#political discourse. And everyone recognized it as a good thing.

[nutzo0001]

Anon 2000s nostalgia

In the early 2000's I finished high school and went to college. I was so stressed out, and in many ways very stupid, and didn't appreciate it at the time. But god do I wish we could go back. Pop culture seemed so dumb, but today it's even dumber. The post 9/11 world seemed so dire, but today things feel even worse. The Patriot act was the height of tyranny! But it was just a stepping stone to even more authoritarianism. --- You know one thing I really miss? When most people still understood how important freedom of speech was! I think it was the height of free speech in my lifetime:

The Evangelical Christian Conservatives had lost the cultural power to enforce their prudishness and were mocked by comedians.

The 80's/90's PC movements from the leftist academics had not gained any traction, and were mocked by comedians.

People who got themselves all worked up and offended by things were rightfully mocked as the weak morons the are.

It was "anything goes" when it comes to comedy, horror, political discourse. And everyone recognized it as a good thing.

Xbox live voice chat.

But then at some point it seems like the progressives realized that the Christians Conservatives didn't have the power to censor anyone anymore, and that was the signal that the left no longer had to pretend to care about free speech. Thus began an ever growing snowball of political correctness which continues to this day and busted open the doors for all sorts of impending speech controls in the name of bullshit like "misinformation", "disinformation" and the new term they made up as an excuse to censor verifiably true things: "malinformation".

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Dude you nailed it. You absolutely nailed how I feel about the 2000s. I also finished high school and also college in this decade. Our mid gen Y generation was raised on this idea that there were these conservative blockheads running the culture. We were raised to be so sensitive to it. At some point the progressives realised they completely won the culture war long ago, and over the next decade and a half went rampant with their authoritarianism. So while I miss the aesthetics of the 2000s, the risk taking innovative tech that wasn't too invasive in life, my youth at the time. The thing that sticks out the most is both sides of the political divide could respect each other's free speech. It went beyond that too, don't we miss when everything didn't have to be political?

[stormsbourne]

alright listen

I know we're all having an evaluation of how eagerly we believe people who present with even the slightest air of authority and frankly good! we all need to be less credulous of people on the internet who tell lies.

but I think there are also other lessons to learn from james somerton. namely about his raging and blatant misogyny, which I've often seen similar forms of in fandom and on this specific site. to paraphrase bombs himself in the ctrl alt del video, if you see shitty behavior within your sphere, it's important to recognize it and try to fix it instead of rejecting it and asserting that no REAL members of the ingroup are like that. and nerds have a misogyny problem. including tumblr. so let's reckon with it.

do you append "white" or "straight" to your comments about women even when those things have little to do with the topic being discussed, just to make your comments seem more legit? (and no, m/m shipping discourse does not give you a ticket to say it's all straight women -- it's fictional characters, james.) do you often theorize about how (hurriedly appended "straight/white/cis") women are responsible for a problem in fandom, nay, all problems in fandom? have you made up a guy based on a single post that annoyed you and extrapolated to say that all (appended signifier to make it ok) women in fandom are like that? do you see women as uniquely fetishizing, uniquely stupid about politics or social issues, uniquely annoying to talk to? do you assume when there's an issue, even a real one and not the fake ones james made up, that a woman is probably at the root of it?

all of this still applies to you if you're a woman. it also applies if you're gay or a person of color or trans. being an oppressed group doesn't mean you are immune from sexism, and sexism is still rampant in everyday life for pretty much everyone.

your shipping and fandom discourse isn't immune from this. no, I'm not talking about how not enough people like yuri. I'm talking about how women who like "bad" ships like r*ylo or whatever are seen as open targets for harassment. how women who are into "bad/problematic" fandoms are seen as idiots and enablers who deserve what they get. how there's an attitude that women who like shitty bad porn must think it's good, must be too stupid to know better, and must need to be handheld and taught about good, acceptable fiction. I've already talked a lot about tumblr's complete refusal to admit that fujoshi wasn't a term coined by delicate japanese mlm to complain about evil women (and I wonder if james contributed to that idiotic concept), but the way I've seen people assert that women into m/m must be straight, must be stupid, must be lying about their identities, must be hurting gay men in real life in addition to wanting some anime boys to kiss ...

I've seen how some of you people talk about amb*r h*ard, is all I'm saying, and I've seen what you've tried to do to dozens of female creatives that, for some reason, you've decided deserve to be taken down or taught a lesson. I've seen the descriptions you use. shrieking, bitchy, whiny, uppity, shrewish, karen (don't get me started on how karen has been turned into an easy excuse for misogyny). you're not bystanders to what james did and is doing, you're a part of it. sure, you might not have the nazi fetish, but you've said things about women that put somerton to shame.

just a thing to keep in mind while the plagiarism discourse is ongoing. somerton is a shithead for many reasons but this is one that's important to remember because I think people often treat misogyny like a lesser crime, a smaller concern, and it's not. just think of what laws are passing and what views popular movements have of women and then, for one moment, consider that maybe your reflexive need to blame women or pick them apart might have been influenced by the Society In Which We Live.

[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[marzipanandminutiae]

Re: age preferences in shared housing.

I'm in my mid-30's in a VHCOL city and have lived with anywhere from 2-7 roommates for my entire adult life. At this point in my life, I would prefer not to live with someone in their early 20's. It has nothing to do with age-gap discourse and everything to do with the fact that I am old, cranky, and tired.

I was not a good friend in my early 20's, and there was a lot of learning and growing that I would do over the next 15 years to make me a better person today. I have no problem having a coworker or friend who is in that life stage, but it is another thing entirely to have it follow you home. (I recognize that bad roommates come in all ages--I am talking about the specific learning experiences that come with living on your own for the first time, like the 23-year-old who did not understand that the city in fact WILL shut off your water if you buy weed with the money your roommates give you to pay the utilities.)

That being said, we don't list a specific age preference in our posting. We are far more likely to describe the current makeup of the house as "quiet, clean professionals in our early-to-late 30's, prefer dinner parties to house parties" and let people self-select out.

We had a very nice 22 year old guy interview a few years ago, and on paper he would have been a good fit (quiet, clean, stable job). However, he brought his mother to the roommate interview, and all of us kind of balked at that. We were not interested in living with his mother and had concerns about how he would handle conflict/communication without bringing his parents into it.

I would consider interviewing another candidate in their early 20's again, but not without reservations.

(Please do not read this as combative--we are typically on the same page about most things. I just wanted to offer another perspective from someone in a similar housing situation.)

I appreciate your perspective! And I think we're on the same page about this, too.

The key here, IMO, is what you said a few paragraphs up- it's not really about age, but behavior. Someone on their early 20s is statistically more likely to be in their Partying and Irresponsibility Phase, but it's not a guarantee. My worst problem housemate was 35 (expected everyone to cater to intrusive needs they had not expressed in the initial housemate interview and walk on eggshells around them; fell back on their trauma as an excuse when we politely tried to have open conversations about the issues at hand, as a house where everyone's wellbeing was taken into account). And I've lived with some extremely conscientious 22-year-olds. A few more tidy than I am, in fact.

Also, what I've seen more of is twentysomethings who don't want to live with anyone older, not the other way around. Which I'm struggling to interpret in any manner besides the discourse-adjacent Anyone Over 25 Having Contact With Anyone Under 25 Is Creepy. I guess they might be trying to be considerate if THEY want to party, but like I said, these groups are mostly more on the hipster queer student side.

[cometrose]

Exactly the only thing different is the genders, if they were reversed everyone would be on his side like you said we've seen this story a 100 times, not that there isn't a lot of misogyny in fandom spaces like all spaces and dramas still have room for improvement when it comes to female characters in general but the way fandom has changed these last few years is just crazy, no nuance no complexity nothing interesting just perfect characters or they will get eaten alive and when it comes to romance, all they want is endlessly devoted men the women and their actions don't even factor into it it's all omg he's such a green flag and she fell first he fell harder we've completely lost the ability to engage with media, everything becomes morality discourse for fake people. I don't remember how they phrased it but someone said the way these people engage with media is because the only activism they know is online they haven't done anything in real life which is why they think fictional characters and their actions are tantamount to what real people believe...

ooh this is such a good point and I agree truly.

Bullied by in-laws? Ignored by spouse? In any other story people would be rallying for HW to get on the quickest flight out of there (I mean I was lol)

There is still a lot of misogyny within fandoms and dramas themselves so I always try to be thoughtful when discussing female characters but god you're so right. We just want perfection from these characters all the time and some many people just want perfect tropes perfect characters and perfect stories all the time its exhausting.

I am repeating myself but I do like how they aren't hopelessly devoted to each other all the time. I've watched two dramas this year, Marry My Husband and Perfect Marriage Revenge, and both male leads are knee-on-the-ground, would do anything for their respective female leads and while i do like those boys I also don't mind a male lead that has contradictory emotions for his partner.

Like the biggest thing here is nuance, the truth is obvious from the beginning that Hyunwoo clearly loves Haein he has just buried that feeling under all this frustration and resentment that he can no longer recognize it. These people don't have perfectly good feelings or behaviors towards each other and I think that's fine.

Plus this is a story about an estranged married couple like how would there be drama if they were perfectly perfect partners to each other all the time? Even though they may love each other that love isn't enough to be a happy couple. Haein says that she did not write Hyunwoo in the will because she wished to marry him as soon as possible and had to get through her mother first essentially leaving him high and dry but they were so in love it didn't matter. Like noooo these complexities are interesting plus it is so common for spouses to grow to hate each other and seeing there relationship grounded in some aspect of reality is a fresh change. I welcome it.

Don't get me started on morality politics on social media, the first two eps dropped I went on twitter saw one discussion tweet and knew I couldn't stay there it would drive me crazy. People are always trying to idolize someone these days, to find some perfect thing or unproblematic item to worship unconditionally instead of just accepting some things are fundamentally flawed and discussing their strengths and weaknesses.

[septembersghost]

This could be an unpopular opinion but Taylor is partially responsible for the 'paternity test' that went on till reputation. The secret messages in the first place where the reason for people to get intrigued and connect it to people she dated. She definitely didn't deserve the slutshaming and I know she was quite young but she really enjoyed that 'clues' at first which became a double edged sword

I am saying this because existence of secret messages is what led me to find muses behind these songs and see them as more than nameless faceless people. She got people curious and combined it with the fact that she dated people who are really famous led people to theorise(This is no way slutshaming her.Noone deserves that treatment from media or public. I just revealed my thoughts on how she innocently gave her personal details on silver platter. This is something her publicist should have known better about)

so i think an issue here is conflating her relationship to us and her relationship to the press, which have overlap but were fundamentally different when she began her career. i firmly believe everyone has the right to tell their own stories and speak their own truth, and she wanted to orient us in her stories and bring us into her music. like you said, she shared that innocently, not realizing it would be weaponized against her, and then once it was weaponized against her, to some degree she used what she could as defense. the secret messages were for us. inescapably the press used that against her, but that wasn't her fault. she couldn't predict that or the damage it would do to her. it also wasn't her fault that she happened to be very famous dating very famous men, and that being impossible to keep private because we live in a society that has a baked-in element of celebrity culture and interest, for better or worse, and people have been interested in society gossip for far longer than our modern times (we could stretch that back to royal courts as far as ancient egypt. gossip probably existed as soon as human speech did). taylor hiding "sam sam sam sam sam sam" or "maple lattes" in the liner notes is something she chose to do to let us in so that *we* would understand her emotions and diaristic writing and truth; the press picking her apart, excoriating her, and slut shaming her was out of her control and would've happened *without* her giving us clues anyway - and might've even made it worse because at least fans inherently knew what her stories meant to her along the way (she rightfully stopped leaving the secret messages because her music has even further clarity now, she doesn't need them, and yet look at the mess of discourse with people not recognizing the simplest things and most obvious allusions and connections on midnights...). beyond this, she was constantly having to behave and hold her tongue, and don't talk about politics or opinions, and be a good role model and a good girl and don't grow up. as she said at her commencement speech: I was a teenager in the public eye at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models. It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day ‘running off the rails.’ That meant a different thing to every person who said it to me. So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. 

her publicist at that point was not conducive to her growth as an artist or a woman. the secret messages were one of the few means she had of revealing things to us that we'd recognize without saying or giving away too much. i don't personally think it's a bad thing she enjoyed or had fun with them either. she liked letting us in! it was only the extreme depth of the hatred and trauma in 2015-16 that forced her to pivot, and then finding a partner in joe who she desperately wanted to hold onto and a relationship she wanted to protect apart from the noise and apart from the "nasty world that just wants to ruin things." we can't blame a young woman in her teens and twenties for wanting a way to connect with her listeners and openly share her experiences in whatever way she could. she also does have a petty streak and justifiable anger. the pettiness typically comes out in biting humor (the joe j doll was ironically hilarious, ibytam says everything it needs to say and allows her that space to make fun of an ex after such depth of shattering heartbreak), and the anger as a raw nerve (mad woman, wcs), but jaime said the other day something along the lines of, if someone really dislikes her pettiness or her anger, then to some degree that's to dislike her in general because it's not engaging with the full scope of her person. she is uncommonly kind, giving, and sensitive, she is passionate and earnest and quirky, that doesn't mean she doesn't make mistakes, or isn't allowed her fury and hurt and bitterness. or that she shouldn't have ever made her stories clear, that was her choice! i also don't think she's wrong in saying she doesn't have to consider her exes' experiences when she's releasing her own work. it's hers.

the paternity test quote in itself is somewhat disingenuous and her leaning into the character of reputation - that was for the media more than anything. it's multilayered, but it's like thinking folklore/evermore are entirely fiction when they're very much a lot of truth and inspired by lived feelings, or like her saying bejeweled is about her coming back into more sparkly pop music again. that's not what the song in its original form is about, but you can add that layer to it. we can find new facets to her songwriting and meaning, make our own personal meanings, and see where she's addressing more than one experience. she's never really obfuscated anything. even with rep, at the secret sessions, she told fans and encouraged them to share that every love song on the record was about joe. she mentioned him during lover press, their daily life has thankfully been kept private, but their relationship isn't at all hidden. rep is not a mystery, it's kind of *why* she didn't need to explain it.

not directed at what you said since i know you're not blaming her, but in general it's strange to me that she gets such outsized criticism for this when you can pull up practically any famous artist and point directly to their experiences and important relationships and muses that informed their work. it would be like saying we can't read keats and think about his poems in relation to fanny brawne and his illness. or we can't recognize how wild it was for stevie nicks and lindsay buckingham to be writing songs about one another that they then had to perform together on stage. artists always pull from their personal lives and audiences always are curious what that inspiration might be, it's just the nature of art.

i don't believe that hearing the songs, understanding their full depth, and knowing what she experienced and what she's sharing, including that the knowledge behind them then gives songs a flesh and blood connection rather than being nameless and faceless, is at all a negative thing, i think it's humanizing and gives them their richness as they intertwine across her career and journey.

[thatstormygeek]

"What recent discourse is exposing is something I’ve been trying to say for years now, which is that there is little The Normal Ones who call themselves "conservative" and rally around the Republican banner care about more than being recognized as the only normal ones by everyone else, specifically because it is this recognition that powers their supremacy. They demand that license, and they’ll use bullying and the threat of punishment to get it, and all too often they receive it from a cowed opposition and a lazy public."

So for a week the whole discourse seems to have been a tug of-war over who the real weirdos are. Conservatives believe it is everyone but them, and to prove it, they issue sneering statements about the existence of everyone but them, which seem predicated on the idea "hey look at this fucking weird person who shouldn't exist but does," and then suggest what sort of punishment is appropriate to ensure that such people are excluded and punished. Regular decent people, meanwhile, have noticed that an exclusive license on normalcy is some real weirdo shit to demand and sneering about the existence of diversity to secure that license and use weirdness as an excuse to punish people is some real weirdo shit to do, which is probably why Walz's framing has taken hold. "Listen to them speak," Walz said in the interview, "listen to how they talk about things." It's a good idea, really. We should listen to conservatives in general and Republicans in particular. They've been calling their political opponents vermin and saying they've been poisoning the blood of the people and promoting the vile antisemitic replacement myth and many other pieces of direct Nazi propaganda, and in recent months their long-tied piss-haired reality-show-pretend-billionaire candidate for president has carved out some of the time he usually uses for praising dictators to blather relentlessly about Hannibal Lector, almost certainly because he doesn't know the difference between political asylum and an insane asylum. And yes, they're saying that Kamala Harris isn't really Black and not really a parent, and that her husband is a "crappy Jew," and frothing at the mouth because they've decided that an Olympic boxer who is a cis woman isn't a cis woman, and they talk about passing laws forcing sex to stop being about fun and start being about consequences, and if that's not enough for you, here comes their large fermented Cabbage Patch doll of a vice president, Junior Development Vance. The veep hopeful has been attacking single women and childless women and just women in general, though we must be fair and admit that he's affirmed he loves his wife even though she "obviously isn't a white person", and that is awkward since he is a top leader of a political movement that wants to end birthright citizenship and enact mass deportations, and is pretending to not understand how mixed-race identity works. Vance has been going after childlessness in general, which could make sense given that he belongs to a political movement that wants to force nine-year-old rape victims to give birth and to ban all contraception and treat all women as nothing but an empty vessel for a future fetus, but is bizarre when you consider he is representing a political movement that wants to ban fertility treatments like IVF; and he's also a big proponent of fun new conservative policies like state menstrual surveillance of all people who can give birth, and restricting their travel to ensure their compliance with anti-abortion laws, and, again, all of this is simultaneously just loonbat flappywing bugshit weirdo shit and also deeply authoritarian and creepy and unpopular with most people and also very much within the mainstream of Republican political intention, and also exactly the sort of thing that crowds of well-fed comfortable pink-faced people waving signs that say MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW really seem to love. And honestly I could go on for three times as long, four times, ten times. It's just a relentless stream of vile supremacist bigotry and misogyny and hypocrisy and counterfactual nonsense, and has been for years and years and years, and I mean my god who besides fascist sickos aren't sick of it up past their eyeballs by now?

Some of these ways of being abnormal were permitted to a degree, others were not. They were permitted by The Normal Ones, who had the license to decide what identity was, and to establish the strictures which that identity must remain, outside of which that identity could not stray. It was normal to be white. It was normal to be a Christian. It was normal to be a man with a job, and it was normal to be a woman who was a man's property. It was normal for children to be viewed as property of the parents, which (see previous point) meant the property of the man. It was normal to be straight and cis. It was normal to be able-bodied and employed. More importantly, though, these were the only normal things to be. To not be those things was to be abnormal, and to be abnormal was to be at the mercy of The Normal Ones. Abuse—by those who were normal, of those who were not normal, used to be normal—and not ever acknowledging how all of the most normal forms of abuse were abuse was most normal of all. It was perfectly normal to be racist, misogynist, a religious bigot, as a way of defending and maintaining normalcy, which was a way of defending who did and who did not have the right to make decisions about what identities would be permitted, and to what extent the permission would be allowed. So rape was normal, and bigotry was normal, and exclusion and threats and punishment and murder of those who committed the offense of trespassing the established boundaries of what ways of being human would be permitted by normal people was normal. But more and more of us are moving on from all that. We're done with it. Imperfectly, to be sure, haltingly, no doubt. Sometimes it feels as if we've been scaling a mountain face and only recently passed through some clouds, allowing us a view, previously obscured, of what lay above—and so the distance we've come often only affords us a better view of how much further we have to climb. I know some would like to use the daunting climb looming above us to claim that we haven't climbed at all. But, if we are attentive and look downward long enough, we can see, peeking through the clouds, the vast prospect of rigid and supremacist normalcy we've left behind. We can see all the ways of being a human that used to depend upon normalized bigotry for permission to exist but which now give themselves their own permission to exist, without seeking any other. We can see more and more identities that are now considered normal, and more and more of the abuse that once was granted as normal is now recognized, from loftier vantage, for the abnormal perversion it is. ... What recent discourse is exposing is something I’ve been trying to say for years now, which is that there is little The Normal Ones who call themselves "conservative" and rally around the Republican banner care about more than being recognized as the only normal ones by everyone else, specifically because it is this recognition that powers their supremacy. They demand that license, and they’ll use bullying and the threat of punishment to get it, and all too often they receive it from a cowed opposition and a lazy public. So there's a danger to "weird," as some are pointing out, because exclusion based on abnormality is what supremacy runs on. We will probably do well to move on from "weird" in due time—both for this reason, and also because conservatives are doing what they always do whenever they face a new line of attack, which is to simply co-opt it and swamp it until the sheer volume of I'm-rubber-you're-glue makes the word start to sound like nonsense.

What saying "weird" means in this context is that it's normal to want government to help people, and it is abnormal to want it to harm people. It's normal to be part of and to celebrate an ever-increasing diversity of identity, and it's abnormal to want to control and define everyone else's identity. And, crucially, it is dismissive of supremacy. It says to supremacists. "If you are going to behave in such a topsy-turvy and indecent manner, I will oppose you, but I will not take you seriously." The trouble with trying to beat The Normal Ones by debating them on policy is it frames the nature of the fight as a policy disagreement, obfuscating the real problem, which is that, underneath their steaming hillocks of bullshit and hypocritical rationales and bizarre conspiracy theories, they are cruel bullies with strange hang-ups and violent intentions.

[thebestcrew]

We see all these terms in people's DNIs and are left feeling exhausted just looking at them... I am "old" and I do not care enough to look up every new thing people hate on. I dont need to know all these crazy stances and sides people take. I recognize a few, enough to know *some* things, but then a new word pops up and I'll just end up saying something like

"Hm. I have no clue what that is, but I'm going to assume it's not my concern if I don't know it by layman's terms"

Except, it could be my concern. It could be some interest or stance I have that I had ZERO idea was an "issue" and part of online discourse. Had zero idea there was a fancy term made for deciding if you are a good or bad person.

I don't care enough in the end. DNIs irritate me. It's like everyone thinks they are running on a political platform. DNIs help with setting boundaries, but some of y'all go too hard.

[dumb-cdc]

Horton Hears a Commitment to Listening, Learning, and Growing

From the desk of the Chief Operations Officer of Dumb CDC:

The hard-working Ethics and Compliance Activity team here at Dumb CDC has published their 2023 audit of our organization. Though we no longer meet the Corporate Equality Index criteria that has long guided our vision of diversity, equity, and inclusion here at Dumb CDC, we remain positive about the report's findings.

With each new year comes new experiences, new challenges, and new opportunities. We see Q1 of 2024 as an opportunity to do better. An opportunity to learn and grow from internal investigations. And better yet, an opportunity to reinstate a salaried DEI Director. We believe that this is the right thing to do.

We are facing trying times as public health professionals. The discourse around Black Lives Matter, Transgenderism, and Palestine has entered the workplace, creating an unsafe and uncomfortable environment for many.

To navigate these conversations, our executive leadership has read and discussed Horton Hears A Who! We take this as a serious step towards understanding the complex identity politics we are facing today, both personally and professionally.

Some of our peers have called racism a "public health emergency" and transgender health a "flashpoint" for health ethics. The conflict in Palestine has caused division within the field with difficult questions such as: Is bombing a maternity ward bad for maternal and reproductive health?

We believe that Horton Hears A Who! provides a helpful framework for addressing these divisive issues as public health professionals.

Colleagues immersed in identity politics often take the social dimensions of public health to their logical extreme. Like Horton, they see the "small speck of dust" and immediately accept as truth that the microscopic Whos exist there and that Whoville is a place where they live, learn, work, play, and age. They take the Whos' words at face-value because they too easily sympathize with them.

It is important as public health professionals to remain skeptical until clear data is presented. To much criticism and pushback, like the kangaroos we say: "Why, that speck is as small as the head of a pin. A person on that?... Why, there never has been!"

Horton's bias towards the Whos is to their detriment. He takes an unprofessional interest in them, saying: "My friends! Tell me! Do tell! Are you safe? Are you sound? Are you whole? Are you well?"

Getting information straight from the Whos is inappropriate. There is no credible census, let alone public health surveillance, available in Whoville. The monkeys know that much.

Everyone in the jungle calls Horton foolish. The kangaroos and monkeys depose Horton and move to boil the speck of dust. They understand that no data is better than bad data.

Horton protests: "Boil it? Oh, that you can't do! It's full of persons! They'll prove it to you!"

The Whos protest and cry out in fear: "We are here! We are here! We are here! We are here!"

Horton goes so far as to make the unfounded claim that "a person's a person, no matter how small."

As an esteemed public health institution, we must remain steadfast in listening to the data before making such a bold political statement. Horton has been getting all of his information directly from the Whos after all.

In the story, Horton has to prove his claim that "a person's a person, no matter how small." He does so through the empirical evidence of the desperate screams of the Whos in Whoville-- including the smallest of children.

Through this good effort, the kangaroos and monkeys can finally hear the voices of the Whos in Whoville.

Mechanisms could now be put in place to recognize and protect the Whos. That is because they and their unique suffering were now proven to exist.

To our colleagues fomenting political unrest and criticizing leadership here at Dumb CDC: know that intellectually and politically, we may not be so far apart on these issues. Like the kangaroos and monkeys, we may see more eye to eye one day. But we will do so through the proper processes, which take time, rigorous work, and patience.

Horton rushes ahead, but the kangaroos and monkeys are committed to listening, learning, and growing. No matter how long it takes. And maybe we could all learn something from that.

[thespectacularspider-girl]

Retiring this Blog

So yes, I’m retiring this blog as of right now. I will be turning off the ability to send asks, messages or submissions. The queue is empty so you will not be seeing any more posts after today.

Why am I retiring? Mostly for mental health. I felt like nine years of political discourse has not done me much good. I have clinical depression and I’ve been making progress in combating it but this blog has not helped overall. I found that the constant inquiry about political discussion, getting into arguments, etc, made my mood deteriorate. Even worse, when my mood was already in bad shape, I’d find myself tempted to engage in discourse as a distraction. This might work in the short term but in the long term this only did damage to me.

For a few weeks I was focusing on my art and other creative work and I found that I was genuinely happy with my life during that time. And when politics came knocking again, I found myself splashed with cold water and miserable again. That feeling of being dragged backwards is what spurred this decision.

I want to focus on the things that make me happy; game design, writing and artwork. That is what I’m going to do. Maybe, one day in the distant future, I might come back and this blog might revive. But I can’t promise that.

Since I announced my intent, I’ve been flooded with numerous comments and messages from people who wanted to thank me or wish me luck. Honestly, it’s been overwhelming to experience, and this week has been an emotional rollercoaster for me, having realized I’ve had an impact on so many people. I never really expected to be worthy of such an outpouring.

To everyone who supported me, who wished me well, who worried about my wellbeing and who made me laugh, thank you so much. It wasn’t all bad, lots of my time here was good. And that’s solely based on the people who followed me and who I surrounded myself with. I made friends here who I don’t think I can ever give up.

I just want everyone to know how grateful I am for being part of your experience. I recognized so many of you over the years, seeing the same people in the notes or in my inbox. I remember all the running jokes made about me, good and bad, and I hope at least some managed to make you laugh.

I know that it might seem like a story without a conclusion. I know people have followed me for a long time, wanting to see how it all turns out. I’m sorry that I’m closing this book without any definite answers. I wish I could have posted one day that I got to move and be out of the closet, to heal and recover, but it hasn’t happened yet. You will just have to hope that things turn out better for me. That’s all you can you and all I can do, really.

If there’s one thing I can ask of all of you reading this, it’s this; Please take care of yourself. Find the things you find joy in and do them. Life is too short to have it be spent in misery and anger. Don’t let the negativity consume you because it helps nobody and only serves to damage you. Appreciate what you have and cherish the things you take for granted.

Thank you, again, to everyone. You’ve turned something I was sad to do into something I won’t ever forget. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Take care of yourselves, everyone.

Goodbye.

[friedloverballoon]

Open-mindedness

I wanted to put this here because I was thinking about it a bit and I wanted to share my thoughts. (Tumblr does seem to love my opinions lately; 🚨opinion alert🚨)

There are a lot of Tumblr people on the more progressive, "gender isn't real" side of things like gender discourse and things like that who I've noticed pack so much punch into their replies to my posts and their own posts, talk about wanting to debate someone who disagrees with them, and when someone even replies with something short like "penis small" (something I got that I thought was funny) or "you support , blocked".

Disregarding the fact that these people are engaging with discourse on their own free will and then complaining that someone has a different opinion, I've noticed that a lot of these people are extremely closed-minded to actually listening to what people have to say because there are a lot of people on their side that oppose that group, it's almost like peer pressure to me, like "I can't possibly agree with this idea because so many of my peers who agree with this other opinion"

Seeing terfs and others on the far opposite side of the gender discourse is quite the same thing. I've seen them call each other "sister" and then go to each other if they see something that makes them question their views, get persuaded right back into their firm beliefs.

By the way, for all the people who called me a terf for talking about how xenogenders are harmful to transgender laws, stop using a buzzword for a group you've never messed with before.

What I'm trying to say with this post is that opinions can change quick, and you shouldn't have to be tied down to any group if they berate you for even questioning if you might agree with a differing opinion. And don't think this doesn't happen on the mogai/xenogender side of things either, it does. I would know, I used to be part of that until I came to my own conclusion about it.

People who switch political sides from the left to the right often talk about how liberating (ironically) it feels to be open-minded. I do relate to the switch in sides and how good it feels to get out of an echo chamber. The problem is that, for a lot of them, all they've done is switched their opinions to the opposite side and become closed-minded of opinions from the left. In real time, I've seen this happen with many people I know, and it is very disappointing how closed-minded some of them will become to any idea outside of their, as I've heard it called, "filter bubble", especially after they cite the reason of their leaving the left being the closed-mindedness.

Of course, nobody on Tumblr would know them, but someone that a lot of the gender and sexuality discourse accounts would recognize as a familiar face would be YouTuber Blaire White, who I've noticed seems to be going through a phenomenon that I've never seen before, one I might call a "double red-pill". If this giant post gets attention, I'm thinking about doing a post about that as well, but I need more time about that.

To finish this post, I'll talk about what it means to me to be open-minded. When someone is passionate about a topic, even if its one I disagree with, if it's something I come across or is said to me, I'll listen. Of course, I'll probably disagree with a point supporting something I already disagree with, but I might not, and it might change my perception on something bigger. America is extremely divided when it comes to (when you think about it) opinions in other peoples' minds, and for me, so much of the stress relating to online discourse just vanished after accepting them. And for good reason too, it's not that I don't care, I still get involved in it, it's that it's not a bad thing to be met with differing opinions. I could be met with thousands of people who disagree with me like how I did with that one post I made, and I read all my replies. Discussions about different opinions shouldn't be angry and dramatic either, if everyone on earth had the same opinion about everything, we would be like robots, so don't be afraid to examine different ideas.

[hussyknee]

Just wanted to say as a transmasc who has seen the horrors of what calling out someone like w-oc can bring, thank you for stepping up and speaking out against this behavior. But especially thank you for showing support towards transandrophobia and us having vocab to discuss our unique oppression. I am so sorry for any shit you might (or, will) get in your inbox and notes, but from myself and probably many other transmascs; thank you. Take care, and have a wonderful new year!

It cost me nothing, boo. Dw about the anon hate, I mostly find it entertaining. 😂 But you're welcome and thank you for the nice message. ❤️

Those kinds of people use our justified anger at racism to use as leverage to harm other oppressed people, especially trans mascs of colour who end up getting the shittest end of the stick. It's infuriating, poisons good faith race discourse and we're losing a concerning amount of kids of colour to this con. And the whole "transmisandry isn't real!!" thing gives me war flashbacks to Tumblr 2014 lmaoo. We're not bringing that clown circus back.

Being attacked by your own community is one of the most traumatic things to experience (I'm ace and have the PTSD to show for it) and I'm so fuckin sorry y'all are going through it. The first trans friend I made irl was a trans boy and I literally watched him being repeatedly sexually harassed, stalked, ostracized, discriminated at his workplaces, and beaten up by his father and thrown out of the house. We had to raise money for his top surgery pronto as soon as he started T because his life was at risk if he went out in public with facial hair and boobs. I now also have irl trans women as close friends and there's absolutely nothing uniform about "how" oppressed any of them are. Neither of them got beaten up or kicked out, but one has to live with a parent that won't even recognize her real name while the other's family called a meeting, got educated on trans issues and got her on HRT within weeks of her coming out. And all of this is in South Asia, in a country where where homosexuality is still criminalised and queer acceptance and safety depends solely on your social circle and income bracket.

This oppression Olympics clownshit works only by actively erasing the experiences of any queer people who aren't from a liberal middle class environment in a First World country, the mythical white utopia. Gender essentialism is just repackaged biological essentialism, and the latter is based on treating cis white womenhood as the default. All exclusion politics are radfem and fundamentalist politics, which is white supremacist no matter who repurposes it for their own benefit. Treating individual "undesirable" groups as the problem rather than interrogating the underlying and intersecting systems that affect us all is how they all avoid having to take accountability and self-examine their own prejudices. BIPOC are exactly as complicit in propping up white supremacy as white people are. It's a grift to use social reform movements as another mechanism to prop up the status quo, because fundamentalists of every stripe actively benefit from it.

You deserve to have everyone to stand with you whether or not other people are impacted by the problems that concern you, and directly butting in on intracommunity discourse does more harm than good. But your issues are our issues. "All of us or none of us" isn't just a creed, it's inalienable fact.

[the-dragon-hearted]

I feel like we, as human beings should address the one overarching issue of not just the Dream smp fandom, but any place where people come together and discuss things they love. The issue: Debate. Discourse. Deliberation. Okay, that was three issues, but you get the picture. We, as a society (yes I'm throwing the 'S' word out there) need to get better at Debate. I get it, the four-year-olds on political stages have set a horrible example but I am here to give y'all a Tedd Talk on arguments, mostly pertaining to content creators but this can be used in any disagreement you ever hold. How to Properly Hold an Argument without being a Child in 4 Steps: Step 1: Never walk into a Debate expecting to change the other's mind This is a big one and it's one of the hardest to grasp. What? What do you mean? What's the purpose of argument if I don't convince the other they're wrong? The purpose of a debate is to offer your opinion and defend it against the world while you pick another's claim apart. Don't expect to change someone's mind. For your own benefit. If you see an opinion that is absolutely horrendus out there on social media, YouTube, Twitchchat, et cetera... and you click on it to refute it. You need to understand you're not refuting it to change that person's mind, but to display to the rest of your collegues why that opinion is, well... Bullshit. You live in a society where people are Ignorant, Misinformed, Sensationalists, or Trolls. Frankly, against certain people (namely trolls) you can't win. No matter what you say or how 'awesomely' constructed your argument is. You can not and will not win. All you can do is build up an opinion and post it and then suffer what 'deez nuts' jokes you get. Here, an example:

Troll: *insert terrible opinion here* Person A: No. That's wrong for reasons a, b, and c. You shouldn't believe that or spread it. Troll: lol, take a joke will you. You're so sensitive.

Naturally, this would upset you. I would be upset and it's okay if you are too. But you should not under any situation continue to feed the troll. Never expect to change someone's mind and never expect to win, especially against people like this. There is no winning in an argument, there's only hurt feelings and over-used claims. The best you can hope for is for your argument to sound and appear as the best option/opinion. Alright? Don't attack people and don't reply with pure emotion. Just breathe easier knowing you made a good argument, posted it, and the other is making a fool of themselves. Honestly, who's the fool? The informed person or the twelve year olds laughing about Bofa? Bofa what? Bofa deez - Aaand we're shutting it down there. So now you know what to walk in expecting in an argument. What do you do next? Step 2: Construct a solid Claim DON'T RUN! I SWEAT I'LL BE MORE CONCISE THAN THE ENGLISH TEACHERS OF HIGH SCHOOL! A claim is the core of your argument; the thing you're arguing about. It can be broad, it can be specific, but the most important part is that you stay on topic. Don't lose yourself to ranting. Always re-read what you type and delete any paragraphs that change the topic. For instance, if you're talking about the Dream speed-runs, you probably shouldn't go on a rant about the manhunts as they're two seperate catagegories and you'll look a bit confused. Step 3: Be mature, be concise, and do some research First things first: Don't deflect in an argument simply because you don't know something. Take your time, do research, form an opinion and come back to it. This will give you time to blow of steam AND stay informed. On the same note, absolutely do NOT use red herrings. Red herrings? Oh, that's when you deflect attention from the main topic with a shallow issue that's related. For instance, let's use discourse discusing a content creator's bias against... let's do something stupid like stuffed animals:

Person A: We need to talk about cc!So-and-So and they're Bias against stuffed animals. Person B: Sure, but there are so many children out there who are lacking connection and are never able to get stuffed animals due to strict parents. It feels wrong to only focus on one subject when there's a whole problem out there.

^^ This is a red herring. It's not always this obvious but for the love of all things good, don't do this. Second things second - this is SUPER important. Stop using Ad Hominem attacks in any and all debates. Ad Hominem attacks are the type that personally attacking your opponent instead of focusing on their position. I'm sure you can tell that politicians love that one - but it's actually an immature approach that cheapens your argument. To see it in practice:

Person A: I don't think it's a big deal that cc!So-and-So did blank and I don't see why everyone's making a big deal out of it. Person B: That's because you're a cc!So-and-So Stan. Person A: Well you're just a hater.

Right away you should be able to tell that there was no tangible argument against or for the content creator. Just a bunch of kids slinging mud on their opponents. Calling someone a 'hater' or a 'stan' shouldn't invalidate their opinion or bolster your own argument. Just because someone 'likes' or 'dislikes' something doesn't mean they can't talk about it, it just means they're likely to possess Implicit Bias or a subconcious bias towards something. Implicit Bias isn't a bad thing and it isn't something that invalidates an argument, it's something that should allow you to at least understand the reasoning for someone to hold a position. If you attack someone's personal standing instead of their opinion it only cheapens your argument because people now assume YOU have no idea what you're talking about and all you can do is hiss at your foe like a feral raccoon on drugs. No one wants to agree with a feral racoon on drugs, kind of how no one wants to agree with a politician. So, how can you better form an argument without mudslinging? It's a bit more complicated, but worth it. You research, you think before you type, you stay respectful, and... you listen to Step #4. Step 4: Sometimes. You have to accept that you were initially wrong. This one hurts. It hurts you and your confidence and all you can do is handle it best you can. I've taken debate and been in dozens or "professional arguments" (I hate that phrase) and I have been 'wrong' plenty of times. There's grace in that and it's an important lesson to learn. It is impossible to be right 100% of the time and it's impossible to be infallible. You have to accept that of yourself and those around you. If your opponent accepts they were wrong, do not continue to harp on them. That's cruel. Alternatively, if you realize you were wrong with your claim, you can admit you were mistaken and amend it. It takes a big person to do that and if your opponent has any decency, they'll recognize that. If they don't, congratulations, you've been arguing with a literal child. And now, you know everything about Debate. (That's a lie, but you know the basics and you can do a lot with the basics.) A good friend of mine once said that every opinion out there came from the mouth of both an asshole and an angel and we all have to be one of those things at some point in our lives. Debate, discourse, argument, all of that is hard and it can be straining or even toxic. Take a step back when necissary. Take a deep breath. Know that if you're feeling personally attacked, you're opponent is using immature methods to tear down your arguments. If you're argument is torn down and you don't know what to think, that's okay too. Take a breath, take a break, and allow yourself to mull it over. Forming your own opinion takes time and a clear mental space. You need both. So next time you see a troll, a jerk, an asshole, a hater, or a stan - don't let emotions get the better of you. Remember you are an intelligent person who is capable of forming your own opinions and NO ONE can take that away from you. Think, research, and then type.

TLDR: Don't expect to win every argument, don't expect to be always right, don't divert your opponents attention, don't personally attack your opponent, always be respectful, always do research, never do anything with pure emotion. Remember you're forming your own opinions and that takes time and space so give yourself that when you need it.

That's it! Best of luck Debating~

[ms-demeanor]

Are you saying the fatwa on Salman Rushdie is part of cancel culture or did he do something?

It’s about the fatwa but I’m going to jump off of this ask to have a rant.

What this boils down to, at least to me, is a preoccupation with an assumed right to be adored, no matter what. It’s an attempt to allow public figures with bruised egos to intellectualise their way out of understanding a very simple idea: when you – particularly the famous – do things to perpetuate or legitimise ideas or actions that contribute to further harming others, you are not entitled to remain liked by some members of the public.

The added suggestion that individual consequences for specific misdeeds are a sign that things have gone too far is just as absurd. Like the “forces of illiberalism” discredited in this letter, many of those who’ve added their signatures in support of it simply wish to remain steadfast in their beliefs without having to engage in exactly the kind of discussions this letter suggests should happen. That’s the thing with glossing over the ugly or difficult issues to bolster your argument – shards of them inevitably push through the cracks.

Salman Rushdie signed the letter on justice and open debate that everyone has decided is about cancel culture because JK signed it.

We’ve got a baby/bathwater situation here. You’ve got a bunch of people who have faced death threats and political consequences and serious shit for what they’ve written (Atwood is on that list, Chomsky is on that list. Atwood’s books have been banned in a ton of places; Chomsky was monitored by the CIA for years because of his political philophy. Rushdie is on that list and people have tried to kill him for his writing) signing a letter saying “uhhhhhhhh fuck censorship” but because Jo also signed it the same week she decided to go mask off with the trans exclusion people are going “these things are the same” and “Uhhhh, it’s not cancel culture, your actions just have consequences” (that pullquote is from an article about this list; saying “it’s absurd to suggest that individual consequences for specific misdeeds are a sign that things have gone too far” is a HELL OF A THING to say about a list that includes people who have survived bombing attempts.

So yeah, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to simply call the letter a condemnation of cancel culture but it’s kind of a joke that people on tumblr are cancelled for having wrong opinions about Stephen Universe but then you see people who have actually lost their jobs because someone made a fake page calling them a possum fucker, or people who are getting called out as pedophiles for shipping two adults, well. Yeah. You know what, I think it’s probably a good idea to have a conversation about why cancel culture CAN be a thing and CAN be a bad thing and how to recognize it and avoid participating it.

Cancel culture *isn’t* just “your actions having consequences” and there IS a totally new mobbing culture that’s exploded in the last twenty years and it is misaimed CONSTANTLY and it does make people less likely to participate in discourse and an open exchange of ideas.

Like, fuck, a bunch of the tumblr “Abolish the police” crew is also the tumblr “kill all pedophiles” crew and trying to talk about intervention and science-based prevention tactics and compassionate treatment gets you labelled a pedophile sympathizer and there is a giant mob of people who don’t want to talk about any of that, they just want to tell you to kill yourself until you decide it’s not worth while to talk about anything controversial.

(My inbox, for example, is full of people who came by to tell me that they were glad I talked about atheism but the response that I got is exactly why they don’t talk about atheism here).

The every-other-week “Cancel Argumate” campaigns are another example of this. Argumate says something pretty clumsy about indigenous people, clarifies a position, makes a good faith argument, and is labelled a colonialist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post about atheism, is challenged on that post by Jewish atheists, clarifies that the post wasn’t about that, continues to clarify that, is frustrated that people keep coming to make the same point in opposition to a point that was never in the post in the first place, is labelled as antisemitic, cancel argumate. Argumate makes a post criticizing US capitalism, is labelled a marxist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post somewhat sympathetically discussing landlords, is labelled an anarchocapitalist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post criticizing landlords for cutting corners and endangering tenants, is labelled an anarchist, cancel Argumate. Like. A bunch of Argumate’s individual posts are glib as fuck but all of the long conversations on that blog are really fucking nuanced and that’s coming from someone who got to know Argumate after initially going “Argumate’s an MRA, cancel Argumate” before then having a long, nuanced conversation about radical feminism.

It’s just frustrating that everything is presented as so black and white. “Oh, this letter is from JK, this must mean she’s whining about how we hate that she’s a terf” and way to go, buds, you just (oh god am I really going to do this) Spoke Over A Man Of Color Who Has Faced Institutional Violence As A Result Of His Writings.

Or, to put it another way: “I REALLY WISH THESE CONVERSATIONS COULD BE HAD WITH A DEGREE OF NUANCE BECAUSE PUTTING SOMEONE SURVEILLED BY THE CIA FOR DECADES FOR HIS ANTIWAR WRITING AND SOMEONE WHO SURVIVED A BOMBING ATTEMPT BECAUSE OF HIS FICTION IN THE SAME CATEGORY OF ‘BUTTHURT BECAUSE OF MEANIES ON TWITTER’ AS JK ROWLING IS LUDICROUS.”

[a-dragons-journal]

Hi! I was scrolling through the otherkin tag (as one does) and saw on an ask you answered that you hated DNIs and didn’t want to go into it on that ask. So I’m curious now- why do you hate DNIs? I don’t have a DNI, and I’m not out to try and change your mind. I’ve just never seen anyone say outright that they didn’t like DNIs, so I’d really like to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

I ended up indeed going into it later, because people kept sending in asks about it, so this tag exists now, but in summary:

- I don't necessarily hate the existence of DNIs, because they can be a useful tool in certain circumstances, but I hate that they're starting to become an expectation/requirement and that it's now considered "creepy/suspicious" in a growing number of communities to not have one. It should not be an obligation to basically list your political stances, discourse opinions, and triggers - you know, things you can be attacked for/people can use to hurt you - in any circumstance, least of all on the Internet where anyone can see it.

- For that matter, putting a list of things that can hurt you in public where anyone can see it and know exactly how to target you if they want to hurt/harass you is a bad idea, whether it's a social requirement or not. Full stop. Unless you are in a relatively small group where you know the intentions of the people there (and often not even then!), it is not a good idea to tell people how to effectively hurt you on the Internet.

- I hate it when people put "[x bigoted group] DNI" at the bottom of actual discussion-type content posts (as opposed to, like, aesthetics and stuff), such as people putting "TERFs DNI" at the bottom of posts about feminism, because a) if you're worried about your post appealing to that group, maybe you should reexamine your post's content, b) I've seen firsthand more than once that those groups, TERFs especially, will purposely put "[x] DNI" at the bottom of their crypto-rhetoric posts in order to turn people's critical thinking skills off and make them more likely to accept the crypto rhetoric (foot-in-the-door tactic), and c) even if it's not intentionally malicious like the last point, it still makes it so the OP's post is suddenly immune to criticism, because "hey this comes off a little transphobic" can be met with "how dare you call me a transphobe?? I said 'TERFs DNI' right there!!1!", which, again, has to do with the whole "turning people's critical thinking skills off" problem.

- On a similar note, I hate this recent trend toward performative activism and "racists/transphobes/homophobes/etc. DNI!1!" feels like another permutation of that; I don’t like people demanding/expecting me to announce all my political opinions right out the gate. It should be my decision whether or not I want to share sensitive information about myself (and if you’re scoffing at the idea of a political opinion being “sensitive information” - if it can get you, again, harassed and attacked by a complete stranger, it’s sensitive information).

- People seem to forget that people can, will, and do lie on their DNIs and bios. Predators will lie about being "under 18” in order to make minors they’re interacting with feel safe and let their guard down. TERFs will lie about “transphobes DNI!” to ensure their crypto rhetoric spreads and gets a foot in the door of trans-supporting people’s thought processes. All “it’s to let the people affected by [bigotry] know I’m safe,” which is something I hear sometimes, really means is that the bigot in question only has to put up a DNI to make the people they’re planning to target lower their guard. There is nothing guaranteeing that someone actually believes what their DNI implies they believe. It’s an illusion of safety that just doesn’t - and, really, can’t - exist on the internet, by the internet’s nature. And people thinking they’re safer than they really are is what gets people hurt because they stopped being careful. I’m not saying people need to (or should) live in fear, but relying on DNIs is not a sustainable solution, imho.

- I hate people using DNIs/BYFs as an alternative to blocklists because it often becomes essentially them forcing other people to curate their internet experience for them, and then getting mad (or hurt) when that doesn't work out for reasons that should be obvious. Especially when you take it to the extreme of trying to regulate anyone who reblogs your posts, which I have seen sometimes - you can't seriously expect people to check the OP of every single person whose post they reblog to make sure they agree with your opinions on fandom discourse; that's untenable and it can only lead to people getting hurt. You are the only person who is - and the only person who can be - responsible for your internet experience. Curate your own space.

- as a minor point, "standard DNI criteria" is becoming a popular phrase and it's frankly a useless phrase because there's no such thing. Beyond "racists/homophobes/transphobes" there's literally no telling what a given person includes in what's "standard" - pro- or anti-ship? SFW agereg/petreg blogs? DDLG? Steven Universe fans? inclusionists or exclusionists? There is no "standard." (But then, I feel like how common that phrase is becoming says something about exactly how performative and empty the trend of DNIs is as a whole at this point in time.)

- also as a minor point, I am frankly just not a fan of how often DNIs put things like "Steven Universe fan" and "neonazi" right next to each other like they're the same level of bad. I recognize consciously that this is not the intention, but it sure does come off that way sometimes. It reminds me a bit too much of those callout posts that have six pages about the person's bad opinions on anime or whatever and only then go "oh yeah and also they sexually abused, threatened, and sent their friends to harass a minor and we have screenshot evidence of all of that. anyway here's three more pages about why their art is bad because they drew a 16-year-old in a crop top one time".

And, let me be very clear here: I do not hate people who have DNIs, nor do I want to act like they're never useful. They are, sometimes! But I do feel they're being misused and they're starting to become an expectation and that's a huge problem, for the same reason that people trying to force everyone to put their age/basic personal information in their bios is a problem - it's a safety concern. I am honestly convinced that at this point, in most circumstances, DNIs are doing more harm than good.

If you want to use a DNI, that's up to you, and it's not like I'm gonna harass people about it ('s why I started that "dni critical" tag, so people could who don't want to read this stuff could avoid it) - but I want people to at least understand the risks they're taking depending on how they go about it. If it's useful to you, then good, I'm genuinely glad! It just concerns me how it's being treated by the larger Internet right now.

(And, of course, that's all just my personal subjective opinion - take what you like, leave what you don't. You're more than welcome to disagree with me; this is not a make-or-break argument for me, just one I have strong feelings about xD)

[karanoid]

about top joe discord

LET ME ADDRESS A FEW POINTS:

There has been many fear and anxiety regardless the top!joe discord I made. I understand how it gives my discord a bad reputation. Somebody has kindly reached out to me to ask me addressing several points, which I’m now gonna clarify:

1. I am racist, I asked why, and they said mostly because of my dismissive behavior to people who called me out for drawing yusuf adorned in gold jewelry which made their friends feel unsafe. So, I am a muslim and was raised in a muslim household and community. I am fucking brown.

I didn’t say it because you don’t need to know that about me. What bothers me is how some people feel the need to come to my inbox informing me “maam yusuf is a religious muslim who prays 5 times a day and do all the supplementary prayers all while he drinks alcohol and fuck nicky in the dailies, he wouldnt be wearing gold maam no maam.” as if I didn’t know any better. so please, now don’t do that. If you care so much about the littlest details like wearing gold then you’ll also call out yusuf because he draws living beings and drinks champagne. yes it’s true muslim men are forbidden from wearing gold AND silk but let’s not forget, nothing in the comic and movies imply yusuf has ever been religious. It’s easier to see nicolo as religious because he was a fucking priest. Yusuf was a fucking merchant, it’s easy to see that he’d be less faithful because he would have been travelling and seen many kind of people to broaden his horizons and not contained to a little bubble of hyper religious community. However, let me remind you: whether yusuf AND nicolo are religious or not is entirely UP TO THE AUTHOR/ARTIST. It’s totally fine to make him religious and if you can respect it THATS GREAT, I ALSO LIKE HIM THAT WAY, but please remember it’s not even canon and hey sometimes I just draw things because I like the aesthetics. Also please, do not harass writers for getting a thing or two incorrect, even white people cannot get christianity correct, even between two muslims could be a disagreement whether this fic’s yusuf is problematic or not. I wouldn’t even expect anything more and THAT’S OKAY. Just don’t be an ass to muslims of color in real life and don’t fall into the believe that it’s a religion of violence. you can say that greg made him that way bc he knew nothing better but hey, I have no problem with that. again, it’s fine to make him religious, I’d be delighted but it’s ALSO fine to make him not religious.

2. I think that people only write Top!Nicky out of political correctness. OKAY. I apologize for this. I thought like this because I have accounts telling me that they were pressured into writing top!nicky or they wanted more readerships so I make a BIG assumption. I realized this is only a small part of switch and top!nicky fics and the big bulk of this must be out of genuine care. So yeah, I apologize for thinking that people only write top!nicky out of political correctness. I think writers should be allowed to write whatever they want. Yes this includes top!Nicky. And in whatever kinks they want it. However, this still doesn’t change that the discourses do scare people away from writing top!joe. Write top!nicky however you want, but stop vague-blogging about top!joe. racism isn’t inherent to top!joe and you can always remind people to be mindful with their writings but discouraging people from writing top!joe is not the solution. 

3. Top!joe is racist and people in the discord are racist. Okay, I am gonna touch several aspects why top!joe discord is considered racist: (1) because I don’t like to switch them, therefore I am racist. Sorry that’s not how it works. I have a clear preference and that’s just how I roll. Besides, a lot of people in the discord (including me) think either they switch (because they are 900 yo) or joe just doesn’t like bottoming. I’m not the kind of people who refers to reality for fiction I consume but people who prefer to top or to bottom exist (2) i want to be away from accountability and responsibility. Nope. The reason I made it is because I wanted to gather people with same interest as mine. 

4. I paint Yusuf as aggressive and the whole discord like him being an aggressive top. I think this is the only reason why the discord is seen in a negative light. Because wow what a coincidence that someone vagueblogged my discord at the day I celebrated about Nicky suggesting 20 years and wrote a post about how Joe is allowed to be angry. And beside someone made the WRONG assumption that we are focusing on Joe’s anger and violence (what). Okay, I don’t know how to break this down. But I will try. First, yes I was overjoyed at the news. Because I’m one of the people that do not like feral!nicky headcanon. I liked it at first bc it was funny but then it was twisted into Nicky being cold. So I don’t like it (lol), I still like it though but like I don’t seriously think that way. However, I never liked the idea that Nicky suggested higher than Joe. Because then his character just doesn’t click with me, there was a cognitive dissonance for me because joe clearly says nicky’s heart overflows kindness, you can see nicky as a medic in the credit montage. Also, from their body language and from the way the movie set em up, I think Joe is the one who suggested higher and I am glad to be proven right. Second, I did write a post about how Joe is allowed to be angry at Booker. People agreed with me, so I was not alone. But the reason I wrote that post is not because I wanted to paint yusuf as aggressive, but because I’m tired at people who think Joe shouldn’t display any negative emotions. I think it’s out of character. I do NOT think Joe is aggressive. That is NOT his wholeass personality. If you looked at my tog art tag, never once I portrayed Joe as anything aggressive. If I do, please show me. Third, people are conflating this with my post where I reblogged with a comment that implies aggressive Joe isn’t racism. Okay in this, the context is IN BED. It’s Joe being aggressive in BED. It’s literally BED ROLES AND FANTASY. I don’t even have a particular scenario in my head when I reblogged that, the original post clearly refers to bed roles with manhandling and kinks etc. like, why would you spank someone in public? Lastly, about the discord, NOPE, most people in the discord agree that Joe is either a GENTLE DOM or SERVICE TOP. But in my opinion, if someone likes Joe as an aggressive top (again, bed roles baby) I really don’t think it’s racism. It’s just... projection? 

anyway, back to joe’s emotions, these are posts from a moroccan man (paragraph #7) and a brown woman whose posts I agree with. Let’s be real, people of color are expected to shut up in favor of white people’s fragile feelings.

Now, about racism in fandom. I understand the concern because muslim men are painted as violent and aggressive. You know what I will never forgive those radicals for taking away innocents lives and to leave a lasting damage in how muslims are perceived in the west. However, you have to keep in mind, Joe in the movie is far from being stereotyped. I mean, Gina and Marwan practically greenlit him? Now, you might have concerns that writers are gonna turn him into a walking stereotype which is... okay, I understand that concern. But the solution is to communicate this ‘hey I think you make him too stereotypical in this etc etc’ not “write more top!nicky AND shame top!joe” because again, top!joe is not inherently racist.

also some people mentioned that they hope I recognize racial bias in the ship. dude, that goes without saying, all aspects of your life will be influenced by racial biases. however, this kind of thing is not specific to fandom/shipping. Like I said I’m fucking brown, friends and families with facial features that cater to white expectation are treated better. I did say at the bottom of this post, yeah I did notice why it’s always a brown character who’s always openly mad. And that’s in itself a form of racial bias. Racial biases affect everyone, white or POC, it doesn’t matter. But I got an issue with how people think this is racism. like how convenient, if by falling to racial biases mean you are a racist then what about those white people who created this racial biases in the first place? and I noticed the persons who got the audacity to cry about everything in this fandom is white?? I mean okay, they don’t know what I am, but not everyone is comfortable with sharing their private information like ethnic group, faith, etc. what if they really don’t want to share it? Because like you said, racial bias, whether good or bad will affect me. Now, I don’t know what white people are feeling, I’m not white. However, based on my interactions with them. We’re all just people sharing same interest, it could be they fall into racial biases, but all we shared about are just regular HCs. Even people making a conscious effort to combat racial bias still in essence fall for racial bias. You just cannot escape it.

According to this post, fandom assumes that the bottom is the proxy of writers, I don’t think this is applicable to everyone but let’s just say it’s true and people tend to write about their projection better so I’m gonna assume the racism part comes from the fact that..yeah I do think the bottom usually gets more fleshed out as a result of them being the writers proxy, so somebody posted this in the discord which I agree because yes I do think there’s a lack about yusuf’s background especially when it comes to crusade era:

but since I know most writers aren’t muslims, to me it’s not so much about racism but they simply know nothing about it, and not always out of ignorance either but in this climate, if you get a thing or two wrong you’d get harassed. so *shrugs* I understand the reluctancy. But here’s the thing, this is not about top/bottom issue but because most of the fandom are white so they have more freedom in writing the white character. Anyway, plenty of people have projected themselves into yusuf already, the whole “top/bottom” thing in this fandom is not even a thing. Yes, some writers project on the bottom so if you prefer bottom!joe that’s fine, somebody in the discord is doing a research and it turned out top!joe wasn’t even a CLEAR majority in JULY. So clearly they got their share already?

so please, let’s stop with the vitriol. if people are preferring top!joe it’s clearly because of different preferences. it’s not that deep. it’s the same way with how some people are preferring top!nicky. But we’re being driven out based on a hypothetical scenarios? like what do you want? for us to cease existing??? don’t be ridiculous.

I know people won’t listen to me. So this is my suggestion: LETS JUST IGNORE THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE. LET’S ALL JUST AGREE TO DISAGREE.