Art challenge: Take your favorite movie and turn the poster into one of those Barbie movies
Sero: Being the responsible one is so funny. There are definitely people more responsible than me but they would rather have a decent life than care for a bunch of goblins so it's just a bunch of feral gremlins cared for by a slightly less feral gremlin.
Listen to me. Listen very carefully:
They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.
So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.
Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!
Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.
That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.
Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.
Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.
Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.
It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?
Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.
*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.
**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.
Bakugou: Listen up, the light of your lives is here
Kaminari: I don’t see Sero anywhere.
Kirishima, about his gym membership upgrade: There are many advantages to being an elite gymnast
Mina: That’s not what gymnast means but I would like to see where this is going
Kaminari: That’s gay
Kirishima: I’m unsure if that’s an insult or a compliment
Kaminari: It’s a statement of fact. Also, a compliment.
Bakugou: You’re a moron
Kaminari: I prefer the term ‘low on braincells’
You see a post like this? Where OP might hurt/kill themselves? You hit that button that I circled
Hit that.
Click Suicide or Self-harm Concern
Yes.
Fill in the rest of it, and hit submit. The "content you reported" will fill itself in
Tumblr will follow up and help them.
This could SAVE SOMEONE'S LIFE.
Michael Crichton’s idea that humans are inherently selfish and will look out for their own survival vs. Andy Weir’s idea that as social creatures humans will connect with and help others, fight.
Bakugou: To all the people who care about me, why?
Kirishima: I’m sitting right here with a PowerPoint.
Me online: Sitting in the corner, making posts, occasionally causing discourse.
Me IRL: I hate people and the world and down with the billionares and leave me alone
Wanna buy some gender? We got half genders, whole genders, genders across the spectrum, and genders not even known to humans yet.
497 posts