[othersystems]

Still thinking about the girl I heard on the subway loudly talking about how her favorite thing about nyc is that skyscrapers have to be as far down into the ground as they are tall and how thats beautiful. Then this guy was like uhh idt that’s true.. and she was like no it is.

[uglysockperson]

For anyone else in need of these words from a trusted source.

[ladymazzy]

So Sally Rooney’s racist? Only if you choose to confuse fiction with fact

So Sally Rooney’s racist? Only if you choose to confuse fiction with fact | Nick Cohen

The author is the latest to suffer an attempted ‘cancelling’, one born of malice and stupidity

This article got me twitching so badly; it's absurd!

The source of the alleged egregious 'cancellation' is one solitary article written by Jessica Tu in the Sydney Morning Herald, criticising the extent to which 'Normal People' has received such rave reviews.

I've read Tu's article, and not once does she say Rooney is racist. Nowhere does she say Rooney's books shouldn't be published or read. She doesn't even say readers shouldn't like Rooney's work. What's more, she ends the article saying that she's going to read Rooney's next book (even if she expects to be underwhelmed). How is that 'Cancellation'?!

All Tu says is that NP is - for her (a Taiwanese-Australian woman) - a fairly bland story about young, white, able-bodied, cis-het people going about their business. For her (and for many), it's simply quite telling when it's these kinds of stories that are fêted above others, given how well they fit the status quo. It says something about which perspectives are still most valued in the anglosphere

I mean, it's literally called 'Normal People'...

Nick Cohen takes umbrage with this in particular:

"Normal People should be called White People because, in Rooney’s world, people like me don’t exist. In the book, Asians are mentioned only as tourists who choke the pathways of museums in Italy. ‘I don’t know why we’re bothering with Venice – it’s just full of Asians taking pictures of everything’, one of the male characters whines.”

He extrapolates from this that Tu believes Rooney to be expressing her own views here, rather than those of her character. Instead of, you know, Tu expressing a degree of frustration that the only time Asians are mentioned in the book is as a convenient but abstract device as a means of expressing the 'This Person Is Bad' values of a white antagonist, versus the 'This Person Is Good' values of a white protagonist. And how that might sit in quite a jarring way for non-white readers, casually reminding us that we are Other, even if only 'accidentally' so

Anyway, the irony of Cohen's article is *strong*. If Tu's article is about cancelling Rooney, then his could easily be read as cancelling Tu

There's absolutely a conversation to be had about 'performative progressivism' and public shaming etc, but this constant raging about Cancel Culture so often reveals itself to be flimsy and completely lacking in self awareness - let alone awareness of the issues marginalised people regularly speak of

This is Tu's 'offending' article/review

Surely there are better literary heroes for our generation than Sally Rooney?

I can’t help but wonder if the novelist would have received such unfettered adulation if she had been Sally Parez or Sally Wong.

[mothcub]

[urfaveisunfuckable]

margaret simson from family guy is so fuckable!

[fairycosmos]

if camila cabello and james corden stopped traffic doing some dumb attention seeking celebrity shit while i was on my way to my 9 to 5 where i make less in 3 years than they make in a week i would think it was the universe giving me divine permission to run them over

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Kermit the frog jumped out of the sewer like he was fuckin Pennywise and he chased me around with a knife. I couldn’t outrun him and he stabbed me in the back.

[damonalbarngirl]

i wish i was a character on a silly tv show so gay people on tumblr dot com would psychoanalyze me for free

[disregardcanon]

Sometimes tumblr activism is just. So tiring. They’re like “you are personally responsible for every world wide tragedy and need to solve it by guilt tripping on the internet” and I’m like. Y’all. I was sitting on the bench

[rednines]

You actually can choose to be gay and you are morally obligated to do so

[wrender]

Heavy is the chest that wears the tits or whatever

[kibumkim]

One day we gotta talk about how certain aspects of feminism give u the illusion of choice when u dont really have one. Like lets think critically here. If a 15 year old girl puts on a full face of make up so she can look more mature and date older guys and u say “well its her choice” i want you to think really hard about that i want u to use ur brain here like is it really her choice or has society groomed her and you to think that it was?

[nietp]

I don't know how to convey to people that yes we're allowed to watch trash and have fun but the minute you start talking about Disney/marvel movies as if they're actual pieces of art worth being critiqued instead of just CONTENT it's done like Please Understand that these movies are just content created in test tubes for us to consume it literally doesn't matter if it's good or bad representation if it's sexist or "feminist" if there's a good witty line about misogyny or racism in it it doesn't matter when they have a complete monopole on what's getting produced and turn a 10+ billion profit every year like I need you to understand that when you pay for these garbage 2-hour long ads-slash-music videos you're acting like a clown and when you're seriously talking about their quality as movies or whether they're politically good or positive representation or anything like that you're acting like the master king of clowns premium

[weaver-z]

Imagine if you were a rich housewife suspicious that your husband was cheating on you and you hired a private investigator to follow him and the PI came back with a ream of polaroids of himself railing your husband. Wouldn't that be fucked up

[toshio]

people who have been on this site for 5-10 consecutive years should get an award or something…we’re all mindlessly blogging on this dead website for FREE

[maybuds]

being in your 20s is like: i’m so young i’m so old. i should do everything i should rest. i can do what i want but i need to be careful. i’m an Adult™ but i need help from an Adult™. i’m so smart i’m so stupid. i’m leaving i feel left behind. i want to be a kid again and i can’t wait to be old. i’ve done a lot i’ve done nothing. i wanna be alone but i’m so lonely. like.... what the hell ??

[valtsv]

ra ra rasputin is objectively the funniest song ever written it's like "rasputin was an advisor to the romanovs and honestly he was a bit of a power-hungry conman (oof)... but you're not here for a history lesson! you want to know how much he fucked, don't you? well i'll tell you: he fucked. he fucked often and severely."