OhNoOKC

Adventures in Self-Loathing and Disappointment

[ohnookc]

[ohnookc]

If someone isn't attracted to a blond that they are against blonds and then they aren't equal? Just because they aren't personally attracted?

I have answered the fuck out of these questions. You can do your own homework finding them.

[ohnookc]

[ohnookc]

I got to the end of your blog ):

Well, I update at least semi-regularly, so check back soon! (Got a post in the works right now, in fact)

[ohnookc]

Well, he got the douchebag part right.

[ohnookc]

Writing Your Rep and Persuading your Parents

@sparklyinnervoid asked: 

i'm a senior in high school and I was wondering if you have any suggestions because my parents aren't supportive of my political interest and are pretty conservative- I'm gonna be submitting a letter about one of my congressmen to the local paper hopefully sometime soon (I have a post about it as the most recent post on my blog if you wanna suggest anything) this is kinda rambley but just advice would be good - thanks

For some context: this user had recently made a post saying she was planning on using ResistBot to send a letter to her representative expressing her position against that rep accepting donations from the NRA and subsequently voting down every weapons reform bill that crosses his path.  Hi Sparkly! (I’m calling you Sparkly now)

You’re a fucking badass for wanting to take direct action by writing your rep, and if you want some awesome and really helpful statistics on gun violence, there are shitloads available. You can find a lot of awesome information on FactCheck.org that describes patterns of gun violence before and after the weapons ban in Australia. If you want to look at statistics specifically for the United States, the Gun Violence Archive has been doing the hard work of keeping track of gun violence since 2013. If you want to get really wonky and look at some actual scientific studies, the Annual Review of Public Health published this paper that details the rates and impacts of gun violence in the United States and JAMA published this editorial looking at the effects of weapons control legislation in Australia.

Since you’re a senior in high school, I assume you’ve had some experience writing persuasive essays. I want to encourage you to read those sources carefully and try to think about how the information they contain could be used to persuade someone to change their mind on weapons reform, and then try to write a persuasive essay explaining your point. Have some people you trust edit it for you (or, if you want, send it to me). Aside from giving you the body of the letter you’ll send to your rep, practicing the arguments in an essay will also help you really learn the information and give you the ability to talk about your points in conversations, too.

I also want to encourage you to take the next step and engage in some direct action. Based on your congressional district, I assume you live in the Richmond/DC area. That puts you close enough to easily attend the March for Our Lives protest on March 24th. I think you should, if you are at all able, try to be there. Sending letters helps a representative get an idea of where their constituents are on an issue, and it’s important, but showing up to march or protest something is an extremely important part of political action. The image of hundreds or even thousands of people standing together to demand change is powerful, and persuasive in ways that a letter can’t be.

Lastly, I want to encourage you to start attending some meetings for people who are organizing in your area. If you’re in DC, you can check out MDC DSA, SURJ DC, Increasing Women’s Participation & Leadership in Politics, or you can pick a political activism group from this list that feels right to you. If you’re closer to Richmond, there is also a DSA chapter there, as well as one for SURJ. Those folks will already be setting up events and opportunities for direct action in your community, and they would love to help you get involved. 

As for your parents: seniors in high school are at the cusp of some really big changes in their lives, and that can make relationships between them and their parents pretty fuckin strained. At your age, though, you absolutely should be figuring out who you are as an individual and separating yourself from them. If that takes you away from sharing their beliefs, you can try your luck at changing their minds, but it’s probably going to be really hard to pull off. It’s hard for parents to take advice from our kids, and I would assume that is even more true for conservative people. What all this means is you may have to just accept their disapproval and learn to respond by respectfully and carefully explaining to them that these are extremely important issues to you and that you feel a sense of civic responsibility to participate in the political process. 

Welcome to the team, kiddo! Go out and change the world.

--Becky

[ohnookc]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try to follow it, but big ambitions sometimes take a lot of work.

Of course. But you have a lot more time than you might feel like you do to make those happen. <3 Hang in there, kiddo

[ohnookc]

An Open Letter to Gen Z

Hey, kids!1

I hear you’ve been eating Tide Pods and shit. I also notice you’re getting a suspiciously large amount of attention for eating Tide Pods at exactly the same moment you’re starting to get political about some Shit That Actually Matters. So, as a millennial myself, I guess I should welcome you aboard, cause older people did the exact same belittling shit to us when we finally started having opinions. Also, I should probably thank you, because I’m pretty sure it means we millennials aren’t the fuckin freshmen anymore. And, since I’m doing the Life Stages Are High School thing, and you’re the new kids in this metaphor, let me, the Extremely Seasoned Sophomore2, show you the ropes.

Assuming I still even halfway correctly remember being a teenager3 y’all probably still believe the general ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You probably believe that hard work inevitably leads to success, that the inevitable arc of history is towards justice, and that you can affect serious political change in a matter of a few months or years. You probably still have a beautiful, earnest belief that one determined person can stand up and Change Things. Me and mine were raised with, presumably, the same general beliefs, but if you got a different story, feel free to correct me.

Assuming you didn’t, I’ll be honest with you–that’s not actually how the system works.  Our adult lives have been watching the emperor stripping away those illusions to show us his whole ass while our grandparents, parents, and older siblings have responded by insisting he was still wearing clothes4, not giving a shit because they only get riled up by femme nipples5, or by limply expressing their horror that the emperor is naked without meaningfully challenging the problem of having an emperor in the first place6. But you know what? The emperor fucking sucks. Our government fucking sucks. Most of all, this practically-unfettered market capitalism bullshit fucking sucks. And if you’ll let me, I’d like to disabuse you of that imperial bullshit as fast as possible.

Right now, our politicians on both sides of the aisle don’t give a single fuck about anything but their own money and power and don’t even care if anybody knows it. The older generations of voters are only slightly less corrupted. The shit the Florida legislature recently pulled with some of y’all is, infuriatingly, the current state of normal7. Hell, if you’re brown and ESPECIALLY if you’re Black, it’s pretty much always been normal. We, the proverbial people, are stuck in this untenable situation where the conservative party is filled with old people, bigots, and fascist permavigins, while the liberal party is trying to be both the fiscally-conservative and the fiscally-liberal party for the rest of us. The Democrats suck. Their indolence and cowardice has made them functionally useless. Meanwhile, Republicans have become so cartoonishly evil that I’m not entirely sure we aren’t actually being deliberately trolled by the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch. 

And shit, it’s not that millennials haven’t been trying, but what have we accomplished, really?

We rose up in 2008 and used the power of our youth to elect the country’s first Black president, which was pretty cool, until he set records for drone striking and/or deporting brown people. And we’ve put up a good fight against the phalanx the old white rich dudes set against us, but pretty much all of the ground we gained is a sneeze away from being lost again8. And it’s taken a decade even to accomplish this much. Frankly, we’re starting to lose steam. We’re starting to have kids even though we don’t have like, actual houses to raise them in, or health insurance, or stable employment. We’re losing our youthful energy and ability. It’s getting a lot harder for us to keep pushing. And frankly, unless something happens to tip the scales, shit’s gonna stay fucked up. 

So to that end, I am wildly fucking excited to see y’all step into the ring. You have time and you have energy, and you don’t have a shitload of soul-crushing responsibilities yet. But you also don’t have experience, and you guys could probably use a hand navigating this fucked-up hellscape. I know I, for one, don’t want y’all to have to struggle quite as hard as we did to do… well, anything, really. We really kind of had a fucked up time of it, my gender-nonspecific dudes. Adulthood has been pretty uniquely soul-sucking for millennials. Like, other than finally being old enough to abuse drugs until we don’t care how fucked we are, mostly would not recommend9. …Anyway, I wanna pitch something to you: let’s team up. 

I’ve been keeping an eye on you guys, and not just because your antics are amusing (although, tbh, they are), and not just because I’m worried you need a babysitter to keep you from shoving single-serving detergent capsules into your faces like Skittles (you don’t). I’ve been doing it because I see your potential. I see you Seeing things. I see you starting to get angry. I see you starting to stand up and speak for yourselves. And I am so fucking impressed by your bravery and by your audacity and by the clarity of your message. And I would move mountains to make sure that spark of revolution doesn’t get snuffed out of y’all. I genuinely, earnestly believe that if we worked together, we could wrench power out of the hands of these monstrous and rebuild a safer, kinder world than the tar pit they’re trying to drag us into.

So if you’re into that idea, here’s what you do: Step 1) Get on Facebook (yeah, I know, it’s for old people) or Meetup Step 2) Look for local chapters of activist organizations (A few national orgs I like are Showing Up for Racial Justice, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Planned Parenthood. Voter canvassing and registration is also always important. Or, if you don’t want to do any of those, there will undoubtedly be local organizations that need your help.) Step 3) Get a couple friends together and go to a few meetings to learn the ropes and get a sense of what they’re about. Listen more than you talk while you’re doing that, not because your ideas aren’t important, but because at first you should be there to learn. Step 4) Find someone there who is in their mid-to-late-20s and ask them to mentor you. They’re gonna think it’s weird, but only because they haven’t really realized they’re old enough to mentor someone yet. It’s a function of our parents and Gen X consistently refusing to acknowledge us as adults well into our 30s. Step 5) That’s pretty much it, you did it. You’re now part of the revolution. Trill.  Step 6) If you don’t get off the internet and find yourself a member of the #resistance instead of the revolution, go back to step 2 and try again. But don’t be too hard on yourself! A ton of people have gotten caught up in that shit. Just don’t let it trick you into stopping early.

And straight up, any of you–any one of you–is welcome to message me if you need help getting started, or if you’re scared, or if you have random political questions you want my opinions on. I am here for you. I want to help.

Let’s burn this fetid shit to the ground and build something good on its ashes.

With love, –Becky

1: I’m talking to specifically US kids here, but y’all international shits are invited to the party too if you really wanna come. But no drugs for ANY of you til you’re in your mid-20s and your brain is done developing …unless you know where to find drugs. do you know where to find drugs? tell me where to find drugs. (don’t do drugs underage, kids) 2: this joke will make sense in 3-25ish years, depending on how far you are from your mid-twenties 3: `it was only a decade ago, which at your age sounds like infinityever and at my age just makes me feel old, but mostly just means yes, I do still remember being a teenager 4: in their defense, they’re pretty much all 100 years old and mostly blind now 5: fuckin patriarchy, amirite? 6: sorry gen X, but yes, we do need to have a fucking talk about your neoliberal ways and your slacktivist #resistance bullshit. still love you though! 7: I know the overall tone of this post is light and snarky, but if anyone who has survived a school shooting is reading this, especially anyone from Parkland, I want you to know that I am on fire with my anger and grief for you. Those men are weak, sniveling monsters, and I will never, ever forgive the previous generations for allowing our babies to suffer and die like that because they couldn’t be fucked to stand up and do something to unfuck this shit fifteen years ago. Never. And even if y’all don’t come with me, I’m still going to fucking war for you. I refuse to stop until this shit is fixed. Anyway, back to your regularly-scheduled snarkery. 8: Obama’s presidency was kind of a clusterfuck of its own, but some good shit did happen during it… y’know, between the drone strikes, and gtmo, and the bank bailouts… and the GOP taking over the house and senate… and most of the state and local governments… and all the other fucked-up shit… y’know, like… we got the marriage equality and the weed and the Black president, right? fuckin… fuck.  9: don’t actually do drugs until you forget how unacceptably broken everything is. that’s really bad advice. be better than your elders. …unless you actually know where to find drugs, and in that case, hook a girl up

[ohnookc]

The future of OhNoOKC

The good news: OkCupid has radically changed the way their messaging system works such that I anticipate receiving many fewer harassing and abusive messages.

The bad news: I won't have as many fuckboys at my disposal to humiliate for your entertainment.

I know I've got a decently sized audience at this point, so I want to put this out there: how do y'all feel about me moving away from the highly specific "awful online dating experiences" theme and towards a more "funny and maybe occasionally insightful social commentary" theme?

[ohnookc]

Ok, like, it goes without saying that hunting rhinos and elephants is fucking awful because they're sentient BUT WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHY HE IS NAKED ON TOP OF THAT FISH

[ohnookc]

People have suggested I bring this on myself by being so hostile. Those people can fuck themselves.

[themasculinevoice]

You don’t sound HOSTILE to me, but you can fuck RIGHT off telling strangers how to conduct their private lives.

[creepsinsingapore-deactivated20]

Specifically where did she tell someone how to conduct their private life?

[themasculinevoice]

“I strongly dislike that you have a preference to date your own race”?

[creepsinsingapore-deactivated20]

How is disliking something ‘telling strangers how to conduct their private life’?

[themasculinevoice]

When you’re calling a stranger racist because of something like that, you ARE trying to run their private life, through moral shaming. How can you not see that?

[talesfromtreatment]

Except that racists deserve to be morally shamed because racism is wrong and terrible even if it’s “private”.

[ohnookc]

I actually disagree with you there. Shame just isn’t a pedagogically useful tool. And a ton of people are going to ignore that and get caught up on how this blog is shame-based entertainment. Which it is, but emphasis on the fuckin entertainment part. This is not a resource people should be learning from. I hope it will encourage people to read the references I make, because those actually are useful. But nah, man, shaming racists helps nothing. It just encourages them to dig their heels in farther and close themselves off more. The actual best way to change racist attitudes is to force racists to actually have long-term, cooperation-based relationships with a highly diverse group of people.

The best thing we can do is to form coalitions and organizations across leftist interests, rise up collectively, and seize the means of fucking production. If you want to learn how to do that, go read R.L. Stephens.

Also just go read R.L. Stephens generally speaking.

[wuh2k]

Oh hey look… @themasculinevoice is back. Last time I stumbled across them the only thing they proved was that the masculine voice is insufferably whiny and irritating. Glad to see nothing’s changed.

[ohnookc]

Not much sadder and smaller than someone who spends that much time trolling blogs with opposing views just to vomit rage at them. But dude clearly has an infinite amount of time to yell at women on the internet and I definitely don't have enough time to waste it on him, so I'll leave it for someone else to engage.

[ohnookc]

People have suggested I bring this on myself by being so hostile. Those people can fuck themselves.

[themasculinevoice]

You don’t sound HOSTILE to me, but you can fuck RIGHT off telling strangers how to conduct their private lives.

[creepsinsingapore-deactivated20]

Specifically where did she tell someone how to conduct their private life?

[themasculinevoice]

“I strongly dislike that you have a preference to date your own race”?

[creepsinsingapore-deactivated20]

How is disliking something ‘telling strangers how to conduct their private life’?

[themasculinevoice]

When you’re calling a stranger racist because of something like that, you ARE trying to run their private life, through moral shaming. How can you not see that?

[talesfromtreatment]

Except that racists deserve to be morally shamed because racism is wrong and terrible even if it’s “private”.

[ohnookc]

I actually disagree with you there. Shame just isn't a pedagogically useful tool. And a ton of people are going to ignore that and get caught up on how this blog is shame-based entertainment. Which it is, but emphasis on the fuckin entertainment part. This is not a resource people should be learning from. I hope it will encourage people to read the references I make, because those actually are useful. But nah, man, shaming racists helps nothing. It just encourages them to dig their heels in farther and close themselves off more. The actual best way to change racist attitudes is to force racists to actually have long-term, cooperation-based relationships with a highly diverse group of people.

The best thing we can do is to form coalitions and organizations across leftist interests, rise up collectively, and seize the means of fucking production. If you want to learn how to do that, go read R.L. Stephens.

Also just go read R.L. Stephens generally speaking.

[ohnookc]

[the-mansplainer]

From 2:14pm to 2:50pm, literally a half an hour, this bitch was ranting! He dropped a quick three-piece on her and left her foaming at the mouth, giving a dissertation on male attitudes towards women. Fucking EPIC. This dude is my hero.

[ohnookc]

Yeah, I had half an hour to kill while procrastinating on chores. Tbh I miss having that kind of spare time.

Anyway, you’re lonely and will die alone because you’re an ugly person that nobody could ever love.

[wuh2k]

Is anyone surprised that that dude is @the-mansplainer/@cry-baby-bitches/@the-girls-of-online-dating’s hero? Anyone?

I mean they’ve so much in common. Fragile masculinity, huge insecurity complex and dying alone.

Though I looooooove that the dude who writes pages long rants that no one will ever read simply coz women exist in a way that he doesn’t like is so lacking in self-awareness 😂😂😂

[ohnookc]

The only posts on his page with notes are the ones where he's reblogged something posted by someone else. I'm kind of conflicted. On the one hand, it's kind of darkly hilarious to see him trying and failing so, so hard to get anyone to notice him. On the other, dude is either a 13 year old edgelord who literally doesn't know better or some incel neet who actually has the time to spend literally all day having pages-long meltdowns about all the sex he's never going to have with the totally hot like tv hot I'm serious girlfriend he made up. I could almost pity the guy if he wasn't basically carcinoma that congealed into the form of a desperate virgin.

[ohnookc]

[the-mansplainer]

From 2:14pm to 2:50pm, literally a half an hour, this bitch was ranting! He dropped a quick three-piece on her and left her foaming at the mouth, giving a dissertation on male attitudes towards women. Fucking EPIC. This dude is my hero.

[ohnookc]

Yeah, I had half an hour to kill while procrastinating on chores. Tbh I miss having that kind of spare time.

Anyway, you're lonely and will die alone because you're an ugly person that nobody could ever love.

[ohnookc]

Watch out for this incredibly sexually virile cosplayer, ladies!

[ohnookc]

[ohnookc]

Dating Within Your Own Race

“But why is it wrong to have a strong preference to date someone of your own race? How is it different from having a preference for gender, body type, religious background, and so forth?” These are really good questions, y’all, and since quite a few of you have posited them, here is my best response. First, let’s talk about the things we agree on: sexual orientations and preferences aren’t particularly under our control. The more the scientific community has studied them, the clearer that has become. And, if those preferences aren’t under our control, making moralistic or ethical arguments about them (whether anti-racist or anti-homophobic or anti-classist) is at best a complicated task. How can you hold it against someone to have a strong preference to date someone with the same religious background, or of the same gender, or of the same race? Are they a bad person for that preference? Short answer: no. They aren’t a bad person. There are a lot of cultural contexts at play when it comes to differences in religious, class, and racial backgrounds that can make relationships a lot more complicated. The first is tied strongly to a lot of ethical and moral values that ought to line up for a relationship to be successful. The latter two are tied into a lot of power dynamics that are patently difficult to navigate within the context of a romantic relationship. I’ll also admit this freely: I do not have a strong preference to date within my own race, but in practice, 70% of the romantic relationships I’ve been in or seriously pursued have been with white, cisgender men. Since I’m a white, cisgender woman, that means the majority of my relationships by a good margin have been heterosexual ones within my own race. And there are a lot of reasons for that. Generally, I spend my time in places populated by primarily white people. My immediate circle of friends is mostly white. I have more in common culturally with other white people than brown and black people. The majority black and brown people I am friends with have intimated to me that it’s hard for them to date white people because the racial dynamics can create a lot of tension and frustration, which is definitely not a romantic thing. Put simply: i have a lot more opportunities to date people who are also white. So, if someone said to me, “I’m open to dating people who aren’t my race, but it’s really hard and I don’t really do it in practice,” of course I wouldn’t tell them they’re racist for that. I think there’s a difference between the de facto practice of generally dating within your race and openly declaring that you have a “strong preference to date people of [your] own race,” though. It’s not the practice of usually dating your own race that bothers me about that sentiment. It’s the strong negative attitude towards dating outside of your own race that is expressed by that specific phrasing that bothers me. First of all, if you are a white person and you say you actively want to date within your own race because you just don’t find people who aren’t white attractive physically, that suggests to me that you aren’t willing to give other races the chance to be attractive to you. It suggests to me that you haven’t taken the time to critically evaluate your own preferences and ask yourself to what extent they might be shaped by a culture that particularly celebrates white beauty by actively excluding nonwhite beauty. That devaluation of nonwhite beauty is itself a facet of racism, and even if at the end of the day you aren’t attracted to people who don’t look like you, if you are unwilling to give someone who doesn’t look like you an earnest chance to become physically attractive in your eyes, you’re most likely perpetuating that facet of racism. If you say you have a strong preference to date within your own race because of cultural differences, that suggests to me that you lack the compassion and empathy to embrace the cultural differences that could, if they were allowed to, make the melting pot of American culture stronger and more rich. Our society devalues nonwhite culture, especially Black culture (except when we’re appropriating it to make ourselves seem cooler or more edgy). The only time white culture seems to be okay with Black culture is after it’s been taken and repurposed as useful to our own. And so long as white culture is seen as the default culture as opposed to one culture among many, refusing to engage with nonwhite cultures perpetuates white supremacy. So while I understand and empathize with the practical difficulty of dating someone from a different cultural background, and I can see why a person would, in practice, not do a lot of it, I still think that shutting out the possibility of it like that is another extension of racism. Finally, as specifically relates to the guy from the post that started this conversation, the most damning evidence that he in particular is racist comes from his reaction to me suggesting his strong preference came from racist origins. When I said it was racist, he didn’t come back with a thoughtful, level response explaining why he answered that question that way. He went on a batshit insane, frothing-at-the-mouth tirade against me as a person. He even used “libtard,” which is basically code for “I call people cuck on the Internet and think President Trump is doing a great job” It seems pretty fucking unlikely to me that someone who is that irate at the mere suggestion that their attitude is racist has ever really considered why they believe the things they do or what the impact of their attitude is on other people. So even if some of you might have answered that survey prompt the same way he did for more thoughtful reasons than his, that doesn’t mean he in particular is not racist. I’m never going to tell any of you that you have an obligation to date outside of your own race, gender preferences, class, or physical preferences. But I do think anyone who is coming from a dominant cultural background has an obligation to at the bare minimum reflect on their preferences and interrogate their own beliefs. You need to have a better reason than “that’s just how I feel” when it comes to racism, or sexism, or classism, because people who are negatively impacted by those things aren’t just uncomfortable. They are dying because of it. They are being raped because of it. They are SUFFERING because of it, and it is never morally acceptable to ignore someone’s suffering. Thank you, truly, to those of you who used my post as an opportunity to engage in meaningful discourse. Even if at the end of the day we still disagree, your effort to have a conversation about it matters and I hope you will continue to do so. And yes, I’ll admit, I also hope that eventually you will see why I believe what I do and come around to agreeing with me. But even if you don’t, I thank you for participating and being willing to reflect anyway.