#but seriously tho from a marketing perspective it makes absolutely no fucking sense at all

[hyunjining]

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[polar-solstice]

Hi, I wanted to ask your perspective on something... I'm seeing so many people online in other, less anonymous spaces who declare that they practice magic, polytheism, wicca, etc... Did people loose a sense of secrecy about these kind of things? I've been interested in esoteric things since I was a teen but for me it always felt like something to guard closely and just yesterday a coworker outed herself as a practicioner at a bigger but informal meeting (both of us started working at our workplace about a month ago). And it just weirds me out so much that I see these happen without a care or any pretense of anonymity. Are people okay now with witchcraft? Are people just more open about their spirituality?

People are absolutely more open about. Part of that is that workplaces are changing and spirituality is on the rise. The other reason?

Just last night I was on YouTube and a random video was just sponsored by a psychic consultancy. My SIL and her best friends (very Average American women who all grew up in the church) go to psychics (and not even good ones) and beg me for tarot card readings after my partner casually let it drop that I read and he’d be more comfortable if they spoke to me and not like, a faceless business that we both know stalked them on Facebook. Its all very mainstream now. Know why?

It’s accepted because capitalism can profit off it.

Now, is that BAD?

I don’t think that being open about it is necessarily bad, but I do think that the way it’s opened up is less than optimal. This is like how every Halloween we see an influx of 12 year olds begging to learn blood magic so their parents let them stay out later (a mild exaggeration but still). People are on shaky ground and they need to feel powerful and another route to explore isn’t BAD.

What WORRIES me is that

a lot (probably most) of these people are coming from Christianity and still can’t shake the idea of One way to do it, so they go looking for One way, which creates a market for abusive “teachers” (cult leaders) to move in and teach them the One correct way

people looking for the One way tend to enforce their beliefs on others. To me, someone who’s been doing this a long time it’s an annoyance. To someone who knows their craft less well than I do, you get misinformation (ranging from the emotionally harmful to the “oh fuck that’s not edible and they’re in the hospital”) that can confuse the situation. There will be content farms, and they will hurt people, I can feel it my bones

lbr as people see things mainstream in shops, they’ll accept it as normal. That means that anything they don’t see available to them in shops (things like closed ethnic practices, personal practices, etc) will be the Wrong way of practicing. It’s gunna get dicey.

following that, a resurgence of the “if you don’t have x objects or x amount of money you’re not a real witch, and

small businesses are already feeling the backlash. Seriously, I read tarot and sell talismans and charms and whatnot, and the idea that a company should have to vet me and hire me for a salary for this to be legit is uh, buck fucking wild.

Here’s my thing tho: most of that won’t actually impact me because, as I said, I know who I am and what I’m doing. To ME, this is an eye roll situation. If kids online wanna curse the moon, I don’t care.

The problem, as always, is capitalism, and what happens when capitalism wants your money.

So, action plan:

Be kind, even to tourists

No, you’re very right, your personal practices are your own and you don’t owe them to anyone

Continue to remember that closed practices are closed for a reason

If you’re a person with resource lists available, keep making them available

If you do shop witchy, shop small witchy businesses, and encourage tourists and newbies to do the same

Keep your eyes peeled and your head on swivel for for people who are trying to start a cult and/or lure you in. I’ve seen (and dodged) more than a few of these, and I’ve had to talk more than a few people out of joining them. There’s resources I’ve reblogged for that in the past, but seriously, be careful

Fuck Wall Street so fucking much

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone