#we need a healthier way of engaging in discourse because we know this is not working

[steleart]

i think that in the haze surrounding veilguard's release, when everyone was scrambling trying to fend off blatant misogyny and transphobia in an increasingly hostile environment, and feeling the frustration of having to be happy with an admittedly underwhelming game (in comparison to the previous ones), so as to not give these horrible people fodder, we misplaced our anger a lot.

people who liked the veilguard are not the enemy. it's perfectly okay to have liked the game, there is still enough content there for it to be a fun story - or even a tragic story. I sobbed like a baby my entire way through the epilogue. I had a great time romancing Emmrich, loved going to the Necropolis and to Treviso. but i don't know, even though there were some scenes I really really loved, it all just felt... hollow.

and that's the issue. I like my art saturated in meaning, the least thing I want is for my art to be hollow.

you remember back in the day when youtubers were worried about censorship, because the sponsors demanded 'family friendly' content only? that hasn't ended. ads are the new currency. everyone wants to be the new blockbuster, but there are three huge movies in the theatre at the same time. three new big games about to be released. these things are expensive, because they insist on doing all the cgi crap possible and paying their artists next to nothing. people aren't killed, they're unalived.

so I don't think people are dumb or 'lack media literacy' just because they liked a game they invested time and love into; there are bad takes, of course, but there are bad takes in any group, even the ones you're part of. the community has made incredible art, as it should. as it always has.

and since we're being honest, I don't think the writers, who were constrained by corporate red tape, are at fault either. they have their issues, of course, but dragon age has always had issues - they're still good games, trying to tackle big themes.

there is an odd polish to big company projects nowadays that feels... ai generated. most of it isn't, of course, but everything has been sanded down so it won't bother the bigots too much. during Pride Month™, we're allowed to buy as many rainbows as we like, as long as it's branded, then it's back to beige. in communist Romania, most of the clothes people wore were grey.

corporations don't understand art, mr beast doesn't understand art, you cannot divorce art from politics, because art has always been and will always be a mirror. if you think you're a centrist, you are the status quo. you come pre-sanded.

all that to say, we need to demand more from the people we give power to. don't fucking settle for the lesser evil, and be loud about it. just, you know, make sure that the people in the line of fire actually deserve to be there yk

[budgebuttons]

There's a lot of reasonably frustrated but ultimately misdirected psa-style posting about how viewers NEED to start reblogging things rather than just liking them because that is the primary mode of post circulation on this site. The modern manifestation of this sentiment seems to miss the fact that, if you've been here for ~15 years, were here prior to, during, and after the exodus to the bird app, you already know that likes have always been more common than reblogs, that many people simply don't want to put your art on their blog, and that guilting end-users into using a microblogging site A Specific Way absolutely does not work. If it did, the trend would have shifted a decade ago. Because this conversation really is that old. Regardless, the modern discourse of how difficult it is to be Seen specifically on Tumblr isn't productive because I think it ultimately misses the reason being an artist online feels so Bad, now.

The social media era has funneled Looking At Stuff on the Internet into an economy of engagement that encourages end-users to treat everything we/they see as quick, cheap, and disposable. This is just another fun and flirty way that capitalism devalues art. It's nothing new. Trying to force masses of users to behave in a way that is healthier for the circulation of art isn't going to do anything to solve the discontent we all feel when we hurl something into the void and it is ultimately ignored. I swear up and down: A higher notes number won't feel better, either. Popularity is just as demoralizing as radio silence, but it manifests differently. Instead of 4 likes and maybe 1 reblog from Old Faithful Mutual, you get a horde of people who treat you like a content machine. You keep hoping for an impossibly Bigger Number. The notifs on the first Big Number Post haven't even settled, and people are already asking when the follow-up is coming. You get anons, but most of them are trying to passively convince you to give them More Content.

It's really, really hard to make people care about art. If there was a silver bullet for making the average person appreciate the enormity of human effort behind every beautiful thing they encounter, we would have found it centuries ago.

The best thing creatives can do for their lives online is to be friendly, or at least kind, with other creators. "Big" artists don't form in-groups because they're snobs. They find each other because they casually showed each other support, and their mutual appreciation for that Thing that wound them up in the same tag becomes a foundation for connection, and in many cases, the ever-illusive Bigger Audience as they introduce themselves to each others' circles. We get more eyes on our work by building community with each other.

Where does that leave people who are just here to look at things, not post them? I think the answer is almost identical: COMMENT!! Please, comment! The first step to engaging with art on a more meaningful level is to point out something you particularly enjoy about a given work. It can go in the replies, it can go in the tags, doesn't matter!! If you notice some symbolism or make some connection, there is all likelihood that OP put it there because they desperately wanted somebody to notice it. Let them know why you like it!

Reaching for the nebulous, impossible goal of better post circulation isn't going to make being a creator online in 2023 suck less. Meaningfully connecting with each other can, will, and does. You can make someone's day just by passingly letting them know that their effort is worth more than a number.

[lunaeverywhere]

I've been seeing "porn addiction" discourse again. I dont know why I feel the need to put my two cents in, but I do. And as usual for my takes, there's nuance to it.

I'll tl;dr at the start though: porn addiction isn't real. This is pretty much consensus by the kinds of people you shluld actually trust on the matter. It's made up by christian fundementalists and conservative nutjobs (but I repeat myself) to convince people that having healthy or even very active sex drives. If someone is viewing porn so much it's harming their life, porn didn't do that. Something else in their life did that, and porn is the avenue it found to express itself. They need to fix that. Maybe after that they wont look at porn at all. Maybe they'll still look a lot, but engage healthier with it. Who knows. But it's not porn addiction.

Now, do I think porn is free of ills? Of course not. We live in a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic society and porn reflects that as much as any other entire category of media. There is porn that doesn't. There's feminist porn, anti-racist porn, unashamedly queer porn. But I'd be either an idiot or dishonest if I said that a lot of porn, especially mainstream porn, didn't reflect those societal biggotries.

Does porn give people bad ideas of what sexual relationships look like? Yes of course. Acts are framed to look good on camera, not feel good to the participants - if the participants even really feel at all, most of the porn I take in is manga, which has its own issues. Negotiation is often completely absent, having really been done when the actors involved accept their roles and sign the contracts okaying what they're going to be doing, and that is absolutely not a balanced power dynamic if the actor has any say in the first place. Aggressive or violent sexuality is increasingly common without an increase in discussion around how to do those things safely or consensually. Porn features actors chosen for their appearances and ability to perform, which, similar to the increased beautification of Hollywood, can give people bad ideas what their bodies are supposed to look like. And again: there's porn that doesn't do these things. There's porn staring people with average looking bodies, where aggressive play is negotiated, where they show safety. Porn is an entire category of media, it's broader than any generalization.

The thing about every problem I just stated, though? Those aren't immutable. A lot of why porn gives bad ideas of what healthy relationships are like, is because we don't have a lot of competing voices of what actually healthy sexual relationships look like. We shy away from depicting sexual relationships anywhere but the Designated Sex Media, which we deem off limits to the people who most need guidance on what sexual relationships are like (they see it anyway, and theres reasons to keep minors from it, but thats beside the point!), so the only voices are the bad ones. Even the portion of porn that goes out of its way to show healthy relationships is a minority here, unable to truly gain the ubiquity to be a widespread good example.

We could fix these things! I honestly dont know off the top of my head how you could show healthy sexual relationships in an appropriate way that's still exciting to watch, but come on I'm a user on tumblr with a passion for anti-puratainism, not an expert in all things relationship.

Any problem we perceive as unique to porn isn't. We live in a society which at its core holds every ill value we ascribe to porn. One which does not treat people as people, even less so if they're any kind of marginalized. Even the ills on the industry side are no worse than the ills of Hollywood, there's just no Tom Cruise Of Porn to paint the image of glamour that in truth few get to obtain. People just get mad because this media that reflects the problems of our culture has people with their boobs and dicks out in it.

[skiplo-wave]

I hate to add onto this Kate Middleton discourse, but as someone who is in medical, it is quite curious. Because they said she had abdominal surgery to "correct something" and wants it to remain private (as it should), and not only that, but she had to be in the hospital for 10-14 days. That tells me, usually, it's about two things: it's either crohns or correcting weight loss surgery. Kate is a skinny tall woman. Almost too skinny for her height. I think they said she's like 5'10" or 5"11". But everyone's body is different. So you really can't always say "well they are this height, so their BMI should be this." Right?

However, Kate use to have a lot more meat on her. Even when they had their engagement announcement and she wore that iconic blue dress. As it got closer to her wedding, she get skinnier and skinnier. And she remained like that. When she was pregnant, she looked healthier. After pregnancies, some will lose weight and some won't snap back right away. Sometimes it takes a full year for your body to recover after pregnancy. Some people do lose a LOT of weight, especially if they are breast feeding. Breast feeding burns a lot of calories. This girl got sickly skinny. Especially after she had Prince Louis, her last baby. She will wear these long fancy gowns and you can just see the bones sticking out of her chest sometimes and her hips. Mermaid gowns are usually more flattering on taller women. We all know the stories about Diana. We know that a lot of the royals like to be well kept. They are in the public eye and critic all the time. Diana ate like a bird sadly even after she got over making her self sick. We also know too that Kate, while she was dating William, was just ripped apart by the media.

I highly suspect that:

1. Kate got a gastric sleeve that went haywire and she got it corrected. A lot of the times those don't hold, because the sleeve will get air pockets which will cause the person to get sick a lot. You can correct it, but there is a good chance that it's going to do it again. Thus having it removed is the best option.

2. Kate had gastric surgery and again, there are complications. A lot of people, especially smaller people who don't need the surgery, will constantly get sick. It's a very painful operation because they are re-routing your intestines etc etc. They have to limit what they eat. They have to cut out a lot of foods. There are people that get so sick and frail. With this surgery, it's not as easy to correct like the sleeve. There is a chance your body will NEVER go back to normal and you may have 10-20 years to live depending on the severity of it.

3. Kate may have crohns disease. Which is understandable if she wants to keep it private. Because a lot of people think it's always caused by starving yourself. But it is a very heraditory disease. And being in the public eye and the way that newspapers love to run with lies... Yeah, I don't blame her if this is the case. Especially since again, she's tall and very skinny for her height.

Deadass who cares what this woman doing or why she’s missing.

Bottom of my heart I do not care about to royals

( no offense to you anon )

[victorromeofox-blog]

VRF Website and Community

VRF Website and Community - Soft Opening Coming Soon!

I've been a little less active here in the last little bit, but have been working behind the scenes to build up the VRF website and planning around community-building.  I'm just about ready to start opening the site to semi-public access and start inviting trusted people to the Discord within the next week!  There is some information below introducing some of the content and features of the site and Discord server.  Please contact me (Ask or email preferred) if you would like access - I recommend reading the rest of this post before you do, but it is not required.

If you’re looking to better understand BDSM and kink, participate in a community of rational, respectful, and conscientious kink practitioners, and contribute to protecting, uplifting, and helping others - while still enjoying some fantasies - you are exactly the type of person who would be a great fit for this space.

If you’re “just here for the porn”, this website and community are not going to be what you’re looking for.  They are specifically a pushback against that very mentality, and the rampant toxicity and problematic discourse in the online BDSM/kink space, especially CNC kink, and your needs will be better met elsewhere.  Same goes for those who are just out to get nudes, roleplay online, organize hookups, or find a submissive - there are other spaces geared toward that.

In the meantime, I'd like to explain what this all means to me, where VRF is headed next, and what factors I'm taking into consideration as I continue.  This is going to be a fairly reflective post - almost like a letter of intent - but I'm putting it out there primarily for transparency and also for those of you who want some insight into my thoughts and process.

VRF - A Quick Recap

When I started VRF in 2015, I didn't really have a goal.  I was just looking to curate the kinds of porn I enjoyed the most on Tumblr and occasionally added some captions that came to mind as I did - and accidentally cultivated a sizeable following.  As the blog grew and began to have more interactions with others on the network, I realized that I couldn't stay in-persona all the time - not without sending a potentially dangerous message - so I started answering asks and giving advice out of character, as myself.  These "real" interactions, as well as the reality checks that kept rolling in, set the tone for what VRF would become - and made me feel much more comfortable with running a blog featuring questionable content.

I stepped away from the blog and went on hiatus in 2016; I saw a sharp rise in hateful, bigoted, and violent voices online and no longer felt comfortable that my posts would remain firmly in the realm of fantasy for the majority of readers.  Although the original @violent-rape-fantasies was terminated in 2019, I made a fairly complete backup of the entire blog before it went down.  I returned in late 2020 to start again from scratch, try to rebuild my following, and reconnect with the community - that effort was terminated by Tumblr in 2021, leading me to the two blogs I currently have (@VictorRomeoFox-blog / @violent-rape-fantasies-2​) and to create a self-hosted website containing the original VRF archives with major quality-of-life improvements to the Tumblr experience.

This process made me consider what my goals are for VRF, how I want to achieve them, and what promises I make to the community as part of that journey.  

VRF - Mission and Values

VRF's mission is to be a safe, inclusive, and collaborative space that promotes affirmative consent, healthy relationships, and conscientious kink, where consenting adults can explore their kinks, enjoy fictional fantasies, and uplift one another without overbearing guilt or shame.

Let me quickly break some of this down:

safe: I want people to feel comfortable consuming and interacting with me and my content - not only the kinks and acts depicted in the fantasies, but in the entirety of the space that VRF projects, including knowing that their personhood, privacy, anonymity, and emotional safety are important to me.

inclusive: although I focus primarily on male-on-female scenarios, people from all walks of life are welcome so long as they are good citizens of the community and conscientious kink practitioners.  This also means rejecting hate, bigotry, and willful ignorance.

collaborative: VRF is discursive, both in-persona and out-of-character; the content and direction I take is often influenced by the conversations I have with followers, the asks and submissions I receive, and the state of the community as I see it.  I want to always be in conversation with the community to understand its needs and goals so that I can better meet them.

affirmative consent: as discussed in a previous post, I highlight affirmative consent because it centers around positive action as opposed to consent, which can be a passive state.  I believe this is critical for conscientious kink.

healthy relationships: the relationships we hold shape who we are, who we become, and how we interact with the world around us.  I believe that healthy relationships build healthier, happier lives - this concerns all relationships, from friendships to families to romantic or sexual partnerships.  I have seen less emphasis in this community on relationships, and interpersonal interactions in general, and think that this is a major oversight.

conscientious kink: kink can be dangerous or harmful when not practiced with care and consideration - not just for physical health, but for mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  It requires reflection, introspection, and communication in order to form intentionality - the understanding behind what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.

reducing guilt: this is one of the concerns I get most often from followers - how to reconcile their guilt for enjoying consensual non-consent, and whether it is morally wrong or an indication that something is wrong with them.  I believe that CNC, like most kinks, can be practiced in a conscientious way to reduce and mitigate the potential dangers, but that it requires consistent effort, education, and research.

Aside from these, I identified values which are important for me to maintain in order to meet the mission.  Some of them are:

transparency: I try to be as transparent as I can, while maintaining my privacy and anonymity, so that people know that I have nothing to hide.  I cannot build a safe space without building trust, and I can’t build trust without being honest and transparent.

leadership by example: if I am positioning myself as a resource and giving advice to others, I must embody the values I put forward and lead by example, not by words; otherwise, what I say is worthless and lacks substance.

data- and research-driven: I want to provide people with a deeper understanding of themselves and their kinks; while anecdotal information can at times be helpful, I want the things I posit to have weight and justification behind them.  This means an intersection of data, research, and analysis around all of the factors involved, including moral philosophy, psychology, sociology, and biology.

care and patience: these kinks are difficult and hurtful to some people, and confusing or conflicting to others.  I need to be caring, considerate, and patient in order for people to feel comfortable engaging with my content and interacting with me.

contextualized: these kinks and fantasies don’t exist in a vacuum and must be contextualized in order to remain conscientious of the relationship it maintains to the real world.  This means that I don’t want fantasies misrepresented as reality or reality misconstrued as fantasy, and the onus is on me to ensure that followers are seeing both sides of the equation.

quality over quantity: I have a limited amount of time that I can dedicate to VRF work, and want to make the best possible use of that time.  I want to focus on high-quality content, both in-persona fantasies and out-of-character advice, research, and resources, without worrying about how much or how frequently I’m posting.  It also means that I care far less about the number of followers and viewers I have, and much more about whether I am cultivating the kind of followers that match my vision for VRF and its community.

There are other factors and values as well, but these are the biggest ones for me.  They drive how I present myself, how I interact with the community, and what kinds of content I put forth.

VRF Website - Content and Features

What does the website allow me to do that I couldn’t on Tumblr?

No censorship, frustrating filters, or threat of termination - I can focus on my content without running into blockers at every turn, or worrying that I’m going to lose all my work without warning.

Better content controls, organization, and layout - I can group posts logically and have different ways for users to access and view them instead of being one monolithic stream of posts.

Tagging and search - I’ve tagged my archive with kinks, features, toys, actions, positions, locations, and more to make it easier to both find content that you want to see and avoid content that you don’t.  The VRF site features granular search controls, including tag combinations, so you can engage with the site how you choose.

Random Post/Random Caption - sometimes, you’re in the mood to mix things up.  Instead of seeing a temporally-sorted feed of posts, you can go to a random post or caption from the menu bar.

Clear disclaimers and view control - instead of my content being blended into a sea of posts, which creates difficulty in carving out that safe cognitive space for engaging with these kinks or necessitates rapid context-switching, all of my posts will be in one central repository with clear disclaimers where I have control over how things are viewed.

The VRF Archive - the content from the original @violent-rape-fantasies blog have been restored to the VRF website.

There are some downsides, of course - like the lack of network discovery, limited server space and resources, cost, maintenance, and effort.  But the benefits greatly outweigh the additional overhead.

VRF Community

What’s the VRF Discord community all about?

This is a new idea I’m playing with - I’m not new to Discord or community management, but combining that with VRF is a new endeavor for me.  Since I’m going to be shifting my focus from Tumblr to the VRF website, some of those network and community interactions from Tumblr will move to Discord instead, such as interacting with followers, taking requests, feedback, and suggestions, and delving deeper into kink philosophy, fantasy, and practice.

I’ve set up the Discord in a way that different sections can be partitioned - like general discussion, BDSM/kink discussion, CNC fantasies, member content (submissions), and so on.  The different sections are accessible to different levels of membership and verification to maintain that safe, inclusive, and collaborative space.  For example, agreeing to the rules and guidelines gives you access to the general discussion section; verifying your age gives you access to BDSM- and kink-related sections; and being an active and trusted member who contributes to the server over time gets you access to the private sections.

This will also be a much easier way to get in contact with me, and keep the majority of my interactions with the community in one place, instead of hunting across Tumblr messenger for both my accounts, Asks, Twitter, Discord DMs, Telegram, Kik, and email.

VRF - Next Steps and Future Work

In the next few weeks, the VRF website and Discord community will soft-open and move toward general opening.  This is a new direction for me, but after assessing my priorities and goals, it is the solution best suited for what I want to achieve.  I will continue to use Tumblr, but will likely be focusing the majority of my time on the website and Discord.

The mission and values I’ve identified leave quite a bit of room to explore various ways to express these kinks and share knowledge.  I’m not hard-set on VRF being a blog with porn and captions, and could see changes or pivots in the future.  I would love for this work to be able to generate some modest revenue in the future in order to cover basic operating costs, support survivors of abuse as well as kink education and safety, and commission custom content.  As an aside, if you read all of this, please start your request for access with the word “potato” in all caps to let me know you got this far.

I also want to move toward a more ethical and sustainable model of captions and fantasies.  My first step toward this is in creating gifs myself and fully crediting the source, which I started doing when I returned from hiatus.  Concurrently, I am working with my partner, who is an artist, to develop illustrations and animations to accompany captions instead of commercial pornography - we’re still in the R&D phase for this, but hope to share some early content soon (including a fantasy and sketch that we’re working on to accompany a follower submission).  Ideally, we would be able to collaborate with submitters and sex workers to create fully original, credited, and compensated content - but that’s a huge stretch goal for the future.

We are also considering other formats for fantasy and knowledge delivery, including a visual novel format or interactive media (i.e., games) if the art development turns out well and proves sustainable.  We’re both fairly busy people in our personal and professional lives, and in situations where we have to maintain a fairly strict separation between kink involvement and our everyday lives, so carving out time for VRF work is challenging at times!

I look forward to seeing folks on the VRF website and Discord community soon!

[sheisbeautyweareworldass]

How would you rank the main couples from each tsc series? From healthiest to unhealthiest.

tmi:

sizzy: i might be biased since they're my faves but i stand by what i said. some might argue with this because of the cheating thing but it has been established none of them had sealed a close a relationship (or even if they had a relationship) at the time so...

malec: pretty healthy and it's only taking the 2nd spot because of the early stages of their relationship where the whole immortality thing was a bid deal

cl*ce: any relationship that has an incest discourse as its biggest legacy isn't the one you want to capitalize on 💀

tid:

gabrily: i genuinely don't remember any moment that could take the gold from them.

sophiedon: probs could be 1st and the only reason why it isn't is because gabriel was smarter than gideon when it came up to creating excuses to see his crush lamo

jessa: yes i wanted to rank them as 1st but i must be honest with my feelings and my feelings are always about jem. always thought that jessa had a big potential of hurting jem on the way and i don't like the secret on certain aspects of their relationship right after they got engaged.

chenry: my babies !!!! i want to rank them righer but all the years of marriage and miscommunication unfortunately stay on their way to the podium

wessa: the bad boy and good girl couple is never the healthiest and we all know it. remember when will read tessa's letters to nate without her permission and we were supposed to believe tessa was okay with it? invasion of privacy ain't it, folks.

tda:

diana x gwyn (i don't remember their ship name): i don't even know if they can be considered a main tda couple i just wanna praise them lol

haline: i love my moms and the only reason they're not first is because i want to praise gwyn and diana

kierarktina: tbh they're super healthy and my blog is forbidden for any kierarktina slander

blackstairs: julian having a secret room full of paintings of emma is still creepy to me and there are multiple times where he just ignored how he made emma afraid/uncomf so yikes

tlh:

(this one is hard af why are the tlh couples like that???)

gracetopher: they only interacted twice and that's the only reason why i can't find an unhealthy thing on their relationship. (outsiders' views are being ignored, so the issues with james and matthew aren't being taken in consideration)

thomastair: it should be healthier but the "you deserve to be deeply hated" "i'll throw you into the thames", not matter if they were empty or not, leave i sour taste in my mouth.

blackdale: i don't like the age gap i don't like the whole "command me" thing

jordelia: cordelia just keeps getting hurt in this (even if it isn't james' fault) and 90% of the moments we can james "loves" cordelia is when he's horny

kamanna: no explanations needed

ps: i didn't rank kitty because they're not, technically, a couple in tda but i would probably place them above blackstairs and below kierarktina just because 1) tda has a lot of healthy relationships between mature adults and 2) kit and ty invented miscommunication lmao

[silverjirachi]

Do u rly 100% believe ur not a woman? If u dont mind sharing how did u figure that out? How can u separate urself from ur body like that? We r our bodies! I cant wrap my mind around it even tho I have dysphoria. Also women are the most oppressed class of people 2 this day so it seems really really stupid 2 let our oppressors claim womanhood. We r all born from vaginas. How do people ignore history & reality? Is pretending ur not who u r a coping mechanism? Wouldnt accepting ur body b healthier?

Hi there!  I considered not answering this because I don’t want to fan flames or stir discourse because I don’t want other people to get wrapped up into something that is 100% about me. I try really hard to cultivate a positive, lighthearted environment in all of my online presences.  But honestly your ask isn’t worded hatefully, and I think what I have to say is important and might help someone else, so I’m going to answer it. But I probably won’t answer anything else and there better not be any funny business in these notes.  If there is, I would like to politely ask people not to engage with it.  Please leave me, and everyone else in these notes, alone.  I am writing this for me, to answer your question about me, and I’m writing this in case there’s a baby enby out there who is exactly like me who who needs to read this today.

With that disclaimer aside...,

Yes, I really do 100% believe I am not a woman.  I unfortunately cannot easily explain how without falling into the traps of words like masculinity and femininity.  But it’s the same as any other identity.  How do you know you are a woman?  Is it something that you identify with, feel a personal relationship with?  Or does it ultimately only come from your body alone, and you feel absolutely no connotations or connections to it whatsoever?  Did it come to you through your body?  I know people who 100% identify with their assigned gender, but can’t really articulate how or why without falling into these same binaries.  And I know people who 100% DON’T identify with their assigned gender and cannot truly articulate how or why.  It doesn’t even have a lot to do with masculinity or femininity.  A lot of our language just doesn’t have the words to describe such an internal experience.

It is true that there is a very specific type of oppression that comes with being born in a female body- or a body that would otherwise assign you female at birth.  From what I can tell, that’s what a lot of this really relies on.  I don’t think anyone who is AFAB and nonbinary or ftm is really denying that, at least not from my experience.  I’m sure they’re out there.  But we, by and large, HAVE had the experience of discrimination in some way or another because of our “femaleness-” our ASSIGNED femaleness.  (Something that got thrown at me was the idea of female socialization- it’s true, I was socialized as a female bc that’s what my body “looked” like and that’s just what our society assumes).  But just as there is a very specific kind of oppression that goes along with being AFAB, there is also a very specific kind of oppression that goes along with being mtf, and there is a very specific type of oppression that goes along with being a poc and any of those other categories.  That’s at the core of intersectionality.  Different parts of our identities interact with each other in different ways.  People experience oppression and privilege in different ways and at different times depending on where they fall in this mix of race/class/gender/ability etc.

I also have body dysphoria, and it’s true our bodies can define a lot of our human experience (after all if I didn’t have a body I wouldn’t have dysphoria, right?? Godddd what a life).  But also because I have dysphoria, I do not think that our bodies should be the defining characteristic of our identities.  Bodies and presentation can cause a lot of our social interactions- including oppression- but I think to say woman and woman’s experience = female body is quite a limited summary of the issue with little nuance, and it’s also quite limiting with the way our society is changing.  This is why I heavily prefer terms like assigned female at birth.  This can imply that such a person may have had a socially female experience (like me) in part due to their body, and thus was socially assigned to be a female, but just... also isnt a woman for some reason or another.

I also think that what we strive to do is not to ignore history (I think very few people are denying the way women have been treated in history, and are still treated to this day) but we hope to build from it.  I think that’s why feminism and gender studies get lumped together.  A lot of feminist activists/scholars (many were both at the same time) led our current strides into gender constructivism.  I studied a lot of gender essentialism when I started my thesis, and to be honest, I saw the point behind it in the context of the time, but we’ve shifted in understanding and context since then.

And, in full disclosure, at the start of this whole adventure, (and i am SURE this will be used against me) I really did identify with being a woman.  I thought it was awesome to have the body I had and when I started witchcraft I did actually fall into that really easy trap of tying the female experience to magic.  (Honestly because I HATED my body and looking back that was probably a way to cope with DYSPHORIA and not the other way around).  And isn’t inherently harmful to have a working magical relationship with your body like that, but it is harmful when you think and say that’s the only way people can exist and the only way people can be magical.  But over time, I just started to change.  Nothing traumatic happened, I’ve been incredibly fortunate and privileged my entire life, it’s not a coping mechanism, I just started to identify with womanhood less and less, for no real particular reason- nothing about me personality or preference-wise changed.  Just my own internal view of myself.

I also got the words for gender euphoria.  And I noticed more and more that, if I was being honest with myself, that that was always how I had truly felt.  While it’s true gender roles shouldn’t exist, just like any other role or label, it’s different when someone chooses that role for themselves versus when they have it thrust upon them.  As a child, like many other AFAB children, I had the idea of womanhood thrust upon me, with all the roles and stereotypes that went along with it.  It’s fucked up in the first place, don’t get me wrong, but I knew people who embraced these fullheartedly, I knew people who didn’t.  But some people who didn’t still identified with womanhood, others became ftm, others became mtf.  I had “woman” thrust upon me, didn’t identify with it, rebelled against it, tried to rationalize it by accepting that I could be a “woman” without falling into gender stereotypes because there is no ONE correct way to be a woman (which there ISN’T), still didn’t feel right, did a full 180 and started buying pink lingerie and worshipped Aphrodite, that worked for a while and was overall a positive experience that helped me hate myself a little less, but at the end of the day, no matter what I did, I still did not identify as a woman.  What does happen to me, however?  I get a burst of euphoria when I am called a boy.  That makes me feel like I’m being really seen.  I actually resonate with that after years of not resonating at all with womanhood no matter how I sliced it, and that’s why it feels so fucking good.  I tried to identify as a woman. Believe me, I tried like all fucking hell.  Even though my presentation is still read as mostly female (I would disagree strongly with it but alas society and their fucking gender roles), I am quite the feminine boy-something to me, and I don’t have to justify that to anyone.

So TL;DR no it’s not a coping mechanism, I have lived a life full of very accepting, open-minded people and I won’t deny that I have that privilege, but in spite of that i STILL did not view myself as a woman, no matter how hard I tried.  I’ve actually generally accepted my body except on the days my dysphoria makes me want to throw my boobs across the room, I don’t think it’s denying history if we’re building from it, gender roles are fucked up.  I recognize that my experience being AFAB- and others who are AFAB- comes along with a particular type of oppression, but that’s why I prefer the term AFAB because it indicates the experience you’re talking about while also leaving it open to considering other experiences like my own and the experiences of other trans and nb folks.  In a few years AFAB might be outdated as a term and then we’ll find more terms to help figure this whole mess out.

TL;DR;DR no it’s not a coping mechanism and anyone is welcome to think that this is simply part of the horrible fallout of female socialization, and anyone is welcome to think that i’m mentally ill for identifying like this. people can think or say all they want about me but it won’t change the fact that I’m a boy-something and it won’t change all the years I struggled trying to figure that out.

Thank you for allowing me to write this all out, I think I really needed to.  This is something that had been floating in my brain forever, and explaining it all to you actually made my thoughts that much clearer.

Now everyone who sees this- please respect my wishes and please don’t clown in these notes if it spreads.  I’m tired enough about this as it is today.  I’m tired enough about fucking gender as it is.  We’re all fucking tired.  What I’ve shared today is about me and me alone and I want to keep it that way.

[asktheboywholived]

i think it's wonderful you want to approach the world with empathy, and encourage others to do the same. have you read about or experienced tone policing? it's a tactic used by the majority to undermine how justifiable our anger is. being empathetic and being angry aren't mutually exclusive (not that you've said that are). i just think it's worth considering tone policing, and its affects, in relation to your fb post. you wrote well, and i just want to continue the conversation.

(( OOC: I’ve never heard of the term tone-policing specifically, but after looking it up, I’m sure that many people, myself included, have experienced it to some degree. It’s hard to avoid it really. 

“[Tone Policing] attempts to detract from the validity of a statement by attacking the tone in which it was presented rather than the message itself.“

I’d actually really like to discuss this, thank you for bringing it up. 

Social media has made conversing very difficult. Because of the anonymity and lack of face-to-face, human interaction, people don’t really see or feel the consequences of words and actions. It also allows people to read into the words being written and manipulate the tone of the statements.  

Tone policing is clearly a method used to detract from and rationalize set beliefs when they are being challenged.

This is why, when addressing controversial topics, it’s so important to channel the anger into calm, educated discussion. It takes a lot of understanding of human nature and how they react to certain phrases or words to get your point across the way you want to, without eliciting an aggressive response. That’s not to say that tone policing won’t still occur, but when we focus on our wording, it can help detract from that.

I won’t deny for a second that sadness and anger are a valid and justifiable reaction to oppression. I can honestly say that I’m angry and hurt, often. Anger and aggression have a place, but we have to be cognizant enough to gage when and where that’s appropriate.

Let’s talk about how the human mind works in relation to communication.

When our personal views are challenged, our brain reacts as though we are being physically threatened. 

If you think about how your body reacts to threats, and then apply that to an argument, or even a discussion that opposes your world view, the instant reaction is usually the same... adrenaline, heart racing, breathing picking up, a general feeling of discomfort, unease, dread or anger, etc. 

It’s the fight or flight response. 

Why do we react that way? 

Because the opposing view forces us to consider an alternative version of ourself, one that we have not personally experienced based on the life we have lived... thus the response connects directly to that instinctual gut reaction of self preservation... the self that we have created that has kept us safe.

THIS is why it’s so difficult to change our opinion, or for anyone else to change theirs. 

It would require a complete shift in identity and an enormous amount of mental energy, which your brain tries to preserve as much as possible. Mental energy/stress can be more taxing on the body than physical energy (for example, after taking a test you feel as if you ran a marathon, and all you did was sit and fill out answers).

The mental energy required to reevaluate everything that you have experienced/been taught, and connect new pathways in the brain, is extremely taxing on the body and therefore causes the mind to react harshly to anything that challenges the “reality” that it has created. 

I can honestly say that for the three years it took for me to deprogram from a lifetime in religion... I was physically exhausted, almost constantly.   

Taking that into account, it makes our approach to opposing views that much more important. If you can find a way to ease your way past that initial, instinctual fight or flight reaction, you can open the door for healthier, and more productive/effective communication. 

Now, I’m going to switch gears for a moment, because I know I didn’t touch on this much in my last discourse on the topic (since my focus was on empathy and calm discussion as a first priority)... but I’d like to address it now. 

There are people who will be unwilling to listen to any form of communication, no matter how you approach it, and will instead only engage in conversation to attack or win the argument. 

I had a ‘discussion’ with a man who’s only goal was to get his point across. He didn’t address any of the points I made... he simply waited for me to respond so he could send his next, pre-written response. It was a one-sided conversation and in the end there was nothing I could do. 

In those instances, it’s best to distance yourself from the individual, and take the fight to a different platform or arena where you will be heard. 

Furthermore, there are people who will put you in danger. Anyone who reacts violently to an opposing opinion should not be engaged with. It would take a beyond-drastic change in their life to make them come to a place of agreement (if ever), and your safety is never worth that. 

Something I also didn’t approach in my last post was aggression. 

Aggression has its place. Aggression can draw attention to a cause, or an injustice. Aggression can break down walls that may not be breached otherwise... but there is a time and place for aggression, and generally, that is not in personal interaction or disagreements, but in grander, political movements. 

Let me also clarify what I mean by “Aggression”.

Aggression has several definitions, and many of them are based in hostility and violence... however, the form of aggression that I’m talking about is a “forceful and sometimes overly assertive pursuit of one’s aims and interests”.

Aggression often finds itself hand-in-hand with excessive negativity, violence or hatred, which I don’t personally condone or agree with. There are ways to be aggressive without resorting to hatred. There are ways to express anger and hurt without resorting to hatred. We have to be more calculated in our aggression, or it will turn into something that won’t have a positive or progressive influence on the world.

We have to gage our audience. We have to know when to use discourse, and when to use aggression... 

You cannot use the same methods on everyone. It has to be on an individual basis. People who react with aggression to every topic will inevitably fail in their approach. People who only utilize passive conversation with every topic will inevitably fail as well. We need to be analytical in our approach to each situation.

Here’s an example... Utilizing the same aggressive reaction towards a lack of representation as you would to someone threatening your safety is not an appropriate response. Those are two, entirely different situations that require different approaches. Reacting with aggression or violence to the former is, as stated above, a base, fight-or-flight reaction that needs to be calmed and overcome so that discourse can happen.

The window for discussion and expression has been growing smaller and smaller in favor of aggressive response... and because it has been growing smaller, and less conversation has been happening, aggression is having to be resorted to far more frequently. 

By shutting the opposing side down instantaneously, by not allowing their views to be thoroughly expressed and analyzed, by instantly labeling others as “bad” or “immoral” without understanding their reasoning... we’re creating an environment that doesn’t encourage open discussion. 

It’s a vicious downward spiral that we need to break out of, or it will only become harder for us to climb out of the pit. 

So, I will state again... put empathy first. Then process, analyze and choose how to continue from there. )) 

[whenpraxisbecomesunbearable]

Remarks on Malta’s political crisis (12 December 2019)

To respond to the current political situation is not an easy thing. To respond means to take stock of a situation, be affected by it, and attempt to make sense of it through thought and reflection, but equally through emotions and sensibility. To respond is be to responsive; to be able to respond, to be response-able.

Our capacity to respond can he hindered and tampered with. The vulnerability of truth is exploited by two things, which I focus on in this response of mine: dishonesty and fear.

Dishonesty. Deceitfulness. Dishonour. To deliberately corrupt.

Amid the cacophony of loud voices, some voices help to remove the dirt in front of our critical lenses, helping us to see better; while other voices purposefully dirty our perspective, skewing us away from facts and critique. Some politicians are guilty of this. Being economical with truth in order to excuse; employing excessively rhetorical tactics so as to confuse; engaging in shady behaviour for personal or political gain. These are also dishonest tactics that serve to take us one step away truth, justice and responsibility. It is most unfortunate when commentators, opinion-makers, even academics employ these tactics in their supposedly critical analyses. Often is the case where we see partial critiques, as if one’s critical abilities depend on the weather of the day or on which party is in government. We do not afford to have critique compromised. We need full, frank and consistent disclosure, and not double standards.

Dishonesty is a malaise which corrupts politics. Scheming, power-hungry and self-serving politicians stand in the way of democratic politics. Politicians must feel the strong sense of responsibility that comes with being elected as representatives of the people. Politicians are there to listen to people; to be modest in their approach and humbled by the power they hold. This also implies an ethical injunction: perhaps it’s not fashionable to speak of ethics, but we need a more solid discourse of ethical standards in public life, that helps us to adjudicate what’s ok and what is not ok for a politician in office to do, and similarly we need a healthier culture of resignations in this country. It’s as if a politician must be the subject of a criminal investigation to be forced to resign. Not feeling the need to embody responsibility is an ethical failure. Honest politics also means taking a good look at how big business heavily impacts politics. ‘Money talks,’ they say, and let us not forget that the current political crisis have been stimulated by an unhealthy close relation between politicians and businessmen. And the same applies for other issues that have dominated the political landscape lately: the issuing of permits; over-construction; the property market, party financing and so on. Politicians must serve citizens, not rich capitalists soliciting favours.

Apart from dishonesty and confusion, what is also defining our current political situation is fear. There is fear in citizens. Many fear speaking out. And you don’t completely blame them. Fear of retaliation, revenge or shaming; fear of getting into trouble in one’s job; fear of being insulted if not assaulted. Unfortunately, these are all founded fears. Irrespective of one’s opinion on her entire writing, the assassination of an individual – a journalist – and its political implications are hellish.

We were promised a new style of politics. A false promise. The bi-partisan politics that dominates this country is a plague. The problem, of course, is not that someone identifies with or is a member of a political party; but that that membership is understood as blind faith or unconditional loyalty to that party, no matter what. It’s really incredible and childish that criticism of one party is read as support for the other party. There is an important need for a political education. Sometimes, it feels as if we don’t know how to do politics in this country. And I will not blame the citizens in this regard, but the politicians – we need to punch upwards, not downwards. I dare say that not even most politicians can really do properly democratic politics. Just look at the reluctance of politicians in both parties to speak out publicly against a position of one’s own party. Immediately, words like ‘traitor’ get bandied about. Dissent, including dissent within a party, is a sign of healthy democratic practice. It’s really frustrating when the dissent that politicians can muster amounts merely to cryptic and ambivalent Facebook posts.

The problem this country has with dissent also emerged clearly in some people’s reactions to the ongoing protests. ‘They’re provocations,’ some said; ‘crossing the lines,’ others proclaimed. These remarks would be laughable were it not for the serious implications that these remarks have. Protests, including very vociferous ones, are an indisputable right in any functioning democracy. We don’t need politicians giving citizens the permission to protest. It’s important that politicians finally get to fear the power that citizens hold, because many people are tired of being themselves afraid of speaking out without fear of retribution.

We need a society that values free critical thinking, free media, and honest critique. We need to trump the culture of fear and sheep-like mentalities. We need to protect the space of civil society. We’ve seen many attempts to dismiss the protests as partisan or biased. It is important for civil society not to be hijacked or associated only with a small group of people. Civil society implies diversity of opinion and is composed of different factions. Different people can participate in the same protest for different reasons.

I’ll end with a remark by the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. In 1784, Kant wrote the following: ‘Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. […] This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding.’ May the responses we’re listening to today help this nation to grow up and mature into a healthy and radical democracy with the people back in the heart of politics.

This statement was read out at the “Political situation in Malta: We are at a delicate juncture” forum hosted by the Faculty for Social Wellbeing at the University of Malta on 12 December 2019.

[allyklapak]

Is it murder or suicide? How unsustainable societal and corporate practices threaten our lives.

The downfall of humanity may come by way of a variety of methods, whether that be catastrophic natural disaster, irreversible degradations of vital resources, or widespread disease facilitates by humanities poor practices and unstable political, environmental, and socioeconomic state. Scientists have been engaged in this discourse on the end of the world as we know if for years as our climate imminently reaches its breaking point. However, recently, the rest of the world has been thrown into this realm of petrifying chaos and uncertainty as we as a collective humanity face a pandemic that threatens all that we love. It is more important than ever to understand the connections between human behavior and its potentially adverse effects on our well-being. Through comprehension of the casuistic relationship between our actions and the rise of disease, we can be better prepared to confront or hopefully prevent future outbreaks. Environmentalists have always injected necessary urgency in their pleas for change, but now the world may finally understand this pervasive feeling of impending doom.

Each day, humans take risks both consciously and unconsciously which can be categorizes into five major groups: biological, chemical, natural, cultural, and lifestyle choices.[1] I argue that each of these are in our control to some degree. The world is comprised of an intricate web of cause and effect relationships. Biohazards can be attributed in part to both natural and human activity. These threats cultivate as transmissible or nontransmissible diseases depending on their origin and status as viral or bacterial.[2] Biohazards are particularly dangerous as their ability to spread may threaten lives on an epidemic or even globally, pandemic, scale.[2] Humans play a role in this threat as scientists have ascertained that more than “half of all infectious diseases were originally transmitted to humans from wild or domesticated animals.” [3] Ecological medicine traces these connections to properly assess the parts humans play in these cases.[4] These issues further highlight the issues that arise from the disproportionalities between developed and less developed nations. For example, impoverished peoples are more at risk of consuming bush meat or soiled water that may carry disease and subsequently do not have access to the necessary healthcare for testing and treatments. Those that cannot afford vaccinations are vulnerable to diseases that many modern nations are able to safeguard against. Working to address and limit these disparities is vital to mitigate the threat of contagious diseases. This is more critical than ever as we face a ubiquitous threat of COVID-19 which began through human consumption of a wild animal and has induced mass chaos. The text eerily predicts our current state as it explains how viral disease is “so easily transmitted that and especially potent flu virus could kill millions of people in only a few months.” [5] This is the reality we face. It is important to recognize how pivotal human response is to the course of events that have and will continue to unfold. Humans have the power to contribute to an overall healthier world with less contaminated resources and practicing responsible health practices when possible to therefore decreases the universal threat of disease.

While infectious disease carries with it an immediate and all-encompassing threat, human health may also be threatened by toxic threats such as carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens causing cancers, mutations, and birth defects respectively.[6] The study of these chemicals and their ability to cause injury, known as toxicology, has traced certain connections between adverse health conditions, specific chemicals, and the products in which they are found.[7] Even substances that are negligible in small dosages may become lethal as, “any synthetic or natural chemical can be harmful if ingested or inhaled in a large enough quantity.”[7] Anything in excess may have adverse effects and it is particularly dangerous when the public is unaware of the harmful things they are exposed to, such as pesticides and air pollutants. Human activity comes into play as we are the ones to implement these chemicals into our environment, sometimes inadvertently. Impositions and violations of human health is grossly negligent on the part of companies that oversee the continues use of harmful chemicals. Due to the shortcomings of our self-interested government, public outrage and widespread outcry is the only way to motivate stricter regulations.

Humans threaten the health of our environment and thus ourselves by mishandling of waste. Excessive consumer habits have produced exorbitant accumulation of solid waste labeled either industrial or municipal.[8] The ineffective techniques used to contain waste often leads to pollution of land and water sources. The United States leads in the amount of waste we produce. [9] The specific quantitative estimates of waste are often conveyed through absurd yet accurate visualizations. For example, we use enough water bottles to reach the moon and back 6 times.[9] It is even more concerning that the U.S. is the largest producer of hazardous waste.[10] Our misuse of this waste ultimately adversely impacts ecosystems and the resources we need. There exist many options for disposal of waste but understandably, minimizing waste through reduce, reuse, and recycle practices are the best preventative strategies.[11] Waste management and waste reduction work cooperatively in integrated waste management which combines the efforts to minimize harmful effects.[11] The more detrimental disposal methods include burning and burying waste in often faulty systems which become particularly precarious when dealing with hazardous waste. Companies may detoxify this waste through physical, chemical, biological, phytoremediation, plasma gasification methods, but these may be costly or release toxins into the atmosphere.[12] Storage methods are similarly imperfect and may still lead to subsequent pollution of surrounding land.[12] Government regulation and law is vital for discouraging poor waste management but is often hindered by the clouded economic interests of those in power. Alternatively, promoting recycling practices through innovative new trends can allow this movement of waste reduction to gain traction. Additionally, states can follow suit of others who have instituted incentives to encourage recycling of paper, plastics, and metals. However, the most effective vehicle for change would be a revolutionary drive to reinvent the industry. By implementing more cradle to cradle designs because “the key to shifting from a disposable economy is to design for it.” [13] I believe that this is an achievable goal with framed in respect to economic gain. I understand that hesitation arises from those who do not want to spend more in the short term to save in the long term, but it seems as if the trend to make this switch has become. If each person strove to minimize their waste consumption the issue of waste disposal would be significantly more approachable. It is frustrating that companies will not switch their own designs as it then requires society to put in a discouraging amount of effort to adopt sustainability. This primarily comes from the publics place of blissful ignorance and refusal to take responsibility for the mess we so clearly made.

The way we deal with issues is largely contingent on risk. Things that humans perceive to not be in control of change their perception to the risk and prevent action. Humans underestimate the effect their waste production has on the world state. Every small part counts. Many small actions create a major reaction which is a concept that applies to stopping the sickening of our planet and our bodies. This is particularly important in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. We are seeing how individual action is pertinent to responding to the crisis on hand as each must do their part to mitigate the spread. We must learn from this and apply it to our handling of waste. If each person does their small part, perhaps the ever-growing issue may finally subside or at least become manageable. So may argue that we cannot control the weather, however I believe that every motion by a human hand creates a butterfly effect. We over consumer, waste burning increases, our atmosphere warms and hence the weather is changed. Humanity holds our own delicate lives in our hands and yet our actions may be what destroys us.

Discussion Question: Can the current pandemic be attributed to climate change in any way? Word Count: 1359

Miller Jr, G. Tyler. Living in the environment: an introduction to environmental science. No. Ed. 19. Cengage Learning, 2017. 443

Miller, 444

Miller, 448.

Miller, 449.

Miller, 447.

Miller, 452.

Miller, 456.

Miller, 575.

Miller, 576.

Miller, 575.

Miller, 578-580.

Miller, 589-592.

Miller, 595-601.

[ludonarrativediss]

“I’m Not Buying Video Games in 2019″ - End of Year Update

In 2019, I decided to challenge myself and not buy any video games. I spent the month of December 2018 looking backwards at the last couple years of my life and my growing reliance on consumerism. With my father’s death a year before combined with the general anxiety that we all feel in the modern world, I recognized that I’d been coping by buying, and for me that manifested mostly with video game purchases. In 2018 I had bought over 100 video games and spent over $4,000 on video games and related products.

I also spent the month of December 2018 looking forward at how to make “don’t buy any video games” a real resolution, and not just a thing that lasted two weeks and then I abandoned (like all my previous resolutions). I thought about what made me buy games, and found that the most money was actually spent on sales for games that I never ended up playing, but bought in order get a good deal. I also found that I had a lot of anxiety about watching for those sales, and then even more anxiety when I bought from those sales, despite the original purchasing rush. I also recognized that I couldn’t go cold turkey, that there would be new releases that I would want to play throughout the year, games that I would want to be engaged in the discourse with, and so I gave myself four games I could buy throughout 2019 (1 game a quarter). Additionally, I left myself open to earning more game purchases if I accomplished big life goals, like creative milestones.

The days leading up to January 1st 2019, I committed to this plan by driving to every game store and staring at the shelves with a ton of stress. What last minute games did I need to stock up on before they were out of reach for a year? I was suddenly a prepper trying to make sure his bunker was adequately stocked, but in retrospect, that wasn’t a new thing but what I had been for years—adding to a backlog that I would never be able to finish, waiting for some hypothetical future when I had time and desire to play all of these old games.

And so now, at the end of 2019, how did I do? What worked and what didn’t? What have I learned from this experiment?

First, I did it. I followed my rules, and I only bought five video games in 2019. Four were my quarterly provisions, one was “unlocked” because I wrote a 10,000 word short story, something that despite identifying as a “writer” I hadn’t done in 5-10 years. A real creative accomplishment that I’m quite proud of.

The five games I bought were:

Mortal Kombat 11

Super Mario Maker 2

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

Control

Death Stranding

I’m incredibly surprised that I was able to crank down 100 game purchases to five. Some of this was due to loopholes, such as buying up a year of Xbox Game Pass in 2018 to last me to 2020. Having a continually updating list of games I could play without buying meant that I was free to try new things, but also free to abandon them—something that’s harder to do when you’ve spent actual money.

Another thing that helped was just the changing nature of video games. Most of my time this year wasn’t spent chipping away at my backlog of games or playing the five new games I purchased, but instead continuing to play the games as a service titles that I had been playing in 2018. In other words, I played a lot of Fortnite and a lot of Destiny and a lot of Forza Horizon 4.

I gave myself permission to buy new hardware and DLC for games that I was actively playing, but that didn’t add up to very much. A Fortnite skin and a couple Destiny 2 expansions. The biggest purchase I made this year was on an Xbox Elite controller, which is also the purchase I’m most happy with. It’s made all of the games I play better, and if you play games regularly on Xbox or PC, I highly recommend it.

This is the first New Year’s resolution I’ve ever succeeded with. I credit several things: 1.) The support of my partner, 2.) The fact that this is something I really wanted to accomplish, 3.) The month I spent before the new year really considering it from every angle and building a plan that worked for me.

When I started this last January, I expected that I would be writing and filming constant updates to keep a hypothetical audience informed and to keep myself in check. In reality, I did that once or twice, but really it was a personal journey that was more about introspection than public blogging. I also expected that I would really miss being involved in the gaming discourse, that I would miss buying games day one to be able to talk about them and listen to podcasts about them. In practice, I bought the games that I wanted to spend my time with, they were personal decisions based on my own tastes and what I was looking for at that point of the year. I’m happy that I saved money on games that have now dropped significantly in price, but mostly I’m happy that I saved time. I’m looking at you, Anthem.

I consider this whole experiment a success, and although I won’t be repeating it again in 2020, I think the lessons I’ve learned will inform my purchasing decisions and time management decisions not just in games, but in all facets of my life. I’ve learned that it makes no sense to buy something on sale if you’re not going to touch it for months or years. The sales are stressful, the backlog is stressful, and the joy I’m looking for comes from the thing itself, not from buying it. I’ve learned I don’t need to get everything just when it comes out. I don’t need to wait for sales, but I need to wait for when I actually want to play it/watch it/read it. Specific to games, I always want to be knowledgeable about the industry, but I’ve learned that the way to do that isn’t by buying and playing every new thing that comes out. I can play what I’m interested in, read about the rest, and still be exactly where I want to be in the discourse.

Most importantly, I’ve spent a year not buying things to feel better, and by removing that, I’ve found new, healthier ways of coping with the world around me and its challenges. This resolution was very personal to me, and I understand that a lot of people reading this will scoff at “stress” and “anxiety” as it relates to video game purchases and backlogs, but I think the reality is we all suffer from very similar things that manifest in very specific ways, and I hope that you can be inspired by this and work to improve yourself as I hope I have.

Anyway, guess I’ll see everyone at the local game store on January 1st. I’ve got a few indie things I want to pick up, hoping I can get a copy of the SoulCalibur or Dead or Alive that I missed this year, and who knows, I might get The Witcher 3 on Switch or Dragon Quest Builders 2, both games that I think I’ll really like having portable. Thanks for reading, take care out there.

[maychorian]

C-could you please not reblog art where the characters are white washed? You recently reblogged one where Lance is borderline but Hunk is pretty pasty. Thank you.

Sigh. This isn’t what I wanted to write about tonight. That said, maybe it’s time.

I think I’ve made it clear that this is an anti-discourse blog. That includes race discourse. I think it’s a side of fandom that has done MUCH more harm than good, and I would like it to go away entirely. I understand why it exists, and I would never tell someone else how to use their time, but I will not agree and I will not engage.

I think I know which art piece you’re talking about. The artist was using a rather pastel color palette. It looked like the paladins were sitting in a bright patch of sunlight, relaxing and hanging out together in a lovely room. And that’s all. Yes, Hunk and Lance’s skin tones were lighter than they are in the show. But so was everything. It was clearly an artistic choice and I have no problem with it.

I’m sorry it bothered you. But I’m not going to delete the post. Neither do I intend to keep an eagle eye out in the future to avoid “white-washed” fandom art and avoid reblogging it. I’m sorry if that’s an issue for you. Feel free to unfollow me. I’m not going to train myself to look for problems.

I think the entire mentality in recent years of fandom in general and the Voltron fandom in particular to hunt down “problematic” fan creators and punish them is not only awful and damaging and unhealthy, but also dangerous in a way. Most of the things fans are complaining about their fellow fans doing wrong, or even the show itself, are very minor. By searching so hard for things to be offended about, by finding them and reinforcing them with likeminded fans and working yourself up into a frenzy over them, you are TRAINING yourself to be offended. You are teaching your brain to be pleased and satisfied when you find things that upset you, because the rush of energy and anger feels good. And that just makes you find more and more and more.

This is not a good road to go down. It leads to misery. It leads to depression. It leads to believing that the world is awful and only getting worse, and no matter how much you fight it you can never make a difference, because there’s always going to be some other “problematic” thing to get worked up over. And it’s just going to keep getting worse and worse.

It’s the same way I feel about the “microaggression” thing you hear about in the larger American culture. Racism is bad, and I hate it. But someone asking where you’re from? Not racism. Most of those things I see listed as microagressions are tactless and a little rude, but they aren’t crimes. By teaching ourselves that they are, we’re only making things worse and worse for ourselves and for each other. Morgan Freeman said it best. The best way to cure racism is not to seek it out and decry it, but to find commonalities and learn to love each other instead. You’ll never change a racist by yelling “RACIST!” at them over and over until they shut up. That just makes them hide away in likeminded communities and discuss how awful you are and how abused they are and how they’re right in every bad thing they’ve ever thought about you. You change a racist by showing them that we’re all the same, and our differences are things to be enjoyed and celebrated and shared, not sequestered and hoarded and gloated over like gems.

This is something you learn in therapy for mental illnesses like PTSD and depression, by the way. It’s similar to the counseling I got. Part of the problem with PTSD is hypervigilance, the way your brain is constantly on the look out for things that threaten you. The more you notice, the more tense and alert you become, and then you see more. It’s the same thing with the whole fandom callout culture. I worry a lot about kids who come into the internet fandom bright-eyed and happy, eager to share and discuss the things they love, only to be beaten down by these eagle-eyed folks who see problems everywhere they look that need to be attacked. And these kids are learning to fall in with the crowd, because not to do so is literally dangerous to their mental and emotional health.

We need to train ourselves in the opposite direction. We need to learn to accept each other with a few little bumps and bobbles here and there. If you have criticism to offer, do so, but in a constructive way. And if the creator doesn’t agree, accept that. Accept that their work is just not your cup of tea, and move on with your day. You will be much happier and healthier for it, I promise.

One of my fandom friends was basically hounded out of the Voltron fandom with hate messages she got for one of her fics. The reason? Lance wasn’t Latino enough. Because he was singing showtunes with Blue instead of more “Latin” songs, I think was the crux of the complaints. Mind, this was before he was even revealed to be Cuban, so it was based entirely on fanon. This friend of mine is biracial and grew up in a mixed Latino family. Her godson is a gay Latino, and she based the characterization of Lance on him, because he loves showtunes and his relationship with his partner reminds her of Lance and Keith. The persecution of this friend of mine based on her artistic choices in a cute little ficlet about Lance and Blue having fun together still upsets me and breaks my heart. I want it to end.

I’m sorry if this little essay offended anyone. As I said, feel free to unfollow me if my stance makes you uncomfortable. I hold no grudges. But this is something I feel quite strongly about, and I’m not going to change. And congrats if you read this whole thing! It was quite a piece.

[ingrid--writes]

On the ‘Sick Water’ of False Body Positivity and Ideal Figures

“It got to the point where I was running fourteen kilometres every day. It comes back to an internal driving force. If I ran fifteen kilometres yesterday, why can’t I run sixteen kilometres today.

“Don’t be weak!”

“Keep running!”

---

Her feet bled, she was rapidly losing weight, and yet she continued journeying blindly towards a potential fatality, in fear of disappointing herself.

---------

In her darkest moments, which she recalls with a sad smile, she remembers only a blurry sense of chaos. Weighing in at a meagre twenty-nine kilograms, she was in a precariously life-threatening situation.

“It was like tunnel vision. I knew everything was imploding,” she recounts. “But in order to manage that, I thought, all I should control and focus on was my study, exercise and food.”

She, Sarah Ravindran, a twenty-one-year-old medical student at the prestigious Monash University, is one of many brave survivors of anorexia nervosa. The Garvan Institute of Medical Research reported that one fifth of sufferers eventually die of the disease, when their minds push their bodies to such a level of exhaustion, malnutrition and frailty that their hearts could stop beating at any given point in time.

When I meet Sarah at Second Wife café, she has just finished her morning placement at Box Hill Hospital, and is ready to scrub up, quite literally, to head to Maroondah Hospital to sit in on a surgery - all part and parcel of the life of a third-year medical student. She greets me with a bright smile and immediately launches into lively conversation, asking me about my weekend and thanking me for the opportunity to speak up. This sense of warmth sets the tone for the highly engaging chat to come and allows me a sigh of relief; the twinkle in her eye is enough for me to know that this is a healthy and happy girl with whom I speak.

“Studying has always been a really, really big part of my life,” Sarah tells me. “I put pressure on myself to do really well and that has its pros and its cons.”

For Sarah, a developing obsession with control and structure, along with the demands of university did not work in her favour. She allowed academic stresses to engulf her. “I freaked out, basically,” she divulges. “And the only thing I could control was the food and exercise, and that’s what I did.”

This is not uncommon amongst people in the Eating Disorder (ED) community. I spoke to Bianca Skilbeck, who works as a counsellor associated with the Australian Centre for Eating Disorders. Her expertise dictates that “there are personality traits that go along with an eating disorder, things like being a perfectionist and being a high achiever.” According to specialists like Bianca, eating disorders are extremely common amongst people who are used to placing themselves under pressure and judgement to attain perfection. Pair this with the toxic dieting culture that constantly shrouds young teens, and you have a perfect breeding ground for mental demons to take over vulnerable youths.

“We’ve all got a relationship with food,” she says. “It’s actually rare to find a woman in particular who has a completely comfortable relationship with food.” Bianca herself battled with restrictive eating from the tender age of ten, but luckily found clarity in her teens, managing to seek professional help and overcome the toxic mindset armed with her steely drive to become a counsellor, which she felt she could not do if she herself was anorexic.

What strikes me most about Bianca is how matter-of-fact she is. She discusses the confronting concepts of body dysmorphia and self-starvation in the hustle and bustle of West Footscray café Willow and Wine, as babies wail around us and cars continually zoom by. I take sips of my coffee, and think to myself, this is the kind of normalised discourse we need surrounding ED, for the sake of all those who suffer.

The Garvan Institute of Medical Research reports that eating disorders, in particular anorexia nervosa, are the third most common chronic illness in girls and young women. According to Eating Disorders Victoria, sixty-four percent of people with eating disorders are female, while twenty percent of all females live their lives struggling with an undiagnosed eating disorder. These statistics are confronting to say the least and have everything to do with the unrealistic body expectations that young girls are faced with from birth and during their upbringing, which are perpetuated blithely by social media influencers.

YouTubers are constantly posting videos with titles like “What I Eat In A Day”, “Trying Intermittent Fasting – It Works!”, “How To Get Kendall Jenner’s Body” and “How To Lose Weight in A Week”. Instagram models spend painstaking hours taking photos from the right angle, and even more time editing them on applications such as FaceTune and VSCO Cam to enhance the aesthetic. This includes simple filters, escalating dangerously to the alteration of one’s body shape, with the elimination of some fat here, and the straightening out of a blemish there.

The modern social media world loves skinny, and skinny role models are what the younger generation of girls are fed from the moment they inevitably step into the sphere. This social media sphere is a distorted idea of reality.

Young girls are subliminally fed the message that skinny is better, healthier, more desirable.

Attractive, hot, more acceptable. 

“I don’t know if you’ve heard the metaphor, where if you’ve got a fish living in sick water, and you take the fish out and fix it, but then put it back in the water, it just doesn’t make any sense,” Bianca laments. “I think this is the culture that we live in, where even if we do eating disorder treatment for people, we still put them back out into a water that says thinner is better.” Such pressure on young girls to look a certain way culminates in great mental strain and can be a direct pathway to the destructive mindset that exacerbates eating disorders. Sarah recalls that her issues regarding her own body image began when she started posting images of herself on her fitness page on Instagram.

“Whenever I would post a photo of myself, it wouldn’t do as well in terms of likes,” she details, divulging how she began to feel pressure to look more like the toned, skinny girls of Instagram.

This is why promoting and advocating for genuine body positivity is so important. Instagram campaigns such as #IWeigh, which was kickstarted by Jameela Jamil, an actress and survivor of ED, are spreading a beautiful message - that we are more than what we physically weigh. The campaign encourages women (and men) to think about what they bring to the table as a person rather than a physical being. People weigh their careers, their aspirations, their values, their hobbies.

According to Bianca, it is step by step that these changes are taking place, and she encourages us as members of society to take responsibility for abolishing fat stigma.

“There’s a level of understanding that you can’t discriminate on people based on race and gender and sexuality,” she points out. “It took Australia long enough to get the vote through for gay marriage, changing people one by one, and that’s what we need to do for fat as well.”

So the question is, how can we help?

The answer is uncomplicated in theory, but difficult to achieve in practise:

1. Vastly improve the Australian support systems for ED. 2. Destigmatise the mental health issues that lie at the crux of ED. 3. Promote genuine body positivity.

Why this is difficult to achieve lies in the lack of understanding and empathy surrounding how ED functions. Bianca recalls a past anorexic client who was told by her GP, after a look up and down, that she was ‘fine’ because her weight seemed okay at face value. In stark contrast, her mental health was at great risk. Further, the constant pressure on young women to be perfect makes it extremely frightening to seek help, and to heal.

“Once again, it’s taking the fish out of the water and then throwing it back into the sick water,” Bianca says, fixing her gaze intently towards my eyes. “What we actually need to fix is people’s perception of what it is to have different sized bodies.”

Eating disorders are extremely harsh mental and physical conditions which are often debilitating and life-threatening. Perhaps a glimmer of hope can be given to the future generation of young girls if we purify the sick water in which we live.

“It’s not about being perfect,” Sarah says with a wry smile. “It’s about being happy. It’s about having those negative thoughts, accepting them, and then pushing forwards in life.”

[jeroldlockettus]

Extra: Mark Zuckerberg Full Interview

(Photo: Ludovic Tolnel/Flickr Creative Commons)

What follows is Stephen Dubner‘s conversation with Facebook founder and C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.” It was recorded last summer, long before we learned that 50 million Facebook users’ data had been weaponized by political operatives. Facebook has been the subject of intense scrutiny for years now; that’s what happens when you’ve gone from a college dorm startup to a social network with some 2 billion global users. We spoke with Zuckerberg in Chicago in a trailer, outside an event space where he’d just addressed a few hundred very enthusiastic people who serve as group administrators for Facebook user groups. He introduced new software tools that would help them manage their groups.

You may have heard recently that Facebook has been seriously questioning its mission — that it’s trying, or at least it’s saying that it’s trying, to encourage more meaningful social bonds and less partisanship and discord. That movement was essentially launched on this day, at this talk Zuckerberg gave, in Chicago

Mark ZUCKERBERG: You know, every day I wake up and I just think to myself, “I don’t have much time here on Earth” or “how can I make the greatest positive impact that I can,” and I know that this is a question that a lot of you ask yourselves too — and it’s not always an easy question to answer. Now, the thing that I think we all need to do right now is work to bring people closer together. And I think that this is actually so important that we’re going to change Facebook’s whole mission, as a company, in order to focus on this.

And now here is our conversation, afterward, in that trailer. A trailer whose air conditioning we had to cut for a quiet audio recording. So picture yourself there: an un-air-conditioned trailer, in Chicago, in the summer, with Mark Zuckerberg. You there with us? Great… here we go:

Stephen DUBNER: Hey! Hey, how’s it going? Really nice to meet you.

ZUCKERBERG: You, too. Good to meet you.

DUBNER: That was really good. You like it? Because it’s a whole set of things that you didn’t used to ever do.

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah, I think it’s important for me to get better at communicating.

DUBNER: Oh my God, the people were so excited when you talked about the tools. Did you expect that level of excitement from them?

ZUCKERBERG: Probably not that level. But I think people are always most excited about the really concrete things that you’re doing. You can talk about the lofty vision and mission and strategy. I actually find you’re lucky if you can get people very excited about that, even if they agree with what direction you are going, because it’s just more abstract. But when you get into a very concrete work that you’re doing, then that’s what I think really energizes people.

DUBNER: I have to say — I’ll be honest with you: I don’t really use Facebook.

ZUCKERBERG: That’s okay.

DUBNER: I mean we use it — Freakonomics, we use it. But I’ll be brutally honest: I don’t want more friends. Or, that sounds bad, too —

ZUCKERBERG: But do you want to stay connected with the friends you already have?

DUBNER: No — well yes, but —

ZUCKERBERG: You don’t?!

DUBNER: Well, honestly, it’s tricky. Because when you’re trying to get a lot of stuff done — I mean, I don’t mean to sound like a total misanthrope. All I’m saying is, I don’t use it a lot. But that made me want to join every group in there, and then I realized that I’d have to quit my job and do nothing but find rare birds and go fishing and support these military families.

ZUCKERBERG: Well, the point isn’t to join every group, but I think it’s really important that people have one or two or three communities in their lives that they really care about. And I think when you have the absence of that, that can lead to real social issues — individually and then for society overall. So, of course these groups, in order to be meaningful, need to span online and offline. There are certain things that you just can’t do online. But the thing that I think is so meaningful and interesting and what we’ve seen is that they do! The people do plan events to come together in person, and the support really does expand out into the physical world.

And a lot of these groups are just things that wouldn’t have been possible physically. I mean we talked about groups for people suffering from rare diseases and almost by definition if you have a rare disease, there probably isn’t someone in your area who has that. So this might be possible for the first time in human history to be able to come together and share your experience of having that condition. I think that’s very powerful. But I think everyone needs to be a part of a few communities that are meaningful to them in order to have that support structure.

DUBNER: So I don’t mean to rain on that parade. I’d love to talk for just a minute about the net effect of Facebook, or social media, or social networking on, let’s say, happiness, to pick a word, or satisfaction. I think there’s a lot of good conversation going on that G.D.P. is a ridiculously bad measure of well-being — it’s way too narrow, it favors all kinds of silly stuff — and that people are talking about either gross national happiness, or some slightly more sophisticated version of that. But it’s really hard to measure it, one; and two, know what causes what. So with Facebook, per se, the upsides that you especially talk about in there, today, are potentially massive, right? Helping communities that wouldn’t be able to find each other, or even identify each other. But I also do worry about the potential downside, which is that, I have teenagers, and there’s always the notion that what people show of themselves online is often them at their best, most buoyant, happy selves. And if I see that and it’s a Friday night, and I’m not with them, I’m thinking, “Man, what’s wrong with me?” And I’m curious if you think about the net effect, costs and benefits on humankind, which is a big, impossible question, but I’m guessing you thought about it.

ZUCKERBERG: That’s very important to us. So the way that I think about this is that technology amplifies human capacity, right. So there are good parts of people, and there are bad parts of people. I believe that on balance people are good, and that therefore amplifying that has positive effects. There’s content portrays people at their happiest, and then there’s content — like a lot of sensational news in some cases — that portrays things as much worse than they are. And I just think that the reality is that both have positives and negatives. There are people who like to point to the negatives of either, because they’re trying to make a point. I don’t think that that’s right, right? There’s a lot of research that shows that the more connected we are overall, the happier we are, and the healthier we are because of that. So it can’t be that talking to your friends when they’re happy is bumming you out, and then reading news that’s down is bumming you out even more, right?

But being an engaged citizen also is not always fun. And a lot of the part of the mission that we’ve been working on is making the world more open and connected. So the connected part is about being connected to more people, and there is generally a lot of research that shows that that is positive for people. But I think that being open is also very important for society. But it can be challenging. Confronting truths or perspectives that don’t fit with ours don’t necessarily make our lives easier in the near term. But I think it’s a healthy thing and an important thing for us to do both as individuals and as society in order to move forward.

DUBNER: So following on that, how do you bring those two notions together which is the fact that we love to connect with people that we either have something in common with or maybe a shared mission, with, as you noted, it’s really important to at least think about or understand a little bit about what people who don’t think like you, why they think like that, and how you can get along. So this is the silo issue, and it exists everywhere and it probably always has and always will. I’m just really curious, it’s interesting: a lot of the groups in there are tribes, and it’s a word that people use kind of positively, and also a lot of them, let’s be honest, they’re kind of — you want a water?

ZUCKERBERG: No, it’s cool.

DUBNER: You sure?

ZUCKERBERG: It’s just very warm in here. And now that you’ve turned the air conditioning off…

DUBNER: Well, yeah, that’s our fault…

ZUCKERBERG: Let’s go with it.

DUBNER: All right. And a lot of the groups in there were about activities. So of course everybody’s allowed to have hobbies that are totally orthogonal to everybody else. But, when it comes to political or social or gender or other affiliations, how do you think about weakening the silos?

ZUCKERBERG: So we’ve both read and just tried to understand as best we can a lot of research around how to promote positive discourse. So there are a few things that I think are pretty interesting that most people may not know. So the first is that if you want to have a debate where people engage productively, the first and most important thing is to first connect with that person over something that you have in common. Right, so if you just go into an internet comment thread and you start debating gun control, that’s probably not going to be super productive. I mean, it can be in some cases. But it’s easy to dehumanize the other people, think about them as not human, not empathize with them. So a lot of what I think social networks can do well, and these communities, are first you connect over something that you have in common. So you recognize that the other person is a person. And I think communities in that way act as a jumping off point.

DUBNER: Do you try to orchestrate that? I’ve read about your efforts to do that and the research that that’s based on.

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah, so we’re trying to work on this, but I think building communities is one of the ways that you can. So a group might come together because they like fishing. But then they go connect over other things, and they debate other things, and they find that, “Hey, we agree on other things; we disagree on them; but now we can have productive and empathetic discussions, because we’re all people, and we recognize our common humanity.”

In terms of just encouraging good positive discourse overall, there are some best practices. For example, one of the ideas that people suggest all the time is, “Well, why don’t you just show people the opposite perspective?” Right, so you have an article that comes up in your news feed about, take gun control, the topic we were just talking about. And a lot people are like, “Well, why don’t you just show an article from the other perspective?” Well, it turns out if you don’t do this well, if you just show the other perspective, it actually just entrenches people’s belief in their original opinion. There’s a lot of confirmation bias that labels the other opinion as “other.” So you start to tune it out.

What you really want to do is not just present another viewpoint, but you want to give people a range of viewpoints. Because people are smart. And when they have the full picture of what is going on, they can make a good rational assessment for themselves about where they want to be on the spectrum, and what they believe. But it’s really important to not just tell people, “Hey, here’s the other viewpoint, you should look at this.” What people need is the whole picture. So I think that good journalism does that; it doesn’t just try to show one side of a story, but it tries to give the full picture. And when that doesn’t happen, then we can help play a role of at least trying to show a number of different pieces of media that might in sum give the whole picture.

DUBNER: So how much do you care about, or maybe love, social science research, the kind of insights that give rise to these kind of possibilities. So I’ve tried to figure it out, and I’ve read a bit. I know you studied psych for a while, and I know that you hire a lot of—

ZUCKERBERG: I wasn’t at Harvard for very long time, but I was technically a psychology major.

DUBNER: And I don’t know if you know Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist you hired? He’s a good buddy of mine.

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah! He wrote Gang Leader for a Day. It’s a great book, I read it.

DUBNER: Anyway, because Sudhir was in … Yeah, anyway. So Sudhir’s amazing, and I love the notion that someone who thinks the way he thought as an academic and as a writer and a scholar — his insights are being applied to something like this, which is accessible to everybody. So talk about how you seek out those kind of things, whether it’s the people, per se, or the research, and how you make it actionable. Because I think I’d like to argue that social science research is having its golden era; I hope it lasts forever. But people didn’t really apply this kind of thinking very much in firms and governments 20 or 30 years ago. It’s really happening, so I want to hear about how you make that happen.

ZUCKERBERG: Well understanding how people are using our services — both in terms of what they want, so we can provide services that meet people’s needs, and understanding what’s good — are really important domains that we want to work on. So we take data analytics and data science very seriously as a company; I think it’s one of the core strategic things that we’ve done well that other companies are seeking to emulate now. But especially because of the context of what we do as a social system, it’s especially important I think to understand.

DUBNER: Who are some heroes of yours from that realm — like Bowling Alone and Bob Putnam? I’m just curious like what you’ve read or thought over the years.

ZUCKERBERG: Putnam’s work shares a lot of the themes that I was just talking about today. He wrote some of the seminal work on community membership and did some of the the longest ranging studies on that. It’s an interesting question of where you draw the line between what is social science and what is economics. But I think recently Raj Chetty‘s work is incredibly interesting opportunity and mobility. We’re doing some interesting work together, and we try to team up with folks who are doing interesting work.

There’s interesting research now that shows that the average American has fewer than three close friends who they would turn to in a crisis. So one of the questions that I asked inside our company, and I started a team to work on this is, “Well, can we build some products or services that make it so that the average person has one more close friend?” So not just helping them connect to more people who they know, but, if you could do that, then that seems like a very meaningful change that you could make in the world — one thing that I’m doing this year is traveling around and trying to just see how people are thinking about communities and their work, and —

DUBNER: You’re going to all 50 states, I understand?

ZUCKERBERG: I’m going to 30; I’m going to the ones I haven’t been to yet. I’s interesting so far. But one of the things that I’ve found is that there’s this myth that I think a lot of people have; that if other people in other places just had better information, then they’d make better decisions. And I’ve generally found that that is not true. You know we all lack some information. Of course we can all make better decisions if we had perfect information. But for the most part, a bigger influence is actually who you know, who your friends are, who your family are, and how they help you filter the information that you have.

I can give a few examples of just how … this is a really poignant example. When I was in Ohio, I sat down with a group of heroin addicts, and one of the things that was really interesting is when you’re going through recovery, the first thing you have to do is detox, of course. But then after that, the next thing you have to do is basically get new friends. And it turns out if you remain friends with anyone who you were using with before, then you are very likely to end up back using heroin and endangering your life. So it turns out it’s not that these people don’t know that it’s bad. Or that they don’t want to end up addicted to it. But it just is that the people who you’re friends with — having those close friends, the three or four folks in your life are just so important.

Another example that has really stuck with me is when I visited a juvenile detention center. And one of the facts there that’s just mind-blowing is if you go to a juvenile detention center … and some of the kids are there because they committed what you’d call a crime,, they stole something or hurt someone. But some of them were there just because they misbehaved in class a little bit. And going to a juvenile detention center dramatically increases your chance of becoming a criminal once you get out, because what you’re essentially doing in that center is building a social network that reinforces itself negatively. All the examples that you’re getting are other people who either have criminal behavior or are misbehaving, so kids who who might have just been okay, a little not behaving as well as they should have in class, are getting all the wrong lessons and friends.

So, making it so that we can have a positive social network I think is actually one of the most important things that we can do for growing opportunity in society. That’s certainly what Raj Chetty’s work is. So that’s definitely a big thing that we study and think about how we can improve.

DUBNER: Let me ask you something in his work that he found that was surprising and interesting: do you know about the moving to opportunity research that was done years ago? And all the first round of scholars that looked at it, they said it didn’t work, and he came back with a colleague and found out that actually it did work if the kids were younger when they moved, because by the time you’re 15 or 16, your patterns are pretty set. You think school sucks or you don’t. But if kids were 9 and under, I think. it really worked. So to that end—

ZUCKERBERG: Actually he found a linear correlation. So if you moved when you were 9 you got half the impact of moving when you’re born, and if you moved when you’re 18 that’s kind of the end of the impact.

DUBNER: Right. So given that and given that the communities you’re building are presumably mostly for adults, I gather, what do you think about that?

ZUCKERBERG: Well, people over the age of 13 can use Facebook.

DUBNER: Okay, this is a corollary to a question I often think: people talk about early education — and I’m really interested in the project you’re interested in, because I’ve known people who’ve done that. I just think that’s a smart way to think about it: use technology to customize because people learn differently. People have different abilities and so on. But even when you talk about good early education, the kids who end up doing worst in this country and most other countries are already doing bad by the time they’re 1 or 2; they’re born into circumstances that are just really, really hard to surmount. So, without putting all the world’s problems on you and Facebook —

ZUCKERBERG: This is what Priscilla, my wife, focuses on. She’s running a school which is focused on the intersection between health and early childhood education. She’s a doctor and she wanted to help kids. And then through her pediatrics program realized that education and health are so intertwined, and that you need to start educating the parents, from the time that they’re pregnant, about what the right behaviors are, and then you basically want the kids in the school or in a program, or are at least to have good habits being built from birth, and have them involved in that as quickly as possible.

When we think about education, we often think about concepts like math or reading. But very early on, when you’re learning how to walk, health is completely intertwined with education, and then of course as you as you go up through your education — it’s hard to learn math if you can’t sleep at home, or there are different issues. So there are all these interesting trade-offs — you could do a whole podcast with her talking about — she has students who come in and who are in an environment at home where they can’t sleep as well. So she has to make this trade-off — they have a nap time during the day, and if a kid is sleeping and just sleeps for four hours instead of the hour and a half, does she wake them up to do math, or does she let them sleep? And I think a lot of the time what ends up being the case is that the health is the precursor to education, so you let them sleep. But they’re totally intertwined in the way that you’re talking about.

DUBNER: So Facebook is obviously not a government. You don’t have an army as far as I know. Do you? Right?

ZUCKERBERG: No, we do not.

DUBNER: But in some ways, it’s become a nation-state in the way that we used to think about nation-states. Except that it doesn’t provide those services, and it doesn’t use monopoly of force and so on. But what I mean is you probably have —

ZUCKERBERG: Well, it’s a community.

DUBNER: Okay. But it’s a global community, organized by interests, activities, and it’s voluntary. So to me it’s — right, nation state is an exaggeration. But what I’m getting at is this: governments throughout history and especially now, try their best, I would argue, to help their people. And they often don’t do a very good job, because the structure of government turns out to be pretty suboptimal and the incentives kind of weird. In a way, Facebook, it strikes me, has more leverage over how people actually organize and live their lives, right? The choices they’re able to make, the information they’re able to get hold of.

And so I’m curious how you think about that. I know you were an accidental C.E.O. and an accidental social entrepreneur, but it strikes me that you’re working really hard to take this massive accidental enterprise really seriously and optimize it for the most number of people. So I guess my question is big and lumpy and impossible, but I really just want to know what that feels like, because, look, I don’t know how to read what you’re trying to accomplish here. You’re this incredibly smart and accomplished young guy with this incredibly big and impressive company. And maybe you’re just trying to make it bigger and better and that’s it. But it doesn’t read that way to me. When I read your letter to the global community —

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah, well, I never started this to build a company.

DUBNER: Yeah. But I wouldn’t have — knowing what I know about you, if I looked at you 10 years ago — I also wouldn’t have thought that you were necessarily in it to help fix society or help make society better. Maybe I’m just wrong.

ZUCKERBERG: Well, I think at each point you try to do the best you can with the position that you’re in. So 10 years ago, I was just trying to help connect people at colleges and a few schools. And that was a basic need, where I looked around at the internet, and there were services for a lot of things that you wanted. You could find music; you could find news; you could find information, but you couldn’t find and connect with the people that you cared about, which, as people, is actually the most important thing. So that seemed like a pretty big hole that needed to get filled, and maybe it’s more functional and more basic, but that was the thing that needed to happen.

Now you know we look out at the world and we say, “Okay, we’ve been focused on making the world more open and connected.” And I always thought that that would be enough to solve a lot of problems by itself. And for some it has, but the world is today more divided than I would have expected for the level of openness and connection that we have today. So now I just believe that we have a responsibility to also work on that. So you can paraphrase what we’re working on now is, “open, connected, and together.” So that is basically the idea that we’re talking about, when we say bringing the world closer together.

Here’s another way to think about it. There are lots of different issues and things that help bind people together and make us stronger as a whole than the sum of our parts. A huge part of that is the economy and our jobs and all that. And Facebook is a big player there, but we’re a relatively small part of the overall world economy. But when it comes to helping people build communities, I’m actually not sure that there are many other institutions in the world that stand for building communities and have the tools to be able to empower people at as large scale to do that. So that just strikes me as something that’s, “Okay, if that’s a unique opportunity that we have, then we also have a responsibility to go do that.” And that’s a little different than where we were 10 years ago, when there were many social networks that were bigger than us. We were just at schools and all that.

DUBNER: The tools that you talked about today; obviously you’re giving some user data to the users. What does that represent in the path of Facebook sharing its data generally. And I realize that what you’re giving to the users is useful. I love that when you announced them one lady actually said, “Statistics. Woo!” I’d never actually heard people cheer for that.

ZUCKERBERG: I missed that. But that makes me smile.

DUBNER: Yeah it was awesome. And obviously you’re not sharing, you know, income—

ZUCKERBERG: It’s aggregated. It’s insights into how people are using groups, right, so basic demographics —

DUBNER: And who wouldn’t want that right? If you’re the admin.

ZUCKERBERG: Well you need to present it in a way that’s actually useful.

DUBNER: Yeah, but I’m sure there are people who want you to share much more data about your users. Yes?

ZUCKERBERG: Well I think one of the interesting challenges that you find running a company or a community at scale is there are people who want things that are completely conflicting. So there are certain people who want us to share more information, and then there are a lot of people who really don’t. For some of these social decisions that we have to make, I find that the right place to be is when you’re getting yelled at from both sides equally. And you try to just make the best decision that you can on this.

But, both parts have good arguments. Of course, privacy is extremely important, and people engage and share their context and feel free to connect because they know that their privacy is going to be protected. On the other hand, if you’re trying to enable people to build communities, giving them some insights into how people engage in their communities in a anonymised way that that isn’t sharing anything about the individuals and the communities, can help them do their job, and help bring more people together, and help people’s lives as well.

So you try to just do the best that you can and know that there’s not always a simple and optimal solution. And another dynamic that’s interesting is that sometimes the balance of what people want shifts over time and that enables opportunities to do more in one direction or the other, that wouldn’t have made sense before.

DUBNER: There’s also, as you’ve pointed out, people don’t know what they want. We’re really bad at predicting or —

ZUCKERBERG: Oh, I don’t know; I don’t believe that!

DUBNER: Well in the revealed preferences, in what people actually do, you can see what they want. But if you ask people what they would like, the social science research at least says that declared preferences, there turns out to usually be a really big gap between that and revealed. No?

ZUCKERBERG: Well, I would say that in a lot of these discussions that I have, people focus on what we as Facebook are doing. The real secret to why this works well is because we focus on giving everyone else as much power as possible.

DUBNER: What do you mean by that. Meaning just give users power to use it as they wish?

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah, give people the freedom to share as much as as you can; give people the ability to get access to as much opportunity as possible. And there’s a whole spectrum on this. First, in order to be able to use a tool like this, you need to have access to the internet. Which is something that we take for granted here in the U.S., but more than half of the world doesn’t have access to the internet. So we work on basic things like improving the business model of telecom operators. Or we’re designing solar powered planes to beam down access to the Internet, because that’s a basic thing.

Then once you have the internet, there’s the whole legal framework. We are very active in advocating in many countries to give people the freedom to share more, and express more of what they want. The U.S. is somewhat of an outlier on having constitutionally protected freedom of speech in a way that very few other countries do. Every other country has many more restrictions on what you can say than you can in the U.S. So that gets in the way of people’s freedom, and we are active on pushing on that.

And then only when you get through these basic foundational and legal frameworks, do you get into the tool. Which is, in the U.S. people can have the freedom to say what they want to anyone who they want, but that may not help you so much if you don’t have a tool that actually enables you to reach other people with your opinion. So that’s a thing that Facebook and the internet have really worked to change over the last 15 years. Now we really are in a world where anyone for the most part can write something and share it, and if it resonates, it’ll get shared widely, and it can start to change opinion broadly. But in many ways, that ability is the practical arm of free speech. That just didn’t exist before.

But there’s this whole spectrum of things that you need to do, and that, that’s the thing that we’re hugely committed to. That’s why when we rolled out the mission today, the basic idea behind it and the vision, is to bring the world closer together. But the reason why that isn’t the whole mission is because it was really important to me that the mission focused on empowering other people. So the mission actually is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together, because there’s no way that we’re going to do this, no matter what we do — you can ask me all the questions you want about what we’re going to do, but it’s actually going to be other people doing this, and we succeed when we empower other people.

DUBNER: Now a cynic would say, “Well, sure it’s in Facebook’s interest. The bigger they build a global community, the bigger and better the company is.” Which is not untrue, but it’s the prerogative of every company to grow as big and as profitable as they can. So let’s say that someone puts on their “I doubt the do-gooder part of you” hat. How do you respond to that?

ZUCKERBERG: I think a lot of people just can’t get out of their own way. So I think for a lot of companies and governments, they would do better by giving people more freedom, and they don’t for whatever reason. So you may be right that it is strategically the right thing to do, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is doing what they should do. So I just want to make sure from the mission of the company on down to how we execute and think about our strategy that that’s always front and center.

And a lot of times people like to think about, “Well what is the impact that we can have by improving this product?” I really want to train our organization always to think about what is the impact that we can have by giving these people more power and freedom to go do what they want. So this just goes back to your original question before around, “Do you believe that people can make good decisions for themselves?” And I deeply do. I really think that things end up better when you give—

DUBNER: I don’t mean to imply that people can’t make good decisions for themselves, although on some dimensions I would argue they can’t. Like with diet, with health particularly. I think you’ve written a little bit about this, that the leading causes of death in the rich world are all essentially self-inflicted. Or at least a lack of optimizing how you take care of yourself. And you could say that people think the tradeoff is worth it.

ZUCKERBERG: I’m not sure I’d say that.

DUBNER: That the tradeoff is worth it?

ZUCKERBERG: No, that the largest causes are self-inflicted. I mean, cancer…

DUBNER: Cancer truly T.B.D., because we really don’t know yet, about most cancers, what causes them. That’s the problem. The environmental causes and behavioral causes, I wish we knew, because then we wouldn’t have as much cancer. But cardiovascular — just take the biggest one —

ZUCKERBERG: It’s also largely a function of age.

DUBNER: It’s true. It’s true. And look —

ZUCKERBERG: I’ll debate you on this one point.

DUBNER: All right. And one reason why we have more cancer now than we should is because people are living longer, not dying as early from cardiovascular deaths, which is great. There’s always a silver lining. But the economist Gary Becker from the University of Chicago, years ago, he was the guy that started all of this in terms of turning economics into a more interesting social science. And he argued once that all deaths are suicides to some degree. Because none of us actually really optimize staying alive long, because life’s too fun and interesting and challenging for that. So I think we all make trade-offs all the time, and I think that that’s what being human is about, and it’s maybe fun. No? You’re shaking your head.

ZUCKERBERG: I disagree with that, too.

DUBNER: Yeah? Tell me why.

ZUCKERBERG: Well, I think that having a sense of purpose is the thing that brings us both happiness and health. So if you’re framing it as “doing stuff that’s fun leads you to your demise,” I think there is a lot of research that would suggest the opposite.

DUBNER: Yeah, I agree with that. Fun meaning cheeseburgers and French fries and not taking care of oneself. That’s what I mean by fun. That’s a shallow version of fun. All right. So let me just ask you: I loved the Reid Hoffman conversation in that piece.

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah, that was fun.

DUBNER: It was really interesting, and I loved how he framed it. And you were obviously really good talking with him. You said something on there that I wanted to ask you about. How many versions — or whatever the proper noun would be — of Facebook are running at any given time? And just explain that to people who use it, and what that idea represents.

ZUCKERBERG: Sure. So one of the basic strategies of our company is to learn as quickly as we can. That is more important to us than any specific strategy of, “Okay, here’s how we’re going to build the best messaging app, or here’s how we’re going to build the best news feed,” is building a company that is just agile and learns as quickly as possible from what people are telling us.

So the best way to learn is to basically try things out and get feedback. So if you just have one version of Facebook running, then that constrains how much people can react to. So we build this whole framework that allows people within the company, any engineer, to change some code, create a new branch of what Facebook is, and ship that to some number of people. Maybe 10,000, some small portion of the community in order to get good feedback from that. And there are a bunch of rules around a bunch of things that you can’t ship.

DUBNER: And how is it related? I assume that if I’m the engineer and I want to do that, I do it with someone, with conversation and approval.

ZUCKERBERG: Some, there are definitely guidelines. There are things that, if what you’re doing is sensitive to people’s information at all, then of course there are a bunch of checkpoints that you need to do before doing that. But people try out different ideas for how to suggest you better friends, or suggest you better communities, and that doesn’t need to go through a lot of process of the company; people can just try those out, and we’re trying out hundreds of different versions of things like that. And the idea is that cuts through red tape at the company. So now a given engineer, instead of having to get their manager and then their manager’s manager and then me on board with changing the app, they can just do it.

And then at the end of that test, they get all this feedback back that is both quantitative — so how their version of Facebook performed on everything that we care about: how connected do people feel; how much do they feel informed; how happier; all these different things — and then we get qualitative feedback back as well. And if their version is an improvement, then we roll that in, and then that becomes part of the trunk version of Facebook that now everyone else is measured against. So now every day, we’re running lots of different versions to see what’s best and what people respond to. But again it gets back to this strategy, which is the real company strategy is to learn as quickly as possible what we need to do in order to bring the world closer together.

DUBNER: How about a couple lightning-round fast questions. What’s one story that your family always tells about you?

ZUCKERBERG: That’s a good question. You’d have to ask them.

DUBNER: But you probably know it too. It’s like, “Oh yeah there was a time that Mark did—,” because I love you know I love the stories you talk about with Reid. ZuckNet was awesome. I also love that the snowball fight game, where you could have a real snowball fight but it’s a lot more—

ZUCKERBERG: Yeah. I think my sisters were happy enough to play the games that I programmed growing up, because it was better than what we would do physically. So they prefer playing a snowball fight game, or some strategy game that I made, even if the graphics were terrible, and the game wasn’t that good, because I was still learning how to program; I was like 12 or 13 or 14. They’d prefer that to getting chased around the house with a Super Soaker or something like that. So there’s that.

I think my dad has a lot of fun stories about how he got me into technology. And he’s a dentist, but he was always very focused. He took a lot of pride in being the first dentist in the area who did digital X-rays instead of physically. He was just such a geek, and he loves this stuff. And he didn’t really know how to program, but he was just like, “Mark, don’t you think this is cool?” So that stuff I thought was pretty good.

DUBNER: You obviously have to make a lot of decisions all the time and there are a lot of different ways to make decisions, and deciding to not do something is often much more important in retrospect than deciding to do it. So other than deciding not to sell Facebook early on — which I’m guessing was at least a little tempting — what’s the best decision you ever made to not do something, or not pursue something?

ZUCKERBERG: So you’re asking about a discrete, big decision, but I actually think the most important thing is what decisions and what process, on a day to day basis, you choose to let people have the freedom to do, and just not get involved with. So a huge part of how Facebook works is giving a large amount of freedom to our engineers, the company, and to people who use the product to make with it what they will, and trusting people to do that. So there’s this balance of how much is it going to be my ideas and my will, versus the people around us and the company. And I think having some restraint there ends up being very important.

DUBNER: Was that hard for you to get to, or?

ZUCKERBERG: I think it’s hard every day. When you’re running something, you of course have the ability to make as many of the decisions as you would like. So the real art I think is not when you know that you have someone who is a superstar, who is going to make great decisions, but deciding to let people do things that you disagree with, because on principle you know it’s just going to free up more creativity and people will feel like there’s more potential to try different things in the future that may be better, if you let them go do those things, even if you disagree with them.

DUBNER: That’s really admirable. I would think it’s hard. I think most people would have a really hard time doing that.

ZUCKERBERG: I believe a lot in giving people freedom.

DUBNER: I believe; I do. I mean I believe in the belief, but I just think that’s a hard thing to do. All right. Last question quickly: if you weren’t doing this, if this hadn’t worked out, if MySpace had become Facebook, what do you think you’d be doing?

ZUCKERBERG: That is a really interesting question. I’ve always really cared about the idea of connecting people and bringing people together. And the way that you do that is different at different points in history. Another way that I think about it is: if Facebook didn’t happen, you’d just drop me in a desert now what would I do? I believe that technology is a huge lever for improving people’s lives. It’s a great thing that an individual can sit down and construct something and share it with millions of people around the world; almost nothing else other than code and technology gives you that ability to do that. Maybe producing media on top of that technology, but the technology is the platform for that.

But today a lot more people message each other than just use social networks, which is why we’re very focused on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as well. So if you if you got started 13 years ago in a dorm, the right thing to do is to build a website for social networking. Ten years ago, or seven years ago, maybe the right thing to do is build a mobile app for social networking. Now I think one of the most important things that you do is build tools for more private communication, because people have the power to do that.

I think that line will always be shifting, and I would bet that you know at any moment that you would want to get started, you probably could. And there are always going to be new ways that people want to share and connect and feel supported, and there are always things to build. I’m just a big believer in technology, and bringing people together is two of the most important levers that we have to make progress as humanity.

DUBNER: All right. No offense — and I know it’s hot in here and you’ve got to go — but you really didn’t answer my question, which is just literally what you think, if this had gone very differently, like you couldn’t do it differently —

ZUCKERBERG: So differently that I wouldn’t want to be an engineer any more? My answer is that I would build whatever the next thing is. I still think you can care about the mission, but Facebook is not a one product company at this point. And you know there are new social network companies that get started all the time. I’m not sure exactly how I would think about it.

DUBNER: So there was no impulse to become a dentist, for instance?

ZUCKERBERG: No, that stuff makes me queasy. So I never had the whole doctor thing. And Priscilla’s got that covered for the family. But no, I believe a lot in technology. I think that there are lots of different ways to get started. Our path as Facebook I think is good proof that the line is not clear. I started it as a website for Harvard students to build a community there. There was no news feed, none of the stuff that you think of as the most important parts of what Facebook are today. So you start with something; you find a niche; and then you can grow it to serve more people in that way. That’s what I care about.

DUBNER: All right.

ZUCKERBERG: Thank you. It was really fun.

DUBNER: Yeah. Thank you very much.

ZUCKERBERG: Alright, we gotta get some A.C. in here.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Greg Rosalsky, Stephanie Tam, Max Miller, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez. For this series, the sound design is by David Herman, with help from Dan Dzula. The music throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at radio@freakonomics.com.

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