#im talking about things like intergenerational discussions

[luvring]

just complained about my group to my irls and i'm pretty sure this has genuinely motivated me to speak in class because i Cannot let my prof think my critical thinking abilities are the same as theirs

[postgameroutesix]

3 for the book asks : )

“3: what were your top 5 books of the year?”

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE BY SHIRLEY JACKSON. rewired my entire brain made me scream and throw up!!! it is THE haunted house story with how the horror relies on the psychological state of our unreliable protagonist and narrator eleanor (who is for sure a gothic heroine of all time). it’s so indicative of ms jackson’s talent that she doesnt need to SHOW us the horror of hill house, only imply it, to frighten us and the characters. it’s all up to both our and eleanor’s imagination. maybe the real horror was familial trauma all along. the ending too …. no notes … mwah mwah book of all time

BELOVED BY TONI MORRISON. another absolutely fundamental brain rewiring haunted house… ive been talking a lot with my friend zaina about her work and one thing we talked about was how much of her work centres around the intergenerational trauma of racism and the theme of love - “what does it mean to love?” and beloved is of course the epitome of this. sethe is an incredibly written character and even though i read it all the way back in march i still remember the way while you’re reading you’re simultaneously hooked and cannot stop but MUST stop because you have to take breaks to process

THE BLUEST EYE BY TONI MORRISON. i read this only last month and holy shit !! my engagement was definitely boosted by my discussions with my friend zaina as previously mentioned but there is an unending amount of things to talk about with this book - the structure, writing style, characters and their relationships its all so rich with so much depth and im obsessed with all of it. i LOVED the structure how it begins with a repetitive passage that instantly hooks you showing this idyllic life of a middle class white nuclear family that, and how the narrative begins with its ending, the non linearity with how we’re constantly diving into different lives and perspectives. the character parallels between family members, particularly the breedlove family, are so cleverly woven in and do so much to reinforce those themes of generational trauma and cycles of abuse. i will stop now but this book will, much like beloved, seep under my skin and stick there forever

ANNIHILATION BY JEFF VANDAMEER. i inhaled this book earlier this year it was so gripping it really grabs you by the throat and implores u to keep reading to figure everything out. if the haunting of hill house and the bluest eye did not tip u off. i love unreliable narrators who force you to question if you can trust their recounting of events and the biologist is a great one - i love the detail of the characters being known only as their professions, especially by the biologist, it adds to the dark mystery so much…. i havent read the other books in the series yet lol because honestly i love annihilation as a standalone. ill probably get to them at some point

GIOVANNI’S ROOM BY JAMES BALDWIN. the book that got me out of a slump and back into reading lots this year!!! i read it in the school library trying not to react too intensely but i really think this is the perfect book in encapsulating the shame we’re made to feel in being lgbt and how difficult it is to trudge through that and the disastrous impacts that internalised shame has on our relationships with other lgbt people. really revived me thank you mr baldwin i need to read more of your books

[sassytail]

the cool thing about 6 arcs is that like, I was definitely using Sabriel , a character that started out as an explicitly jewish thinly veiled anders dragonage expy, as a way to process and discuss a lot of the really difficult shit i was going through at the time, and also, the intergenerational trauma from the shoah.

I haven't really talked abt it here, but i was trapped in a super abusive living situation, and living entirely on my own for the first time in my life, and was Not coping very well with it. Listening back to especially the first few arcs of season 6, and the irl situations i mention and I used as inspiration to fuel my storytelling is a sobering reminder of what i've overcome in that time.

all this to say, im so glad that i had this messy terrible scrungly lil bitch who makes no good decisions ever and actively throws himself into his self imposed role as a martyr, as an outlet for my deeply messy and challenging emotions that i was dealing with during that time in my life. <3

[chanseyirl]

im tired of the fucking internet im tired of tiktok im tired of instagram reels im tried of how devoid i feel when i find myself in a hole hatewatching this shit im tired of being traumadumped to when i didnt ask for it im tired of people being so weird and gross and overtly weird and gross im tired of people suckling the teets of capitalism and being so small brained to see past it and to see that their $200 shopping haul is what is ruining this planet and why i fear for my future childrens lives im tired of people who are rendered desperate and numb and hurting making content who also feel the same and then sucking them depressing cycle of hurt and pain from a system that have given our parents and our parents parent and their parents parents intergenerational trauma but we dont know how to combat it besides going to the doctor, being told we have mental disorders that are really just natural responses to prolonged generational trauma and then living with those labels like they mean anything and being overmedicated and being okay with that and that turns into stupid tiktoks where a filter of cat memes guesses if youre on prozac or zoloft and so many young, vulnerable children are being sucked into this cycle and we are all just desperate to heal but capitalism doesnt want a healthy society, it wants a society that it can exploit and the more unhealthy and the more pain it is experiencing the more it can do that . and i hate the oversexualization that is so prevalent on the internet because it feels so disingenuine and not like how a sex positive society should be i hate the incels that are convinced real women have r*pe kinks and then abuse women because they LIVE they FEED in this treacherous internet and i hate people who are platformed and on podcasts and shit who create essentially fandoms and echochambers that discusses this type of thinking i hate the term "touch grass" is actually a thing i hate that people are developing apps that simulate what genuine human connection is like bc we are devoid of it i hate the people who strive for attention so they are willing to destroy their lives and bodies for it on the internet i hate the unrealistic body standards i hate the favoritism of womens bodies i hate that young young children are exposed to this i could go on and on but i cant cuz i have to do real things like get my degree but

idk i dont wanna just sound like a boomer and talk about how phone bad because it isnt entirely, we get very good things like the vast amount of information at our fingertips ready at any time and the very real social connections and bonds that form because of it, as well as it being a tool to maintain those social bonds when people leave their hometowns or homelands but like, my how much weve bastardized this

[inadequate-nefelibata]

Still thinking about lil nas x, a 21 yo, who was also very closeted as a kid, receiving an unrelenting stream of homophobic comments online. And thinking about the reaction there was to that on social media.

I mean, the choice to fend these people off with jokes was his to make, and I get why ppl wanted to celebrate him. I did too. He’s excellent and so were the song and the video. But it was a bit striking to me that it took so long for people to even begin to wonder if he was doing okay, if this was affecting him in any way. It was only after dozens and dozens of posts making memes along with him that users started bringing up one tweet where he mentioned that he was feeling very anxious. Maybe 6 or so people commented on that.

It’s possible that was just my dashboard, or that most people did wonder but they just wanted to follow his lead. I mean, if that’s how he was facing the situation, then let him.

But I just… have been thinking about this for a while now. When it comes to this specific situation, there are some great post discussing this, by people who get his situation much better than me. What I’ve been thinking about is the effect that social media has had on our response to queerphobia and to bigotry in general. And just the responses we have to bigotry nowadays.

 Because of social media, we are more exposed than ever to all those ideas and groups that want to and have managed to hurt is. Lovers and haters of something occupy the same space, so you stumble upon their musings all the time. If you are a public figure, it specifically comes to find you. And Social media turns everyday activities and thoughts into a performance, so of course, vulnerability and sensibility are hard (impossible, I’d say); in a public setting, a disaffected front is easier.

My point is, I think because of this, somewhere along the way we started getting this idea that turning the hate you get into a joke or into a source of “inner strength” is the best-case scenario when it comes to dealing with bigotry.

Let me be clear: I do think that it’s necessary to learn to let go of hateful comments and actions sometimes. And joking around can help. If we were to focus all of our attention and emotions on every single fatphobic/racist/misogynistic/transphobic etc event of our lives, we would probably end up falling apart. Also, like I mentioned before, being vulnerable in social media is. Basically hell. It makes sense to be this way, especially for public figures.

But I do not want to end up creating a social environment where marginalized people are… I don’t know. Sensitive to being sensitive.  Some time ago I read something about “a fixation with reclamation” or something like that, in reference to people who are just… straight up transphobic or homophobic, and justify their behavior by pointing out that they’re part of those groups.

I guess this is something that’s not exclusively related to social media. We’re all living in a world where some forms of social injustice are still common place. We want to change that, but the path to the reality we want is meandering and rocky, and, at some point, you have to develop some short-term skills to deal with the situation you actually experience.

So… yeah, that’s how it is. Learning to make something good out of the bad stuff they throw at you.  I mean, reclaiming slurs is an example of this, and I use “queer” all the time because it feels right to do so. That this is something that we do is not the problem. Neither is being able to joke or downplay bigoted comments occasionally.

The question is: are we separating necessity from… I don’t know, morally affirming hardships?  Does that make sense…? What I mean is, are we interpreting our ability to be unaffected by these behaviors as something that “makes us stronger” somehow? Something that proves our worth? Are we better than other members of the group if we can joke about it, instead of being sensitive to it, or being hurt by it? Is this something we are incorporating to our mentality?

I don’t know. I just wonder about that sometimes. About whether or not this is happening. It’s possible that it isn’t, and this is just what I’m getting from social media at the moment. There are many conversations that aren’t happening here, but I do I have them with my real life friends, for example. Or maybe I’m misreading the situation, and there’s a better explanations for the things I’m talking about. It may be the effect of internalized bigotry: it could be that people are finding “woke” ways of behaving in the way they learned to behave when they were younger. It could be the effect of having different experiences: for example, joking about “going to hell” Is easier if you were never raised to actually believe that. It’s probably all of those things.

I just keep thinking about it.

We can’t really reclaim homophobia/transphobia/racism… etc. At some point, it’s something that is out there and it happens to us. Even when you learn to joke about it, it fucks you up. The aim is that at some point, someone growing up in the world won’t have the faintest idea of what it’s like to experience that. The things that happen in history never go away, but it can be like, I don’t know, reading about people who thought that the sun circled around the earth, if that makes sense.

I’m sure most people know that already, I don’t want to say obvious things. But I do wonder if it’s like a narrative we tell ourselves at this point: we endure bigotry and we win out. Like those experiences have an intrinsic meaning, instead of being a necessary part of existing in this world as a marginalized group.  Also, another thing that doesn’t feel right about this is that all the emphasis on the pain we withstand can make us forget that, in most cases, the reason why we’re still in one piece today is because of our communities. Is because other people offered us kindness, and companionship, and acceptance. Someone somewhere had to figure out their life on their own, I’m sure, but a lot of the time you at least have a sense of belonging to something larger.

All of this may be connected the idea that pain is morally edifying. But this is too long already so I’ll just leave it at:

?????

(Side note: I keep using examples of queer experinces, I guess bc those are the things I know the most. But maybe talking about bigotry in general terms was a bad call here. I don’t know. If someone has a different experience from mine and wants to add something, you’re welcome to do so.)

[whiteanti]

sry if that's gonna turn out long but i really want your onion on it. in relations to that anon who asked you abt white passing people - what do you think about "west asians" loool. like caucasians, not white europeans but people from the caucasus like armenians georgians azeris etc. personally i could never consider them poc lmao first of all demographic region such as west asia doesnt exist, most countries from that region are middle eastern and the ones who are not are BETWEEN europe and asia

and not to bring that up but armenians have been legally classified as white like 100 years ago, ntm how they never looked racialized in the first place its just that white americans considered anything that’s not white american as impure. like even white southern and eastern europeans. and cool you could say they’re white passing poc but there are not Any specific racialized features that make you go oh thats a poc.. its not fucking 2012 anymore we cant still push that race is social bullshit

(i think tumblr ate the 3rd or 2nd ask so im rewriting it) even if it was its still made to not only benefit them but put them on top. with tht circassian beauty shit that was spread among both europe and the global south w circassian women and their “big beautiful hair” as the beauty standard while black women were and still to this day are abused degraded etc for their hair then you have white ass circassians and other caucasians using as an argument about not being white that white russians call thm bl*ckies or the white version of the n word lmaooo can you believe… and like ok your ppl faced genocide and ethnic cleansing from white russians but how does that contribute to you being racialized ESP in the modern day world. 

not only that but so many of them have pale skin, blue eyes, blonde hair like straight up cracker and they still insist on being poc just cuz they’re not Straight from mother europe. its just a caucasian online thing to claim the racialized experience for white ppl jokes access and extra oppression points. 

if you ask the average middle aged lets say armenian person what race they are they’re gonna tell you white. and with the amount of anti asian sentiment in their communities how tf do they expect to be accepted as asian like they’re truly playing with us. 

also wht bugs me is how they cant tell the difference btwn racism and xenophobia/ethnophobia sjhgahsj how do you insist on facing racism without being racialized? they face as much discrimination in white countries as any average white foreigner would but go explain that shit to them that if you’re not racialized you cant use the terms racism and xenophobia interchargeably. 

to me the only asians are east, southeast, south, central and north, also anything mixed inbetween. all these crackers lite from the caucasus mountains can go fuck themselves and shove their forced victimization up their asses cuz at this point i’m so tired of their white asses trying to prove me they’re on the same level as us whn it comes to discrimination. 

like yes s and se asians are way more discriminated than the rest of us but we (east central north) do face racial discrimination unlike caucasians lmao. and sure they face intergenerational trauma from the genocides of their countries but so do we, in way bigger amounts. thats why im so sceptical abt terms like visible poc cuz you either are a poc or not… they have so many tactics as a gotcha to racialized asians to make us seem as if we’re bigots who invalidate their genocides and talk so aimlessly abt it when all we want is for them to acknowledge their whiteness, white privilege, white guilt and self victimization against us. but anyways im so sry for making it this long but i needed to get if off my chest and you’re like the only person i know who can understand it and give a well thought out opinion. i rlly wish you all the best and good luck on all your exams 💓💓💓

btw for the previous asks i only said “mixed inbetween” bc i talked about monoracial asians specifically not that someone isnt asian if they’re mixed w black or anything else, also idk much abt indigenous ppl from oceania or how they identify so that’s why i left it out

ok so I reformatted some of the asks to make them easier to read (as in I changed where paragraph breaks were bc wow there r so many) but my answer is below the cut! 

[EDIT] since a few ppl r asking me abt this no I don't fully agree w this anon. I don't think arabs are white. I don't think Iranians are white. I don’t know if Armenians or other ethnicities from the Caucasus region are white I think thats an ongoing discussion w in their communities, but as far as I knew I thought people saw Armenians as white. again I could be wrong but that is what I think the general consensus is. if you want to have in in-depth discussion abt this topic pls ask someone from within those communities or at the very least has researched it in-depth.

ok so just from what I know a lot of ppl from the caucus region classified themselves as white during segregation, etc in order to escape racial discrimination. Armenians as far as ik r generally classified as white? the Kardashians are Armenian and I don’t think anyone has ever said they’re poc. geographically Armenia is in west Asia so technically they’re asian but does that mean they’re poc? but if u say Armenians r white then r arabs white? Armenians do face discrimination and they have faced a genocide which is denied by the Turkish govt. but most ashkenazi jewish ppl r also white so….. idk.

as for in Europe they would definitely be seen as poc or at the very least not white. basically anywhere east of turkey (ofc excluding Russia) is seen as Big Scary Middle East full of ppl who want to invade Europe. but again in America I’m not too sure bc race relations r definitely different there.

I think its a rlly complex question w a complex answer and tbh I don’t know enough abt any of this to b able to give a cohesive opinion. what I will say is that I think this is a different discussion completely from whether mixed white poc r poc or not. this is a discussion is to whether a whole ethnicities of ppl who look ‘white’ are poc or not. its complicated bc race isn't ‘real’ as in theres not way to divide humans into 5 groups. ppl like from the caucasus region don’t fit neatly into white or asian and if u look historically the region is closely tied w Greece, Iran and the Mughals in India so again… theres no definite answer. but as far as ik they definitely have a large degree of white passing privilege but I would still say to a lesser extent than full white europeans. they’re also mostly racialised in europe or at least demonised to a certain extent. more than Eastern Europeans and less than poc but like idk lol. I hope this is an ok answer bc to b honest my brain is so fried rn

[nostalgiacolloquium]

Passion and Nostalgia in Generational Media Experiences

Summary:

In Goran Bolin’s essay, “Passion and Nostalgia in Generational Media Experiences”, he discusses three distinct modes of reflexive nostalgia found in a study examining the relationship between generational differences and nostalgia. First, Bolin argues that the formative years (generally speaking, from about the age of seventeen to twenty-five) “are crucial in forming the generational experiences.” He cites Karl Mannheim’s analogy of language to nostalgia: in the same way that dialect stops developing much beyond the formative years but continues to shape how we experience the world throughout the rest of our lives, firsthand experiences during these years shape and give meaning to how we filter the world later on in life. Research also shows that people tend to have more vivid memories from this part of life than any other, which fits in with Bolin’s idea of nostalgia in the formative years.

The study Bolin discusses took place in Sweden and Estonia in 2012, wherein the subjects were chosen and sorted into four separate focus groups based off of age and media landscapes of their youth. The groups spanned from people born in the 1940’s (the “postwar” generation) all the way up to people born in the early 1990’s, with a set criterion for every group (for example, no member of the 1990’s group had had children, and all were studying in some sort of academic setting). Bolin brings up the point of “phantom pain” here, pondering whether or not a person can be nostalgic for something they never experienced, and concludes that this is not true nostalgia but “nostalgic envy.”

It was from the findings in these focus groups that Bolin constructs his modes of nostalgia, although he admits that these three hardly encompass all forms of nostalgia and with further research into the field, we will discover more). The first mode is called “technostalgia.” This mode means that the nostalgia has a focus on a material piece of technology and how it was used rather than on the content of the technology. This kind of nostalgia facilitates social interaction, as it provokes questions such as “Do you remember…?” Over time and as technology progresses, older forms and mediums through which we receive media fall out of mainstream use and disappear. Technostalgia usually includes a longing for a certain sound or image of this old technology, because the medium is connected to and associated with an emotional state for the individual. The important point here is that this nostalgia is not for just any one type of item, but rather for a very specific copy of a specific item. Technostalgia can also be about the “labour investment,” or the work it takes to acquire this item (like the effort it takes to make a mixtape used to be much more difficult, and therefore holds more cultural value). This mode of nostalgia tends to be more positive and focused on cherished memories, and has the possibility of being re-enacted.

The second mode is “nostalgia as loss of childhood.” This type can occur in any generation and is directed more on content than on medium. It is highly individual and usually didn’t begin much large group discussion in the study. The content an individual is nostalgic for is related more to childhood than to a media experience. Bolin states that it’s not necessarily about what actually happened, but more about an idealized memory of what happened.

The third mode is “nostalgia as the (im)possibility of intergenerational experience. This comes from a generation gap and the idea that other generations (especially youth) will never be able to understand or appreciate an experience, and usually happens when one’s children are nearing the end of their formative years. “It both binds together those who have made the same experiences in the past, and it also binds the generation together in the present through the shared feeling of loss. It becomes a specific generational value that ties people who appreciate this value together.”

Bolin concludes that these last two forms are more profound and painful to experience than technostalgia as these memories have no chance of being revived or remedied.

 Analysis:

           The biggest and perhaps the most important part of this paper to me was the categorization of the three different modes of nostalgia, because having distinct and separate criteria for each type facilitated my understanding of the definition of nostalgia, and the way Bolin tied these ideas together with media forms and consumption furthered my capacity to relate to and understand these somewhat difficult concepts.

           Beyond that, I also found the concept of “formative years” to be the most interesting (perhaps because it is the only generational group in which I could belong). The relation of language and memory formation in our formative years (roughly ages 17-25) to how we experience the rest of life is very interesting and well-supported here, with references to Mannheim’s analogy. It intrigued me that a person’s nostalgia most often originates from events and memories of these years, and that nostalgia for these years can and does resurface as one’s children reach adulthood and independence.

           I think that one thing this essay could’ve expanded on was the topic of technology itself, and the idea of passion (which was briefly mentioned and tied to both positive thinking and pain). Because of this, I think the article is poorly named, as the focus is more about nostalgia in different age groups today than on passion and nostalgia surrounding technology specifically.

           Another problem is that the study the article uses to support most if its ideas took place with a very small group of people with similar backgrounds in a relatively small geographic area, and then is being used to generalize all populations. For example, all the people included in the 1990’s generational focus group were in school at the time the study took place. In particular, and this is noted in the essay, the subjects used in this study had very different interactions with media in both form and content from those around the globe, and therefore the findings here cannot necessarily be applied to all people or generations and their media consumption.

           I enjoyed that Bolin did more than just state these different modes, he also talked about the capacity for each type of nostalgia to be treated. I think the fact that technostaglia has the potential to be remedied whereas the other two do not is an important distinction and offers insight into the history of how people have perceived nostalgia as an illness. It also lends clarification to the question of whether or not nostalgia should be perceived as a positive or negative occurrence, because the experience is vastly different depending on which mode it belongs to.

           Although I found this article very interesting and insightful, I think it offers speculation more than it does evidence because of the limiting variables of the study. Bolin could incorporate more substantial examples and studies to add merit to his claims. In short, his essay is a bit on the short side considering all the information packed into it. Regardless, his ideas and thoughts have a lot to offer those interested in studying the experience of nostalgia.