I Am Confusion @aesthetic-indy - Tumblr Blog

we'd be spared a lot of gifted kid discourse if some of you would just admit to yourselves that you grew up thinking you were superior to everyone else and now you're deeply insecure after realizing that you're not actually all that special

slopaganda

everyone in the notes like "that's what we were already saying" missed the point here entirely bc what im getting at is not just being disappointed in yourself for not living up to expectations. it's the unspoken part where "not living up to expectations" = "doing as well as people i always looked down on, working jobs that i thought were beneath me, still feeling bitter about it years later bc i havent let go of my elitism and i still kinda think i inherently deserve better"

slopaganda

i like that all the replies are assuming that im a jealous normie taking cheap shots at oppressed nerds bc i wish i was as special as them, but i regret to inform u that the reason i know all this is bc i grew up in gt programs and am speaking for my past self and a number of people ive known lmao. you can all get mad at me for pointing it out but you're lying through your teeth if you say this never happens.

anywhomst i said this bc i find it absurd that grown adults (yall are clowns for acting like im addressing children in this post lol) will spend so much time uncritically commiserating over how hard we supposedly had it, when we all know damn well that we had it the best of everyone in the whole system because it's set up for our benefit in particular. we never give this much attention to people who got written off as worthless from day one, people who slipped through all the cracks, people who can never complain that the system gave them false expectations because it just always treated them like shit. the fact is that gifted programs get higher funding, better teachers, smaller class sizes, greater opportunities. regardless of your personal baggage with the whole thing, it is absolutely undeniable that we were materially privileged, in ways that often overlap with class and race. this privilege is rarely ever acknowledged, or when it is, it's accompanied by a torrent of sob stories that downplay the reality of it. ultimately though, you could not have been "gifted" unless you had un-"gifted" people to be compared to, whether you did so consciously or not. some of you are still comparing themselves to them years on.

mayhaps this was worded inflammatorily but it's very cringe of u all refuse to think past your main character syndrome for just one second. like im sorry you had a hard time coping with real life lmao i did too ive been there i get. but nowhere did i say this is anyone's own fault so save the traumadumping for your therapist. my point is, if youre well into your 20s and you still identify with the intelligence tests you took in elementary school, it's time to get some fucking perspective.

kendallroy-deactivated20210425

people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”

kendallroy-deactivated20210425

i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today

themself

this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them

westenra

this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?

lunaescribe

You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist.

When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective.

No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream.

A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’

You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions.

I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior.

I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are.

bobbimorses

your honor my client is a creep, he’s a weirdo, but what the hell is he doing here? he doesn’t belong here

ihavemovedyay-blog

You rarely see skinny girls stand up for fat girls. I feel like most skinny girls are more concerned with proving that skinny shaming is on the same level as fatphobia and that they aren’t fatphobic or that skinny privilege isn’t a thing eventhough skinny is seen as the default and they benefit heavily from it (they have a hard time understanding that fatphobia is institutional and skinny shaming isn’t)

laxsara-deactivated20210802

the meaning of life is summed up in the story elmer bendiner tells about how when he was a pilot the second world war, his plane was hit with a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from the nazi forces but the crew survived. and how everyone was saying it was a miracle until they investigated the shells that got in the fuselage and found there was no explosive charges in any of them. in one they found a note scribbled in czech, written by the person who had been forced to manufacture the shells, and it just said ‘this is all we can do for you now’.

laxsara-deactivated20210802

every time i see someone acting tough online about how harm reduction is pointless and in some convoluted way worse than doing nothing i think about that person in some soul-destroying nazi factory in occupied czechoslovakia removing all of the explosive charges from their anti-aircraft shells and writing a note that they must have known would probably never be read, just to say ‘this is all we can do for you, and we’re going to do it’. they are trying to make us kill you and we refuse. i do think that maybe it’s all going to be okay.

decaffeinatedvoidwombat

*sits down*

dont you think its weird. dont you think its weird that the space race last time was two of the biggest powers in the world. and now its a handful of rich men. dont you think its weird they can afford that. dont you think its bad that rich men can afford the same things as the government.

dont you think its weird that while the world is suffering and poverty is everywhere, where there's wars and climate change and human pain and homelessness. the same month I've watched people die on the news from unbearable heat and unprecedented flooding. that a rich handful of men are going to space, causing more carbon emissions. dont you think its weird that instead of putting their vast amount of money to use for good they're using it to find a way off the planet theyre destroying.

dont you think its really fucking weird.

lunah-goodbye

hybridsheart

hi i just want everyone to know that i will never ever EVER be angry with anyone for not replying to my texts even though you’re visibly online and reblogging/posting. i understand that holding a conversation takes a lot more energy and effort than scrolling and posting and that’s 100% okay. take care of yourself first. the whole idea that you HAVE to reply to someone when you’re online is toxic and makes mentally ill people feel as though they are bad friends just because they can’t always reply within minutes.

pocasu

the japanese government has approved the revision of ALL jp textbooks scheduled to be released starting next year (2022) that state dokdo is japanese territory illegally* claimed by koreans. furthermore, they've outright eradicated any prominent mention of comfort women.

they are even utilizing the tokyo olympics for their propaganda, including dokdo under the japanese map for their promotions. the ioc is letting this pass due to the massive amounts of funding they receive from the jp government.

we cannot let this pass. the japanese government's aim is to erase their crimes without a single word of apology. they have already half achieved this through global soft power and covering the ears of the new generation. fighting against this NOW**, and for generations afterwards is the way to hold our rightful place.

*you dense bitch, how can it be illegal when dokdo has always belonged to korea? it is closest to OUR peninsula. furthermore, if japan claims dokdo, they will also gain control of the waters close to korea, which is another political can of worms I will not discuss here.

**activists of previous generations have already been up against right wing jp propaganda bs for literal DECADES.

birthdaypigeon

could u imagine if ppl talked about catholicism the same way they talked about like… indigenous ppl’s religions….

birthdaypigeon

girl in horror movie holding a bible open: “according to legend, a mob tortured a half-man, half-god, and nailed him to a wooden cross, leaving him to starve to death. But days later, on this very night, they found he had clawed his way out of the grave. Now those who believe lie in wait for him to rise again, To honour him, they have weekly gatherings where they chant and sing, and at the end of it they eat his flesh and blood.”

girl’s friend: “wow.. thats so creepy…”

horror movie jock: “it’s only a myth, don’t worry”

howieabel

“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions–poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed–which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”

— Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

socialistsephardi

thetearsofunfathomablesadness

mutuals do this

a-method-in-it

I am dead serious: If you are a Walmart employee, at any level and in any store — like if you are a high school kid with a part time job stocking shelves — message me any question you have about unions. Like ask me “What’s a union” if you want. I will explain it to you. I am a grievance chair for a white collar union whose workplace only unionized within the last five years and whose management fought as every step of the way, but in the end we fucking won. It can be done, and I can tell you how.

yorkshirereaper

Rb to kill wal mart

notanothercashiercomplaints

Unionizing is our wet dream I promise you.

vbartilucci

I like how it’s described as a union could “cripple American Capitalism” when more precisely it’s just that a union would be so powerful as to force WalMart (or any other company) to pay their workers like human beings. That’s not going to break Walmart. They’ll barely notice.

They’ve successfully convinced us that the unions are the greedy monsters. For so many years, the companies have painted unions as “we want you to pay janitors three million dollars a year and if you don’t we’ll set your stores on fire”.

But it’s more like “We want you to take an almost imperceptible fraction of your bountiful profits and use it to make your employees’ live marginally better, and maybe give them medical benefits, y’know, so they don’t die”.

Big companies did not stop hiring ten year olds to work in coal mines because they just woke up one day and said “my god, we’re monsters”. They did it because their workers stood together and said “really, enough of this crap”.

Companies are not going to give people raises unless it’s economically necessary that they do so. Anything they can do to lower their expenses, and raise their profits, they are going to do. And no one person can stop them.

But thousands of people, millions of people? Better chances.

moonybyte

To anyone that wants to claim it wouldn’t work:

Just another reminder that Walmart Germany was a spectacular fail because of ver.di (which is a national service trade union that has it’s control over almost all trade and service companies in Germany) among other things.

Like, ver.di essentially came up to the CEO of Walmart Germany and was like “Hi, welcome, we wish you the best and that we can work together well :)” and the dude was like “hahaha no” and tried to pull the american concept here so ver.di pulled out a list of all the breaches of german law that Walmart was doing (underpaying workers, trying to avoid paying health care by using part-timers, trying to be open for more than 80 hours per week, firing people on short notice without warning or exit payments, etc) and long story short, they got some massive hefty fines for it. They also set up a list of demands for the workers and organized national strikes to push them through, making the employees of 85 hypermarkets neatly stand in front of the store doors with signs, whistles and chants (and certainly not the “Wallmart! Wallmart!” chant). In the end, that plus other things caused them to bail after 9 years with a gigantic loss (almost a billion just from sales) from one of the best retail markets in the world.

So all those issues like “no healthcare” or “work full-time and need food stamps” or “work on sundays and holidays” and shit? Unions are there to set their foot down against that for you. They are there to keep you safe from the corps wrath while fighting for your rights.

Cause if you, an individual, complain, they just fire you and laugh about it. A union is a collection of hundreds up to MILLIONS of people, supported by lawyers, going against employers for you.

zvaigzdelasas

In Denmark, due to union negotiations & refusal to work for slave wages, the McDonald’s basic pay comes out to about $20 US / Hour. The big mac there costs about 60 cents more.

veteranmortal

Actually crippling capitalism is good and cool anyway

parlezvousladybug

Reminder than Walmart won’t even be paying time and a half during thanksgiving and Black Friday to their employees. They only give them a DISCOUNT On two specific days. Shit pay and their only “perk” is to give the money back to Walmart by shopping there.

Fuck Walmart. Unionize. Burn the waltons down.

lnfini-deactivated20230930

so there was a shooting that happened at 3 spas in Atlanta that killed 8 people, six of which were asian women. the articles i was going to link had pictures of the shooter, which i am not going to spread, but this can be easily validated with a google search.

here are links to donate. i'm very tired.

Help support Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs by donating or sharing with your friends.

From funds to help struggling businesses to community-enrichment organizations.

other asian americans feel free to drop their donation links too. mine is in my blog description. thanks

pakchoys

pages from my one of my A level sketchbooks :D a5 is one of my fave sizes to work on

mysharona1987

scholarlyapproach

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO CEREAL!!!

Listen in the past the poor have had to improvise cheap food the rich never wanted as a means to survive. And over the many years of innovation made the food taste good until eventually the rich where like: “Oh hay you actually like that garbage? Why on earth would you like it?” Then they try it, love it, start buying it, and then drive the price up so much it becomes a luxury good.

They do this and its devastating, the food typically never becomes affordable again. It don’t matter how cheap the foo dis to produce, it doesn’t matter if there is almost no meat on the bone or its super difficult to eat and messy. Once the poor discover how to make some bit of cheap food taste good, the rich take it away via driving the price of it up.

THEY DID THIS TO RIBS.

Ribs were garage meat. Just look at them, there is hardly any meat on the bone, you have to eat them by hand usually, and they are messy. They where an undesirable cheap source of junk meat. But the poor being the poor made them taste good. (Because they don’t have much to choose from.) The rich discovered the meals the poor made with them and decided they liked ribs too. People discovered they could sell a few ribs to rich people and make way more money then selling lots of ribs to poor people and the price was driven up.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO CEREAL!!!

askmace

They did the same to brisket. You used to be able to get brisket for less than a dollar a pound, which meant you could get a twenty pound brisket fairly cheaply. And then you smoked it, sliced it, and had meat for weeks if not a full month. And it was tasty. I grew up eating brisket at least once a month because my family could afford it.

It was a cheap meat because no rich person looks at the dangly part of the neck of a cow and goes ‘ooh, that looks tasty!’.

But then Food Network started showcasing things like barbecued brisket. Rich people started showing up at places that weren’t just Rib Crib to get their barbeque. And the price of brisket went up. A lot.

I regularly see it for over five dollars a pound in stores now. And while yeah, that might not seem like a lot when you’re talking only a pound or two of meat, brisket is normally sold in ten to twenty pound sizes. It’s become completely unaffordable to the people that made it delicious.

Sushi used to be really cheap, too, until it became ‘trendy’. Guess why you’re now paying twelve dollars for your order of California rolls? Because rich people discovered something that poor people had been eating for ages.

Noticed the prices of fajita meat, chicken thighs, or ham hocks has gone up recently? You guessed it. Rich people are taking our food and now we’re scrambling to afford the things that we grew up eating.

auroraluciferi

Lobster is a perfect example of this phenomenon. For hundreds of years, lobster was regarded as a sort of insect larvae from the depth of the sea. It had zero appeal as a “luxury food” until people living in NY and Boston developed a taste for it. Before the 19th century, it was considered a “poverty food” or used as fertilizer and bait - some household servants specified in employment agreements that they would not eat lobster more than twice a week. It was also commonly served at prisons, which tells you something about prison food.

Only by cleverly marketing lobster as an indulgence for the privileged made it cost so much. It became a vehicle for enormous profit spawning a multi-billion dollar global industry in the process. This mythical affection for lobster flesh - not its practical value in terms of taste, nutrition, or any other reasonable consideration - drives its value.

blackwitchmagicwoman-deactivate

LMAO. Wait.

thegrimmlovely

Anyone else’s eye twitchin?

strongorcbutch-deactivated20220

Food gentrification is a long standing practice and it’s some of the most evil shit I can think of. It’s why I refuse for example as someone living in the US to buy things with Quinoa in them. It is specifically pricing an indigenous population out of their prime staple food. It’s a horrific invasion of one of the final requirements of staying alive.