Be weird. Be colorful. Help random people. 💕

Daily affirmations

https://www.tumblr.com/suggestrogen/802217874472173568

(sorry no alt text, someone screenshot the posts from tumblr for me because i can’t view the posts without an account and they didn’t copy the content as text for me)

in my opinion if you tell people that the instance they’re on is bad without offering an account on the one you’re currently on, you’re part of the problem actually

ive been thinking up this story in my head about mental health, isolation, apathy, kindness and bits of how it’s like to suffer with BPD, and honestly I think I’m gonna intentionally end it unsatisfyingly.

the MC won’t get any resolution or salvation. won’t get better and won’t learn any lessons. the story happened and that’s all. there won’t be any real changes to any of the characters.

the reason is that that’s what it feels like to have mental issues.

this is unrelated to anything posted on fedi rn (aka this is not meta) but here’s a gentle reminder that if your antifascist opinions happen to include something along the lines of “death to all fascists” you are unfortunately also one

there’s a loud opinion people have of “but the problem with fascism is that it rejects any opinions that aren’t theirs!”, and while yes, that’s the definition of fascism, “death to all fascists” quickly becomes a slippery slope of repeatedly redefining what fascists are that everyone that don’t fully align with you become fascists to you too.

antifa should be about stopping fascists from gaining power– rightists allude to the thought that leftists were fascists for a reason (the whole “they’re turning kids woke” is partially a subtle message of “they only want leftists in this world”)

if you’re antifa you need to accept the definitional facts: every single possible opinion will always exist at every single point in time simultaneously. some of them are extremely bad. fascism aims to control what opinions get to be expressed.

prevent that from happening instead, because remember, you can’t kill an idea, even if you kill the believers

just got banned from breakfast for referring to nutella as “nutslop”

Foodslop

Something I don't think is talked about enough is what "getting out of a toxic community" actually looks like. People often have a tendency to identify someone as being associated with a toxic community, and then assume that they must be toxic as well.

But... it's more complicated than that. A lot of people, especially growing up, don't directly choose their communities; they're more likely to be determined by their circumstances. And that means that within even the most toxic communities, you are going to find resistance to that toxicity. People who might still have a lot of internalized problematic views, but who are already pushing back against it within that community, because it was never really a place for them to begin with.

But from the outside, if you look at it superficially, it's just going to look something like "oh that guy uses channer memes, so they must be toxic/bigoted/etc.". And while that's likely to be true in a very literal sense, it often also involves an unspoken assumption that they have chosen to be toxic or bigoted and that is where it goes wrong. Because you can't tell the difference that way between someone who chooses to be there, and someone who is trying to get out but can't just leave behind their social safety net.

So you need to look at it more closely. Do they regularly express discomfort with some of those things? Do they try to reclaim slurs? Do they seem rather unenthusiastic about their participation, as if they're just going through the motions? Because if you see any of those, there's a good chance that they're trying to get out, but they just don't know how.

And in practice, yeah, people from those sorts of communities are going to be toxic. They are going to be bigoted. Most of them probably do choose to remain in those communities, and keep behaving that way.

But you really do need to look out for the ones who don't.

mnyeh ~

@GrapheneOS is being threatened by French authorities for refusing to add backdoors and they're dealing with coordinated attacks in French media right now. They're pulling out of France entirely, moving all their servers, and fighting off a wave of bullshit one-sided reporting that makes them look like they're helping criminals.

They need us to fight back. Support them however you can, whether that's a dollar, sharing their story, pushing back on the garbage news coverage when you see it, or just telling someone you know about what's happening. All of it matters because they're drowning in attacks from governments and media and bad actors who want them gone.

This is the only Android OS that actually makes me feel like privacy isn't just marketing. They fight for us now they need us to fight for them.

The EU is allowing this, governments think they can just threaten developers into compliance, and if we stay quiet we're letting it happen. Show up for them in whatever way you're able to.

#grapheneos #Privacy #NoBackdoors #encryption #security #chatControl