#east german stuff

[rochenn]

Honestly kinda weird what an almost 60 year period of de facto de-christianization in a language and culture otherwise steeped in centuries of Christianity does to a mf.

Like ur always referring to some dude when you swear and curse but you bet your ass most of the ppl around you have never seen a church from the inside unless they took a tour to look at the colorful altars and architecture. It's just history to you. Pretty buildings etc. You don't spare a single thought towards Jesus bc his birthday isn't named after him in your language and his resurrection is linked to pre-Christian traditions that are way more fun than going to church. You forget he exists. You celebrate his days either way, but all of that happens in the shadow of the gods he replaced. God and Jesus are little more than expletives to you.

Still it feels like something was taken from you and you don't know what it is??

[his-heart-hymns]

Around 2400 years ago one of the most famous Greek philosophers Socrates said:

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

And About 150 years ago, the renowned Urdu poet from the Indian subcontinent Dagh Dehlvi wrote:

Yeh samajh kar tujhe ae maut laga rakkha hai

Ke kaam aata hai bure vaqt me aana tera.

Translation:In contemplation, we hold death close to our hearts, Aware of its significance in the gravest and most difficult hours.

Even after thousands of years of human progress we still believe that death offers solace and ultimate peace from life's cruelties.

[boxenstopp]

ok whatever hair, waist, chest, eyes. i dont care. does your man have a freaky english accent. does he even speak english. does he say weird shit without batting an eye. when he opens his mouth do you gasp and then realize you dont know what the fuck he's saying. does he-

[sonicskullsalt]

EM-Spielplan auf ostfriesischem Platt

Euro match plan in East Frisian Low German

[cienie-isengardu]

5. A gift from the past.

Up until the moment the officer gazes at the holo of the infant boy, it’s easy to believe Loi’e may have been mistaken in her identification of the eyepatch-wearing Imperial. But as he removes his cap to show the scars where two horns once protruded from his skull, we know her intuition has served her well. And instead of just another nameless Imperial soldier, a cog in the Empire’s galactic machine, we begin to see him as Loi’e did. A little boy who was stolen, a child who was indoctrinated, and a young man who can still change his mind.

[caktoz]

People naming their characters or children after random ass german words will never not be weird

If you named your child some german word never come here, this child will not know peace

[multifandom-nerds-blog]

When you can finally get back to writing fanfiction after having a migraine two days in a row ON YOUR FREE DAYS.

Anyway. I started watching 90s Moomin in the background. (New obsession???)

[veryfrickingqueer]

The cultural difference between east and west Germany is bigger than I thought.

Last saturday it was my turn to cook and while the stew was cooking I texted my friends. Normal. I told them I was cooking and they were like "ooh nice, what" and I said Solanka.

Apparently people in the Baden-Württemberg don't know Solanka. Which is somehow a cultural shock to me even trough I lived here since 5+ years.

Then I asked other recipes like Pierogi or Szczi and that also not. Then I asked cake because for fun. Y'all they've never eaten a Prophetenkuchen in their lives. Or a Paradieskuchen. Eierschecke. Hexenkuchen.

Now I'm on a mission to make them best east recipes and yes.

Sunday gonna cook Gulasz węgierski (which is a stupid title because it's in Polish but I only know this in Polish but I'm pretty sure it means something like Stew from Hungaria in English) for my friends.

[newtafterdark]

I've already subjected two servers I'm in to this bc that's where my friends are - but come here.

Every day I wake up, being glad that I longer have a saxon accent on the regular... but also knowing I slip into it to curse my friends with speaking English with the worst (affectionate) dialect Germany has to offer.

And in case you want to know what that would sound like - here ya go! Shout-out to these gentlemen from the late 90s & Stefan Raab for remixing it.

Groovy 🕺 Funky 🪩 Groovy 🕺 Funky 🪩 Groovy 🕺 Funky

[benevolent-blackhole]

I hate that Wikipedia is usually the best source that comes up on Google because it really does have its problems. It’s not as if it’s peer reviewed, what gets allowed or not is the purview of just whatever editor who isn’t typically a subject area expert or anything

[skitskatdacat63]

SHRIEKING AT THE DDR NATIONAL ANTHEM BEING MY TOP 3 SONG ON YOUTUBE SHUT THE FUCK UPPPPPP

[reg1ment]

since i like to browse through military surplus and the one i mainly use has some cool new sweaters and jackets. it's gonna get colder so maybe i should get myself a new look

[so-you-melted-22]

Shoutout to my history teacher who straight up never taught us anything about historical events after 1945, even though he is literally supposed to.

I hope you die in a fire.

[xslytherclawx-writes]

lol my senior thesis in college was a comparative legal history of women's rights in east and west germany with a conclusion that reunification, while good for like general human rights, did women in particular a fantastic disservice because it nullified all protections and rights women had in the gdr which far outnumbered any protections and rights women had in the brd (fgr?? idk the english. west germany) because reunification was not reunification; it was a reabsorption of the east into the west, and that's evident even by the way people talk about it today ("new" vs "old" bundesländer, etc.)

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

The "Americanization of the global internet" post and slow deterioration of local native culture gave me an idea: many users don't even know there is native language communities on this website, so if you know of a regional group/"subculture" on Tumblr, reblog/comment with the tags they use so people can find them and connect with other folks from their countries or speakers of a language they'd like to learn

I will try to update this post with every new addition to hopefully make a comprehensive list of Tumblr regional communities

Edit July 29th: the post has reached a point where Tumblr won't let me add any more links, so from now on all tags are plain text to make it fair

The list so far:

Europe

• Czech

#česky, #hezky česky - general Czech language posts, frequently featuring user-written poetry, art, sometimes politics and current events, warning: often contains vent posts

#čumblr - Czech but frequently used by Slovaks as well, primarily memes and fandom things, shipping, art, cultural things, frequently overlaps with #česky

#obrození, #obrozujeme - memes and fandoms as well but with more emphasis of maintaining and developing Czech culture, is a mostly humorous parody/self-proclaimed continuation of the Czech National Revival of the 1800s, overlaps with #čumblr and #česky

• Slovak

#slovensky - general Slovak language posts

#slumblr, #sumblr, NEW - #ťumbľr - Slovak, general posts, memes, fandom and culture things, sometimes overlaps with #čumblr

• Polish

#polska, #polish - Polish, general posts, art, politics and current events

#polblr, #polishposting, #polskie rzeczy - Polish, more humorous general posts and memes, often overlap with the above

• Ukrainian

#ukraine - general Ukrainian posts, often in English

#укртумбочка - mostly used by artists

• General Slavic

#slav, #slavic, #slavposting, #slavic stuff - mixed Slavic, usually cultural things, memes, art and photography, sometimes politics, sometimes visited by other East Europeans

• Irish

#gaeilge - Irish, general posting but especially cultural things and memes, often features posts for language learning

• Welsh

#cymraeg, #tymblr - general Welsh posting, memes

• Romanian

#romanian - general Romanian tag

#romanisme, #vlandom - Romanian, mostly memes and humor

• Hungarian

#magyar, #hungarian, #tumbli - Hungarian language, mostly quotes

• Finnish

#suomitumblr, #suomitumppu, #suomipaskaa, #suomeksi, other variations beginning with suomi - general (shit)posting

any and all swear words such as #perkele, #vittu, #saatana, #helvetti and #paska - shitposts, overlap with above

• Dutch

#dutch, #the netherlands, #netherlands, #holland, #nederland, #nederlands - general Dutch posts

#nedermemes, #dutchcore - memes, shitposting

• German

#deutsch, #german stuff - general German posting

#BundesTag - memes and humor

blogs like @official-deutschebahn, @official-german-medienlandschaft and other official-deutsche- blogs, "because THE joke of German tumblr is to act like an overly bureucratic public institution"

• Swedish

#sweblr, #swedenposting, #svea rike - memes, shitposts, fandom stuff, sometimes political

#svenskt, #sverige - general Swedish stuff

#all makt åt tengil vår befriare, #sa du sten - used mostly by @svenskjavel

#borås - posts and memes about the city, "kinda like Swedish Ohio"

#lesbisk, #bög, #bisexuell, #pansexuell, #hbtq+, #hbtq, #homosexuell, #asexuell - Swedish queer tags

• French

#upthebaguette, #french side of tumblr, #whatthefrance - general French posting but especially memes, comics, art

#bagaitte - French queer posting

• Greek

#greek tumblr, #ελληνικα, #ελλαδα, #γρεεκ, #ελληνικο ταμπλρ - general stuff

#greek memes - memes

Catalan

#coses de la terra - general stuff

Belarusian

#беларускі тамблер - general stuff, fandoms

#артшляхта - art

Italian

#itablr - general stuff, not very populated yet

#welcome to italy, #italian things, #italian stuff, #italy tag, #roba italiana

#sanremo - for the Sanremo Music Festival, also #domenica in but only after the end of the festival

Italians also frequently gather under #leonardo rai, #medici, #i medici, #montalbano and #il giovane montalbano

Estonian

#eestiblr, #eesti - general stuff

@unofficial-estonia - blog

Danish

@useless-denmarkfacts - blog

Spanish

#español - general Spanish (* I noticed some Mexicans using these too so there may be overlap with American Spanish-speaking countries as well)

#citas, #frases - quotes

#humor grafico - memes

Scottish Gaelic

#gaidhlig, #gaelposting - general, art, language

Africa

Moroccan

#المغرب, #Maroc -general, often photos

Asia

• South Asian

#desiblr, #desi, #desi tag - general South Asia posting, memes, humor, sometimes also used by Arab people

• Indian

#dabara tumblr, #தம்பிளர் - suggested tags for South India

Russian

#русский тамблер, #русский tumblr - general stuff, memes

Sri Lankan

#අරගලයට ජය, suggested tags LKA or #Lankablr if anyone's interested

Indonesian

@useless-indonesiafacts - blog

Israeli

# עברית# ,ישראבלר - general stuff (sorry if these are broken, tumblr keeps fucking with right-to-left scripts)

Arabic

#عربي - general

#كتب, #كتاب, #كتابات - books and writing

Oceania

Australian

#auscore, #straya - general stuff, culture, memes and shitposts

#auspol - politics

Aotearoa (New Zealand)

#māori, #te reo māori - Māori tags

Americas

Brazilian

#brazil, #brasil, #Come to brazil, #br posting, #meu brasil brasileiro, #tumblr br - general and memes

Turtle Island (North American) Indigenous

#ndn, #ndn tumblr - usually about culture, memes etc

"If you're looking for something specific to your tribe, try the non-English spelling of your tribe's name (Tsalagi for Cherokee, for example)"

Not location-specific

Jewish

#jumblr, #frumblr - general stuff, history, discussions, posts mostly in English

Romani

#romani, #rroma, #rrumblr - romani sides of tumblr, general stuff, history, discussions, mostly in English

Please share around wherever you're from, US American local cultures are welcome as well, especially indigenous (though that should go without saying)

Reminder that this is a post made to allow people to find others of the same culture/language, be respectful and do not use these tags to target groups and spread hate

[anyroads]

OK you know what, if we're gonna talk about Bake Off then fuck it, let's do this.

It used to be this wholesome, lovely show! We used to watch it for the bakers! And the learning! And the light banter and occasional bit of coy innuendo! What happened?

Channel 4 happened. When they bought the show they made a number of changes, most of them Not Good™️. Not just in the sense of them resulting in a lot of 😬 and 🫠 moments, but in the sense of how they changed the show's purpose, atmosphere, and brand.

Look, I know most people are just like, "whatever, it's just a baking show," and yeah, sure. But it's one of the UK's most successful TV exports, and where it once shifted the tone of reality competition to being wholesome and supportive of contestants, it's since moved towards creating tension at the contestants' cost. So aside from the fact that most people watching it signed up to watch a nice show, it has also shifted the goalposts of what that even means. And that, lovelies and gentlefolk, is some bullshit.

I decided to break my rant analysis into four main parts: theme weeks, the hosts, the judges, and the bakers. Let's get to it!

Theme Weeks:

If you watch Bake Off, you know the show's always had a specific theme for each week. The staples that come up in most seasons are:

cake

biscuit

bread

pudding/dessert

pastry

patisserie

Less common but consistent are things like caramel and chocolate week.

Then there are the fun episodes! When GBBO was on the BBC, this started out with things tea week, tarts, pies, tray bakes, basically little tangents still focused on emphasizing specific baking skills. In Series 6 (still on the BBC) they had their first nation-focused theme week with French week -- fairly innocuous given that a lot of patisserie is French, France and England share much more culture than either cares to admit [Norman Flag dot gif], and it was a nice change from watching Paul make the bakers do recipes that involved boiling things while talking about how wonderful boiled doughs are (are they, Paul? Are they?).

The show kept mixing it up with innocuous themes like advanced dough and alternative ingredients weeks, European cakes, Victorian week, batter week, and botanical week. And while it was frustrating to watch Paul Hollywood mispronounce things like the Hungarian Dobos Torta and lecture bakers on babka when he clearly knew nothing about it (or about Jewish baking in general, go off Past Me), the show's general attitude was that the judges had their own opinions, which were separate from the immutable facts around the chemistry of baking (more on this later) and shouldn't affect how bakers are judged.

After the show moved to Channel 4, the number of themed weeks increased and more of them focused on specific countries. In 6 seasons on the BBC, there were only two country-focused theme weeks, and in 5 seasons on Channel 4 there have been five. And while they've also had themes like vegan baking, roaring 20s, the 1980s, spice week, etc. the show has really started to go hard on exoticizing other cultures in outright disrespectful and racist ways. There's been Italian and Danish week, German, Japanese (it wasn't, it was East Asian week), and now Mexican week (which doesn't touch on interspersed Jewish bakes that didn't get a theme week, like versions of bagels and babka set as technical challenges that were borderline hate crimes and mansplained by a guy who has no idea how to make either and once wrote in a cookbook that challah was traditionally eaten during Passover). Each time the hosts played up the theme with racist bits and jokes that can be used as evidence in court if your case is "why should shows with scripted content have a professional writing staff."

Which touches on other issues the show has now...

The Hosts:

When GBBO was on the BBC, the show was hosted by ✨Mel Giedroyc✨ and ✨Sue Perkins✨. They encouraged the bakers! They'd hold stuff for them sometimes! They were interested in them! If a baker had a breakdown, they would start singing copyrighted material to render the footage unusable! When the show moved to Channel 4, they left, though I'm not unconvinced that Channel 4 offered them impossible to accept contracts to force them out so they could rebrand the show. They replaced them with Sandy Toksvig and Noel Fielding. Sandy was a lovely host in the vein of Mel and Sue, and she and Noel had a relatively sweet rapport, but she left a few seasons ago and was replaced by Matt Lucas.

Noel Fielding is mostly known for his quirky brand of comedy, a sort of British Zooey Deschanel who's goth from the neck up, an upperclass British gay divorcee from the neck down, and basically an early 60s Beatle re: trousers. Matt Lucas has almost definitely never watched a single episode of GBBO and his most redeeming quality is his thinly veiled contempt for Paul Hollywood.

The two treat the baking tent as their personal playground. Far from the supportive attitude of Mel and Sue, they tend to get in the bakers' way during the most stressful moments, especially when they try to do hilarious "comedy" bits (I can't not put that in quotes) like Noel's talking wooden spoon thing, or Matt talking over Noel to do time calls. During theme weeks like Japanese and Mexican week, they do culture-specific bits that are both racist ("just Juan joke" and "is Mexico a real place?") and unsurprising, given that both Matt and Noel did blackface on their respective sketch shows and absolutely could and should have known better because it was already the current fucking century.

All this to say, there's now a separation between the bakers and the hosts, as if they're on different shows. The hosts are doing their own thing and the bakers are doing GBBO. The show has gotten meaner to the bakers, and the hosts aren't there to support them anymore, they're just there to be comic relief. Because when you refocus your show on stressing the bakers the fuck out, you need a forced laugh I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The Judges:

First of all, a sincere congratulations to Paul Hollywood who managed to squeeze I jUsT cAmE bAcK fRoM mExIcO aNd YeT sTiLL pRoNoUnCe PiCo De GaLLo As 'PiKa De KaLLa' and I aM aN eXpErT oN s'MoReS wHiCh aRe MaDe WiTh DiGeStiVe BiScUiTs AcCoRdiNg tO mE, aN eXpErT oN s'MoReS, just two in a giant pile of astoundingly wrong hot takes, into a short enough time span that they all aired within Liz Truss's term as Prime Minister. A true man of accomplishments.

In the interest of fairness, I need to preface this with a disclaimer that, due to the fact that I've been watching Bake Off for most of its run, I'm biased. Specifically, I can't stand Paul Hollywood's smarmy, classist, egomaniac ass because he's proven time and again he's more interested in looking smart than actually knowing what he's talking about. Since the show moved to Channel 4, they've changed the occasional handshake Paul would give bakers to the HoLlYwOoD hAnDsHaKe™️. It's gone from being an emphasis of someone's skill to a goal, a reward, and one that emphasizes the judges' place above the bakers.

The judges used to function as teachers, imparting their skills and insights to the bakers. When the show was on the BBC, the voiceover leading to a judging would focus on the bakers' work being finished, saying how it will now be evaluated based on their skill and how well they met the brief. The voiceovers now, on Channel 4, focus on the judging (literally saying something along the lines of, "the bakers will now be judged by Prue and Paul"). There is a clear distinction Channel 4's producers have made, to mark that the show is now about whether or not the judges approve, not whether the brief was understood and executed well. On the BBC, it was irrelevant whether the judges liked a particular flavor, as long as the bake was well-made. Now, the bakers are expected to know the judges tastes and cater to them, which is frankly bullshit. A judge doesn't have to like a flavor to know whether or not it was executed well, ie. is it carrying a bake and was it meant to etc.

The judges have been turned into a brand. Cynically, Channel 4 knows that by building them up and focusing the show more on them, they can exploit their image more for profit. In the process, they've become much more biased and their own biases have come out as well. Most recently in the flaming dumpster fire that was Mexican Week, Paul Hollywood tried to intimidate a baker by telling them he had just gotten back from Mexico (which must have been a fruitful learning trip if he couldn't even learn how to pronounce pico de gallo correctly). Where do I even start with this? Here's an amateur baker from England (the show specifically casts middle and lower middle class bakers for the most part??) who likely can't afford trips to Mexico, who lives in a country with incredibly limited access to Mexican cuisine, who is expected not only to understand the cooking and baking traditions of a completely different culture but to do so well enough to play with it and do something creative with it. On top of which, one of the judges is now using his privilege of traveling halfway around the world as some kind of leverage, as if this were a bar that any amateur British baker could clear.

Prue, meanwhile, has openly asserted her biases against cultural flavors and textures, prioritizing her own personal preferences over them, as if they were in any way relevant to the skills and knowledge necessary to execute the tasks she sets to the bakers. She has also been consistently elitist, criticizing bakers for choices they made that were clearly informed by their experiences within income brackets that are too low and foreign for Prue to comprehend. She once had a go at a baker on a Christmas special because his Christmas dinner themed bake didn't have a turkey, even though it was clear from the stories he shared of his own Christmases that his family likely couldn't afford one. "It's not really Christmas dinner without a turkey," Prue said into the camera angrily while sitting on a chair made of live orphans and telling the ghost of Christmas Future to come back when he had another museum gift shop necklace for her to round out her collection.

The show is no longer about which baker has the best skills. It's become about which mortal can appease the gods of Mount Olympus, ie. the judges.

The Bakers:

Remember when the show was about them? Channel 4 doesn't! Because this is a reality competition show, the bakers are chosen both based on their skills, as well as cast-ability. They're cast as characters, distinct from each other, from different areas, age groups, ethnicities. All of them are amateurs. All of them are middle or lower middle class. They've ranged from college students to supermarket cashiers to prison wardens to scientists.

Something I noticed when the show moved to Channel 4 is that the baker who goes home in the first week is always wildly behind the rest in skills. I have no proof of this other than my eyeballs and deductive reasoning skills, but I think that Channel 4 deliberately casts a ringer each season who they think will be an easy send-off in the first week, just to get the audience's feet wet.

Anyway, like I said, this show used to be about the bakers - about them building skills and learning, and having walked into the tent with a self-taught foundation and understanding of the processes and chemical reactions involved in baking. When the show was on the BBC, the end of each round had some (often brief) moments of tension - will they finish in time? Will they get their bakes on the plate before time is up? Did they forget to add sugar to their batter and only remember at the last minute? In the end, they usually managed to finish and we'd all breathe a sigh of relief and think, yeah! You go, Bakers Who I'm Rooting For!

Now, on Channel 4, the end of round drama has been stretched to be so much longer that they've composed extra music for it. The bakers often seem out of their depth, whether because the instructions for the technical challenge are too vague (bake a lemon meringue pie??? As if anyone in the UK under the age of 60 has had one in the last decade???), or because they were expected to bake something that required a more than a basic foundation they weren't told of. Often it seems like they just aren't given enough time, a tactic used by reality competition shows to manipulate contestants into giving the cameras more dramatic content. On top of all this, the hosts get in their way, instead of helping them plate their bakes. As has been pointed out before, when everyone fails the challenge, the real failure lies with whoever set it.

In conclusion:

The show no longer exists to teach the bakers - and the audience - skills or knowledge. It now manipulates contestants for dramatic effect and prioritizes showing conflict over wholesome content. Channel 4 sees the bakers as social media content they can churn out season after season, and don't care about them because in a few months there'll be a new batch to exploit. Meanwhile, the judges are also out of their depth, co-opting recipes from other cultures and butchering them horrendously, while the camera gives them nothing but status as they hold bakers to the expectation that they learn how to make things very much the wrong way. If you saw any of the tweets about Mexican or Japanese week, or read my post on how Paul Hollywood isn't allowed to go near babka ever again, you'll understand.

So what would fix all this? Scrap the current judges and the hosts altogether. Bring back Mel and Sue, and replace the judges with expert bakers who have a love of their craft and want to share it with others. The draw of GBBO used to be its warmth and comfort - if Channel 4 isn't going to start its own version of Master Chef For Bakers, then it needs to stop trying to find a balance of how it can insert that vibe into GBBO. It can't. That's not a thing. Stop trying.