#rubberneckers

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A crowd watches a fire in an aeronautics factory from Saint Gabriel's (now Saint Vartan) Park, which is bounded by East 36th Street on the north and First Avenue on the east, March 1, 1944. The five-alarm fire occurred at 411 East 36th Street between First Avenue and the East River. The building, completely destroyed, housed manufacturers of military equipment.

Photo: Weegee via the Int'l Center of Photography

[wfodicks]

#619: CASHLESS VENDING AND THE SACRED SEED

mike and travis are joined this week IN STUDIO by jodie b from the po boys podcast. they discuss the following topics…. angel food cakey…. hold in your seed…… jodie’s big surprise….. homeless or dead…. mike’s favorite soda guy…. george washington university…. POTW: WOLFIE’S JUST FINE/I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE/I WAS THERE WELL, BYE. https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/t43iux/WFOD53123V.mp3

[cassierobinsons]

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand queer!Sam. The coding is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of literary theory most of it will i don't think i can finish this post actually

[demynom]

This can be a comic if you read it right to left.

[notbecauseofvictories]

today I discovered that this amazing article about a doomed attempt to create a seafaring haven for bitcoin miners, is by the same journalist as this other article I love about people so wealthy they go to therapy about it, and now I absolutely want to know how Sophie Elmhirst finds these people.

[starlightseraph]

i, in a moment of weakness, unblocked one of the major rpf bloggers just to see how they would turn the sweet, loving smiles and pictures of the olivier awards into some intricate web of secret relationships and abusive partners, and i was not disappointed.

i think the months during which tumblr was flooding my dash with an endless stream of these posts (despite my attempts at blocking) had desensitised me to all of the genuinely awful things that get posted. i thought it was weird and gross, but i’d lost sight of just how completely tinfoil hat insane it is.

case and point:

HUH? what??

that is not what this looks like to any reasonable person. what it does look like is a conversation between them, during which georgia signals (with some urgency) that another person is trying to make it through behind them. she gestures that they need to move, and david notices. anna, facing the aisle, sees this person clearly, and tries to guide michael out of their way. michael, not quite sure where the person is, backs up first, before realising that he blocked their way more.

there. what the rpf people seem to think is michael’s agitation really only looks like he’s trying to move out of someone’s way, without being able to see them, while in the middle of a conversation. i do that head-to-one-side-then-to-the-other move whenever i’m in that situation. idk how they got “recoiling” from anna. georgia is clearly pointing to people, not desperately flapping around to get david’s attention.

i’ve watched this video several times. to form my initial opinion, to screen record, and to clip the recording. i looked out for specific instances the rpf blog mentioned, including a barely there “slap” of georgia’s hand in the first fraction of a second of the video, and i see nothing but perfectly normal body language for people standing in an aisle in a crowded room. you can quite literally see her hand formed into a pointing position, with one finger towards the group and another directing towards the isle. like it’s literally right there in the video, she’s pointing.

and here, a lovely group photo. except…

am i genuinely losing my ability to read people??because they look fine. not like they’re the most comfortable and free they’ve ever been, but they are at a crowded, televised awards show and they probably have limited time to take photos. ughhggg

then, this:

for the first screenshot, there’s a third distinct possibility: she’s poking fun at him. do these people really not understand banter in a relationship?? i would happily post about my loved ones or see them post about me with a “don’t encourage them” joke. playful annoyance and insults are super healthy, and from the way david sticks to his point in the video from georgia’s story, i’d guess he’s responding in a “watch me” way. as long as no one feels undervalued, which david’s firing back would suggest he doesn’t, it’s fine.

for the second: i cannot even imagine what would possess someone to edit a happy photo of a husband and wife, remove the wife, and edit in someone else. it has the same vibe of obsessed teenagers sticking cutouts of their own faces over photos of band members. especially with the blog’s caption, it feels like they’re implying that georgia is an annoyance or dead weight in david’s public life. she’s his wife, she deserves to be with him publicly whenever they want.

at the very least, find some real pictures of david and michael together to use as fuel for this dumpster fire.

the aforementioned rpf blog that i unblocked has spoken many times about how she’s autistic and can have trouble interpreting nonverbal cues. i can’t help but wonder if these analysis posts are, to some extent, an overcompensation, overlooking the simple explanation in favour of something complex. or maybe these people don’t have a good frame of reference for normal relationships, or they’ve spent so much time in an online echo chamber, originally spurned by some tiny notion, that they’ve forgotten how real people interact.

i’m neurodivergent myself (though not the more commonly recognised autism or adhd; i have other conditions that fall under neurodivergence). the result is that i’m hyper vigilant and often paranoid. in middle school, people would call me sherlock because i’d notice things that let me predict behaviour or work out the details of a person’s recent activities by looking at them. i’ve always found it very easy to read people and situations, and, from experience, i’m almost always right. i’ve never tried to do this, it just kind of happens subconsciously, and has for all my life. i generally don’t talk about these observations because i’ve creeped people out more than a few times by offering pens before they’ve realised they’ve lost theirs or dodging objects while facing another direction. but here i feel my observations can hold value coming from someone who has no trouble interpreting social interactions and with high situational awareness.

i really am just baffled by the insanity of all of this. “reaching” and “doing too much” come to mind. if david and georgia and anna and michael wanted us to know or say something, they would tell us. explicitly. if they really wanted people to think something, they would actually portray themselves that way, and not in a secret, can’t-hide-their-true-feelings way.

i’ve sighed so many times while writing this.

i’m actually quite proud of myself for going this long without unblocking them; when i see something i consider to be a batshit train wreck, i find it very hard to look away and i’ve gotten sucked into hate-reading many things in the past. not that i hate these blogs (although i do find their behaviour unacceptable and very confusing), but that’s the best descriptor i could come up with lol

anyways, all i really want is for the four of them to be happy and free from the amateur tmz reporters. ideally, this stuff will never reach them or have any impact on their lives, but it could, and that’s the most concerning thing to me. even if they are unhappy, i can’t imagine that seeing strangers saying that their misery is so obvious would be any less than horrible.

such brazen speculation is disrespectful to them, their privacy, and their agency to make good personal choices and share information responsibly. if they don’t tell us, they don’t want us to know, and it’s really as simple as that.

[decepti-thots]

tired: AUs where the characters are all involved in fandom drama

wired: AUs where the characters are all involved in the kind of unhinged hyper-specific hobby drama that is only accessible by being really, really into something like quilting or fountain pens or whatever incredibly niche thing

[thatswhatsushesaid]

every time i catch myself thinking i'm way too spicy for mdzs fandom discourse, i just have to spend five minutes listening to my husband talk about the batshit drama happening in the local roller derby community and i realize that, just like jon snow, i know absolutely fucking nothing

[lonelyroommp3]

feel like pure shit just want her back (2016 makeup culture)

[batwynn]

I got one of those cheap, dinky heat printers for work/patreon stuff but ended up printing a bunch of in-house memes to throw at my mother and now we’re both using random ones as bookmarks.

It’s a tiny bit distracting to be reading something serious/sad and then see that. 😂

[introvertedx10]

[wfodicks]

#608: JOHN JAMINGO AND MAURY POVICH

mike, travis and drunk are joined this week by john jamingo of the boomer bunker podcast. they discuss the following topics…. the bud light thing (here’s an article about the esg thing john talked about) the denver airport says we can’t kick people in the nuts any more…. steely and cleevie vs. pretty much everybody…. the king of cola reviews wbc maraschino cherry cola: 8.2 thanks to myster…

[everett-true-daily]

[opiodae]

i doodled Meow

[communistkenobi]

the ofmd vs stucky poll has the most heinous notes section

I haven’t even see the actual poll post I’ve just experienced the ripple effects through 5000 vague posts and drowned screenshots

[swamp-gremlin]

Happy 30th anniversary of Rubberneck!

I will always acociate them with the summer I went up to Michigan/ Chicago- being that I had just discovered them and had like the same 3 songs on repeat the whole time lol; they've been a staple band for me ever since :]