9hyz

holly (she/they) • eighteen

[starlightacademia]

I wish I wasn't, such a dreamer. I've ruined this life for myself.

— N.M. Sanchez

[nickyandmikey]

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

[nickyandmikey]

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

[irrelevantlyvalid]

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

[chokolattejedi]

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

[executeness]

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it

[ramshacklefey]

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

[jbbartram-illu]

I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3

[eregyrn-falls]

Just to add to the pile: this was the cover of Springsteen’s break-through album Born to Run, in 1975:

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

There’s a lot more online if you search. They’re all pretty amazing. But the photographer is right, the one chosen for the album cover just pops.

[loveridden1999]

top 3 hobbies for young adults:

1. borrowing misery from future

2. carrying grief of the past

3. agonizing over the present

[rainbowgaez]

ok guys but imagine how hard it's gonna hit if something good ever happens again

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

© _ADwills

be kind to yourself and your creations ♡

[minotauri]

nothing makes me go "ooooh we are NOT the same" quite like reading some post about how people talk with their parents about their interests. what do you mean you told your father about stevebucky. what do you mean he asked further questions

[minotauri]

"i sent this article to my relative" "mom & i were discussing dialectical materialism" you navigate the world with such a different set of parameters than i

[ms-demeanor]

Ma'am. Why isn't your college paying you to teach these courses? You already seem more qualified and competent than your teacher...?

Funny story I have actually applied to teach Newspaper Production at this school AND I have applied to this school for a writing center position in the past.

Also folks I want you to know, sometimes all you need to teach at a community college is an associate's or relevant experience in the field! The one that always comes to mind for me is that I've seen like three schools hiring for radio broadcasting professors with "has an Associates in Radio Production" as the educational requirement.

But also seriously the answer is "I'm not educated enough" and the second serious answer is "nobody in the WORLD wants to see me running a classroom."

[ms-demeanor]

There is definitely a high humor value there, but students deserve better than what I would be able to offer them. I'm not built to answer questions on the fly and have a stable lesson plan, I'm built to turn up three weeks later with a twelve-thousand word answer to a question that five people had.

God. Someone please hire me to be a weird-ass research assistant. All I want is for people to give me questions to find answers to every day so that I can go root around in the dirt like a pig searching for truffles until I can emerge holding up something both valuable and gross.

[ms-demeanor]

any tips for getting through college in the middle of a depressive episode where i just want to lie down all the time?

Remember that there's no hard deadline for completing school, talk to your professors and the school administration about getting a medical withdrawal if you need it for this term, and (depending on the circumstances) see what you can do to dial it back and give yourself a lower-pressure environment.

It took me from 2004 to 2011 to get my BA because I spent a couple of those years being catastrophically depressed and failing a hell of a lot of classes. The school I'm at now *still* has the failed semester that I took in 2005 on the record, actually, because one of the things that I did was attend a couple of low-cost schools near me when I was having problems.

If you're at a 4-year school, talk to your adviser or counselor about taking a couple of terms off and take classes at a community college instead (if community college is more affordable - sometimes it isn't).

If you can't take a break by going to a CC for a while, see about taking some low-stress classes; you can take a whole term of electives if you want to, or you may be able to take a lower number of units or even defer a couple of semesters.

Depending on how depressed you are you may want to try to at least take a couple of pleasant, low-stakes classes for the next term or two just as motivation to get out of the house and go be among people and have a schedule - there's a hell of a lot to be said for taking an art or ceramics or science fiction or beer tasting class (all real things that at least some schools offer) to keep you in a healthier routine.

But also: You can 100% drop out and come back to all of this later. You don't have to get a degree right now and if it's too much to deal with taking care of yourself and passing classes and racking up debt at the same time, then take care of yourself first.

But also: do what you can to remember that almost all depressive episodes are short-lived and that you'll come out on the other side. Treat it like an illness because it is one. Get lots of rest, hydrate yourself and feed yourself, treat yourself carefully, exercise to the extent that you can, try to keep a regular sleep schedule, and spend time with people you care about.

[ms-demeanor]

Any tips or hacks on how to go about writing the introduction and the conclusion of an academic text? I have finished the body of the text but introductions and conclusions always stump me. The deadline isn't until october but I worry I will piss away the entire summer agonising over how to do this last damn thing.

The simplest advice is "tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em what you told 'em."

I like to start from an extremely straightforward position on writing introductions and conclusions. I'm writing a paper now about the US healthcare system and my placeholder introduction paragraph is "The US Healthcare system is bad for X, Y, and Z reasons and should be changed." My placeholder conclusion is "Now that I have illustrated that the US Healthcare system is bad in X, Y, and Z, ways, I hope we have all learned something and take A, B, and C steps to change it."

Basically I write out the most basic thing I want to say in each paragraph and then embellish it. Sometimes this will actually lead to restructuring the paper a bit as I organize paragraphs to make sure that X, Y, and Z are in the proper order.

I have more trouble with conclusions than I do with almost any part of a project, but one of the things that has helped me with more academic-y texts is recognizing that if you've done your job properly the reader should know why you're making the argument you're making so you don't have to have a rabble-rousing, inspiring conclusion, you can functionally just say "Hope that clears things up! Here are the implications I want you to leave this paper with and my policy suggestions for the future."

Intros are a little easier for me because I just see them as scene setting. Treat it almost like an abstract, if that helps. "This paper is about this subject, here is my opinion on this subject, here is a brief summary of the evidence that supports my opinion on this subject. Here are some considerations to keep in mind, and here is why I think you should agree with my opinion."

Depending on the norms for the subject your intro can also include a brief history of the scholarship around that subject, biographical matter about a person under discussion, or a short explication of theory. I personally love multi-paragraph intros that spend a while getting me up to speed, but I also read literary criticism recreationally so I may be a bit biased. I would definitely say to find some field-specific papers that you liked and found useful to read and see how they constructed their introductions and conclusions and take some cues on structure from them. You can even go sentence-by-sentence and break down what each sentence is saying in the conclusion of a paper you liked ("As you can see from the previous paragraphs on SUBJECT, there is ample evidence of THESIS. We have responded to counter-arguments by addressing ISSUE and OTHER ISSUE. Our findings support THESIS, and you should agree for REASONS.")

Actually you know what that's my advice to everyone having trouble with intros and conclusions: find some intros and conclusions that you like and turn them into mad libs because that's basically what they are. That's a really good way to practice seeing what parts of your paper are unique (to fit into the blanks) and to figure out the structure of an academic intro or conclusion (the frustrating bit that is difficult to write).

[ms-demeanor]

Wait, so you said that you can learn to trust others by building friendships, but how does one go about doing that? Wouldn't someone I don't know be creeped out or annoyed if I suddenly walked up and started talking to them?

Friendships are built of repeated low-stakes interactions and returned bids for attention with slowly increasing intimacy over time.

It takes a long time to make friends as an adult. People will probably think you're weird if you just walk up and start talking to them as though you are already their friend (people think it's weird when I do this, I try not to do this) but people won't think it's weird if you're someone they've seen a few times who says "hey" and then gradually has more conversations (consisting of more words) with them.

I cheat at forming adult friendships by joining groups where people meet regularly. If you're part of a radio club that meets once a week and you just join up to talk about radios, eventually those will be your radio friends.

If there's a hiking meetup near you and you go regularly, you will eventually have hiking friends.

Deeper friendships are formed with people from those kinds of groups when you do things with them outside of the context of the original interaction; if you go camping with your radio friend, that person is probably more friend than acquaintance. If you go to the movies with a hiking friend who likes the same horror movies as you do, that is deepening the friendship.

In, like 2011 Large Bastard decided he wanted more friends to do stuff with so he started a local radio meetup. These people started as strangers who shared an interest. Now they are people who give each other rides after surgery and help each other move and have started businesses together and have gone on many radio-based camping trips and have worked on each other's cars.

Finding a meetup or starting a meetup is genuinely the cheat-code for making friends.

This is also how making friendships at schools works - you're around a group of people very regularly and eventually you get to know them better and you start figuring out who you get along with and you start spending more time with those people.

If you want to do this in the most fast and dramatic way possible, join a band.

In 2020 I wrote something of a primer on how to turn low-stakes interactions with neighbors and acquaintances into more meaningful relationships; check the notes of this post over the next couple days, I'll dig up the link and share it in a reblog.

[ms-demeanor]

Very annoyingly I can't find the post. Some of that is covered in this post about affinity networks, but step-by-step here is how you make friends:

Be where people are. This can be online or in person, but you need to be in a social space around people in the same space frequently enough that you begin to recognize and get to know people. Maybe you are in a discord server for a game and you start to get to know names and avatars; maybe you go for a walk around your neighborhood and see people at their houses; maybe you go to the library and see the people there.

Exchange greetings. You might exchange a "Hi" the first time you meet someone passing them on the street, or you may wait to see them a few times before you greet them. But the first step toward being friends is saying hello (whether that's waving to a neighbor or greeting someone when they enter the chat)

Smalltalk. Smalltalk is a social script of exchanging trivial conversation about non-personal topics in order to pass a brief period of time together. Common subjects are weather, sports, local events, holidays, etc. If you're not sure how to initiate this a simple "How's your day going" is great; if you're not sure how to respond the answer should always be some variety of "pretty good, how about you?" If the other person brings up another subject ('how about this weather' 'did you catch the game' 'holidays are crazy') you respond with a polite and somewhat upbeat response on the same topic; you can continue in that vein and wait for the other person to introduce another topic or say goodbye, or you can introduce your own low-stakes topic. These are the conversations you might have with someone you've said hello to a few times while you are both waiting on a coffee order, or to someone you've seen a couple of times at the dog park, or someone who has showed up in the comments of a fic multiple times. This sort of conversation is about figuring out whether you want to get to know each other better, so it's kind of a behavioral test. It's assessing "can I have a pleasant, brief conversation with this person?" because people usually want to know if the answer to that question is "yes" before they share more details of their lives.

Slightly more personal conversations. Once you've seen the same barista twenty times and said hi, or you've run into the same person at your gym every other day for a month, or you've played on the same team as someone in your server for a while, you can increase the intimacy of the conversation. The way that you do this without seeming creepy is that YOU share something slightly more personal than smalltalk and allow the other person to guide the conversation from there. So this could be "hey, how's it going?" "Good! I had a nice conversation with my sister today, she got a new job. How are you?" (for example) and the response could be something like "Oh hey that's great, I'm good, what kind of job" or the response could be "Great, my roses are blooming" or the response could be something like "enjoying the weather." If the person speaking responds to your sharing of personal information with a request for more information (asks about your sister) or by sharing some of their somewhat more personal information (roses are blooming) they might be interested in continuing to gradually share more information. If they respond with more smalltalk, they probably aren't interested in becoming closer friends (though you should still continue to say hi and be polite and ask them how they're doing; maybe at some point they'll share something with you and it'll be your turn to decide if you want to get to know them better).

Deepening personal conversations. Once you've seen someone several times, you will begin to know little things about them. You will find out if they have pets or a partner, learn things about their job or their parents, and they will learn things about you. If you want to become friends with them, ask them about these things and offer information in return. Start casually and don't pry for more information, and be sure to share about yourself as well. Eventually you will get to the point that you can have a comfortable conversation on topics of shared interest for at least a few minutes.

Plan a time to hang out with this person intentionally. Maybe you've been randomly crossing paths in the server with this person for a few months and like them pretty well - that's a good time to ask if they want to get together for a planned game. Maybe you've been seeing this person at the dog park on random weekends; this is a good time to say "I'm going to bring Buster to the park on Saturday at about two, are you going to be around?" If they agree to meeting up for the thing, they are interested in continuing to develop the friendship. If they don't want to meet up then continue at the same level of interaction as before and perhaps later on down they line they'll ask you if you want to plan a meetup.

Begin to meet regularly. If the initial meetup went well, do it again. Don't make it a rigid scheduled weekly thing but periodically ask if they'd be interested in meeting up specifically like you did the first time. Once you have hung out on purpose a few more times you've got two choices: set a regular meetup, or hang out elsewhere.

Setting up a regular meetup is the relatively casual option here; it keeps things in the same location and keeps the context of the friendship the same while still increasing interactions and intensifying the relationship. You can have perfectly good, if somewhat casual friends, who you see regularly in one place and rarely outside of that place.

Hanging out in a new place changes the context of the relationship; suggest a hangout in a place that makes sense for the mutual interests you've learned over the previous months of getting to know the person (perhaps you've been meeting up in the library for a weekly crafting event and you've learned you both like scifi; ask if they want to grab coffee after the event and talk about a book or movie you both like. perhaps you've been hanging out and having fun conversations in a fandom-specific server; ask if they want to hang out in a private chat and talk about a non-fandom topic).

Do this over and over forever. Eventually it stops feeling forced and scripted, and the more you do it the better you get at it.

Some tips:

Most of what people mean when they say "creepy" is "overly personal" or "social interactions happening before both parties are comfortable with it." It transgresses the normal script and it makes people uncomfortable. That's why it's worthwhile to take things slow and keep things casual as you're getting to know someone. Sometimes people are *not* going to want to get to know you better and that's okay, just don't push for more intimacy once you know the other person isn't returning that same desire for increased closeness. If they never talk to you about anything more serious than small talk or casual interests, and change the conversation when you bring up personal stuff, they don't want to get closer (maybe they will at some point, but if you keep things chill they can make that decision if they get more comfortable.)

People like to talk about themselves, and if you give them the opportunity to talk about themselves, people will largely think well of you. Pay attention to what people are saying and ask them questions based on the topics that interest them.

People don't like to *only* talk about themselves, or talk deeply about themselves with people who they feel are strangers, so there has to be some level of exchange. Share information about yourself that mirrors the level of information that people share with you; if you want to know more about someone you can *gradually* begin to share more about yourself over time but don't over-share deeply personal information if most of your conversations have been casual.

Most friendships are pretty positive for the first several months at least; bringing up negative emotions with very casual friends might cause them to turn away from you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't *have* negative emotions, or that you should never, ever talk about them, but until you know each other better it might be best to keep your negative motions at the "had a rough day at work, glad to be off, how are you" level rather than "my boss is a raging asshole who fired my coworker for something stupid" level.

It takes forever! It can be very stressful! I do seriously recommend seeing if you can become friends with people in regularly scheduled group hangouts if you can swing it because it replicates the way we form friendships as children - frequent proximity and increasing intimacy because of time shared together - instead of the "this feels like dating" feeling of trying to make friends with people you see occasionally.

Anyway sorry that's a lot good luck.

[fouroddapples]

This is incredibly helpful, holy shit.

In case it helps anyone else, I’m gonna try to add something I got from a book on social skills (it’s by Daniel Wendler, written by an autistic person who’s learned the rules for autistic people who haven’t yet, highly recommend!) on the flow of conversation.

If you’re like me, maybe you struggle with infodumping and talking too much and forgetting to ask questions. If people don’t share as enthusiastically as you without direct prompting, you’ll accidentally dominate a conversation. Don’t worry, I get it! I thought, I’ll share what I want to share and they’ll share what they want to share, easy—right?

As I’ve had to learn…nope. 95% of neurotypical people (and a lot of neurodivergent people too!) won’t feel comfortable sharing without being invited to.

So, that “natural” back-and-forth of neurotypical conversation goes something like this:

You talk for a little bit. The less you know this person, the shorter your individual “blocks” of conversation should likely be in most cases. So if you’re at small talk stage, you say maybe a sentence or two; if you know them better you can get away with more.

Then it’s on you to pass the ball back. Your job here is to communicate “hey, your turn, I’m interested”, and to give them a cue of what to talk about so they don’t feel stranded and like they have to “come up with” an answer.

Not giving any cues is where awkward silence comes from, and it’ll feel to them like you’re communicating “I want out of this conversation!” So if your conversations with people often awkwardly peter out, check if you’re giving them a cue every time you finish talking!

There are, broadly speaking, two types of cues:

Invitations: these are questions, or otherwise direct prompts for the other person to speak.

They’re very direct cues, and they’re the easiest for the other person to respond to. That means that the less you know someone, the more you’ll likely rely on invitations (but not exclusively! That makes people feel interrogated. 2-3 questions in a row are fine, after that you might want to throw in an inspiration or two to break it up and be less intimidating—more on that below!)

Try to always keep invitations at the same level of intimacy as the current conversation—don’t talk about the weather and then ask where this stranger grew up and what the weather was like there. These are such direct cues that it’s inherently awkward for the other person to dodge them, so make extra sure your invitations aren’t uncomfortable.

Inspiration: this is essentially referencing things that the other person can easily latch on to for their response.

These are more indirect cues, and a little trickier in my experience. Essentially, you want to make sure that you end your bit of the conversation with something that’s deliberately easy to respond to—avoid ending on something that’s very niche that people can’t relate to or that’s very unique to you. If you want to mention something like that, you can, but tack something more general on after as inspiration (or just end on a question). Inspirations are still cues, they’re still meant to give the other person an idea of what to respond with, otherwise the conversation will feel awkward and unwelcoming!

What the other post mentioned re: offering slightly more personal information of your own often falls under this category. For example, if you’re talking about the weather as in the first example, but you mention where you grew up and what the weather was like, that can be inspiration for the other person to also talk about where they’re from!

But, unlike with a question, if they don’t want to share that information they can usually dodge it without having to make it extremely obvious that that’s what they’re doing. They can ask you something else, or shift the topic, and it might not be super subtle but it allows plausible deniability, so they’re not forced to either a) answer a question they don’t want to, or b) expose their discomfort (which is personal in itself!)

The more you know someone, the more you’ll likely automatically rely on inspiration to keep conversation flowing. That’s because you two have context for each other, something you say might easily have a bunch of things they could use as inspiration just because of past conversations you’ve had or things you already know about each other—anything can be a cue if there’s context! But with people you don’t know well, you’re gonna want to be a bit more mindful of it.

Generally, every time you talk in a one-on-one conversation, you want to leave some kind of cue for the other person to respond to!

Don’t worry too much about it though—if they want to talk to you, they’ll deliberately look for inspiration. If you throw the ball badly, they’ll still try to run to catch it anyway! It doesn’t have to be perfect.

But the less you know someone, the less you’ll be willing to “run” (because hey, that’s a lot of mental effort for a stranger who hasn’t proven they’re worth it, for all you know they might be an asshole!) and the more intentional you want to be about giving cues and making the ball as easy as possible to catch.

I’m very much still learning to “practice what I preach” here, but thinking of it this way has helped me enormously, so perhaps it’ll help someone else too!

[ms-demeanor]

This is so fucking funny

[ms-demeanor]

The first time I remember feeling suicidally depressed because I was certain I'd never have any friends and would die alone because I didn't know how to talk to people and everyone who acted like my friend was actually doing so in order to make fun of me or get me to do things for them was when I was ten years old.

That continued on until I was eighteen and happened into a scene that was full of accepting diverse, neurodiverse, and queer people that was A) quite welcoming and B) met once a month and C) had extremely clear social rules.

Once I found that group, I got a lot better at making friends and being able to act like a normal-ish person who could do things like hold jobs and talk to my partner's relatives without immediately coming off as someone dangerously unhinged.

To this day I have problems with trusting it when people are nice to me (because it always feels like they're setting me up for a public humiliation, something that happened multiple times in my childhood and something that made me very dearly want to grow up to be Carrie) and I have problems with overwhelming new people with too much information and too-aggressive friendliness.

So this is a guide written by someone who has had to painstakingly learn from the ground up how to trust people and make friends without letting myself get too hurt too often and without scaring people away constantly by coming on too strong.

[ms-demeanor]

The Point of Affinity Networks -or- Why picking up groceries for your neighbor is actually useful as a form of direct action

So in the notes and replies and tags of some of my recent posts I’ve been seeing a few people saying “What’s the point of getting groceries for my neighbor if I’m about to lose access to life-saving medical care? Why should I help the terrible old jackass down the street by lending him my tools if he’s just going to vote away my right to access reproductive care?” and.

A few years ago my spouse was setting up a volunteer radio and emergency response group and he started reading a prepper blog that I *hated* because it was taking the concept of community-building and making it Machiavellian. This blog was talking about why you should help out neighbors who you knew to be Mormon because they were likely to have good survival supplies, why you should have your kids volunteer to mow the lawns of the elderly folks at church so that more people knew you and liked your family.

And it just felt so *shitty.* And I ended up ranting to my spouse about it because it was shitty! “It’s, like, weaponizing kindness or something! Just be good people, it’s so fucking weird that you’re trying to get on your neighbor’s good side in case of the apocalypse!”

Guys. Picking up groceries for your neighbor is getting on their good side in case of the apocalypse.

I’ve recently moved to a new neighborhood. I walk my dog here about four times a day.

I have adopted four surrogate mothers in the last two months. There are several elderly white ladies who check in with me about how my husband is doing and talk to me about how cute my dog is.

You know who’s going to be a good person to be friends with if I lose my job, or if I need someone to watch my dog because my husband is hospitalized, or if I need some cash to buy food because it’s the end of the month?

FOUR ELDERLY WHITE LADIES WHO THINK I’M JUST THE SWEETEST THING.

You know who is probably going to have access to prescription medication if I lose my health insurance? FOUR. WEALTHY. ELDERLY. WHITE. LADIES.

And I hate that I have to explain it that way because I didn’t go out and be like “muahahaha, I’ll befriend Bertie and she’ll let me use her air compressor if I’ve got a flat” I went out and was like “Hey I like your rabbit and it’s nice to meet you and that package looks heavy, can I help you carry it inside?” and I was like “Laurel, it’s good to see you, how are the kids; oh Otto needs his meds from the vet, do you want me to go grab them tonight? I’ve got to pick up dog food anyway.”

And look, this is a long con.

Could I flip Diane into lying to her GP to get me an inhaler today? No. But I can walk around the neighborhood with my exclusively black wardrobe and a “defund the police” tee shirt and then maybe those scary Atifas on the teevee don’t look like a faceless horde, they kind of look like Alli - you know, the one with the pink hair and the little white dog - from down the way who crocheted you a potholder because she had some extra yarn.

So here’s a simple set of reasons why it’s a good idea to befriend your neighbors and do shit like offer to walk their dogs, pick up their groceries, water their plants when they’re out of town, or provide emergency childcare:

BURST BUBBLES - I think people are frequently less ideologically isolated than the news likes to make out but nonetheless I look pretty weird to my neighbors and they look pretty weird to me. Offering to do shit like pick up their groceries humanizes you, and therefore people who are like you, to them. Also if you are dealing with elderly folks you MAY be dealing with people whose only source of contact with the outside world right now is Fox News and YouTube and it is MUCH better that they talk to you than that they sit there and watch Hannity for another hour or get into Qanon.

BUILD A SOCIAL SAFETY NET - Look, I couldn’t get Laurel to get me an inhaler right now, but if I knocked on her door with a broken arm she’d drive me to the hospital. That hasn’t been true of most of the places I’ve lived because I haven’t known the neighbors as well. And that is kind of a huge deal that I think a lot of people overlook. YEAH, getting to know your neighbors isn’t going to get your health insurance back but it’s going to make you WAY less stressed spending five hours waiting at the free clinic because Bertie is making sure your dog has food and water and can go for a short walk. “I don’t have a car and I can’t afford an ambulance and the buses aren’t running” - honey, try to make friends with your neighbors. Most neighbors who are even vague, wave-as-you-pass-by-on-the-street neighbors won’t begrudge you a ride to the hospital; someone you’ve picked up groceries for will DEFINITELY drive you to the hospital.

REDUCE THE IRON GRIP OF INDIVIDUALIST CAPITALISM - The HOA here is kind of a giant dick about weeds and yard management and what this means is that I bought a hedge clipper. What this also means is that my new neighbors next door do not need a hedge clipper because as soon as they moved in I was like “hey, welcome, I live next door, it’s great to meet you - if you ever need anything let me know; I’ve got gardening supplies and power tools and stuff or if you need a furniture dolly or anything, just ask. Have some banana bread, and a great day.” Bertie does have an air compressor. She does let people use it if they need to; this means that I do not have to buy an air compressor. You’ve got some free boxes because you just finished moving? Put ‘em out front so that someone else doesn’t have to go buy boxes. Laurel gave me a bag of pears from her tree, I gave a set of dog stairs that my dog hates to Andie, guess where I got a free motherfucking grill?

LEARN AND TEACH COMMUNITY SELF RELIANCE - If Bertie and Laurel and Andie and Diane and Susan know they can call me to come snake their toilets or fix their computers they don’t have to call out for that. Bertie is teaching me about not killing plants and how to garden in Las Vegas, Andie is willing to share her dumbbell set, etc, etc. You know that this sort of thing is really great for? Exchanging numbers with your neighbors. You know why you want your neighbors to have your number? So they don’t call the fucking cops on you for a noise complaint or report you to the HOA because they know you well enough to just call you instead.

RADICALIZE YOUR NEIGHBORS - Look, buddy, they aren’t going to listen to your ideas about a bright, better future if they don’t fucking know you. NONE of these folks are about to go do jail support with me, or host someone who needs a safe place to stay for an abortion, however ALL of them are a lot more open to the idea of mutual aid than they were three months ago and I’ve got one completely fucking flipped on her stance about providing housing to the homeless and she’s stopped calling the cops on people sleeping on benches in the park. Changing people’s minds sucks. It takes forever. It’s shitty, boring, unexciting work that puts you in contact with people you probably disagree with pretty strongly. It feels like you’re not accomplishing anything. But goddamnit if teaching ONE of your neighbors to be compassionate to unhoused people, at least enough to not call the cops on them, works even ONE time and someone doesn’t go to jail one time, or doesn’t get their belongings trashed one time, then you’re doing good fucking work.

So no, friend, picking up groceries for your neighbor isn’t going to save the ACA or protect abortion access - not in any direct, meaningful, noticeable way. But it might save you the cost of an ambulance ride. It might save someone else from getting arrested. Hell, if you teach your neighbors not to call the cops it might keep someone from getting shot. And that’s worth it.

SOME CAVEATS:

Don’t feel bad if you can’t build these kinds of affinity networks or if people don’t respond to you; some neighborhoods just aren’t like that, some people are just standoffish.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t do this kind of thing because of social anxiety or limited mobility. It’s okay, friend, not everybody can go out and meet people.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t do this kind of thing because it is unsafe for you to do so. Some people live among virulent racists, some people’s only neighbors are raging homophobes. Don’t endanger yourself, don’t feel bad for keeping yourself and your family safe if reaching out to your neighbors makes you a target.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t do this for any reason. It’s difficult and often unpleasant and you’re not obligated to, this post isn’t to guilt-trip anybody into going out to radicalize their neighbors, it’s an explanation of why small instances of interpersonal action can be a useful longterm strategy and shouldn’t be handwaved as pie-in-the-sky UwU lefty pipedreams.

[doomhamster]

Also, if YOU are relatively privileged, don’t underestimate this as a way to help others on a small scale. Most people don’t like to ask help of strangers, and a lot of minority folks are justifiably wary of doing so, especially when it means they may have to reveal personal things… but if it’s someone they’ve talked to before, even just to chat about dogs or the weather or the new houses they’re putting up nearby, the threshold is that much lower.

[feotakahari]

This is the most I’ve ever distrusted Ms Demeanor’s worldview and attitudes towards other human beings, and I read that Ms Demeanor post about how not to get caught committing arson.

[ms-demeanor]

I mean, it’s not like I’m walking around with Tiny Bastard twirling my mustache and going “how can I trick people into having an affinity for me” but when I saw an old lady cutting palm fronds by herself I offered to help and when I had duplicates of books and spare boxes from the move I put them outside with a sign that said “free!” and I offered to let the neighbors use my hedge trimmer because they’ve got a huge rosebush that they didn’t plant so this is the exact same kind of automatic “hey dude, that was an awesome set, it was really great to play with you, I like your vibe and if you ever need pins or whatever hit me up, I’ll make ‘em at cost and I’d love to play with you again sometime” network building that I do with my band that organically grows out of talking after shows but when people specifically *SAY* “what’s the use of this? Why bother getting groceries for your neighbors? how is this supposed to help me if I might lose my healthcare?” like, yeah, of course I explained it in terms of self-interest.

(Please remember that I’ve been a Libertarian in the past and have seen this exact kind of self interest used to explain away altruism and dismiss it all as personally motivated greed and I call bullshit on that entire philosophy)

like, I mean, ok, have you read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography? He spins this type of favor exchange out into how you get people to give you wagons for the revolutionary war. This is an old and uncontroversial form of coalition building that is used by churches, fraternal organizations, and intramural softball teams.

And I know it sounds like exactly the machievellian shit I was explaining at the start of the post! That’s why that prepper blog bugged me! It seems intuitive to me that you should do things for people because it’s the right thing to do!

I let Andie use my trash cans last month because hers were full due to a new roommate moving in. I’m thinking about asking her if I can put a trash bag in her garbage bins this week because I’ll be out of town on trash day and won’t be able to take my garbage out. When her dog got out of the yard a few months ago I chased him down and took him back to her. She was throwing out her grill and didn’t mind if I took it out of her trash, my dog hated the dog stairs but she has an even tinier dog who might like them! 

I gave Bertie two cases of dog food when it turned out that Tiny Bastard needed a special diet; that’s why I thought of her when I needed someone to check on the dog while I was away from the house for eight hours.

I live in a new city where I’ve got no family and haven’t met any of my friends in person and have only my anti-mask landlords to call if my car breaks down and I need a ride. I’m trying to make friends and my normal method of “go hang out at a hacker space” won’t work because of the pandemic, so neighbors it is.

And it’s not like I went “i’ll specifically target old white ladies as the most advantageous kind of friend because they have money and are manipulable” but there’s one specific group that walks around my neighborhood with small dogs a lot more than anyone else.

It’s not that deep. 

(and I will take any teeny, tiny excuse to talk about why calling the cops on unhoused people is bullshit and why housing first programs are the most effective and compassionate way for governments to address homelessness so that’s fair game; I’ll rant about that in the grocery store. I’ll rant about that at the gym. So I will absolutely rant about that while I’m holding a bag of dogshit and still wearing my PJs during my morning walk so that is not at all unusual; you can change a lot of people’s minds about helping the homeless when you share evidence with them because most people have never actually THOUGHT about homelessness)

Besides, if there IS anything motivating me to be like this it’s not the hope that I’m going to be able to get someone to get me a cheap Z-Pak or spot me some cash for rent, it’s my crushing, overwhelming need for approval.

(and the way you avoid getting caught for arson is obviously not to do arson; that would be illegal and we don’t condone getting caught for crimes here)

[night-the-starfish]

Let your colors shine, markers and gouache.

[bettyrightnow]

ever since i was a little girl i knew i wanted to put no effort into my appearance

[hopeless-eccentric]

humiliating to be attracted to a conventionally attractive person. I thought I was a more sensitive and refined pervert than this

[shamebats]

"it's just stress" oh thank god, it's just the silent killer that slowly kills you, perfectly harmless, no need to worry

[helicalsymmetry]

8 hours of decent sleep will have you thinking things like 'i am a beautiful horse and i will never die'

[helicalsymmetry]

2 hours of bad sleep will have you thinking things like 'i am a stranded whale and i need to be covered in dynamite in an ill-advised attempt to clear the beach'

[status-quo-hater]

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

[status-quo-hater]

Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM