#doomscrolling is nothing

[infatuatedlilbitch]

STOP DOOMSCROLLING ABOUT RFK JR AND MUSK--READ THIS INSTEAD

Oh, so RFK Jr's brilliant plan as HHS Secretary is to "cure" ADHD with labor camps and ban all psychiatric meds? LMAO these are literally the rantings of a lunatic. And that's who they've installed at every level of government.

But here's the thing: You HAVE to see this as lunacy. You CANNOT take this seriously. The second you start thinking one man could actually do this, you're thinking about Kings. DON'T.

If fucking MITCH MCCONNELL - MITCH MCCONNELL of all people - can speak out against what Trump and Musk are doing, what's YOUR representative's excuse? This is the same Mitch McConnell I've been wishing on every goddamn star would pass the fuck away, and HE can say something?

So NO MORE posts about what Musk is doing unless you're posting it with YOUR representative's silence right next to it. Look them up. Call them out. Put a lil picture of them in all of your Elon callout posts. People should know what they look like. Everyone else in America who doesn't do their fucking job gets FIRED. Why are we letting these people collect paychecks for doing NOTHING?

Look at the French - they get it. The second their government tries any of this shit, garbage collectors stop collecting, workers walk out. No discussion. Because they remember something we forgot: THEY NEED US more than we need them.

And don't give me that "but we can't protest, we live paycheck to paycheck" bullshit. You're living paycheck to paycheck BECAUSE you won't protest. BECAUSE you won't unite. BECAUSE you're too scared to imagine what would happen if we ALL just stopped for ONE DAY.

Your representatives work for YOU. Start acting like it.

And if you're not ready to confront other aspects of solidarity yet? Fine. Just remember we're ALL united in oppression under being members of the working class. Start there.

[bookinit02]

i really do think there’s a huge disconnect on here w/ people who have never used tiktok as to what it actually is and who actually uses it. the number of people i’ve seen call it a “teen dancing app” is actually insane. it has not been a teen dancing app since i was in high school, around 2016 - 2020. the main communities i saw on a daily basis were 1) black history/anti-racism educators, 2) high school & college teachers sharing in-classroom strategies and frustrations with the education system, 3) local/state political leaders giving real-time updates on behind-the-scenes government decisions, & 4) community activism & leadership. like tiktok is an adult platform. almost every person i interacted with was my age or older. and yes it completely depends on your fyp and how you interact with the app, yes there’s still teenagers and dance videos and literally anything else you can think of. but these communities of adults aren’t insubstantial at all, they have literally millions of interactions on a daily basis. there’s about a million other types of communities that i could name just off the top of my head, because the range of users was SO diverse and thriving. it’s a long-distance community tool, just like any other social media—and honestly much better than any other social media, because it relies primarily on the kindness of strangers. i saw at least 5-10 videos today of queer people in rural areas panicking because they don’t have any access to queer community on any other platform or in real life. and before i end this i do want to say i think tiktok is coming back, i think this is a highly orchestrated political move, etc., but i do know it won’t ever be exactly the same. people are panicking about free speech violations because tiktok was a place where people fucking SPEAK. i have never seen mass mobilization and communication in this same way for as long as i’ve been alive. it is the people’s app, not just a silly teenage thing. if you’re not on tiktok and never have been, please stop talking about it like you know anything at all😭

[significant-narratives]

saw an rpf tweet with 86000 views we are so fucking cooked

[starriskiesstuff]

[notannascribbles]

starting off season six with adrien doomscrolling on a mattress on the floor…miraculous ladybug wants me back so bad

[siennaditbot]

Got motivated for one night so far so here's my tip

Stop doomscrolling and go learn things. Please.

Maybe even write them down. Take notes from video essays so you won't get bored. Your brain needs more than the easy dopamine from constant content. It helps with escapism, yes, but is it really helping?

Here's an easy start: go look up things you're interested in. Maybe some silly questions. Like...

"Why do we use the QWERTY-keyboard?"

"How did we decide what numbers or letters should look like?"

"Is there anything interesting in the history of my hometown, country, language, or family?"

Or, on the franchise side of things...

"What can I learn about my favourite game or movie's soundtrack?"

"Is there a greater theme or message in this game/movie/franchise?"

"Do the people working on it enjoy it? Are they passionate? Can you learn from them?"

(There are great video essays on GRIS, Minecraft, Sonic and Hollow Knight at least that have some amazing answers and have brought me to tears lol)

Learning shouldn't be graded and made stressful like in school. It's so fun. Only a few hours in and I'm feeling so invigorated I don't wanna go to bed.

I've been writing down fun facts I could later share with people or have some interesting conversation topics to bring up.

So.

Stop doomscrolling. Wake up your brain.

It'll thank you.

[sobeksewerrat]

I personally think that thinking the human race is doomed or that we failed as a species or that everything sucks is an extremely reductive mindset. There's good in the world, you just have to see it.

The people you're talking about want you to believe everything is shit anyway so you won't try to change the status quo that benefits them dimwit. Get up, get out and try to see the beauty of humanity to give yourself something worth fighting for.

[frankensteins-mt-dew]

Does anyone know if the dropout cast and crew are ok? Ive been looking at updates for critical role but haven't seen anything from dropout

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

should have brought my book to work today. I would be having a much better day if I was able to read David Byrne talking about music during the lulls in traffic at work :(

[girl-dot-tzt]

I wanna pop in to say that social media companies don't make money when you're having a good time.

Longish rant below the cut

I recently asked a friend of mine who works in the tech industry why most social media platforms don't offer an option to block everyone who follows certain accounts. After all it would be a surefire way to ensure you don't have to be barraged with hateful content every time you log on. If I didn't want to interact with the followers of certain conservative pundits I could just block the followers of them and immediately I would have a much better time on certain platforms.

She told me about a time that she got the same idea, so she wrote herself a script that would do just that. And after running it and blocking the followers of Ben Shapiro, quite a few social media platforms banned her in short order

That was when she explained to me that it would run counter to the interests of social media companies to allow users to have a good time. There is genuine neuroscience behind this decision as well; when you're scrolling, if you only saw content and comments that made you feel nice. You would get your dopamine fix, you'd log off after a reasonable amount of time, and the company would have a whole bunch of missed sales opportunities. You would see far less ads if you had a good time on social media, I.E. these companies make less money when you have an enjoyable experience using their product.

That is why inflammatory comments and posts left by bots are so often elevated despite their clear unpopularity, like seen in the image below.

Notice how the two comments disagreeing with the original post are prioritized above the comedic/popular one? That is extremely purposeful, and after doing research into the posting schedules of these accounts I can say that the second account is suspicious and the first one is absolutely a bot.

I ask that you think long and hard about your experience online and ask yourself if you're *actually* having fun, or if you find yourself scrolling down and down for miles. Hoping that you can find something to make your time worthwhile

[beast-feast]

I promise I've been drawing I just forgot to post it 💔💔💔

[skitskatdacat63]

Ik two days gone isn't a huge deal to other people but it is to me, since I feel like I woke up in a completely different world. It felt wrong to come back and blog and act like nothing happened, re: current events. I still feel pretty numb and empty about it all, along with many other emotions. I couldn't bring myself to look at any social media bcs it was like rubbing salt in the wound, and it still feels like its take a bit before I'm gonna be able to truly enjoy all the things I enjoy again. I was gonna write some long post about my feelings about it all but, I feel like atp I'd rather just try to indulge in what makes me happy I guess. Thankfully the fomo of not getting to commentate on all the F1 things that have happened have brought me out of the anxious slump I was in(new driver?? GPDA??? Zhou out??? Send me posts???)

On a completely unrelated note. Anyone interested in adoption?

[seilon]

kinda funny to me how the effect of this site on my mental health has gone from more or less objectively negative to generally a net positive in a journaling sort of way over the course of like a decade

[radioregine]

excessive cynicism is boring & unhealthy. to me

[seventh-district]

not even gonna try to contain this vent post within the tags bc i can just feel that i'm gonna yap

for the first time in a very long time, i'm watching an old video of me, age 13, playing with my dog on the kitchen floor. and i can barely handle the envious sight of how absolutely free i was. like, i know i've rewatched this video at a few other points in time in the nearly 12 years since i recorded it, but i've never really watched the full thing, paying as much attention as possible to every single detail.

i initially dug it up the other night because it's one of the only videos i have of Sassy on my current phone, and i wanted to.. see her again. but while i was analyzing every frame of the 3min video trying to drag as much of her memory out of the past as i possibly could, it dawned on me in a way it never has before just how unbelievably free i was behaving.

i was on the floor. touching it, sitting on it, putting my hands down on it and then (to my current self's horror and disgust) putting them on my cheeks, touching my face. i sat my drink down on the floor next to me. i picked Sassy up over and over again and then touched my face and drink and then i picked her up again and actually put my mouth on the top of her head to give her a little kiss. i did all of it without a second thought. it obviously came so naturally to me. i was moving around, interacting with the world around me in such an unbelievably normal way that i barely even recognize myself. and i was doing everything so quickly, too. i had energy. i moved (what seems to me now as) recklessly (though to a normal person it is probably just. normally.) and i just touched anything and did anything and. there weren't any consequences. it was fine.

that was roughly 1.5 years before Sassy dropped dead with zero warning and zero explanation and i developed severe OCD.

my memory is too far gone for me to figure out if the two events were cause-and-effect, or simply happened to take place around the same time in my life. it's not like i kept any sort of detailed log of my developing symptoms so i don't know if i'll ever be sure.

regardless, all i can focus on is how nowadays i wouldn't be able to do any of that. nothing aside from my shoes can come into contact with the floor. and i cannot come into direct skin contact with my shoes. if i find myself in a situation where i have to sit on the floor, as soon as i can get up, i have to remove all clothes that touched it and put them in the dirty laundry, and wash my hands, and if i had to touch my phone after touching the floor, i have to disinfect it. i will under no circumstances touch my face after contacting the floor until my hands are washed. i cannot touch or pet or hold either of my pets without washing my hands and preferably removing whatever clothing they came into contact with.

they are not allowed in my room nor my bed. Sassy slept in my bed with me every night. i never put my mouth on their fur to give them a kiss. i gave Sassy head kisses without a thought. they are not allowed to lick me. i used to find another one of my past dog's 'kisses' on my hands to be very endearing and unproblematic. now if it happens i have to wash it off immediately. anything that gets touched between my hands contacting either pet and being washed, i have to disinfect it.

i mean it with my entire fucking heart and soul when i say that OCD is an insidious disorder. having lived with it for a decade now, i couldn't be more aware of this. but, therein lies the exact point i'm trying to make. in spite of knowing that it has wormed it's way into every single aspect of my life, brain, and personality, it's entire nature is defined by the fact that it will do so, and it'll do it in such a way that the disordered mindset becomes your new normal. it had managed to completely overwrite a lot of my pre-disorder memories of how i used to... operate in the world around me. it has entirely altered the way i do every. single. thing. to the point where i just can't even fathom how it used to be any different. if i didn't have videos like this one to serve as proof that things did used to be different, i wouldn't have any basis for what my "normal" ever even was. it robbed me of those memories entirely.

let's fish one example out of the thousands of different ones i've got siting around: i've spent years trying to figure out how i used to take a shower that didn't take me an entire hour. i have no video of something like that obviously, so it just feels like.. like when i try to envision how i used to bathe myself it literally just goes black in my brain. there's no memory or mental images left in there. i can't fathom it. i mush have just been walking around halfway clean. i don't know. i don't understand how anyone can take a "quick" shower and get out feeling clean. my brain just absolutely cannot grasp it because the OCD is all that's left. it snuck in and completely rewrote the code of who i am and how my brain functions and how i perceive the world and i am never going to get my old self back. no amount of medication or therapy can truly, fully undo the damage it's done to my mind and body.

i mean. i have learned to live with it, barely. i wouldn't really call what i do 'living' but i am. surviving. and some of my obsessions and compulsions have the tendency to fade in and out over time, so i've been able to CBT myself out of some of the most disabling ones. showers take 1 hour now instead of 1.5 to 2.

i can read normally again now, after that period of time around uhh 2018 i think where i could barely read since i had to count the letters of every single word i saw. that was a pretty miserable time and i eventually forced myself mostly out of it. but i still slip back into it when i'm exceptionally stressed, which makes written communication difficult. but it's not like you can just explain that to people and expect them to believe you. but the uh. idk what to call it. OCD cranked the pattern-seeking part of my brain up so far that the metaphorical knob broke off and so the uh. like. the ability for me to notice which words have what amount of letters is always there, i'm just good at overriding it now. that's what 'learning to live with OCD' is like for me. the tracks that it carves into my brain never go away, i just get better at overriding them. but certain stupid little rules never really leave you, like if i'm lengthening a word like turning 'no' into 'noooooo' or 'holy' into 'hooooly' then the new lengthened form of the word has to have a 'good' number of letters like 3 or 7 or whatever my brain deems fit.

i can sit small objects down now without compulsively checking that the surface i'm about to sit them on is clean. ...most of the time. that got really annoying but also embarrassing to be seen doing it. having to re-wipe the counter down every time i'd pick up my water bottle and put it back down. trying to do Anything in the kitchen was an absolute nightmare. and yeah it still takes me a long time to cook anything, and there's countless other compulsions that make me dread the kitchen, and yeah i still can't sit large objects down without thoroughly inspecting the surface below them, and. sigh. there's no making this one sound like it's much improved at all. cause it hasn't

at least the compulsion to re-live and commit to memory every possible detail of my dreams immediately upon waking has left me. that's one rare example of a compulsion that has totally left instead of just adapting to be less intrusive. it was so miserable laying there for ages every morning trying to force any shred of memory out of my dreams and then panicking when i oftentimes couldn't remember anything.

anyways. i could and would have to write a literal book to fit in even half of all the examples of every single compulsion i've ever had in the last 10 years. most of them are still with me. some of them are very.. evolved, but most of them are still with me in one form or another. there isn't a single aspect of the way that i interact with the world around me that isn't heavily influenced by my OCD.

i don't expect to ever get to be that 13y/o kid again. and even back then, i was far from neurotypical. mental things were already starting to spiral for me around 11 or so. but none of my other (numerous) illnesses hold a candle to the disabling effect that OCD had and has on me. it's one of the WHO's top 10 most debilitating illnesses in the world, physical health issues included. i think i heard it ranked at #7, ironically enough. that stat might not still be accurate but i can't help but constantly want to quote it because i think one of the most tortuous aspects of OCD is the inability of those who don't have it to truly grasp how much you're struggling. how bad it is. it's taken so unseriously by the majority of those who don't have it, that trying to get across to someone how much you're struggling feels like this constant uphill battle that you never asked to fight.

one of the most difficult things for me to live with is the knowledge that most people just aren't going to understand. or believe me. and feeling unseen while suffering through immense pain is just. it's maddening. and dealing with that exact issue of struggling so much, both in physical sorts of pain and with mental illnesses, and having everyone around me never take it seriously enough.. it has been such a prevalent part of my life for so long that it just. it's slowly driving me fucking insane lol. not to be dramatic. i know i've got a relatively easy life. but there is always gonna be this invisible, bleeding wound on my soul that gets torn open a little wider every time i have to look someone in the eye and try, exhaustedly, to explain the absolute dumpster fire shitshow that i have to live with in my brain 24/7, only to get some fuckass excuse of a response like 'haha yeah i know what you mean! i'm a little OCD too!' and they just like. like seeing things organized neatly and sometimes experience a passing worry that they left the stove on.

and i just wanna say that 'we are playing life on two very different difficulty levels and i don't think i'll ever be able to get that across to you' but no i have to be nice and downplay it and get along bc it's just not worth it. i'm so fucking tired. OCD is exhausting enough to live with, let alone trying to educate other people on it.

maybe one day ill post that stupid excuse of a poem i wrote regarding my frustration with that exact experience.

but like i said, i don't ever expect this to go away. medication only treats the symptoms and i can only force myself to suffer through so much CBT. this will be with me forever, in a significant capacity. i just hope that before i die, i'll get to know what it's like to have someone look me in the eye and understand. not necessarily from personal experience, but to at least know me well enough to be able to understand how serious i am when i say that OCD ruined my life.

but it might turn out that the only place i'll be able to find that level of understanding and acceptance, is when i look in the mirror.

that might just have to be enough.

[goodnightwindy]

deleting this app for a while tbh. don't know when i'll be back. if there's something you want to tell me orrr if we're mutuals , i'm goodnightwindy on discord. bye 🫡🫡