#who is the target audience

[marfromthestars]

“babe, which teenage mutant ninja turtle cologne should I wear”

[ID: A picture of a cologne bottle with 2012 Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series with the box it comes in next to it, also having a picture of Donatello. End ID]

[shinigamichan]

WHY is Spotify recommending me “husband audios” wtf is that

[mtsainthelens]

WHAT IS THE OBSESSION WITH THESE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER TYPE POSTS. CAN YOU IMAGINE SOMEONE COMING UP TO YOU IRL AND TELLING YOU THE IMPORTANCE OF READING. WHAT IS HAPPENING.

[coochiequeens]

“Drag Syndrome” – a touring drag show featuring people with Down syndrome – has sparked outrage and confusion following the publication of a video intended to promote the group.

On January 4, UK-based media company Mashableuploaded a video to Twitter highlighting the drag show. The short film, entitled “Born to dance with an extra chromosome,” shows interviews and performances with several drag queens with Down syndrome. 

The video also includes an interview with the creative director of the drag show, Daniel Vais, who ostensibly does not have Down syndrome.

Vais founded “Drag syndrome” in 2018. In 2020, Vais gave an interview where he was asked what his most memorable performance was, Vais recounted how one of the drag queens, “Horrora Shebang,” opened a show by shouting “Good evening, bitches!”

Drag Syndrome, which is described on its website as being a “drag collective featuring highly addictive queens and kings with Down-Syndrome” tours across Europe and is currently performing at RuPaul’s DragCon UK 2023in London. The troupe was previously featured at DragCon in 2020, and earned a profile in British Vogue.

Drag Syndrome also sells merchandise on their website, and currently has over 81,000 followers on Instagram and an incredible 558.1K followers on TikTok. 

Despite their renewed popularity, Drag Syndrome has been performing for years, and drawing criticism for just as long. 

In 2019, a venue owner in Grand Rapids, Michiganactually cancelled the troupe’s booking, citing concerns about “exploitation.”

Peter Meijer, the owner of the Tanglefoot Building, issued a public statement, writing: “The involvement of individuals whose ability to act of their own volition is unclear raises serious ethical concerns that I cannot reconcile.”

Reacting to Mashable‘s short film on Twitter, the response was overwhelmingly critical. 

“This is abuse. This is exploitation. This is disgusting. These individuals cannot consent to this, they likely are not even able to live totally independently. No words,” one individual said.

“As a special needs parent myself, this is disgusting,” another wrote.

Reporter Tatiana Passaic asked a question many others also seemed to have: “Who exactly is the target audience for this?”

Other netizens compared the show to historical “circus freak shows” which often exploited people with physical or intellectual disabilities. In the 20th century, some parents of children with disabilities would sell their children to the circus, where they would then be ridiculed and exploited for profit. Circus “freak shows” would often showcase people with dwarfism, intellectual impairment, or Down syndrome.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “almost all people with Down syndrome have intellectual disability or low IQ, which includes difficulty learning and trouble with activities of daily life. These difficulties can be mild to severe.” Both adults and children with intellectual disabilities are known to experience higher rates of abuse and exploitation, an issue that has been exacerbated by social media and the internet. 

Drag shows have been mired in controversy over the past year due to an increase in “drag queen story hours” aimed at children, “family” or “all-ages” drag shows, and drag shows which feature children.

Videos have gone viral showing children witnessing sexually explicit performances. One video from July of 2022 that was widely circulated on social media featured a toddler being led through a bar by a half-nude drag queen with breast implants.

Drag queen story hour” (DQSH) is a growing trend which involves a male performer dressed as a caricature of women, often in a highly-sexualized manner, reading books to children. The events inspired multiple protestsduring 2022, particularly from conservative groups and concerned parents who blast the practice as indoctrination and the sexualization of children. Detractors often describe proponents of such events as “groomers.”

Critics of DQSH have been called a litany of slurs equating them with “bigots,” yet protesters have been singling out venues that host drag shows involving children while passing over adult events that adhere to age requirements.

Opposition to DQSH has also been accused of motivating a mass shooting at a gay night club in Colorado in November 2022 which resulted in the deaths of five attendants. Prominent LGBTQ+ activists have argued that the use of the term “groomer” online has led to an increase in violence towards the community – despite the fact that the shooter responsible for the killings identities as “non-binary,” and no official motive has yet been announced by investigators.

In addition to drag queen story hour and drag shows aimed at children, there has also been an increase in child “drag” performers, often called “drag kids.” 

One such “drag kid” who uses the stage name “Vanellope Craving” was mentored by an adult drag performer who was later arrested after it was discovered that she had “utilized the internet on numerous occasions to distribute and exchange pornographic images of children” and “engaged in creating child pornography and uploaded it to the internet.”

Debates about the ethics of DQSH and similar events have become a hot topic in the media, particularly in the US and the UK. Many legislators in the US are now attempting to ban such events. In Minnesota, legislators have introduced a bill that states public libraries will lose state funding if they host drag queen performances for children. Similar bills have been proposed in both Missouri and Tennessee. 

By Shay Woulahan Shay is a writer and social media content creator for Reduxx. She is a proud lesbian activist and feminist who lives in Northern Ireland with her partner and their four-legged, fluffy friends.

[forstered]

saw the worst insta ad ever. it was ai and for a drive in theatre in a province thats not even close to me

[thedreadvampy]

people seriously pretending EEAAO is overrated suddenly bc it swept awards? it swept awards largely because it is very very very good. I cried like someone who's just had a religious revelation BOTH times I watched it bc it touched something raw and real and beautiful but it was also just very, very funny. everyone's performance kills and the concept is creative and interesting and doesn't distract from the emotional core. you guys are just contrarian.

[pasdeloup]

Movies I've Seen Recently

back on the lash

Bicentennial Man (1999) Yes, Robin Williams as a robot who yearns to get some action, or be human, whatever. It’s just a really weird movies and the overall strangeness is what sticks with me. It’s based on a story by Isaac Asimov, so there is some interesting stuff in the movie. It’s kinda fucking twee! Get the hell out of here, Robin Williams android making clocks all day long. This sounds like…

[menaceadored]

the way that people disregard nancy’s grief in fic is my biggest pet peeve- like she didn’t break up with steve because she wanted to be with jonathan :) she broke up with him bc she was overwhelmed with grief from the death of her closest friend and couldn’t stand the fact that barb’s family were still wondering what happened to her - even going so far as to sell there house to pay murray to look into barb’s disappearance- Nancy broke up with Steve because he wanted to bury the trauma they had experienced and pretend to be normal teenagers. Nancy wasn’t saying that Steve’s love for her was bullshit. She was saying- look at us. Look at everything we’ve been through. Pretending like none of that happened, burying the grief I feel, that is bullshit.- She didn’t go looking for Murray with Jonathan because she had feelings for him and wanted to leave Steve for him. Jonathan, he validated her feelings and was willing to go against the NDA to give Barb justice and give Barb’s family peace. (Or as much peace that can come from at least knowing that they don’t have to wonder where their daughter is any longer- to know that in the least she is no longer suffering.) That was what was most important to Nancy. And being validated in those feelings and seeing that Jonathan could truly empathize with her grief after believing he had lost his brother and that he would be there for her and support her in doing what she believed to be the most important thing she could do- that inspired romantic feelings and led them to get together.

Some of y’all write her like she’s this heartless one dimensional person who just left Steve in the dust because she wanted another guy and that is a huge disservice to her character.

[fleursfairies]

made a uquiz 💪🏻💪🏻

[juicywizards]

what if you watched a show and it was so bad and you never got over it

[martyrbat]

well maybe if you look at bernie wrightson's frankenstein art youll calm down!

[inorheona]

wangxian x aun no beats

[stupid-puppycat]

Evil and fucked up agent32

[pinkeoni]

It’s funny how audience members view Mike as their underdog-average-straight guy who is a total nerd but got an awesome girlfriend anyway when the character they are actually looking for is Dustin Henderson

[livwritesstuff]

It’s uncharacteristically warm outside for late-winter in Hawkins, Indiana.

It’s 2004, and the whole entire Party is back in Hawkins to celebrate Jim and Joyce’s fifteenth wedding anniversary (it’s actually closer to their sixteenth by now, but they’ve all well and truly entered that phase of adulthood where planning things is next to impossible), and it’s the first time they’ve all been in one room since…honestly, Steve doesn’t even know when. Since Lucas’s wedding in ‘99, maybe.

Everyone is inside unwinding after dinner. Steve can hear them from where he’s sitting outside on the front deck gently rocking the porch swing Hop had installed years ago with one foot, a now-empty bottle resting on the unfinished pine floor by the other.

The front door of Jim and Joyce’s house quietly opens and Steve looks over as El steps onto the porch, closing the door behind her as soft as she’d opened it.

She pauses, her eyes turning wary as they slide off of him and onto the baby girl drifting asleep in his arms (his and Eddie’s littlest baby, Robbie – the older baby, Moe, who’s nearly three so not really a baby anymore, is inside still probably being doted on by all her aunts and uncles).

Even in her early thirties there are so many ways El is still just like the little kid Steve met back in 1984. At the same time though, she’s completely changed.

“Doin’ okay, Ellie?” he asks gently.

She nods.

“It’s getting loud,” El tells him, “Someone put on Jeopardy.” 

Yeah, that’ll do it these days – older and wiser they may all be, but any kind of trivia is still a vice for pretty much the entire Party.

“Well, you’re welcome to join us out here for as long as you like,” Steve replies.

He knows El is a little apprehensive around babies still, same as she is with cats and puppies – really anything small and vulnerable that might have been used against her many years ago, so he half-expects her to go back inside.

But she comes over and sits down next to him on the porch swing anyway and for a while, both of them are quiet.

Robbie exhales a satisfied snuffling noise that tells Steve she’s well and truly asleep.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees El’s hand twitch, like she was going to raise it but then stopped herself.

“Can I?” she asks tentatively.

“‘Course,” Steve tells her, and he watches as El runs the tips of her fingers over the wisps of soft hair on Robbie’s head.

“How old is she now?”

“Three months,” he replies, “Four in a week or so.”

“And she’s…she’s doing…good?” she asks, and there’s something so El in her tone, the same tone she always uses when she’s tip-toeing her way through something that, to her, is foreign territory.

“Mm-hm. She’s good.”

El nods.

“Your daughters are lucky,” she says, her brown eyes trained wistfully on Robbie even as she pulls her hand away. 

Steve thinks he knows what she’s getting at, but before he can ask, she keeps going.

“She’s gonna live her whole life never having to wonder if she’s loved or if she matters,” El says, “She won’t have to wonder because it’s always true. That’s special. I love Hop, and everything I have that is good is because of him, but…I still wish I could have had what you and Eddie are giving her too.”

And Steve knows exactly what she means because he feels the same way, because he thinks about it all the time, every time he thinks about his daughters and the way they are his entire world like he should have been to his own parents and yet never was, every time he thinks about himself and his father and his father’s father and knows it ends with him.

He’s not sure how to put any of that into words.

It’s El though, and he’s never really had to put those kinds of things into words with El, so he decides to just nod and settle back into the porch swing with his friend at his side and his daughter asleep in his arms and the faint noise of the people he loves most carried over them on the breeze of a warm winter evening.

[paladinmain]

💊 cradle pharmaceuticals