[64mpg]

anon who seems to be under the impression that you have had extensive PR training because you have a post with more than 10k notes would like to ask you a bad faith question about the current state of the world

[probuccalfat]

the goal is get so secure and confident that i’m 7th grade weird again

[martindykewood]

not to sound like a christian facebook mom but some of yall need to have grace in your hearts for the people in your lives or the people you pass once on the road and never see again like you literally need to stop assuming the worst of everyone and their intentions it is poisoning your brain. you can be careful and responsible without being a miserable person. it is possible i promise

[martindykewood]

you are a tar pit and you live this way because you choose to.

[martindykewood]

honestly i have been responding to some of these replies at face value bc i do also think you have a duty as a human being to be nice to people. but if you think this post is scolding you to be nicer to people then youve already lost the plot. this post is about how assuming that everyone you meet is hostile and wants to hurt you is bad for you. it ruins your life and it is a choice you are continually making.

[bauliya]

i think villains in general provide better, more epic romances because they're allowed to go to extremes. they're allowed to put their love over the greater good. they're allowed to be selfish. the best a hero can offer you is number two, because their duty comes first. villains, though. villains will burn down the world for a last kiss goodbye.

[cake-writes]

[divinesong]

Yea, sure. Until YOU or people you love are among the victims for someone else’s love and the villains won’t care. Would also like to point out that some villians(Kuvira, for example) have been willing to sacrifice/throw away love interests for their own goals.

[bauliya]

idk about you but existing in the real world gives me and my loved ones immunity from the actions of fictional villains. hope you manage to get your family out of star wars.

[brightlotusmoon]

[pidgefudge]

hello 👋 i am the worlds smallest bug 🐛 and ☝️ i too would like to “fag it up” if i may

[enki2]

[thebdelliumlady]

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Here's a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.

[chapscher]

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.

Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).

[corpseprize]

the reality of being a writer

heres how to fix it

[dragon-hoard]

if you are going to need some kind of sedative for 4th of july fireworks for your pets NOW IS THE TIME TO SCHEDULE THOSE APPOINTMENTS TO ASK FOR THEM

NOT WHEN ITS 2 DAYS AWAY

[alex51324]

I feel like to really get this circulating as it should, we need it superimposed over the picture of the turkey going in the fridge. (I can't do it I'm on my phone.)

[amaditalks]

[figtreeandvine]

With the 250th anniversary it's likely to be especially bad this year!

[unsolicited-opinions]

We've Made Changing Your Mind Look Like a Flaw Instead of a Virtue

The internet has taught people to archive your opinions and weaponize your growth. If you evolve, you're a flip-flopper. If you admit uncertainty, you're weak. If you take time to rethink, you're stalling.

So people fake certainty to avoid punishment.

Intellectual honesty, though, requires change. If your views haven't changed in ten years, that says less about your clarity than it says about your lack of reflection.

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[salamandorange]

The most PATHETIC lil baby sounds...

[whitebear-ofthe-watertribe]

I love when little creatures who are entirely loved and well cared for have the BIGGEST baby reactions to normal things. Like yes sweet pea, you DO have the hardest life of anyone ever, for sure, and you’re SO BRAVE about this minor inconvenience of *checks notes* having some water touch you

[cephalon-sancti]

There is nothing sadder and more pathetic than a baby marine mammal having to get into the water. They are suffering the most out of any baby animal ever. How dare they be introduced to their natural environment.

[phaeton-flier]

Bear religion probably fucking rocks. You're a fucking bear, you're the deadliest thing on earth, once a year an endless supply of salmon just flings itself up the river to gorge on and then you nap for 3 months.

[phaeton-flier]

The most delicious food in the world is protected by tiny demons who can defend it from everyone except you. Your natural armor is thick enough that you can just eat the damn hive while they buzz around you. God's chosen animals right there

[theaudientvoid]

[centrally-unplanned]

Regular bears tell stories of angel bears sent by the Bear God, pure white and twice as strong as any normal bear could be, who rule the summit of the Earth and kill all who stand in their path.

And they are right, those bears exist and totally do that. Humans just have fake angels as a cope.

[tinynebula]

i love to headcanon steve as this aggressively progressive dude but like, he begged to be part of the us army,,,,,, we can’t just Forget That

[starkillerrx]

He joined to literally fight Nazis the fuck you on about?

[thadeeliv]

Minecraft lore is deeper than i remember

[vivid-escapist]

he was also like 20 and the Internet didn’t exist so besides the fact that fighting the Nazis was one of the few good things the military has ever done, just mayhaps Steve wasn’t fully briefed on the sins of US militarism and imperialism

[afronerdism]

I love that y’all think tha white people in the army in WWII joined to fight the evils of the Nazi party and not because of nationalism. The US sent minorities back to Germany to be gassed and only got involved after Germany threatened us.

[cardentist]

captain america was created by joe simon and jack kirby, two jewish second generation immigrants. you can argue about what the character has come to represent culturally today but it’s absolutely insensitive to erase what the character was supposed to represent for the creators at the time.

hell this is the image on jack kirby’s wikipedia page next to the “entry into comics” section

it was absolutely a political statement, and one that positioned america against fascism, against antisemitism, which is more than we can say for some modern media or even the orange stain running our country

[apersnicketylemon]

I would also like to add, he was introduced, like this, while the USA was not in the war, and was selling weapons to Germany -among other things. It was a very dangerous, very unpopular statement to make at the time. People love to do the ‘punch Hitler’ thing now, but when Captain America was first released with this cover, this was an extremely controversial statement. 

Captain America was created in direct response to how the USA was reacting to the war at the time as a direct call to action against injustice specifically. Created by two Jewish men who were very much affected by all of this. They specifically designed him to look like he did because that was the ““Aryan Ideal”“ as part of that statement. That is why they made him blond, blue-eyed, white, tall, and muscular. They also called him ‘Captain America’ to implicitly tie the United States to this statement. This was a metaphor of ‘The USA has to stop letting others be hurt, it’s time to step up and do something’.

It’s not only insensitive to erase that, it’s Antisemitic to call a Jewish-made character that was a political statement against antisemitism in the 1940′s by people who were fed up with watching their loved ones die while people said they ‘shouldn’t get involved’ in a massive, global genocide attempt a ‘symbol of military industrial complex imperialism and nationalism’ when he was made as a symbol of resistance and a call to fight fascism and antisemitism.

[ryuutchi]

Has anyone mentioned yet that American fascists were so pissed about Captain America that some American Nazis showed up at the Marvel offices to “show what Real Americans would do to Captain America”. Jack Kirby literally rolled up his sleeves and would have beaten the shit out of them if they hadn’t run off by the time he got to the lobby.

Like, fuck you if you refuse to accept that JEWISH AMERICANS created a character that is intended to protect Jews and other marginalized groups.

[mossadspydolphin]

[dirtyriver]

This.

[pooslie]

Steve Rogers is basically a golem y’all! He is not a white nationalist!

The WNs see that American flag and assume that the guy wearing it would agree with their BS but Steve has literally said that America and the flag means nothing when it isn’t backed up by ideals and commitment of freedom for all men.

[futchlings]

"incurious" still GOAT insult. You could be better but you're not. You could learn but you won't, and for no good reason, just a base dispositional apathy. Get fucked

[soundoftheirwings]

Gotta tell you guys something wild in the Chinese fan sphere

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

And that is how this charity received over 1 million in donations in three days lol. Oh btw the “freedom of expression” side won by a landslide (960k to 40k)

[tlbodine]

From now on this is how all petty fandom disputes should be settled.

[flagellant]

[prokopetz]

I understand that you were aiming for a morally grey protagonist, but in practice what you've ended up with is more of a moral beige.

[prokopetz]

@ancient-tree-with-deathwish replied:

how do you distinguish grey from other colours beyond black and wite?

Distinguishing features of moral beige:

The protagonist is constantly agonising over Hard Choices; however, circumstances always conspire to prevent them from actually having to make those choices, so in practice they're just angsting over stuff they might have done.

The text exhibits a recurring pattern whereby the protagonist seems to to have made a Hard Choice, but new information is reliably revealed shortly thereafter which retroactively establishes that whatever they did was the morally upright course after all.

The protagonist's moral impulses are straightforwardly heroic, except in one specific context which lacks any clear real-world analogue; for example, being prejudiced against telepaths.

The protagonist's actions are consistently reasonable based on the information available to them – they're merely operating on bad information basically all the time due to a bizarre conspiracy and/or a series of increasingly implausible misunderstandings.

The protagonist always ends up doing the right thing (for some fuzzy value of "right"), but, like, they're really grumpy about it.

[vale-gaai]

[elucubrare]

ok i think what gets me about the kind of post that's like '[children's media] has child soldiers, where are their parents!!' is that those stories really and truly aren't for people who'll think about that, they're for the people the children's age, who don't, for the most part, want to be kept safe or told they're too young to participate in the world, they want to be given a sword

[elucubrare]

i did not anticipate that this post was going to be this popular so like.

when i said "a sword" i was speaking metaphorically. i mean, literally as well, swords are cool as hell. but metaphorically: agency and the power to do something about their situation and the situation of the world.

a bunch of people have said that children who do not have supportive parents love this kind of thing, which is very true and part of a thing i was thinking of but is not in the post - often when you feel alone, reading about someone who is alone but in a much more dramatic way, with, again, the power to do something about it, is much more comforting than reading about someone who is kept safe and given the "right" supports. the dragon takes on the face of the fifth grade bully easily and naturally.

when i said "where are their parents" and "child soldiers" i was generalizing these kind of complaints. "why didn't any adult step in"/ "these are bad pedagogical techniques" are some of the ones i see a bunch. and the answer is the same. they didn't step in or teach in a way that would be good in real life because it is the opposite of empowering for a child to hear "when you're older" in fiction as well as in real life.

someone reblogged this post with tags about how their younger self would have been furious if the events of one of those "villain gets mad at seer for sending children to fight them" posts had played out in real life, and that's about right - one of the central things about being a child is not being taken seriously. those posts are by adults who have forgotten that, because being wrapped in a blanket and told to sit this one out means that you are not being taken seriously - as a threat; as an enemy; as a hero; as a person.

if your "counterexample" is not directed towards people under 20, you're misreading the post. The new crop of adult fantasy books really examining the post-traumatic stress of child heroes is very much not for me, but if people like it, that's fine. but that's very different from stuff focused on kids with heroes who are kid-aged. "wow, the hero of this book is too young, it's kind of funny that no one else can do anything/this Great Mage War is between a 12 year old and a 10 year old/whatever" is maybe a funny joke but it is not any sort of real or, more importantly, interesting criticism of the work.

kids' literature is a great way of exposing kids to the thrill of danger while keeping them absolutely safe.

kids' literature where the adults are a problem is a great way of teaching kids that authority is not inherently trustworthy.

kids deserve to be safe; kids deserve to feel powerful. a kid reading about an 11-year-old taking on the Dark Lord and winning is safe and feels powerful.

[bitchautism]

the online identity and gimmick-ifying of autism is so odd. I'm diagnosed with autism and yet I barely identify with any stuff I see about it anymore. It feels like autism is being rebranded as the Silly Guy Disorder that gives you smart and beautiful hyperspecific interests. it's not that I mind silly jokes or being lighthearted about being autistic- but when the entire social movement is based around marketing us this way, I just can't help but feel isolated from it. it feels like I'm not the right kind of autistic. I'm not marketable and digestible to common audiences, and therefore I am discarded by the movement in the name of progress and acceptance. it feels foul.