Am I the only one whose internet addiction started with my parents not letting me fucking go anywhere
This but I also had no friends so I wouldn’t have anywhere to go if I was allowed
this is a thing! danah boydis a researcher who has been studying social media for over a decade and in her 2014 book it’s complicated she argues that teenage social media “addiction” (which she also contends is like…..not actually a thing) is a result of the fact that “today’s teenagers have less freedom to wander than any previous generation” because “parents argue that these restrictions are necessary in an increasingly dangerous society, even though the data suggest that contemporary youth face fewer dangers than they did twenty years ago.”
as a result, teenagers are reclaiming these lost social spaces (which their parents and grandparents had in the form of mall hangouts, drive-in theaters, after school parking lots, etc) by using social media, where they can continue to “engage in crucial aspects of maturation: self-presentation, managing social relationships, and developing an understanding of the world around them,” aka stuff that teens are Supposed to be doing
If Cthulhu can be summoned by humans who are so far beneath it, why can’t humans be summoned by ants? The answer is they should be.
Well if a bunch of ants formed a circle in my house I’d certainly notice, try to figure out where they’d all come from, and possibly wreak destruction there.
That’s why knowing and correctly pronouncing the true name is so important to the ritual. Imagine how impossible it would be to not go take a look if the circle of ants started chanting your name.
And they’re like, you can’t leave because we drew a line made of tiny crystals – now you have to do us a favor.
And you’re like, let’s just see where this goes “yup, you got me… what’s the favor?”
and usually the favor is like, “kill this one ant for us” or “give me a pile of sugar” and you’re like… okay? and you do, because why not, it isn’t hard for you and boy is this going to be a fucking story to tell, these fucking ants chanting your name and wanting a spoonful of sugar or whatever.
And SOMEtimes you get asked for things you can’t really do, one of them, she’s like, “I love this ant but she won’t pay any attention to me, make me important to her” and you’re like… um? how? So you just kill every ant in the colony except the two of them, ta-da! problem solved! and the first ant is like *horrified whisper* “what have I done”
This is the best explanation for higher powers I’ve ever really heard.
For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better.
She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.
Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”
She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there.
You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.
Yeah, regarding that suicide hotline post I reblogged: I genuinely worry, with the number of mentally ill people on this site trying to live with and/or ease their mental illness, that some of these people are going to get tricked by Scientologist anti-psychiatry propaganda. I mean, that’s how cults lure people in; they pick people who feel there’s something missing or wrong with their lives and take advantage of them by claiming to have the solution to all their problems.
I’ve joked in the past about “What if the Church of Scientology got a Tumblr?” but there’s a part of me that’s worried that there are Scientologists on Tumblr trying to spread dangerous misinformation about mental health.
I hope that part of me is wrong.
UPDATE: So, uh, turns out a branch of $cientology technically HAS made Tumblr blogs. Several of them. If you see any blogs promoting a drug rehab facility called “Narconon”, please be aware that they ARE associated with the Church of $cientology, and they have a rather troubling history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narconon
I made a thread today to give some tips for all the protesters around the country going out and resisting, and I figured it would be helpful to share it here too. Be smart, safe, and radical.
My mom and I went to Ikea for the first time the other day (that was An Experience™), and I bought myself a knitted blanket in my favorite color for 25 dollars. And she got mad at me, saying “You could have made that!”
And she’s right. It’s a very simple garter stitch blanket. And I’m all for slow, self-reliant art. I could have made it – if I went out and bought the right sized circular needles, and then 40-50 dollars worth of yarn on the cheap end, and maybe not found the exact color I wanted to keep it in budget, and then spent weeks and weeks working on it (because I’m a lazy bum, you see).
I definitely could have done all that. But sometimes you just want a blanket, you know?
Man I have, off the top of my head, NINE unfinished knit blanket projects. Nine. That shit takes an unholy amount of time, and even the cheap yarn is way too expensive. Blankets are basically a more boring version of the sweater curse.
Like… you either: do a really boring stitch and it takes forever because it’s BORING; do one very long horizontal row that takes forever because it TAKES A LONG TIME to go through 150-200 stitches; do several columns that take a long time because they have to then be meticulously sewn up (I hate sewing knitwork. I just hate it.); or you do an interesting pattern or set of blocks that take a long time because they’re complicated.
Or I could just buy a blanket and spend my time on…literally any other project that I would not find boring.
The Knitter’s Curse is feeling bad about buying literally any knit item
TRUTH.
I knit and crochet, but I crochet much faster than I knit. I’m more than willing to spend time crocheting myself a blanket. But taking 4893243289 years to knit one? Nah fam you can keep that and watch me give Ikea my hard earned cash
You cant even buy the yarn to knit/crochet a blanket for what a machine-knit blanket costs…even with really cheap yarn
We Don’t Talk About my unfinished blanket projects.
vanhalenofficial 