And he has like 100k subscribers! Those are confirmed supporters! Imagine how many silent and untethered observers are feeling this loss right now. Imagine how many will not have it in the future.

If he never posted them at all, we wouldn’t know we had it. It wouldn’t be a loss. But we did. We did have it. Until he decided that no, we didn’t, because he just happens to be the one out of millions of individuals holding the button to burn it in a hundredth of a second.

His personal work, the attachment I had to it, and the ways that it helped me are now just ripped away. I am one person out of millions, literal MILLIONS of people who saw and liked this content before it vanished. The soul has been ripped, the access severed, and by CJ’s (and my) definition, the art is functionally dead. Not for the YouTuber or anyone else lucky enough to save a link or download, but everyone else. From this point until the end of time, even if people even two weeks from now don’t know it. Even if someone who stumbles upon his channel today, doesn’t know it.

We only mourn the concept of Alexandria because we had some kind of scope for what was inside. Yes, maybe you got self-conscious and deleted your 12 year old deviant art account. Do you know who else is doing that?? THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of other twenty somethings who ALSO feel self-conscious about their old socials. Art. Fanfic. One direction fan videos. anything.

Suddenly, an unquantifiable amount of information from your age group—an entire age group in 2012, is. gone. And we will NEVER know what’s been erased from that history. We will NEVER know what could have been significant to us ten years from now. Twenty years from now. A hundred years. A thousand.

You could have deleted a fanfic that would have been someone else’s new go-to panic attack distraction tomorrow. You could have deleted a video someone used to laugh at with their friend who died yesterday. When you delete something, you risk tearing a hole in unknowable personal histories.

The Internet isn’t just a big library of Alexandria. It’s a library containing libraries. And those libraries have their own libraries in those libraries have their own as well. libraries inside libraries, inside libraries, ad infinitum. To conceive the amount of destroyed history on the Internet is crushing.

And I just can’t help but I ask myself how in gods name people can choose to contribute to that, instead of reposting everything to trash heap alts titled “hall of shame” or some shit.

You can offload to alts. Put up disclaimers. Make password locked blogs, or dropboxes, or anonymous imgur dumps. Anonymous reuploads. Orphan fics. Make a playlist or linktree of unlisted videos. Cut off the watermarks. Delete all references to it on your main. Make a dedicated unlisted playlist. make a google drive. Make new portfolio sites. Delete any questions you get about it. Change pen names. Pretend it never existed.

Give a heads up.

Something.

But don’t. kill. the media.

The knowledge that our stuff is going to forever be tied to us is a cross we have to bear, but the responsibility that comes with putting it out there in the first place, can’t be ignored.

Anyway. I'm not trying to start conflict. This is not a bash on anyone, nor a call for witch hunts. Or anon hate, or blocks and unfollows or anything of that nature. I'm not wishing ramifications or hate of any kind on anyone who does wants to do any of this.

I'm also not guilt tripping— I am not saying that you should feel bad. I AM saying why it makes me feel bad. That’s not guilting, it’s a dialogue. One I personally feel is long overdue.

It's me yelling into the void: please consider the real people on the other side of the screen before you hit that button. Realize and know that whatever you're about to erase from history could be the most important thing in the world to someone.

Art is an experience. It's why we revisit it. If art and history simply lived in the matter and code of media, we would only need to look at it once. We wouldn’t put things in museums. We wouldn’t build libraries. We wouldn’t look up vine compilations.

If you're able, consider (and I do mean consider, this is not a call to action) not destroying that. And don’t shrug it off as some pretentious asshole venting on Tumblr. You only need to look in the notes and tags to see that it isn’t just me. it’s never just me, or you, or the pixels.

And even if you do shrug it off, then at least recognize that what you make matters. Whatever you think about it, if it’s out there, that's not your discretion anymore. If a tree falls in the woods and even one person is around to see it, it fucking mattered. Because it happened. Don’t mulch your tree rings if you don’t have to. Because if enough people do it, a whole forest is gone. Media is history, no matter whether you think it’s worth putting in a museum, or only has 30 notes.

Thousands of years ago, a child named onfim doodled on his homework. They’re crude, and everyone has the wrong amount of fingers, and they’re also priceless archaeological artifacts recognizable throughout the world.

the only thing separating Onfim’s doodles and your MS paint Pokémon doodles is time. The only thing separating your old MS paint Pokémon doodles from being a priceless artifacts, thousands of years in the future is time. Your creations are already priceless artifacts. No matter what you do, don't ever, ever deny that. It isn’t blowing up your own ass, it’s artistic and anthropological fact.

The mundane and the supposedly unworthy are often the first things lost to time, and that’s why they’re so precious. That’s why artists who were before their time are scorned first only to be celebrated later. Do you think they knew that was going to happen?? What if they nuked it? Many probably did! But now that’s happening exponentially and instantaneously everywhere, WITHOUT the artist having to destroy their only copy—which makes it way easier and more dismissable.

Sometimes, If you’re revolutionary enough, people will make an effort to preserve your work, but recognized and thoroughly recorded work is rare compared to unrecognized and thoroughly recorded work.

Sometimes something is beloved enough that it would be impossible for it not to go down in history, but even then it isnt a guarantee, and it’s rare. But if van Gogh burned all of his paintings in a fit of despair before his death, we would have no van Gogh. Because he wasn’t respected as an artist in his time, but that wasn’t what defined the worth of his art. The people after him did, because his art was still there for them.

If you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it. If you belittle your art, you belittle the very real relationships and emotions and revisitations people have with the media. You defy the inherent worth and weight of a creation. you created. That's effort. It's passion. No matter how flippant or unskilled or worthless you think it is, it matters. Because at the end of the day, you could have chosen to make nothing at all, and you didn't.

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Muting notifs

#artists on tumblr #Artistic #digital art #art history #anthropology #humanity #art discussion #art theory #skit yells

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five-thousand-loaves-of-bread · 2 months

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ok. masking. let’s go.

[plain text: ok. masking. let’s go]

(specifically masking in autism - there probably other disabilities this can apply to but no guarantees. so only write what know, aka autism)

to simply it a bit, personally see two part to masking:

1. ability to mask

2. whatever struggle/thing, can be masked

1. ability to mask

it a skill that depends on many other skills

think most people will able see it as ability to suppress behavior & instead do something else (to appear more “socially appropriate”). like stop body from stim & instead sit very still. stop self from say something that may be rude or blunt n instead say it in more indirect way or say compliment instead. n it true, that is ability to mask

but ability to mask also depend on many other more basic skills, n because it basic, sometimes people forget they actually skill & others struggle with it, n instead see it as given, as nature, almost take for granted. before can do the thing in previous paragraph, other skills need have:

awareness of self - that you exist, awareness of what you doing

(n if able aware, also the ability control what you doing & impulse)

awareness of others - that they exist, that they have thoughts you not see

awareness of surroundings - that, you not just in own world

n, if have all of that, understand “need” or feel need or pressure for masking. at least some conscious or subconscious idea or feeling about what supposed to do & what not supposed to do. n ability to remember it. ability act on it. (all related but separate skills.) some autistic not able explicitly name it or tell you, but have internal sense of “this feels wrong even though don’t know why,” & that still allow them to mask

n many others am forgetting at moment

2. whatever struggle/thing, can be masked

think people forget about this part often: that even if assume have expert ability to mask (#1), there some things that. just can’t be masked (at all, or cannot mask all of it). because they (for not have better word) so extreme, or simply cannot control

for example. there no way really mask fact am nonverbal (as in, cannot mouth talk at all. all the time). no matter what do, cannot just. mask n suddenly say mouth word (then wouldn’t be nonverbal).

n say this simplify because. real world much more muddy more nuanced than can be say in clear linear bullet points n equations. some times, is mixture of both. not that clear divide.

many level 3 / severe / whatever language they use for self / etc people, move their body all the time, make sounds all the time, grunts screams etc. not really able control it, because very significant sensory needs that come with their level 3 autism. n not able to control it, not know to control it. sometimes both.

or, like awareness of other people - if not able to, then can’t mask it (#2). but it also prerequisite skill to masking to appear more “socially appropriate”, so cannot mask if don’t have skill (#1).

so, get annoyed when level 1 (& sometimes 2) high masking autistics say difference between them n someone like me (cannot mask & level 2/3 nonverbal), just masking. that if they unmask,

masking often really negatively affect mental health. make you stressed, on edge, confused about who you are (it actually me or just my mask?). n sometimes it become so a part of you you cannot drop it. yes. and same time true:

B1. masking is protective. is coping mechanism. is for safety. or else wouldn’t start do it first place. you mask n spend that energy n put up with its cost because feel like on some level, would not be treat as well or with as much dignity & autonomy, will be bullied n hurt even more than already is. n for some (especially BIPOC), masking literal one of reason they alive, not wrongly convicted or suspected of crime because suspicious behavior, etc. something can be both protective & harm. it up to you decide if it worth it.

B2. high masking not always mean other people not able tell. high masking not mean you treated well all time or not get treated badly at all or not go through anything said in above paragraph. it just mean that. you would probably be treated even worse if not masking.

B3. ability choose to unmask (yes, even if hard), not same as not able mask at all (involuntary not a choice) in first place. able switch between mask n unmask, even more so. you at advantage some of us not have.

B4. like in B1, not everyone can afford unmask. n for every person like that, imagine there someone in similar situation, except they cannot mask (reason #1 or #2 or both). what will happen to them? what happens to them? what happened to them?

no, you wouldn’t be like us (who unable mask in first place because level 2/3 autism, high support needs, severe autism, whatever language we use) if you unmasked.

there also difference between unmasking & finding your authentic self & how you naturally act. n pretend to be like us, copying us, someone you not, by choosing to do stereotypically visibly autistic things because it make you feel more validated. that no different than mocking n faking. we not your cosplay. (yes this actually happens.)

n no, don’t mean anytime you hand flap you’re copying mocking visibly autistic people, or you picking up AAC device “even if you can speak” (but you struggle) is copying nonverbal people. understand this is process, that sometimes when mask so long not know what feel natural anymore who you are or aren’t anymore, so you pick up n experiment different things.

fundamentally, is it helping you? that should stay. is it make you become another person you aren’t, going in opposite extreme direction? that shouldn’t.

anyway.

a lot time you see people who not able mask, we level 2/3 / moderate & severe autism / higher support needs (etc language we choose for self), which make us not able do both #1 & 2 (both not have ability to mask, n have struggles that cannot be masked fully or at all). struggling with more “basic” stuff needed for masking like awareness of self others n surrounding, often happen together with other symptoms n struggles that too big or significant or severe to mask.

this why you rarely if ever see anyone like listed above who also appear high masking — even if we can mask, our struggles often too significant to be fully masked over. n many of us can’t mask, we not have prerequisite skills to mask

but, not all people who not able mask are higher level higher support needs higher severity.

sometimes some people may have some masking abilities (have some #1), but have struggles that cannot be fully masked (#2).

sometimes, they have struggles that many other high masking autistics can mask (have #2), but they have low or no masking abilities themselves (don’t have #1).

AKA—

not able mask =/= not always mean higher level higher support needs higher severity autism

lower support needs level 1 autistics =/= not always equal high masking

there lower support needs autistics level 1 autistics who low or no masking!

masking ability not always correlate with levels & support needs & severity!

wow that long winded. glad we got back to where started.

[do not debate severe autism & autism levels etc language we choosing for ourselves - if you don’t like it for yourself cool then am not talking about you]

#loaf screm #actually autistic #autism #autistic #long post

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