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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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If you want more information on ranked choice voting and want to find out how you can help make it happen in your state go to fairvote.org
It looks like every state that doesn’t already have RCV has an organization or branch that’s fighting to make RCV happen that could use volunteers and/or donations
let's bring back the stop taking videos of strangers without their knowledge discourse because you really must stop doing that
i'm still a leftist but in my experience women are viewed as expendable in leftist spaces, spoken over, treated as stupid, on a level that is astounding. you can get away with an enormous level of vitriolic hatred for women if you couch it in the right terms
yeah they think it's bourgeois and childish and that you are bourgeois and childish if you are a feminist. sometimes the ones that want to act like Allies to Women will act like it's cute (read: naïve) that you're a feminist and expect you to be flattered by that. otherwise you're stuck up and obnoxious for acknowledging rape culture, caring about your own safety, and not believing in bullshit like "rich women don't experience misogyny"
already can't pretend to care about the male loneliness epidemic because it isn't real but listening to the way men actually talk about their friends/what they think friendship entails makes me care even less sorry
read an AITA earlier today about a guy who would walk his female friend home to her dorm very often UNTIL she rejected his romantic advances*, then when she asks him to walk her home bc she's drunk and feels unsafe he says no. Men in the comments were clamoring to insist he "didn't owe her anything" and that she was a deceptive harpy who wanted to use her #femaleprivilege to get "special treatment"
and idkkkkkkk that could never be me sorry!! wym you don't care about your friends safety and are willing to mildly inconvenience yourself to ensure they are okay? no compassion or care for the people in your life but its an "epidemic" when you don't have friends? lol
#my favorite thing about every invented problem men have that is dire and world ending #is that it's none of their responsibility to fix it #'if men can't talk about their feelings are you making an effort to do that and check in with your friends?' #'no I'm acting exactly the same but now when I'm called out on being a dick I have an excuse that says it isn't my fault :)' #and now men being bad friends is women's job to fix not theirs lmao
⬆️ i've only ever seen the "male loneliness epidemic" used as a means to scold women. never as an encouragement for men to be better friends to each other
#also as far as i can tell the social penalty for men being good friends to people#is being perceived as feminine and/or gay#which.#if you're going to let your repulsion for women and gay men stop you from having friends#that seems like a you problem!
you know what. i’m gonna say it
the whole “younger siblings have it easy” concept doesn’t apply the moment your older sibling is male and you’re not
International human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson takes audiences inside the courtroom and behind the global headlines in SILENCED. Watch the trailer now. Featuring the women and journalists at the centre of high-profile legal battles across the globe, including Brittany Higgins, Catalina Ruiz-Navarro and Amber Heard.
By Maia Olusanya
Text from the article:
"Tomato girl, that girl, clean girl, coconut girl, downtown girl, it girl, soft girl, dark feminine girl, light feminine girl, ballerina girl, coquette girl, cottage core girl, vanilla girl, strawberry girl, party girl, indie sleaze girl, west village girl, east village girl, french girl, italian girl, riviera girl, mermaid girl, rockstar girlfriend, trophy wife, old money girl, new money girl, office siren, pilates girl, yoga girl, beach girl, farmer’s market girl, e-girl, cool girl, weird girl
What was once a fun way to find your niche or like-minded people has now become a part of the cyclical hell now known as the micro trend. These ‘aesthetics’ used to be lasting and instantly recognisable like the more foundational subcultures that came before them, but nowadays we’re really just saying shit. What do you mean you can just order a whole pre-curated style package because a TikTok slideshow told you that you’re like soooo #y2k?A “curated” Y2K TikTok shop package
Now the art of personal style is dying, and we all look the same.
Punk was a response to Thatcherite Britain. Rave culture was a reaction to the Criminal Justice Act. Goth emerged from post-industrial bleakness. These subcultures had music, politics, community; you didn’t buy into them, you lived them. So what on gods green earth is Tomato Girl reacting to? A slow summer and a Pinterest board? What does coquette stand for politically? What is the Guinness moustache 2 dot swap boy rebelling against? Nothing.
We’ve kept the aesthetic shell of subculture and hollowed out everything that made it mean something.
And look, let’s not get too nostalgic about it, we’re not sat here pretending there was ever some golden age where fashion was pure and untouched by money. Malcolm McLaren was selling punk from a shop on King’s Road before half those kids even knew what they were rebelling against. Subculture and commerce have always been in bed together; obviously, that’s not new. The difference is the speed; people used to spend years, genuinely YEARS, developing a look.
Trying things, abandoning them, finding a silhouette that felt like theirs, wearing something until it fell apart. Now you get three weeks before the algorithm decides it’s over, and you’re already behind. It’s not that fashion got commercialised, it’s that the commercialisation got so fast and so all-consuming that there’s no breathing room left to develop an actual point of view before someone’s already packaged it, sold it and moved on.80’S PUNK IMAGE: SHIRLEY BAKERS
“Now the art of personal style is dying, and we all look the same.”
Now, back to my previous list of micro niche TikTok aesthetics or whatever you want to call them. I wonder if you may have noticed a word repeating itself a wee bit. We’re no longer women, we’re now, in fact, perpetually girls. And honestly, I don’t think that’s an accident. A girl is easier to package than a woman, easier to sell back to herself, easier to reduce to a mood board and an Amazon storefront; a girl can be a Pinterest board. But a woman, she has contradictions and weird phases and a jacket she’s had since she was seventeen that doesn’t go with anything, but she’ll never get rid of, and quite frankly, that’s a lot harder to shift units with. The word girl implies youth, softness, the kind of smallness that makes you easy to categorise and easier to market to. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, is exactly the point.
As Rayne Fisher-Quann, aka the Internet Princess, famously stated in her essay “Standing on the Shoulders of Complex Female Characters,”
“It’s become very common online for women to express their identities through an artfully curated list of things they consume or aspire to consume…the aesthetics of consumption have in turn become a conduit to make the self more easily consumable.”
These ‘aesthetics’ previously known as subcultures are now entirely about consumption; it’s no longer about politics and musical taste but more about buying or being perceived as someone who might buy something. For example, the quiet luxury trend was not about actually being rich and being quiet and graceful about it, but in fact, the point was more for people to think that you might be.
And although many would argue, really, there’s no such thing as personal style - cue the cerulean blue scene from The Devil Wears Prada - there’s no denying that across all media, people both facially and in terms of fashion are all starting to look the same, slowly moulding into one big beige lip flip slick back bunned fox eyed blob. Yet to make ourselves seem original, we declare that we’re wearing these items in a different way than the ‘other girls’.
“I’m not wearing Ugg boots in a clean girl way, I’m wearing them in an off-duty ballerina Slavic girl winter way”
Okay, girl, whatever you say. Either way, you’re still following the trend, and these big corporations don’t care whether your shoes are being worn in a basic way or a coquettish way because the money is still going into their pockets.
It’s become a performance of proximity, who got there first, who’s wearing it in the right way or the new way, who is in the know, who started the trend or really gets the trend and who is just a follower, like seriously if I had a quid for everytime I heard or even said myself “but they just don’t GET IT like I do” I would be lying on a beach in Thailand right now.
We speak of those with basic style as less than not for political reasons, or because we want to help the less fashion inclined, but because we want to inflate our own egos, we are better than you because we chose to follow a different trend. Although you may deem it as cooler, a trend is a trend, no matter the outcome.
And it’s not just how we dress, it’s who gets to be in the room. There’s a Reel doing the rounds at the moment that’s said what we’ve all been thinking – stop inviting the same rotating cast of freeloading influencers to everything and bring back actual curation.
Invite the film nerds to the screenings, the fashion nerds to the shows, and the music nerds to the listening parties. Right now, we’ve got people who couldn’t name a single track standing front row at gigs time and again that they got into for free, and will leave before the encore to make sure they get their post up while it’s still relevant. Proximity to a scene is not the same as being part of one. But I suppose when the whole point is just to be seen there, does it even matter if you give a shit what any of it is actually about? Apparently not, babes. Open bar, free food and a branded photobooth? Guess we’ll see you at the next one.
We’ve now reached what people call cultural stagnation. To paraphrase Walter Benjamin, whenever the aesthetics become politicised, then fascism is in trend, when it seems like art, beauty and fashion have hit a wall because we keep repackaging the same shit. The average person is no longer developing their aesthetic taste, and nothing feels new because we only seek algorithmic approval, so our taste is intrinsically tied to whatever gives us the most social clout. After being told what is considered to be the pinnacle of beauty, we find ourselves all trying to wear the faces of Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner while trying to achieve the bodies of the likes of Gracie Abrams (convincing women to dedicate all their energy to worrying about their weight is a whole other conversation). And we really do sit and complain about “everybody looks the same” until somebody actually looks different, then we hit them with the “Greek gods would go to war for you/ I love your confidence!” type comment section.
“Stop inviting the same rotating cast of freeloading influencers to everything and bring back actual curation.
Invite the film nerds to the screenings, the fashion nerds to the shows, and the music nerds to the listening parties. Right now, we’ve got people who couldn’t name a single track standing front row at gigs time and again that they got into for free, and will leave before the encore to make sure they get their post up while it’s still relevant. Proximity to a scene is not the same as being part of one. But I suppose when the whole point is just to be seen there, does it even matter if you give a shit what any of it is actually about?”
We buy bags with pre-added charms and jackets that are pre-distressed because the trend cycles go so fast, our clothing doesn’t even get the chance to feel lived in, everything is a signifier and can’t just be worn because it’s loved, but more to show or prove that you are someone. If she wears tabis, she’s a ‘real’ fashion girl; she goes to art galleries and posts fit check TikToks with her photographer boyfriend; if she wears Arcteryx, she’s chill, she drinks Guinness and goes on hikes for the gram. If she wears fur coats, she loves a messy night out, smokes tabs and is let in everywhere, no questions asked, because she knows the band. If she wears Tom’s trunks, she went to private school, loves drum and bass and goes skiing on the weekends.
None of those things have to be true; we just have to believe that they could be. It’s like we’re all desperately trying to make a point about ourselves, and really we’re all just performative asf. And duh, life itself is a performance, but we’ve essentially turned getting dressed into a personality test we administer to ourselves every morning, desperately asking, are we niche enough to be interesting but still hot enough to be desired, weird enough to have taste but not so weird that nobody wants to fuck us?
And when you actually clock what these aesthetics are, they are almost entirely built around a femininity that exists to be perceived. Not felt from the inside but read from the outside, filed correctly, appreciated from a distance. Somewhere along the line, the question stopped being how do I want to feel in my clothes and became will they get it? We absorbed the male gaze so young and so completely that we now curate ourselves for it voluntarily, document it ourselves, post it ourselves, tag the brand ourselves and call it self-expression. And babes, that is not self-expression, that is free advertising.
“Are we niche enough to be interesting but still hot enough to be desired, weird enough to have taste but not so weird that nobody wants to fuck us?”
Gen Z gets blamed for this, but it makes sense when you’ve grown up in an attention economy that demands you be legible at a glance. Personal style used to be the accumulation of a life: a concert tee, a dead relative’s coat, shoes worn down on one side. Now it’s a mood board made real, assembled to be read rather than felt. We’re not getting dressed, we’re making a case for ourselves. We’re at a point now where when we see somebody online showcasing their beautiful individual look, we are no longer inspired to find originality for ourselves, but instead find ourselves in comment sections demanding a step-by-step tutorial on how to copy the entire look.
And before you boys get too comfortable, you’re doing it too. The Salomons hiking boy who’s never been further than the Peaks but owns three shell jackets and needs you to know he could survive a Norwegian winter. The moustache mullet patchwork tattoo guy who keeps his keys on a carabiner, the boy who wears vintage band tees and beat-up Sambas, who’s definitely seen Fontaines D.C. four times and will tell you that every time you play ‘Favourite’. The raw denim enthusiast in full Oni selvedge who’s been to Japan once, visited one workshop in Kojima, and hasn’t stopped talking about it since. The record store guy in a deadstock flannel and New Balance 574s who needs you to know he has the original pressing and absolutely did not find it on Discogs. The “I don’t really follow fashion” boy who somehow owns every single piece from the Uniqlo U drop and is inexplicably head to toe Margaret Howell. The skater boy who hasn’t been on a board since 2019 but exclusively wears Rassvet, Fucking Awesome and one very specific Supreme drop from 2017, he got resale. The “I just threw this on” boy in a perfectly proportioned Rick Owens leather and Lemaire trousers, who, to make it clear, did not ‘just throw it on’.
Men have spent years mocking women for being trend-followers while quietly developing their own just as rigid aesthetic uniforms. The difference is they call it “having taste” rather than following a trend, which is somehow the most on-brand thing imaginable.
There was absolutely no need for us to reduce our interests to an aesthetic, to fit people into boxes. You are a complex, contradictory, multidimensional person; you are allowed to play and explore and like multiple styles of clothes and decor all at once. Not everything has to be curated to fit into a repostable TikTok. Unless it’s a really good one, in which case send it my way."
We need to bring back calling people posers. I'm not one to encourage bullying, but when everyone is being fake and performative, we need to call that out. I'm so tired of being punished for being genuine, and never following trends- how do people even have the money to do that, when everyone's poor and struggling?
You said it, not me 🤷 I was just telling my partner the other day that we should bring back the word 'poser' for this exact reason.
I do think the word poser was pushed to the brink of extinction because people abused it and were pretentious about it back in the day. Like calling a teenage girl a poser because she had a budding interest in the alt scene that she was just starting to dabble in but hadn't fully committed to yet, or calling someone a poser because they liked a couple of Green Day songs but couldn't list the entire biography of all the band members. And it was often gendered, and was rightfully criticized for that.
But there is a difference between that and what this article is talking about. There is a difference between someone curiously dabbling in a subculture vs someone hallowing out anything that gives it meaning to just profit from it (financially or socially). So I propose we bring back the word poser, but use it responsibly this time.
I'm not sure if some of Tumbler's user-base knows this, but you do know that if there is something you want to add to a post that's related to what they're talking about, you can do that without insulting them in the process.
I keep seeing comments and reblogs around Tumblr along the lines of "wow, all of those words and you didn't even bother to mention x 🙄".
The thing about replies like this that there's a strong insinuation that either x was left out intentionally and maliciously, or that the person writing the post is an idiot for not already knowing about and including x, or both. Either way wording it this way is an insult and a put-down to whoever wrote the post.
Maybe sometimes people didn't mention x for malicious reasons, but 9 times out of 10 that's not the case. Most of the time people either generally didn't know or weren't fully aware. Or maybe just genuinely forgot. Either way, it's not called for to insult and attack people who are total strangers to you on the internet.
And there really needs to be more emphasis on the whole "people on Tumblr are strangers to you", it's rarely called for to attack or insult strangers unprovoked. Say some of your new co-workers or classmates you haven't really gotten to know yet are talking about how your city is going to be getting rid of some of the bike paths, and one of them is talking about how this is bad for the environment. You (hopefully) wouldn't butt in and say "wow, all those words and you didn't even bother to mention how this affects lower class people who can't afford cars 🙄😒" and if you would actually do that, you seriously need to work on your boundaries because it's really inappropriate to just attack and insult people unprovoked like that.
Of course you could say something like "oh it's not just an environmental issue, this is really going to hurt lower class people who can't afford a car!". You can actually just add it in a neutral way like that without attacking or insulting anyone in the process for not already saying it.
People become more closed off and less receptive when you attack and insult them, btw. Even when you're saying something they'd otherwise agree with. In some cases I wouldn't count it against someone for attacking and insulting someone who is genuinely being cruel and malicious, sometimes it is called for and can be a form of self defense. But just over someone not knowing something or forgetting to mention something? What do you actually gain from that?
Most people have absolutely no fucking empathy for the way it affects you to survive an abusive relationship. Most people have absolutely no fucking empathy for what the symptoms of PTSD do to you.
I had to work various food service and retail jobs right after I escaped a violently physically abusive relationship, and that mixes together just about as well as having to work a strenuous physical labor job right after having both your arms broken. But it was my only option if I wanted to pay the bills and keep food on the table.
Of course customers would get aggressive and hostile with me, of course customers would scream while their faces were red with rage and slam their fists on the counter or even try to physically threaten me. And of course given my very fresh and very untreated PTSD I'd freeze and/or fawn and break down afterwards. Even just moderate aggression like a raised voice or a forceful attitude could send me into freeze/fawn because my brain had just spent years being taught that even something as moderate as a raised voice or a forceful attitude meant I was in physical danger if I didn't back down.
And when my co-workers would witness me freeze up in front of a screaming hostile customer the reaction would range from anywhere from annoyance at how pathetic that was of me to later bragging to me about how much better they would have handled that because they're so much tougher and more assertive than me and needed to preen about that. Instead of even bothering to think about why I might be reacting the way I was or trying to empathize they could only jump on the opportunity to judge me as weak to make themselves feel better about themselves.
Or a friend of mine who I distanced myself from after I saw how she reacted to her sister's behavior after leaving an abusive relationship. Her sister was of course afraid of her abuser and afraid of confronting him about custody matters, and my friend would always talk about how frustrated she was with her sister for being "so childish and such a scaredy cat". She knew her sister had just been abused, but all she could do was judge her sister for being "weak" and get mad at her sister for her "weakness".
I have spent years in therapy and have regained a lot of my confidence and assertiveness that I'd lost from the abuse. But it still stings in all sorts of ways when I think of how people reacted to my behavior after I'd just escaped the abuse. How everyone's, and I mean everyone's, reaction to seeing me freeze or fawn or break down when I encountered aggression or hostility was to judge me as weak instead of having any understanding at all, and this includes people who knew I was fresh out of an abusive relationship.
If someone had just broken their arm and couldn't carry anything with their freshly broken arm, any normal decent human being's reaction would be to understand why they couldn't carry anything with a freshly broken arm, and any normal decent human being wouldn't expect them to. It's widely understood that if you judged them as pathetic and weak for not being able to carry anything with a freshly broken arm, and if you started preening about how you're so much stronger and better than them because you can carry things with your unbroken arm, that this makes you a colossal fucking asshole and a generally bad person.
Imagine if we could actually approach mental/emotional injuries, like PTSD from a physically violent relationship, with the same understanding.
I feel as though what drives most rude / inconsiderate behavior I experience IRL on a day to day basis comes from a place of having this unearned and unnecessary sense of urgency in situations that aren't actually urgent. I think if more people became aware of this completely unnecessary sense of urgency in situations that actually aren't urgent, it might make co-existing and sharing public spaces with other people a lot easier and more tolerable.
That text post that's been making the rounds that goes something like "Omg you made it to the same red light as everyone else but faster and more dangerously and recklessly, should we call nascar? Do you want a medal?" summarizes exactly what I'm trying to talk about.
It's like when I have to change buses at one of the bigger and busier bus stops, and the people who get off the same bus as me shove and elbow past me to get off before me, and then shove and elbow past anyone even slightly in their way on the way to the bus they're switching to, only to end up on the same bus as all the people they shoved and elbowed, with several minutes to spare before it leaves and plenty of open seats left.
I think this unnecessary urgency a lot of people feel in their day to day lives drives a lot of bad behavior. I'm not saying I'm innocent of this (is anyone's?), I've felt it too in plenty of situations that didn't call for it, and regrettably was less kind than I should have been as a result. But I try to be aware of it, and always try to ask myself it it's really as urgent as my lizard brain is trying to tell me it is, and even if it was urgent, does that still justify unkind behavior?
Is shoving or elbowing another person aside going to make the difference between whether or not you make it to the bus before it pulls away? (hint: at least where I live, most of the time that's a no because the drivers usually won't leave if they see people from another bus heading towards their bus). Is shoving and elbowing people aside in a crowded grocery store going to make any real difference in how quickly you get your shopping done?
Does a few extra seconds of time actually justify cruel and unkind behavior towards people you perceive as slightly inconveniencing you?
A few more examples of this phenomenon:
- Waiting in line at the store and the person behind you creeps closer and closer to try to pressure you forward, and ends up violating your personal space and making you uncomfortable, because they think creeping closer and pressuring the person in line in front of them will somehow get them through the line faster (it won't)
- Going through a self-serve buffet, and the person behind you keeps creeping closer and closer to try to pressure you to serve your food faster and get a move on. All it achieves is that you can't scoop your soup without elbowing them, and that's somehow your fault
- Crossing a crosswalk when the car waiting for you to cross creeps closer and closer to you to try to intimidate you into crossing faster (because using a 2 ton metal machine to try to intimidate a fleshy little ape you could easily kill with said 2 ton metal machine isn't acting like a bully at all no sir-ee)
- Honestly a huge heap of the poor treatment of service workers is also rooted in this sense of urgency in things that are not actually urgent
Please do feel free to add more examples if you can think of more examples
To everyone in the notes saying they've never, or very rarely, feel this urgency: you are so powerful, please don't change, and I hope your powerful disposition can spread to more people.
I take issue with how many people conflate being rude with being more "honest" "sincere" and "real", while the same people will often conflate being nice and polite with being "fake" "insincere" "two faced", and even though this line of thinking has always existed, I think it's gotten worse in the last decade or so.
Don't get me wrong, brown-nosers and people who try to use a veneer of "kindness" as a manipulation tactic are very, very real. And they give kindness and good manners a bad name.
But I take issue with the idea that in order to be sincere and honest with someone you have to be rude and inconsiderate. It's a very childish view on human interaction and human relationships IMHO. You can be honest and sincere with someone while being considerate of them and their feelings as a fellow human being.
I also think it's incorrect to conflate kindness and good manners with being fake and insincere because, at least the people I've met who are fake and insincere people (brown nosers and manipulators if you need a more concise definition of what I mean by fake and insincere people) yes they can be good at making first impressions. They can come across as quite nice, at first. But if you spend any amount of time around them and actually pay attention, they are actually rude as hell. And it will always show at some point.
I think it ties into the false idea that being "smart" is being cold and unfeeling, and that being "emotional" is both feminine and connected with being unintelligent; both of which are simply excuses to not do the hard work of developing emotional control and maturity.
A lot of people don't just associate being cold and unfeeling with being "smart", so many people associate being outright rude with being smart or witty, and it's so exhausting to deal with.
You see it a lot in this online culture of always having to give "witty" quips to whatever people say, even if that person is a stranger, even if that witty quip is rude, and even if their so called "witty" quip isn't actually witty or smart at all. But it bleeds a lot into daily life. It's probably not fair to completely blame this on social media, I don't want to be too "old man yells at clouds", of course this mentality existed before social media, but I feel like formats like X (formally known as Twitter) encourage this.
It's all about this weird need to TOTALLY PWN someone for, idk, some weird smug sense of intelligence and superiority when you're making yourself look the total opposite most of the time.
Take for example, the other day I was discussing pizza toppings with my boss. One of my co-workers chimes in "You know what pizza topping I just DO NOT understand? Pineapple! Come on people! It's so stupid, I can't believe how stupid people are that they're eating an unhealthy food like pizza and think putting pineapple on pizza makes it healthy! People are so dumb, I don't get it!" And she said it with this really smug tone, like she sure was showing anyone listening how smart and superior she was and how dumb they are.
The thing is, does anyone even put pineapple on pizza for health reasons? I know a few people who like pineapple on their pizza, and none of them do it for "health" reasons. It's all about just liking a sweet tangy flavor mixed in with the savory flavors of the pizza. In her desire to make herself look smart and witty, she made herself sound ignorant (to put it nicely).
And even if someone was putting pineapple on their pizza for health reasons, so what? Yeah, pizza is high in fat and carbs, but people still need some fat and carbs in their diet. Pineapples are high in vitamin c, vitamin b, manganese, and copper. If someone wanted more of those nutrients in their diet, what would be stupid about adding a food high in those nutrients to their dish, regardless of how high in fat and carbs the dish is?
I'm not saying I hate witty humor or attempts at wit, but it's about what your target is. People who have this incessant need to make themselves look smart and witty by trying to put down other people are telling on themselves.
First of all if you're not ABSOLUTELY 100% sure that you know what you're talking about, you risk making yourself look like the ignorant one and just look like an ass, to put it not so nicely. Second of all, it's only insecure people who have no sense of personal power who try to get a sense of power and self esteem by trying to put other people down.
I know it’s easy to give in to despair, anger, and apathy, but not voting will not help. You cannot boycott an election. It will continue on with or without you, and it will impact you and EVERYONE else worldwide, as well as future generations to come. This is a group project, and abstaining hurts everyone. Please vote.
I feel as though what drives most rude / inconsiderate behavior I experience IRL on a day to day basis comes from a place of having this unearned and unnecessary sense of urgency in situations that aren't actually urgent. I think if more people became aware of this completely unnecessary sense of urgency in situations that actually aren't urgent, it might make co-existing and sharing public spaces with other people a lot easier and more tolerable.
That text post that's been making the rounds that goes something like "Omg you made it to the same red light as everyone else but faster and more dangerously and recklessly, should we call nascar? Do you want a medal?" summarizes exactly what I'm trying to talk about.
It's like when I have to change buses at one of the bigger and busier bus stops, and the people who get off the same bus as me shove and elbow past me to get off before me, and then shove and elbow past anyone even slightly in their way on the way to the bus they're switching to, only to end up on the same bus as all the people they shoved and elbowed, with several minutes to spare before it leaves and plenty of open seats left.
I think this unnecessary urgency a lot of people feel in their day to day lives drives a lot of bad behavior. I'm not saying I'm innocent of this (is anyone's?), I've felt it too in plenty of situations that didn't call for it, and regrettably was less kind than I should have been as a result. But I try to be aware of it, and always try to ask myself it it's really as urgent as my lizard brain is trying to tell me it is, and even if it was urgent, does that still justify unkind behavior?
Is shoving or elbowing another person aside going to make the difference between whether or not you make it to the bus before it pulls away? (hint: at least where I live, most of the time that's a no because the drivers usually won't leave if they see people from another bus heading towards their bus). Is shoving and elbowing people aside in a crowded grocery store going to make any real difference in how quickly you get your shopping done?
Does a few extra seconds of time actually justify cruel and unkind behavior towards people you perceive as slightly inconveniencing you?
A few more examples of this phenomenon:
- Waiting in line at the store and the person behind you creeps closer and closer to try to pressure you forward, and ends up violating your personal space and making you uncomfortable, because they think creeping closer and pressuring the person in line in front of them will somehow get them through the line faster (it won't)
- Going through a self-serve buffet, and the person behind you keeps creeping closer and closer to try to pressure you to serve your food faster and get a move on. All it achieves is that you can't scoop your soup without elbowing them, and that's somehow your fault
- Crossing a crosswalk when the car waiting for you to cross creeps closer and closer to you to try to intimidate you into crossing faster (because using a 2 ton metal machine to try to intimidate a fleshy little ape you could easily kill with said 2 ton metal machine isn't acting like a bully at all no sir-ee)
- Honestly a huge heap of the poor treatment of service workers is also rooted in this sense of urgency in things that are not actually urgent
Please do feel free to add more examples if you can think of more examples
#cutting in line at the airport#you are all going on the same flight!
Not just getting on the same flight, but the majority of the time already having assigned seats! The plane isn't going to just pull away while passengers are still boarding, your seat will still be your seat, why the urgency?
People have always been like this in airports, and maybe I'm just noticing it more, but I feel like in the past few years this sense of urgency in airports has gotten worse. I get some people might be running late for their flight due to extenuating circumstances, but that doesn't excuse being rude. It's not fair to punish random strangers at the airport if you're running late for your flight. That's your problem, not theirs.
If it's really urgent and genuinely extenuating circumstances, then use your words ("I'm so sorry but I had a family emergency this morning so now I'm running really late for my flight, do you mind if I go ahead of you?") rather than push / shove / elbow / cut in line / violate other people's person space.
The past several times I've flown I almost had a panic attack going through security because of how much other passengers kept violating my personal space by standing too close (to try to pressure me forward), even though that wouldn't make the line go faster + were getting pushy / shove-y / elbow-y with trying to get their stuff on and off the x-ray belt. Is there really any reason that's called for? We're all just trying to get through and get to our flights, You Are Not The Main Character of Airport Security.
I'm seeing a lot of posts recently about how we have 1 year to get ready for the next major U.S. election. And not to be alarming but its actually much sooner than that.
The primaries for most states are in 6ish months. When we say 'vote them out', and it's a representative from your party, we are talking about voting them out in the primaries. If you wait to vote until Election Day in November, the only choices you'll have are the Republican and the Democrat candidate. So it's everyone's responsibility to be active in the primaries where we choose which democrat will be running.
Instead of being stuck with whatever democrat is the most popular, or has the most money, we can choose to elect someone who has more of a backbone and better politics, and maybe even someone who is Independent. But it means you have to vote in the elections leading up to November 3rd, 2026.
THE WEST WING → 4.03 'College Kids'
[ID text–
Series of GIFs showing Allison Janney as CJ Cregg in The West Wing, giving a speech to young adults at a "Rock The Vote" rally, on stage and in front of the band Barenaked Ladies.
CJ’s speech is subtitled as follows:
25 years ago, half of all 18 to 24 year-olds voted. Today it's 25%. 18 to 24 year-olds represent 33% of the population but only account for 7% of the voters. Think government isn't about you? How many of you have student loans to pay? How many have credit-card debt? How many want clean air and clean water and civil liberties? How many want jobs? How many want kids? How many want their kids to go to good schools and walk on safe streets? Decisions are made by those who show up! You gotta rock the vote!
End ID.]
every time someone says some shit like "girl math" I remember her
I love you katherine johnson I'm so sorry for how many modern women are spitting on your legacy
