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cellarspider · 7 months

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5/30 The pseudohistory of Prometheus

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We return to a movie I wish to send on a journey down the Kola Superdeep Borehole, Prometheus.

And my insanity truly begins in this segment. We are only 1/10th of the way through the movie so far. Content warnings for discussion of racism in pseudoscience and historical anthropology, Spider getting hung up on logistics and space nerd stuff, and pictures of Yuri Knorozov, the most sour-faced man to ever live.

The cast sits down for a briefing. This is a scene with an easily identifiable narrative function: providing exposition to the theater audience. The act of doing a briefing makes sense. It is the last thing here that will.

We are introduced to a hologram of Peter Weyland, the financier of the expedition. The name means all sorts of Lore to the series, but what’s intensely distracting is that we seem to have caught Weyland halfway through applying his zombie makeup.

Weyland is played by Guy Pierce. As of the filming of this movie, he was somewhere around 45 years old. Yes, they smothered this Australian in old man drag so that he could play this character. This is a baffling decision, that only gets slightly less baffling if you know the production history of the movie, which I did not at the time.

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Guy Pierce was hired to play a younger Peter Weyland. There’s a promo video out there of him giving a fictional TED Talk in the not-to-distant future of next Sunday AD 2023, there were various plans for him to appear in the movie proper. None of those scenes are actually in the movie. They refused to double-cast the role for some reason. While the practical effects in the movie are generally excellent and it does make the tiniest smidge of sense that a hypercapitalist asshole would be portrayed as a literal rubber-faced movie monster, this, like many things in Prometheus, made the movie a very weird sit. One where I was increasingly less open to going along with the movie’s fiction. You are telling me that this is an actual human man. I am not buying it. He looks far less human than David, the only non-human there.

Speaking of David, Weyland calls him “the closest thing to a son I will ever have”, and then immediately says David is an inhuman lesser being, who does not appreciate the specialness of his existence because he does not have a soul.

Which is funny, because I think you can see David’s soul leaving his body at this exact moment.

Weyland then tries to mash in some existential weight to the movie: they might finally get an answer for “why are we here?” and all that jazz! He also tries to explain why naming a ship Prometheus is totally not like calling it Titanic II: Don’t think about the part of the myth where Prometheus is chained to a rock and has his ever-regenerating liver eaten by an eagle every day! Think about the bit where he brought fire to mankind! We’re gonna bring back that bit!

And then the archaeologists take over the briefing, and this, THIS, is the bit where they entirely lost me. My suspension of disbelief had already been strained by multiple oddities up to this point. My skepticism about these characters in particular was already a bit elevated by their implied invocation of the ancient astronauts concept.

Turns out, only Vickers, Shaw, and Holloway know why they’re here.

Two years away from Earth. On a massively expensive expedition that intends to make first contact with an alien culture, the first alien culture that humankind has ever found evidence of. Nobody has been briefed up until this point.

This is lunacy.

Explanations have been figured out by fans since then: this is a passion project by Weyland, an annoyance to the rest of the corporate structure that nobody else believes in. The movie eventually intimates this, through Vickers.

Fans have thus speculated that Weyland was just quarantined off to do his little alien hunt, with no logistical support that would make it actually functional. He believed a crazy theory put forward by Shaw and Holloway, and everyone else wasn’t actually best-of-the-best, they were just whoever would take a big paycheck to do fuck-all for nearly five years of sleeping their way to and from their destination.

I am willing to consider that this was intentional. The movie possibly tries to confirm this with Mr. “I’m here for the money” Fifield, but none of the other characters have enough characterization to determine if this is the general trend.

How could we make a story that more clearly spells this out? Maybe Millburn the biologist could encounter more of the crew talking about the payout from taking the job, or reveal that he himself has some project he needs money for. It would also chip away at the dearth of character-building dialog for most of the cast.

As a result of those deficiencies in characterization, a lot of my discussion of plot points is going to be focused around what they do, rather than why. …Except when it is about the why, at which point the main commentary will be “WHY.”

In any case: while it makes sense, I'm still not certain the film meant for this character motivation. Prometheus is just so loudly explicit with so many of its plot points that it doesn’t seem like this is the case. The movie certainly believes in the sincerity and correctness of the archaeologists, though.

Unfortunately, it also immediately tells me that they’re a couple of wingnuts. I’m not sure if it intends to, for reasons I’ll get into after I foam at the mouth for a little while.

They present a series of artifacts to the crew: Egyptian, Mayan, Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, Hawaiian, and their Scottish cave painting. All of them feature “men worshiping giant beings”, who are pointing to what stargazer nerds call an asterism: a pattern of stars. Shaw and Holloway believe that these are aliens that engineered humans into their current state. Shaw literally says “it’s what I choose to believe” as the entirety of their justification for this.

Again: I knew the movie wanted me to take this as truth, within its universe. That’s the implicit deal the movie has made with the audience, this is truth. You are supposed to be contemplating the "whys" of it all. But the movie had also smacked me in the brain so many times in the past five minutes, that I, like Millburn the Biologist, was ready to call bullshit.

I appreciate him for doing so, and it shows he could have been a smart character, but sadly, he is in Prometheus.

Because he is a fictional biologist and I am an actual biologist, I will expand on his argument, as I descend into ranting for the rest of the post.

Millburn objects on the basis of evolutionary history, which the movie only partially succeeds in papering over: the implication is that evolution on Earth was directed with the deterministic outcome of creating something like humans.

This opens up a whole new can of worms that the movie doesn’t get into–when exactly did this engineering start? When great apes evolved? When mammals did? Tetrapods? Skeletons? DNA itself? After all, we know the aliens, now dubbed Engineers by the archaeologists, have DNA. Did they seed all life on Earth? How did they evolve? Our last universal common ancestor is believed to have already been using DNA 3-4 billion years ago, evolving out of a likely RNA-based genetic standard. Hominins diverged from other apes around 15-25 million years ago. What sort of culture would undertake a project that required at least 15 million years on the extreme low end?

All excellent questions! The movie is not concerned with them. I am, and that is part of why this movie still lives in a special, awful place in my head.

This isn’t actually what made me become actively hostile toward the archaeologists, though. What managed that, well! It was their archaeology. Anybody who had an Ancient Egypt Phase in their childhood should be able to articulate multiple reasons why the academic community would’ve laughed these guys out of the building.

Bigness in ancient egyptian art does not indicate literal size. It indicates importance. In fact, the artifacts the movie uses exclusively come from artistic traditions which feature hierarchical or non-literal scale. Do the Engineers turn out to actually be eight feet tall? Yes! Am I still annoyed by this? ABSOLUTELY.

You know what else is a big problem? Many of the cultures they reference here had written language! A LOT of written language! They include Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Mayan art in their evidence, all of which not only wrote a LOT of things down, but had a habit of annotating a lot of their art with labels to tell you what was going on! You can actually see some on the props they used in this scene!

Beyond that, they had very prescribed formal styles, where you can follow the action entirely through gestures, held objects, attendant symbols, and clothing! If all these cultures, as implied, had actual, direct contact with aliens, recorded in the art presented here, we would know what they were told.

Skipping ahead of the movie for a minute: the Engineers were apparently not telling humans “we’re here in these stars, come find us”, they were telling humans “settle the fuck down or this is where the hurt’s going to come from”.

Here's the thing. Ancient peoples weren't stupid. They wouldn't just not talk about this. If giant aliens came down from the sky and gave them a stern talking-to that contradicted their religion, that would be a big deal. And these characters specifically say the Engineers are being "worshiped" in these images! They're apparently taking onboard what's being said!

It is certainly possible for information to be lost. Over long time scales, that's unfortunately the rule, rather than the exception. But again: half the artifacts have writing on them!

I chose to believe that Shaw and Holloway simply did not attempt to read any available translations of attendant texts, and they were thus cursed for their foolishness by the ghosts of Mayan Studies pioneer Yuri Knorozov and Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, and the still-extant spirit of Assyriologist Irving Finkel.

Knorozov knows your sins against Mayan Studies. Knorozov is a vengeful god. Chapollion and Finkel are likewise very cross.

Two last things stood out to me in the theater. One of them was extremely petty but tied into some very serious issues with pseudoscience, and the other one was not.

Pettiness first: the asterism shown in the artifacts is a pattern of six stars. The movie wants you to believe that it is very spooky that the only asterism that precisely matches this pattern are six stars that are too faint to see with the naked eye. This is laughable, both because the asterism is so generic-looking that I can think of several very visible asterisms that are good matches for the pattern, but it also recapitulates a bunch of really fucking annoying stuff from pseudoscientific bullshit.

First: Pseudoscience and pseudohistory likes to make a big deal out of the fact that every culture has stories about the stars. Why?

The sky is very important to every culture’s mythology, because every culture can see the sky. Like, that’s literally it. People can see the sky. They tell stories about it. There’s not much to do at night except look at the sky, when even keeping a fire lit can be an expensive prospect. It is not even the least bit weird when multiple cultures–all of them in the northern hemisphere in this case!–have stories about the same stars.

Second: Cultures vary in their ability to faithfully reproduce celestial landmarks in art and align their architecture is variable, and not as exact as modern techniques can manage. Pseudoscience will claim that they are exact, when it fits their pre-existing theory, or fudge the difference if they want something to fit their claims.

(This is a photoshopped image, by the way.)

Were the stone age temples of Malta secretly aligned with a particular star that foretold the doom of Atlantis, precisely tracking its location through the sky over thousands of years of Earth’s axial wobbling? No! They were roughly aligned with the sun. Sunlight is important when you don’t have electric lights. Were the Great Pyramids of Giza laid out ten thousand years ago to match the layout of the stars in Orion’s Belt, according to the designs of a legendary lost race of highly advanced non-African people? Were they tapping into the Earth’s magnetic field to generate energy? No! They were aligned with the cardinal directions, and they got them a bit wrong!

Hell, if we want to play at that game, I found a decent match for the asterism in Stellarium's Egyptian constellation set. Just flip this 90 degrees clockwise and you'll see I'm totally right. Aliens confirmed.

I know the movie is trying to tell me that all the asterisms in the art are precise matches for each other and are thus impossible to explain without intercultural contact (or aliens!!), but it is also showing me that they are not that precise. So, it’s just showing me stars. At least in some of them. Their little charcoal lad from the Isle of Skye may be throwing fruit at his audience.

In fact, there's a further, probably unintentional link to pseudohistorical claims in the artifacts presented: the Maya artifact shown does not actually depict a "giant figure" being worshiped, in fact, it shows one instantly recognizable, known figure in Classical Maya history: It is an altered version of the ornately carved coffin lid of Kʼinich Janaab Pakal I (24 March 603 - 29 August 683), with the top quarter of the carving replaced with a star pattern that looks nothing like the ones on the other artifacts.

The carving shows Pakal in the pose of an infant, entering into death and being reborn. It is packed full of so many symbolic elements that can be easily recognized by those more familiar with the Classical Maya than I am.

Conspiracy theorist Erich von Däniken thought that it showed Pakal rocketing away on a spaceship. Däniken proposed this because he didn't understand the cultural symbolism, but he had seen pictures of astronauts before.

And on that note, 2,400 words into this rant, we get to the actually bad shit. Unfortunately, it ties into the issue I had with the premise to begin with: the real-world context of pseudoscientific claims of ancient alien contact. Specifically, the racism.

We’re going to unspool this more near the end of the movie, because there was further behind the scenes I was not aware of when I first saw Prometheus, and it just compounds this stuff.

So, when I went on my first tangent on how unpleasant ancient alien theories are, one thing I highlighted is that the further from Western Civilization you get, the more these theories presuppose that fellow humans are incapable of building great works or imagining interesting things. No, they had to be guided, and explicitly shown things that they copied down to the best of their limited capability.

The only european example of alien contact they show is from the Upper Paleolithic, 37,000 years ago. All the examples around the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia range from 5,500-3,700 years ago. The examples from the Classical Maya and Hawaiʻi are from 620 and 680 CE.

During this period, Tang Dynasty merchants were creating the first paper money as the famous female emperor Wu Zetian was on her way to the throne. The Prophet Muhammad went to al-Aqsa mosque, and we’re only eight years before the birth of Charlemagne’s grandfather. We’re no longer talking ancient, it’s just old.

I want to emphasize that the movie is presenting these not as depictions of myths that have been passed down–though there are more problems with that I’ll get into shortly–these are implied to be contemporary depictions of events witnessed by the artists, who were quite possibly instructed by the Engineers to record a precise pattern of stars. An equivalency is being drawn between stone age Europe, bronze age Africa and the Middle East, and a couple of startlingly recent Mesoamerican and Polynesian cultures.

But let’s be generous. Maybe these aren’t supposed to be contemporary accounts in these two outlier cases: the movie’s script will certainly indicate later that they have no idea what they’ve implied here. Perhaps these are story traditions that were handed down from the Olmecs and Melanesian precursors of the first to sail to Hawaiʻi.

Unfortunately, this just recapitulates a different racist trope: that European and more “developed” civilizations invented so much cool and comfortable material culture and philosophy that they forgot the Mystical Religious Truths of the old ways, which were preserved only in Primitive Lands and among Uneducated Peoples, where they never found anything better to do with their time. Oh, if only we had heeded the warnings from those spiritually attuned non-white people!

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(Look, I only remember Devil (2010), which has 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, because M Night Shyamalan wrote and produced it, and this was two years after The Happening came out, so I watched it out of morbid curiosity. It's not as unbelievably bad as The Happening, but as shown in the clip above, the spiritually attuned latino security guard Ramirez attributes toast landing jelly side down to Satan. That is an actual thing that happens in the movie. He is proven right.)

But let's be even more generous: someone probably realized that they'd focused near-exclusively on Middle Eastern cultures, and wanted to throw in a couple from elsewhere. Sitting here, having seen the movie in full, this is the most likely option: their inclusion creates a contradiction with a later scene, and was thus probably not checked for consistency. These cultures were thrown in as a bit of background flavor. I list this last, because in the theater, there was no way to know this at the time.

That answer's still not great. Still leaves us in the same position, where Europeans are pretty much given their own agency, while other cultures need to be led.

Oh, and to anyone else who’s made it this far and knows the production history of Prometheus: don’t worry! I know what Ridley Scott told that one interviewer, about a contact between a less-ancient European power and the Engineers. I’m saving that one. I like to save that one, because strategic deployment of that quote made some of my IRL friends scream.

Next time: the Prometheus descends to an alien world, and I descend further into madness. I am going to drag you all down with me.

(Pictured: Yuri Knorozov, and my present mood.)

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Citations for alt text ramblings:

https://www.almendron.com/artehistoria/arte/culturas/egyptian-art-in-age-of-the-pyramids/catalogue-fourth-dynasty/

#Prometheus (2012)#prometheus 2012 #The last time I watched this movie with a scientific colleague and friend #this scene took us twenty minutes to get through #because we were both biologists #plus me with the archaeology and a dash of space nerdery #and they knew mesopotamian history #so by the time we were done with this scene we were ginned up and ready to fight the movie

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kafkaoftherubble · 10 months

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Actually to add onto what I said: we as poc are too mean to white people. "White women" followed by the most horribly misogynistic string of words you could imagine, "white men" and then something men of all races do, "white people are so annoying" like poc are perfect angels just because we're oppressed.

We gain nothing by making white people feel guilty for existing. My white friends say "white woman" as an insult or "basic white boy". Dude that is literally your sibling, your mother, father, friend, neighbor and Lord knows what else that you are talking about, stop using it as an insult! It is a descriptor!

Honestly the most infuriating one is "white women" because it's used only as an insult. You can say whatever you want as long as it's by "white women" because white women are all rude, middle class, middle aged transphobic Karens.

Saying Karen is a mean women's name is misogynistic too! Both Karens I know are angels and don't deserve to be treated so horribly just because they have perfectly normal names for their age range and ethnic group.

Tldr: singling out white people just makes them feel bad for existing and it's often used as a shield to be misogynistic.

I agree wholeheartedly!

Humans are humans. I know it sounds pretty damn cliche and I run the risk of sounding like those people who have never had to endure any discrimination in my life, but at the end of the day, people are people.

I don't mean to say a white person is the "exact same" as a minority. A white person today isn't born in a vacuum where their skin color is completely unrelated to the history that color presents. There is a continuity of history that every one of us is born from and into, including "white" people.

But, well, racialism isn't real. It's pseudoscience. Every concept of race was invented; our genome is literally too similar to one another that you cannot actually tell whose genome belongs to which "group "race" (hereditary tests and all aren't actually telling you this, either. It simply tells you how many genes you share with people within the database that specific company has collected from "natives" of a certain area).

Also, whiteness is an invented category that unites people not even by culture or region.

That means that a white person is really, at their core, not significantly, biologically, or cognitively different from a human being like me. What makes them different is the historicity they are born into—which they don't actually have a hand in choosing, like how I didn't have a hand in choosing which country to be born in, or to which parents, or to what sorta brain I might possess, etc.

To take it out to someone because they are white by random birth lottery just doesn't make sense to me. Because I'm punishing someone for their score on an RNG.

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There is an institution, built up from history, that favors the majority, that's for sure. That majority turns out to be White for quite a lot of countries, and internationally, the most well-off countries are countries with the same institutions that favor White people. It's a product of history, and it does come at a lot of expense to minorities. All that is the sort of historicity a White person of today is born into; all that is real.

But I don't think a White person should be made to feel guilty of being born white. I don't think they should be proud, either—hard to be proud of being deposited at a good place that was built at the cost of other long-suffering, bedeviled people, innit?

If it's hard to see why White people should just be seen as "the people the system favors" instead of "white = inherently bad because of what their skin color represents," then look at countries where the majority isn't White. My country's majority is the Malay people, and the system is terribly biased for them. Someone like you, who has no history in this country, will (correctly) not think Malays are bad by default; in fact, a Malay would be a minority in your country and therefore seen as "not (as) bad (as a White person)."

But an angry minority in my country could easily see them as bad (or lazy, or stupid, or untalented, etc.) to the core just by being Malay. Malay are not White, but the resentment is the same.

What some people don't recognize, I think, is that their resentment is actually toward the system and not the skin color or ethnicity this system favors. When one confuses the latter for the first, one starts to think the problems are all tied to one specific group's "inherent quality." And then we get the whole idea of making this group a slur or something to look down on. As if being White is a karmic punishment, and they should atone for their "past," even if it's beyond their actual births, by suffering our get-back form of discrimination.

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The individual born into this historicity is not the guilty one, I think. The system that arises from that history, the one that oppresses minorities, is.

I think a modern-day White person isn't guilty by default; they are only problematic if they contribute to that system or defend it.

I mean, a POC could unabashedly defend a terrible, discriminatory system even if the historicity they were born to wasn't favored or lifted by this system. Sure, the historicity of a group will skew the probability—a White person may more likely defend this system, and a minority may more likely oppose it.

But a person is more than the group it's born into. It's also the experience and the genes and the society and the resources and the friends and the education and the narratives and so many things.

They didn't choose to be White. They are not responsible for being born white. But! They could be responsible for choosing to protect that system or help dismantle it.

And in that lens, they really are just people choosing to either protect or dismantle, like the rest of us do. They are just people.

Thank you for reading my ramble (written while having a headache owww)

(I rarely talk about this sorta thing here, huh?)

#a piece to the rubble

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jaspersreprise · 5 months

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My own connection with Paganism

Hello! Today, this posts particular penchant will be relating to my experiences and connection with a spirituality called Paganism, which is something you must’ve already heard before :)

Before I continue on with it, I’ll define what Paganism is and how it impacts peoples lives for those who don’t know.

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Paganism is a collective term for a wide range of ancient and modern religious systems, many of which focus on worshiping or honoring nature, ancestors, gods, spirits, or other divine, supernatural, or mystical beings. The term 'Paganism' comes from the Latin word 'paganus', which means 'rural' or 'country'. In the past, paganism has often been used as a pejorative term to describe the religions of non-Christians, and was often associated with superstitious or 'barbaric' practices.

Paganism is often marked by a strong connection to the natural world, and many pagans believe in a deep interconnection between all beings and the surrounding environment. While different religions or sects within Paganism have different beliefs and practices, many pagans are concerned with a connection to the cycles of nature, and may celebrate the equinoxes and solstices as times of regeneration and renewal.

Paganism often includes worship or reverence of specific gods or spirits, and many pagans practice polytheism, believing in multiple deities. The exact nature of these gods may vary widely depending on the particular pagan tradition or group, and may include gods and spirits from many different cultures and mythologies.

Many pagans also practice witchcraft, which is a form of magic involving rituals and spells, and which may be used for both good and for ill. Pagans also often engage in meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices, which they use to connect with the divine, to seek guidance, or to seek wisdom.

Paganism can also have a significant impact on the lives of individual practitioners, and many pagans find that their religious beliefs shape their sense of personal identity, their values, and their daily choices. Many pagans believe in the concept of karma, and may engage in acts of charity or service to others as a way of promoting spiritual growth and personal development. Others find that their spiritual practices help them deal with stress, anxiety, and other challenges in their daily life.

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Now that the explanation has come to conclusion, I will be discussing how I am drawn to Paganism and how it aligns to my own spiritual beliefs and values. But first, I want to essentially say this:

I believe we live in a world of indefinite possibilities, where everything is an enigma and we are all unique in our search for individuality. To me, mere labels do not contribute and define what or who we are as a whole person. They are just a way for us to make sense of the true meaning of life. At a young age, I look upon my journey as a perpetual student in life, and the people that I have met along the way, including my friends, who have a profound effect in shaping my views and thoughts. I would like to thank them for also being the reason why my mind had came this way 🤍

I’ll be moving forward now

From the age of 9, or maybe even younger(?), I have started questioning my own identity and grew even more intrigued and curious with discovering who I am as a person. With this yearning to know for more, I subsequently found new interests for myself and had opened my eyes to more knowledge. I wanted to learn more about the things I was passionate about, and so I did!

I am quite younger than you think, so I’m not surprised if I inadvertently implied and distributed subtle hints for you to discover my age.

At the age of 10, that was when I’ve actually delved in more deeply to understand myself. That was when I’ve exposed myself to more new-found interests, such as behaviours and cognitive functions, psychology, superstitions and omens, spirituality, pseudoscience, angelic numerology, extraterrestrials, yadda yadda, there are much more to name :o) And that was all because of one particular book that inherently changed my beliefs and views on life. I started being more open-minded and increasingly became more curious to find a value to life. I don’t dismiss my existential thoughts; I try to find more truth to it, now look what happened 😭 My viewpoint is completely different compared to what I’ve had when I was 9, I’m no pessimist though LMFAO. Definitely not

I’ve been a witch since I was 10 years old, but even as a small child, I felt that there was a calling for me and a craving to reach for the divine. At that age, I began my research and study on witchcraft and it had already came clear to me that this was the path I had to take. It took some time for me to voice my own opinions and belief system to a few of my familial relatives, and it didn’t take much for them to process. I influenced them very well. They were superstitious people, which I am referring to my mom, aunt, uncle, sibling (who also partakes in this practice) and cousins. So I can comfortably, yet gradually, open up to them with my thoughts (by thoughts I mean existential thoughts and what interests me, my academic focus and ambitions, and also saying that I’m bisexual and have more of a preference towards women. Not opening up as in bawling my eyes out. To sprinkle a little humour.)

At the earliest times to when I’ve reached the age of 10, I didn’t know what Paganism is after initially studying and researching witchcraft. It took me a little while to find out, but after finding out what it is, I realized that it greatly aligned very well to my own spiritual beliefs, values, and perspective. Before having truly considering myself a Pagan, I needed more confirmation and delved a more deeper study in it’s spirituality.

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I’m not sure whether that was enough information, but I’ll probably update it later on and do a retrospective. I hope you guys had a great day or night. Please look after your welfare, and be hydrated!

Feel free to ask questions.

#paganism #witchcraft #curiosity #understanding yourself #spirituality #spiritual growth #used to be a catholic #religion

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olderthannetfic · 2 years

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https://at.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/703935827956334592/fit9149v77ch

I'll accept this if you'd do the same for other disorders. Would you call it "depressive abuse"? "Anxious abuse"? "Autistic abuse"? "ADHD abuse"? If not, if those seem ableist to you, then you're wrong.

And anon, we already have terms to describe what you went through. Emotional abuse, gaslighting, guilt-tripping, blame-shifting... and so on. Your ability to discuss your abuse isn't impeded by not saying "narcissistic abuse".

Also from an abusive survivor who's been told my mother is a "narcissistic abuser" to another abuse survivor, your feelings do not matter more than the demonization of an entire marginalized group. When you look up NPD everything you find is going to be about how "dangerous" it is, how to "spot narcissists", "how to know if you're a victim of narcissistic abuse". I googled NPD a while ago and the People Also Ask Section was:

Can someone with NPD truly love?

What triggers someone with NPD?

Do people with NPD deserve love?

How does a narcissist show love?

Does narcissism worsen with age?

How do you break a narcissist's heart?

Imagine all of these things being said about your disorder. Oh hey, remember when people used to say the same things about autistics? Ivaar Lovas, an influencial clinical psychologist, used to say that autistics had the shape of a human but lacked personhood and warmth. Less than a decade ago people spoke about autistics as if they were coldblooded, incapable of compassion, completely self-centered and incapable of love. This is clearly ableist, we didn't stand for it then, why is it okay when it's NPD? It's the exact same rehetoric. You can't claim to not be ableist or stand against ableism when you're prepetuating classic ableist rehetoric. Why is a category of people being casted as inherently more dangerous and evil, as lacking humanity? And why is that okay in any context?

It's not like this isn't pervasive. Ableism against Personality Disorders and Psychotic Disorders aren't only common, but they're normalised. Hell, people often refer to these conditions by slurs instead of their name. These have real profound effects, in the case of NPD a diagnosis can get you denied jobs, housing and more because people don't want to "work with abusers" or "house abusers". It can get you cut out of support systems, it puts you at a higher risk of incarceration & unfair sentences due to judicial bias. It puts you at an increased risk of psychiatric and medical abuse.

That's not even touching the bullshit pseudoscience that backs up "narcissistic abuse". Or that it was a term literally coined by someone with no credentials in order to make profit off vulnerable groups (and dismiss his own abusive behavior, which another anon got into).

Every single "narcissistic abuse" article I've read, and video that I've watched — I could point you to at least three things that directly contradicted supported psychological research into NPD, or hell the DSM itself.

Also, don't tell me it isn't ableist because "term by abuse survivors" (which is wrong, considering it was literally coined by an abuser) when narcissistic abuse spaces make it so that masking, an action that's completely normal amongst all neurodivregent people, that's commonly talked about in mental health spaces, suddenly is the most evil thing a narcissist can do. Clearly they're masking to deceive and manipulate you, instead of masking for literally the same reason other neurodivregent people do. Suddenly, even normal words we associate with neurodivergency, mental illness and disability take on new and sinister meanings.

That is 100% ableism.

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tanadrin · 1 year

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Not sure who the dysgenics post is vaguing, and I don't want to get into this off anon, but sterilization (ostensibly voluntary) of genetically inferior potential parents is an idea that I've seen advocated by someone concerned about dysgenics

It's a side post to big discussion involving some people I follow about Scott Alexander's pessimistic predictions for the future. All very silly Decline and Fall stuff, as @discoursedrome put it.

(And even then I think he was being too charitable--"the whole world looks like it's decaying if you live in the political and economic center of it and even small things are shifting around you" is true, but I actually don't think very big shifts are occurring--I could go on at length here, but suffice it to say I think US hegemony is assured for the time being, we're making progress even on the biggest issues facing our society, like climate change, and I simply do not think a 50/50 chance of humans destroying themselves within 100 years--or even experiencing a major global collapse--is realistic. I think Acott Alexander lives inside a bubble of people with a lot of really silly ideas about the world and how it works, where being clever is seen as a sufficient substitute for expertise, and he is there because he is fundamentally gullible to any idea packaged in the right aesthetic.)

But historically, the idea of dysgenics/eugenics arose in the context of Social Darwinism. I think Social Darwinism is a funny animal; it is a surface-level retread of some ideas that were in circulation in Britain for a long time before Darwin. Specifically, the idea of a hierarchy of virtue that exists alongside and underpins a hierarchy of class is nothing new--that in itself may be as ancient as human civilization, since every society needs an ideology to legitimate its power structures. But in the context of early 1800s Britain, you had the Whigs, the new middle class of the burgeonining Industrial Revolution, looking to join the ranks of power--either to position themselves against the lazy shiftless aristocracy who did not work for a living, or to join them, to be like "yes, we don't have titles [but please give us some!], but we're also not like those awful lazy/drunk/Irish poors." I think alongside the Whiggish enthusiasm for science and progress, Social Darwinism nicely blends both that older idea of a hierarchy of virtue with newer ideas about dispassionate natural processes to produce an idea with a lot more mimetic heft for the new age (if you don't know much about either Darwinism or economics) than the unfiltered Anglicanism of the pre-1860s generations, one which takes the exact same policy prescriptions and like 90% of the same underlying rationale ("we cannot improve the social condition of the poor; they will waste their money on drink and gambling, breed like rabbits if their children are no longer often starving to death or dying of cholera, and they will corrupt the virtue of our society") and adds just a light dusting of pseudoscience ("we cannot improve the social condition of the poor; they will waste their money on drink and gambling, breed like rabbits if their children are no longer often starving to death or dying of cholera, and they will have a dysgenic effect on the white race").

(Along with the corollary, obviously, that we should get rich people to breed more, because clearly wealth and intelligence and virtue are heritable.*)

I do not think Scott Alexander is a Social Darwinist. Almost nobody is these days, and while I think he sometimes takes some very bad ideas seriously, I do not think he is at "19th century British racist" levels of taking bad ideas seriously. AFAICT the kind of eugenics Scott Alexander would support is what's sometimes called "positive eugenics," i.e., not sterilizating people against their will, but making sure that (for instance) middle-class people aren't actively discouraged from having kids by the tax structure, and using genetic engineering if/when it becomes available to gradually improve longevity, health, and IQ. But where concerns about dysgenics do pop up in modern authors, they tend to echo or simply restate older Social Darwinist concerns--as a general argument against welfare, for instance. But Scott has also talked about how UBI is a good idea, and that's pretty much the welfariest welfare you could possibly welfare. So I assume he's not worried that if we give the poor food, we will be up to our eyeballs in shiftless drunk Irishmen within a few generations.

(*"Heritable" is a great word! Wealth, for instance, is indeed heritable! How much money you will have is strongly predicted by how much money your parents had. But "heritable" is obviously not the same as "genetic," and this kind of equivocation--like that between intelligence and education, or between virtue and conformity to arbitrary social norms, was the bread and butter of 19th and 20th century Social Darwinists.)

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c0rpseductor · 3 months

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bitching and moaning post

i know the satanic panic was completely nuts and that nothing that was alleged in it actually happened in any way. i still hate seeing it mentioned so much bc so many people will bring up fucking false memory syndrome foundation talking points in response, like "they implanted false memories in kids to make them say this shit, remember that it's what happens to everyone who says they had a 'repressed memory' and that's always how they 'retrieve' these things in therapy, DID came out of the satanic panic and it's not a real diagnosis and the people who claim to suffer from it...uhhh idk made it up for attention and weren't really abused i guess!"

it's so fucking exhausting. i know i shouldnt have looked in the tags of that post and it's my own fault for upsetting myself. i just wish people wouldn't say shit like this. i hate feeling like nobody would believe me about what abuse i suffered in my family just because i had such difficulty with recall. like yes it is possible to forget parts of a trauma and still have it affect you that's why it's part of the diagnostic criteria for fucking ptsd. not everyone who claims to have forgotten something is making shit up or talking about like. remembering things bc of fucking hypnosis therapy. when i was in therapy most of what happened was me describing fucking actual abuse that was happening in my family right then and having nobody give a shit bc Kids Are Dramatic. nobody was trying to make me think i was abused because nobody listened to me about the abuse i was even able to articulate was happening.

and like. saying DID was fucking invented by the satanic panic isn't even fucking Accurate, but i'm just so exhausted of hearing it anyway. like ok so clearly the reason ive had all these symptoms since i was very young before i even understood DID was not "for television" (bc i legitimately thought it was like, a fictional parody of schizophrenia) is because um. ?????. yeah. no youre right when things happen to me i should definitely accept that i can't tell what they are and listen to the people who tell me that i'm stupid and nobody has ever abused me and that i can't ever trust anything i remember. you guys definitely have my best interests at heart. my dad was innocent! it was all a sexual fantasy just like freud said! nice men would never do those things! like. ugh. i just hate it i hate that i doubted myself all my life and felt so miserable going through abuse alone and being gaslit and people are STILL FUCKING DOING THE GASLIGHTING!!!!! bc they dont like. know what actually happened during the satanic panic and think loftus was right. everyone who was involved in the false memory syndrome foundation should be shot.

like. i dont want to question myself anymore. i dont want my first thought whenever i have flashbacks or get upset to be "i'm making this up. if i remember something bad it was imaginary, because nobody can forget and remember something bad. it must be satanic panic pseudoscience, somehow." why do some people think they're doing a service to survivors when they trot this shit out. idk.

i know it happened. long after i began remembering stuff my mom has alluded to my dad doing the exact same things to her, having the exact same attitudes and patterns and everything, and i think the only reason i remember anything more violent than she reports is because he understood i was forgetting things and could get away with doing stuff to me that he couldn't with somebody who would remember it. like, everything i remember is horrible, but it makes complete sense and is totally possible and doesn't contradict anything about like...my parents or my life before i began remembering or just basic things like "can someone physically do this." like my dad wasnt an evil cult wizard he was just a normal thug and rapist. idk. i just really did not need to expose myself to this stuff and it's my fault i did but. ughhh

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captainclickycat · 9 months

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I think the most egregious example of an “X behaviour = Y armchair diagnosis” I ever saw was one that said something like “people who are obsessed with astrology (and myers-briggs types and stuff) do it because they want to understand people, because nobody understood them when they were growing up, it’s a love language”

As if using pseudoscience to group people together and make shit up about them isn’t the exact opposite of making the effort to get to know and understand them on a personal level lmao

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trickstarbrave · 9 months

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"People who are annoying are just doing astrology wrong" nice no true scottsman fallacy there. People find astrology insufferable because it's a pseudoscience and you aren't helping the matter by insisting there is an actual "true" way to do it that isn't just being a dick to other people for no reason.

okay but there are actual methods of doing astrology. you know that right. there is genuine math calculations to find the position of EVERY planet and relevant asteroid as well as the angles between them. they are doing astrology incorrectly bc you cannot only look at one astrology sign in isolation. that's like finding out someone is. idk. a teacher and basing every last part of their personality around the random fact about them and getting mad when they don't act like the perfect "teacher" you have envisioned in your mind. which isn't what astrology is for

astrology is a cultural practice based around the principle of things do not uniquely happen to individuals and if you look at trends long enough and chart time you can make predictions about it. empires tend to last around 200 years without major disruption. communication and technology and travel problems pop up certain times of the year. people tend to have major life changes around the age of 28-31 where they finally become fully realized adults and have to process everything that came before that. the planets and stars and asteroids do not cause these with magical space beams, humans have just been basically have the same exact fucking problems, which is kind of endearing and freeing. like wow, my life is kinda being hell right now at age 28. glad almost every other human being who has kept track of it has gone through smth similar

if you dont have an interest in it that's fine too. i dont like sitting down with random strangers i dont know and telling them about themselves based on some math i did after being forced to ask them very personal information like "where exact were you born to the closest coordinates possible preferably and exactly what time down to the hour and minute". which is really what you would NEED to do to start actually making assumptions about someone based on astrology. like sure, they might be a cancer sun. they could however have various other placement that effect it like my saturn is conjunct my moon exactly which leads to much more tame emotional reactions and i have an aries moon (moon rules cancer so these are relevant), and an aqua rising which is more what ppl are going to see upon first meeting. as well my cancer sun is in the 6th house which influences things more in that area of life (like health and jobs).

people are complex and astrology is complex to account for that but really most ppl don't want a play by play categorization of their entire personalities, back stories, trauma, family relations, and relationships with their community. you frankly dont need to know all that to have a normal fucking conversation with someone. you can learn all of that that you NEED to know just by talking to them like a normal person rather than make assumptions based on their sun sign of all things.

personally im mostly interested in astrology in terms of problems you might face like personal flaws, pit falls, traumas, and difficulties in life. which a lot of ppl are interested in hearing about being dumped on them at random. so i REALLY try hard not to be weirdly invasive abt it especially. but when i am asked specifically to do so it tends to be accurate. which is again reassuring that man humans have always had the same problems and we've always found ways to get thru it

tl;dr: there are ways to actually do astrology and you dont even need to do all that to talk to someone like a normal fucking person. i do not get why ppl demand to know your sun sign and then judge you for it.

edit: also yeah its a pseudo science doing math doesnt make things super scientific. but lots of things that matter arent science. so

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alarrytale · 1 year

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How can u still assume that he’s a closeted gay man, when he literally only kisses straight men in front of the camera for laughs, yet is only ever seen making out with women otherwise. Body language analysis is a pseudoscience and you do not know how he feels about anyone. If he wasn’t into women why would he date Olivia for 2 years and get her freaking name tattooed? Who do you think forced him to get that tattoo. Maybe it’s time to stop being delusional

Hi,

I dont appreciate being called delusional, especially when your arguments are easily refuted. So maybe not do that if you want to have a real conversation and for me to even bother glancing at your ask. Since you actually brought some arguments along with your insult, i'm going to give you an answer.

Harry can kiss straight men for laughs and still be a gay man. Kissing men for laughs is probably a bit freeing for him as a closeted gay man. He can only kiss women (in public) because he is closeted. Not only is he closeted, but he's in a relationship with a man who's also closeted. That's why he's never been seen kissing a man in public. He has kissed a man on film, and for some of us that was with more passion and show of physical attraction than we've ever seen him give a woman. He is closeted for many reasons, but the gist of it is because the world is cruel to queer people. It's an advantage in many ways to be straight presenting. In order for him to make his label money and portray him as straight he has to enter pr relationships. Pr relationships are very common in Hollywood as a promotion tool, but also for closeting purposes. Just look look at it closely.

Since pr relationships has become so common, you now have to work harder to convince the public that you are the real deal, hence having to go further than ever to legitimise your relationship. That might mean getting a tattoo of your partners name on you.

You are right, body language analysis is a pseudoscience. But we all agree that this is a smile 🙂 and this is the opposite ☹️ right? You also agree that this here is a subtle act off affection, right?:

And this:

And that movies and series trying to portray subtle partner affection while being closeted is doing the exact same thing? Here is a gif from heartstopper (source):

The reasons why we know how Harry feels about Louis is several. He's said so explicitly. He's also said it indirectly, metaphorically and lyrically. He's also shown us, the way he treats him, tenderly and carefully, and very different from others, the way he stumbles over his words talking about him and how close he is to Louis' family to mention some.

So after all this, how can you not entertain the thought that Harry might not be straight? I know it might be a scary thought, because it means that he's decived us, played pretend and lied to us. And it shows us that the world isn't so black and white and perfect as we think. But most importantly, Harry is still Harry and he's a good person who makes lots of people very happy. I think people wants him to be happy too, and he's going to be really happy when he comes out. I hope you will be there to support him, alongside me, when he does.

#harry image #closeting #bearding #pr relationships #boyband politics #long post #antis say the darnedest things #block that tag if you don’t want asks like this on your dash

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joski-town · 1 year

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Kinda funny how every time someone makes crazy claims about rawhide and you ask for proof, they're just like "trust me bro I've googled it, I know what I'm talking about".

Cause I've looked into it. It's literally just a bunch of blog saying the exact same thing word for word, and none of them link to any study or proof of any kind. "We tested some treats and they have arsenic in them! I'm not linking the test results tho lol"

Oh, and if you go far enough, you start seeing names like Dr Karen Becker who loves pseudoscience and hate vaccines. Good source right there (sarcasm).

I'm not against being proven wrong but I'm tired of people just repeating what they read and never questioning it. If you can't link me to anything I'm just gonna assume what you're saying is wrong.

#dog #dogblr #rawhide #and they're always pushing for such expensive treats too

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creativepromptfills · 2 years

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[ @creativepromptfills | prompt source ]

A reason why I was reserved about my Arcane powers is that the blood curse bound me. Because of it, I was highly vulnerable to blood magic. Blood mages cast psychological spells often on me, and it drove me crazy like a mad demon. Now that my curse has gone after I killed P, my murderer, I am now free of all restraints related to the curse.

I used this chance to bond more with my Arcane prowess. Luckily, my buddy and disciple Alderman was the head of the prestigious Heddwich Arcane Academy in Pangaxylia, another realm. My insights and the academy’s activities tremendously improved the speed by which Arcane knowledge developed, eventually closing into becoming a pseudoscience.

A crucial aspect of the arcane is the mind of its caster. A spell might produce a highly unpredictable effect if the caster was not in their right mind. There are countless times a small spell I cast turned out to be entirely different when my mind was not right.

When this girl came to my office here on Earth asking me to help her with her Arcane Impotency, I was intrigued to help her. After all, this is the very first time Alderman asked me to help in such a case. He would usually patronise me and do everything from his end, so I’m glad he finally treats me like friends we are and ask me to help him.

Elsa was an Arcanist whose family was brutally murdered by Wusari, a rogue blood mage. She became an orphan ever since. It was was when she was 19 years old.

She had vowed to put Wusari into her place by exacting revenge. Knowing that Wusari would and had murdered countless other families for her blood ritual, Elsa became more determined to end Wusari’s killing spree. Wusari would wander around Pangaxylia every full moon in October, using the blood she gathered from her fallen victims to initiate an unknown summoning ritual.

However, Elsa’s magic attacks weaken if she is angry in any form. She had to control her temper when facing her family’s murderer to exact her revenge. Master Alderman was lost trying to find an alternative for her cause, so he recommended her to see me.

“Purging your emotion is essentially killing your soul while leaving the body intact,” I told her such a horrifying answer when she begged me to purge her of human emotions. “After all, such emotions were why you wanted to put Wusari in her place. If we purge it, not only would you become vegetative, you would lose Arcane, and you would lose your intents. It's killing you inside in a literal sense.”

“So what should I do?”

I demonstrated a fireball spell. It was a small fireball. But once it touched Elsa, a blaze of fire surrounded her—yet it kept a safe distance, so she was not set ablaze.

After the blaze of fire ceased, I gave her the insight I believe she will come to understand later. “Control it. There is always a time and place for everything. Putting your emotion at the right time and situation will incredibly give you an advantage. Don't suppress your feelings. Allow them to go wild but make the time and place for everything. Give your emotions a chance rather than letting them be in a heated conflict within you, and only then would your Arcane benefit from tranquillity.”

-- ** --

“This is such a creative spell. Let me put it into practice.”

I attempted casting the spell Rendra wrote. He was my student on Earth but he decided to travel here after graduating from high school. He wanted to study more about Arcane. I was happy when Alderman and the people of Heddwich provided such a warm hospitality for Rendra. Now I spoke as if I was his parent, but I can't help being caring to my students as if they were my own children after all.

The spell was an attack spell, forming a ray that looks like a chakram above the index finger. The chakram would then be thrown at the target, causing a hot slash wound. After assessing the power, it was strong enough to demolish a twenty-story skyscraper if adequately mastered.

“Let’s give the mantra a refine. Have you learned the properties of sun and heat energy? I think it’ll be beneficial to enhance the natural heat that comes with the spell.”

“That is a great idea! I’ll look into that immediately.”

“Awesome! Keep me updated, ok? Let's try cutting a diamond in half using the chakram and see if material properties play a hand in its impact.”

“Thank you, sir! I’ll be on my way now. I’m sorry to have borrowed your time.”

“No worries! It was also an insightful discussion. Feel free to drop by if you feel I can help!”

After Rendra left, Alderman knocked in. He brought a glass of mango juice for me. “Are you not tired, Master?”

“Told you to speak casually to me like you usually are!” I chuckled lightly as I received his gift. “Thanks, Alderman. I take it that concerned look is about Elsa?”

“Yes. She...” Alderman paused briefly. “She killed Wusari, but the latter’s death caused her to be trapped in the Bloodcursed Realm.”

“Holy crap. Who is the bloody whore’s host?”

“I can not be ascertained, but Wusari’s host might have links to P and the blood mages despising you. After all, Wusari had records of being revived after her leftover victims claimed her life.”

I gave a shocked pause before I stood from my work desk in my workroom in the academy. “I’m going to go murder myself a god. You wanna come?”

Wusari must have been a vessel for someone else if this is the case. I must ensure Elsa does not become a vessel for Wusari’s previous host.

#submission #pov: mr al #writeblr #writing ideas #creativepromptsforwriting #writing inspiration #creative writing #the settlement #arcane #perfect you used a spooktober one 😁#prompt fill #writers of tumblr #writing community

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churchofnix · 4 months

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To effectively ask for evidence and double-blind, peer-reviewed studies to support scientific claims, follow these guidelines:

Be Specific: Clearly identify the claim you are questioning. Instead of general queries, pinpoint the exact aspect you want evidence for. This helps ensure you get precise and relevant information.

Request Evidence: Ask for empirical evidence that supports the claim. Use language such as, "Could you provide the empirical evidence supporting this claim?" or "What studies back up this assertion?"

Double-Blind Studies: Specify the type of study you are looking for. Double-blind studies are crucial in eliminating bias. For instance, "Are there any double-blind studies that validate this claim?" or "Please share any double-blind research conducted on this topic."

Peer Review: Emphasize the importance of peer-reviewed studies. Peer review ensures that the research has been evaluated by other experts in the field. Ask, "Can you provide peer-reviewed studies that support this claim?" or "Which peer-reviewed journals have published research on this subject?"

Quality and Source: Inquire about the quality and source of the studies. Ask questions like, "Which journals were these studies published in?" or "What is the sample size and methodology of the studies cited?"

Critical Analysis: Encourage a critical evaluation of the evidence. You might say, "How do these studies account for potential confounding variables?" or "What limitations were identified in these studies?"

Replication: Ask if the findings have been replicated. Replication is key in validating results. For example, "Have these results been replicated in other studies?" or "Is there consensus in the scientific community about these findings?"

Scientific Consensus: Check if the claim is widely accepted by the scientific community. You can ask, "What is the consensus among experts regarding this claim?" or "How does this claim align with the current scientific understanding?"

Example Request:

"Could you provide empirical evidence supporting this claim? Specifically, I am looking for double-blind, peer-reviewed studies published in reputable journals. It would be helpful to know the sample sizes, methodologies, and any potential limitations identified in these studies. Additionally, have these findings been replicated, and what is the general consensus among experts in this field?"

Importance of This Approach

Myths and pseudoscience can spread misinformation and lead to harmful consequences. By demanding rigorous evidence and well-conducted studies, we uphold scientific integrity and ensure that claims are based on reliable and validated information. This approach fosters critical thinking and helps distinguish between scientifically supported facts and unfounded assertions.

#science #scientific-method #reality #facts #evidence #research #study #knowledge #wisdom #truth #honesty

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692blog · 9 months

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shifting tiktok: you're not dreaming (probably)

for my last ever post, i wanted to focus on the topic that i originally intending on covering first, but felt it was better as a grand finale: reality shifting.

putting it briefly, shifting is a tiktok-centric phenomenon wherein you put yourself through hypnotic-like rituals to move your consciousness into a different reality. is it real? no. will people die on the metaphorical hill that it is? oh, you bet. this is tiktok. the truth literally never matters.

so, when someone 'shifts' realities, the most popular theory says that it is someone's consciousness shifting into a different universe in the 'multiverse.' the multiverse theory says that there are infinite timelines coexisting, and shifting just allows you to enter one different than your own, whether it be fictional, the past, present, or the future.

most shifting tutorials include the following:

1. scripting - the process of writing out the life you're trying to reach. it goes from big things like what time period or fictional universe you're traveling to, all the way down to the finer details, like what job you'll have and who you're dating. 2. manifestation - while writing down your script, you can listen to subliminal audio videos. very long and complicated story short, they are videos with various tones playing at different frequencies while subliminal messaging is either shown on the screen or whispered in the background. things like "i will shift" and "my shift will be successful" are common ones. when typing in "shifting" into the youtube search bar, these are the first two suggestions:

the following are the first few search results for "shifting subliminal":

3. hypnosis/meditation - after scripting your DR (desired reality) to get out of your CR (current reality), you are ready to shift. there are countless methods describing how to do this, but the bare bones is guiding yourself through meditative journey. popular ones include imagining yourself entering a room in your CR and exiting it in your DR, and some other methods are just repetitions of affirmations.

here's a link to the following tiktok, which is a short summary of shifting as a whole:

lexa's tiktok - if you are thinking, wow, this all seems like a very concrete way to fall into a deep sleep, you (and these comments) would be right. that's all that these people are doing. falling asleep and having incredibly vivid dreams.

shifting is notoriously difficult, and people will beg and plead for methods and helpful advice to do it correctly. which makes sense, as it's an impossible desire made true: changing the universe around you to meet your exact wants and dreams.

liz's tiktok - this shifter is crying while claiming they shifted, they shifted, they shifted! it goes to show the endurance needed for a pseudoscience like this, and the reward you feel after forcing yourself into a lucid dream. notice the comments, the first fulling buying into not only transferring universes but worried about the risk of getting stuck in one, and the last comment, self-aware and knowing that all of this is "just a dream". the middle comment is all of the rest of us, wondering "how did we got here? this certainly cannot be the right classroom."

as far as 'shifting' goes, the biggest population of shifters are cosmically traveling into the harry potter universe. other tropes include shifting into a reality where you're famous, and, my personal favorite, (the presence of which is antithetical to the core message of the entire series) one where you win the hunger games.

one of my favorite shifting tiktoks i ever came across was a girl warning her fellow shifters 'not to shift into the trojan war' because 'even though you're a medic' it's still 'very traumatizing'. i can only find a link to a reaction video, but i promise it was an earnest tiktok when it was posted.

the most common defense of shifting is in reference to a mysterious scientific study that seemingly everyone cites but no one has an actual link to.

wa gè's tiktok - the trend implying shifters are effortless and lowkey about their knowledge, whilst 'anti' shifters boast their rhetoric superfluously. here are the comments on this tiktok:

notice anything? all requests for proof are acknowledged (liked by creator) and left unanswered, or responded to with a 'i'll find them later.' wouldn't solid evidence of something you do that is constantly under intense scrutiny be always on hand?

some of the other 'defenses' of shifting fall into a very dangerous line of thinking: "well of course it's real. that's why so many people say it's not...because they're afraid of the truth." this conspiracy theory way of rationalization can lead to very scary places; if someone convinces you something is true purely based on the fact everyone is saying it's false, it can lead to the belief of pseudoscience and harmful conspiracy theories.

luckily, the venn diagram of young women shifting into gryffindor tower and flat earthers are very far apart, but it's a way of interpreting the world that can be harmful in the long run.

originally, shifting boomed during the pandemic, a time of peak loneliness and isolation. there's actually a great study posted on the national library of medicine dissecting this exact relationship:

link to study - it's part of the library's "covid-19 collection" and incredibly detailed and sourced. the study also debunks the mysterious 'scientific data' that shifters are always referencing; simply, it's a profoundly misunderstood physics concept, and to quote the above article in reference to said theory: "The theory does not posit, however, that individuals can create their own realities and is considered unfalsifiable and thus questionable by some in the mainstream physics community."

there are still active 'shifters' on tiktok, though shifting reached its peak during the pandemic. people are still getting famous, dating fictional bad boys, and surviving the zombie apocalypse; you just aren't part of that reality, so you haven't heard about it. shifting is the ultimate "you wouldn't know my boyfriend, he goes to another school" card.

building upon everything we've learned from this blog, we know people will always want to insert themselves into realities they love and are currently not existing in. whether that be hogwarts, a mafia house, or the avengers tower, people in pain will always dream of someplace better, and i think we'd lose some of our humanity if we told them not to (just maybe just tone down on the pseudoscience, guys?).

#tiktok #reality shifting #brb shifting into a reality where this blog gets really famous and i make tons of money

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