There are certain recurring behaviors on social media that annoy me to no end. And one of them is "whataboutism."
You know, you post about SHEIN's unethical supply chain and someone says "yeah, but what about prison labor in the US?"
Or you post about AI, and someone's like "well what about people who are still eating meat?"
Of course the frustrating implication here is that if you care about fast fashion, you can't possibly have space to care about prison labor. Of if you're posting about AI, you never think about animal rights or the climate impact of industrial farming. And so on.
It's annoying and distracting, but I think it's also a coping mechanism. When you feel overwhelmed by the "badness" of something, it feels emotionally helpful to call out another bad system/problem. Why? Because now there are TWO bad things in the conversation and you can kinda walk away thinking "there are so many bad things in this world that one person like me could never have an impact on anything." And then you don't have to think about it ever again!
Fortunately, all of us have the ability to care about AI and prison labor and fast fashion and animal rights and more. We contain multitudes, my friends! And of course the "fix" for any of these things is complex, a combination of social change, governmental regulations, and individual lifestyle changes. That means "fixing" them requires all of us, doing a million little tiny things every day that move us in the right direction. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and it motivated me to make a list of the conscious things I'm doing every day while envisioning a better world. I hope this inspires you to make your own list, too.
Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone, so the images in this post were created by me, using Photoshop and lots of scans from two different mid century children's books: Teddy Bear's Book of the Alphabet and My Big Picture Book of teddy bears. The superhero bear graphic came from a different craft book, Cuddly Toys and Dolls. This post took three hours to make.
P.S. The black kitten in the last photo: I live on a farm in Lancaster County, PA. We rent our home from an Amish farmer who owns lots of land around us that he rents out to other farmers, including a few barns. The barn next to our house is really dilapidated and it is used by a goat farmer.
Yesterday my husband Dustin thought he heard a kitten crying inside that barn, but I didn't hear anything when I walked by. This morning, he heard the crying again. After walking around the barn trying to figure out the source, I saw a little tiny black tail stick out of the wall. We found a way into the barn (it was very creepy in there), where we found a tiny black kitten with his leg stuck in a crevice between the wood floor and the concrete foundation.
We tried to get him out, with no luck. He was so stuck! I had the idea that if we could shave down some of the wood, we could get him loose. Dustin went in the house and returned with a metal file, which he used to file down the wood. It worked!
When we took him in the house, we realized he was having trouble walking. Off to the vet, where he was very popular! The good news is that his leg is not broken, just injured and swollen. He is four weeks old and I guess he will be living with us forever.
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