Roarey's Stuff @roareystuff - Tumblr Blog

First and Best

I feel like sharing a little story with those of you who read this shitty blog, something real and special to me.

Several years ago, my cousin Nicola died. She had epilepsy and hadn’t been taking her medication for a few days. She had a bad fit and died during it. She was 26. Nicola was in my life more than any of my other cousins, she was basically the daughter my mother always wanted, but the poor sod ended up with two sons (aint life an arse!). Nicola was tall and beautiful, a football player and black belt in karate. She filled books with poetry and was damn good at it. Nicola’s funeral was my first funeral and the best one I’ve ever been to.

The room was bright, red and gold; her casket decked in Manchester United merchandise. We read her poetry, talked of her life, her humour, her fuckups. God was absent and not invited, religion was banished, there was no time for Jesus, this was Nicola’s day. It was wonderful, just hearing about her and nothing, nobody else. Then Lionel Richie started singing Three Times a Lady through hidden speakers and I wept waterfalls. It is right and proper that the world should shatter when good people die. It’s good to hurt, it’s right to hurt, and go on hurting for as many months or years as your heart wants to. They matter, they really fucking matter. Nicola mattered and still does. At the wake, while the mourners were getting pissed up as drunken farts and laughing, men in tailcoats released armfuls of doves in the pub car park. Twice. I’m a shit writer, but it was what a sendoff ought to be. The funeral kicked ass, almost as much as Nicola did when anyone pissed her off. My mother has a photo of her in her flat, always prominently displayed. Look at the ass-kicking poet for yourself.

I remember her staying at my house a lot, her own mother treated her like shit. She’d stay with us, my brother and my mother, and get upset when we fought. She had an unhappy life, one of mistreatment and loss. Once, during an epileptic episode in a hospital, she had been tied to a radiator by the staff and left there (this was in the 80′s). My mother found her and raised hell. Mum really did love her, they were there for eachother. I still remember my mum waking me up the day after she died by screaming in the kitchen. I’d never heard a scream like that before, just a piercing, instantly recognizable expression of pure grief. Thank fuck she’s a smoker, because I ran downstairs, lit a fag for her, held her, made a coffee and it actually helped.

Of all the bullshit platitudes about life that are out there, the only one I like is “shit happens”. I’d add “with alarming frequency” to the end of it but it works XP. You don’t need to look for a silver lining or something inspiring from a shitty situation, some things are just shit. Embrace the shittyness, the realness. Don’t act like this is all to teach you some damn life lesson. Or do. Either way, Nicola rocked and she died too damn young. Salut!

Tis one of the pitfalls of mental illness. Healthy people often, in my experience, seem to believe that they know the solution to your problems, that they can pull answers from their arseholes and throw them around like wisdom confetti. I wouldn't presume to lecture a mathematician about their own job, I know sweet fuck all about maths. I wouldn't expect to know even a fraction (harrdeeharrharrharr) of what they do. As someone with more than two decades of depression experience, life experience that I didn't read in some fucking book, I get insulted as all pissery when some fucking chipper fruitloop tries to pass on pearls of dogshit wisdom. It's patronising and inconsiderate. Naturally, as the ill person, you have the burden of being considerate towards the people who are fucking you off like a space shuttle, because protecting their feelings is more important than your own. This is simply because they have good intentions, or at least believe they do. I doubt these good intentions, I think it's something people do to make themselves feel good, feel knowledgeable. Even if someone is genuinely trying to be nice, it's still a colossal mental hemorrhoid. So take it as friendly advice, don't undermine the legitimacy of other people's shit, just agree that it's bloody awful. Or just bugger off.

#depression #mental illness #cartoon #rant #mental health

Sticking Up For Speech

To give the following some context, a few weeks ago Maryam Namazie, an ex-Muslim, feminist campaigner and activist gave a small talk at Goldsmiths University on the subject of blasphemy and apostasy. She wanted to express her views regarding the realities of life under Islamic regimes for women, freethinkers and apostates. Before she was due to talk, the student Islamic Society of Goldsmiths wrote an open letter in protest of the impending talk. They claimed her views were in violation of their "safe space", which is apparently a thing at universities. For further information, here's one take on the story:

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/muslim-students-from-goldsmiths-university-s-islamic-society-heckle-and-aggressively-interrupt-a6760306.html

Though far from an isolated incident, I believe this case is a good illustration of what is happening to the concept of free speech, or rather what already has happened, in a great many minds, young minds particularly. The very idea that a university, an academic institution for the furthering of knowledge and understanding, should have any censorious policies at all is disgraceful. How can one hope to get a valuable, useful education in an environment where certain points of view, certain perspectives, are considered too dangerous to even talk about? How can you develop strong arguments and principles against or for something if discussion is forbidden?

Maryam Namazie did give her talk at Goldsmiths, but it was continually disrupted by infantile objections and distractions, by arrogant, simple-minded fucktits who couldn't pay the simplest of respects to let a person talk at a university. Following the disruption, which someone happily caught on camera so it couldn't be lied about later (lies ever being a great tool for unscrupulous bellends), the Feminist and LGBT societies of Goldsmiths decided they had to make a statement about this too. In favor of the Islamists. For feminist and LGBT societies in a student body to express solidarity with a group that opposes feminism and gay rights, solidarity with their pathetic 'crusade' to silence a woman, displays a complete lack of understanding among these students. They clearly have no idea whatsoever about the real world, about the real consequences of dangerous, fascistic ideologies. People like Maryam Namazie are a minority at risk; outspoken critics of Islam, especially ex-Muslims, face real violence, even murder. We live on a planet where, under fundamentalist regimes, people are beheaded for writing blogs. Take that in: your head could be sawn off with a shitty blade for making a fucking blog post.

Goldsmiths Islamic Society have happily invited guests in the past who are proponents of fundamentalist Islam. They are in line with and in support of an ideology that calls for the domination of women in society and the censorship of any view contrary to Islam. Overdone to the point of triteness is the protest that speaking out against religious domination is Islamaphobic or extremist. This is a theft and repurpose of language to reframe the debate, to elicit sympathy with causes that are enemies of free speech, freedom of religion and free expression. Speaking out in favour of women to live as they want to live, for all people to say what they want to say, for all people to love who they want to love is a good thing. Isn't it?

That's the question people need to ask themselves, since it seems so-called liberal values have entirely collapsed amid this pathetic, barefoot-on-glass tiptoeing that one is expected to do, to avoid causing offense at all costs. Do you believe people should be free to live how they, themselves see fit, to make up their own minds about their own lives, or not?

If yes: Stop sticking up for the assholes who try to silence outspoken minorities fighting for the same rights you believe in.

If no: You need to be fought every step of the way by every thinking, moral person. And you're a massive twat.

The path of least resistance is an effortless one to tread, which is why it's easy and therefore commonplace for minorities to be suppressed. Great, brave women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali have to live under permanent bodyguard for daring to write and speak. To write and speak, for fuck sake. Tens of thousands of screaming muslims can burn embassies to the ground over the publication of cartoons and nobody says a fucking thing. No, the murder and destruction, the domination and censorship, that's not the problem, it's these few upstarts over there daring to speak out against it. Grow a spine, cultivate a conscience and get fucking real, because the world doesn't owe you a security blanket to protect you from opinions that challenge or offend you. I've always been left-leaning, but right now the left, its pathetic weakness, it's support of evil bastards, pisses me off beyond description.

Catch 22 - Continued

I wrote briefly about a fraction of the stuff on my mind in the last entry; I want to expand on it a bit here. Barely anybody reads my blog, since the updates are so infrequent, but I still want to get this out of me somewhere, so I figure this is a decent enough place to do it.

Over the past month or so, my relationship with my partner has come to an end. We’d been together 11 years, but for the past few things have grown more cold and distant. The reality is that it’s not easy to deal with someone who has depression. I can’t move forward very far in my own life and have to do so in small steps, but to someone mentally healthy it’s far too slow. People just want to enjoy themselves, have a fun, carefree life and people with serious mental illnesses like chronic depression are a hindrance to be around. So he’s slowly moved on to the company of others, going out on trips, enjoying life without me being a part of it. My illness has sucked away my energy over the two decades I’ve lived with it; it has dashed my career prospects, limited my future options, made my life one of constant pain and now I’ve lost the only relationship I’ve ever had. Hopefully you can understand if I feel like I’ve lost an awful lot to this, which is quite a burden to bear. I’ve spent so many years doing my best to be tough, strong, clear-headed. When my mother attempted suicide some years back, I was the one who stepped up and took action. I set up our then new house, looked after her through her nervous breakdown, when she was hearing voices and was convinced everyone in the house wanted to kill her. I’d go in her room every hour or half-hour for months, to make sure she wasn’t doing something silly, like one time she fell asleep holding a cigarette and nearly set herself on fire, but I was there. I had to do all this shit on my own, my boyfriend took a back seat because he’s come from a happier background, he doesn’t have the skills or experience to jump in at the deep end like I did.

The harder my life has got, the more it piles on, yet I see people every day who haven’t been through an ounce of what I have and life has more great things in store for them. I feel shat on, alone, discarded, to face everything that tortures me alone. People say they want to be there for you, but they’re not physically there. I’ve always had to pick up the broken pieces every time my life falls apart. It would take too long to list everything, I really don’t want to conjure it all up just now anyway, but traumatic experiences leave their marks on you; if you’re going through this sort of thing and you’re alive, then you’re strong. The people who aren’t strong enough are dead. This is what others don’t get, that this shit kills people. So here’s some reality of what it’s like, in brief:

Nobody wants to help you shoulder your burdens, instead they will make up ideas that you’re just too lazy or weak-willed to sort things out for yourself. People will believe they are better than you because they can work and you can’t, that they can move on and you can’t. You’re simply lacking something that they have. This is true, but what one is lacking is health. Health and social bonds. You’re only as important to people as what you give them or do for them; so if you make people laugh or feel good they’ll love to be around you, if you don’t then they’ll want to avoid you. It’s a perfectly natural thing, so I don’t blame people for wanting to avoid me and avoid the subject of my problems. I’ve read and watched talks from people who have made real progress in their lives, despite crippling illnesses, and the story is always the same. “If it wasn’t for my friends and loved ones, I would not be here today.”. People need people, end of story, but the more sick you are, the less you get to see of others, to feel the warmth of being wanted.

This shit is hard. It is hard. It is fucking hard. You might not be able to understand a persons problems if you’ve never had them, you might not want to give a shit about them, but at the very fucking least, what you OWE a sick person is to ACKNOWLEDGE their illness and the limitations it places on their lives. Don’t hunt for fucking inspirational stories of people overcoming huge odds, acting like that’s the story to aspire to, that’s the legitimate story to be told, because the REALITY is that life isn’t a fucking inspirational story for you to gobble up hungrily and move on. Life is sometimes a goddamned sack of shit and potatoes and it HURTS like a son of a bitch when you don’t have that acknowledged. I have been ignored and left to rot for two fucking years in this house, my confidence has been seriously damaged. Now I’ve got to move off and try to rebuild my life yet again, while the people I currently live with go forth to live productive lives.

Here’s a fact for you: if you need help, most people don’t give a flying fuck. In this Generation Me, the only thing that matters is personal success and the contents of ones wallet. Despite all the shit I’m dealing with, I still cook food for local homeless people and I take care of my mum, who is even more ill than I am. I’ve always given to others, my whole damn life, figuring that doing good at least gives one some comfort. It really does, but it also hurts to see the total indifference of other people.

I’m fortunate enough that there are some people online who care enough about me to send me some money through gofundme, without whom I’d be even more snookered than I currently am. My god, though. Sometimes you just feel so damn tired.

Catch-22

Depression is such a bastard. I don’t really have any other outlet than spewing this drivel online so I might as well take another crack at it.

Living in near-constant pain and anxiety, with the complete mood Black Holes that accompany depression creates a situation that is all but impossible to escape from. Being in pain, mentally and physically, can lead to anger and bitterness, especially when the experience is prolonged. I go through these periods of bitterness that seem so irrational and childish on the surface, making efforts to describe them look like whining. Suck it up; deal with it, as the sayings go. Thing is though, if you’re left to your own devices, with nobody giving a shit or helping out, you’re just stuck. You don’t want to reach out to people yourself, even when they offer, because you’re ever aware of the burden you will be transmitting. Getting on with it, sucking it up, these are the very things one cannot do, yet you are surrounded by people who can do it with ease. It’s like a return to the helplessness and dependency of childhood, but with the added frustration of knowing that one is an adult and what you ought to be capable of. You’re in a room, looking at life through a window, observing people getting on with their lives, and you can’t get out of the bloody place. Sooner or later resentment can build up, stemming from how fucking painful everything is. People around you having a great time really hurts, but you’re hardly going to express that or you’re Emperor Buzzkill, Lord of Misery-Arse Kingdom. Nobody wants to lose a good vibe when they have one, so avoiding you and your pathetic downer of a personality is a priority.

But it isn’t pathetic, it’s fucking awful, but you can’t expect people to go out of their way on your account. It’s just a torturous sodding mess of loneliness, self-doubt and the worst despair coming seemingly from nowhere at all. To those around you who don’t understand what it’s like, you just look like a silly bastard. I’ve been through a lot of heavy shit in my life and I’ve had depression for over 20 years, so I know I’m not a pushover, but this honestly just makes me feel like the weakest, sniveling shite on Earth.

So yeah, misery and loneliness are a catch-22; the worse you are, the more people want to avoid you, which makes you feel worse. On top of that, the symptoms of your loneliness become the objects of your ridicule. So you’re a fucking failure in the eyes of most people. Haha, what an absolute bastard.

Some stickers I’ve been working on for Telegram users. I’ll be adding more as time goes on. Feel free to use them!

https://t.co/ekeIDWUAUM

Freedom of Speech

I keep seeing this issue raised, which is a huge issue, but there’s one part of freedom of speech I want to talk about, specifically. It’s the concept that, while freedom of speech gives you the right, by law, to say what you want to say, it has nothing to do with social consequences. You are free, legally, to say what you like, but not free to escape harassment, vitriol, whatever other people want to throw at you in retaliation. There’s nothing technically wrong with this, but there are a few reasons why I think this is bullshit in practice.

Just to conjure a hypothetical scenario, say you’re in a small town and you’re gay. You have the freedom to say you’re gay, to be gay, to say you are not ashamed but proud. Legally. However, the rest of the population of this town thinks that homosexuality is a filthy, immoral sin, a blight on humankind. So you exercise your freedom of speech and say that you’re gay, in this town. As a consequence of your actions, you are shouted at as a piece of shit, as filth, garbage, evil. You’re hounded away with slurs and anger. After all, you deserve the consequences for opening your mouth, so suck it up.

Of course, the context I see this principle in action is usually when someone makes a hateful, discriminatory comment on the internet. A view is expressed that causes offense, so people send off their own angry messages to retaliate. All this is done behind the mantra “well if you can’t take the heat, don’t say such shitty things”. There’s a good will behind this, an attempt to disparage hate speech and ignorance and beat it down. It’s only effective when you’re in a majority, stripping down a minority. If you were to take your fight to a forum dedicated to the hate you disparage, like, say, a forum filled with racists and you try to flood them with anger, you’ll be laughed out of there quicker than rabbits fuck. It’s an abusive tactic, getting people to back down or reverse their view with force; either they change their tune or they can just fuck off.

The first problem I have with this is that it creates an environment of tension and sets a pattern for how undesirable opinions ought to be treated. Not with reason, discussion, evaluating the experience of another person and finding out where that opinion comes from. It doesn’t change minds, it just makes people think they better be careful not to say the wrong thing (or makes them further hate the people they already didn’t like). This doesn’t encourage free discussion or free speech in general, it encourages people to lock controversial thoughts and feelings away, so we end up not having those discussions.

The second problem I have is that it mirrors the tactics of abusive people. Homophobes, racists, transphobic people, they use drowning out, pummeling and making a joke out of vulnerable people. To see others, who believe in sexual freedom, racial integration and gender fluidity, act as spiteful, mocking, forming angry mobs, as those they are against is disheartening. The gleeful, self-righteous attitude of most of this sort of behavior is also truly nauseating. I don’t see any moral integrity in licensing oneself to be an asshole.

People are not an opinion, people have opinions. The stronger an opinion is held, the more context and history that opinion has in a person’s life. There are experiences, feelings, areas of knowledge which contribute to the formation of these views. If we do not know what they are we cannot get to the root of them. If we do not stick up for people to express themselves, how they really feel, no matter how they feel, then none of us can expect to be backed up either.

Of course, I’m not condoning abusive behavior. If someone is actually attacking another person, bullying them, then they need to be stopped, but I see this sort of shit happen when someone is just expressing a view, aimed at no particular individual. Even the most ludicrous ideas are worth preserving, even if only to remind ourselves why they are wrong, to keep the arguments for our own positions fresh in our minds.

That, and I really don’t believe hate, the refusal to empathize or understand, is doing anybody any favors. It’s just another addition to a vast pile of shit.

Coming to terms with life.

I debated whether to even write this down, because, ultimately, realizations about life need to be arrived at by oneself. Attempting to communicate something as personal as this is unlikely to resonate with others, let alone to the extent that it does with me. Then again, maybe it’ll help someone who is having trouble seeing life as anything other than bleak, so I’m going to do my best to put things down.

First, a little bit of background. I’m an atheist, I find it impossible to believe in any kind of God. It’s not just that I don’t, I really can’t. Add this to over two decades of chronic, clinical depression, and it makes for a disturbing, bleak mix. I’ve struggled for over 20 years, trying to find some meaning, some purpose to life which truly resonates with me. I believe I’m finally finding something. The bottom line for me was, if I’m ever to find something to live for, it has to be real, it has to be based in reality and evidence. I can’t find comfort in fanciful stories and make-believe, it doesn’t wash with me.

I do an awful lot of reading, I’ve read literally hundreds of books, from novels to a huge range of non-fiction, including philosophy. One of the reasons I’ve read so much, aside from the comfort it gives me, is to search the lives, thoughts and perspectives of others for meaning. We’re not just alone in the dark, we have a vast wealth of written lives, imaginations and ideas to draw from and countless more that have yet to be written.

To begin with I recognize the fact that life is short; our species, our planet, even our universe will not be around forever. One day I will die and eventually everything I’ve ever said or done will also fade from all human memory. I am, in basic terms, utterly ineffectual and inconsequential, along with everyone I will ever love. This is the central idea which gave me great pain for so long, coupled with the fact that life, before it ends, contains a great deal of suffering and anguish. How does a positive view arise from these ashes?

First, I consider the fact that all life is connected. We are made from the same elements, these elements come from something as awe-inspiring as a supernova, the cataclysmic death of a star. The elements of which we are composed, our genetic relationship with all species on Earth, the realization and true understanding of this connectivity is astounding. So, we are not alone, we are all in this together. This lends to me the basis of my moral values, that to ease the lives of other creatures as much as possible, as a result of life’s brevity. The brevity and scarcity of life is the lender of its currency, it’s preciousness, like gold. It’s not just a belief that I am not alone, it is to KNOW I am not alone.

My second point can be introduced by a few lines of poetry by Dylan Thomas:

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

There is strength in fury, anger and rebellion. My vitality and lust for life are found in the rage the poem mentions. Life is the ultimate rebellion, in a universe that is overwhelmingly dead and hostile towards it. Being alive is badass, it’s the biggest middle-finger in history. When I feel battered, shattered and broken, this is the stuff I remind myself of. No matter how hard life gets, it goes on anyway. The natural world is nothing if not a struggle and what a glorious struggle it is. Do not go gentle.

The next point is opportunity. Not an opportunity for glory or financial success or any of that meaningless bollocks. An opportunity to experience, to think, love, hate, feel. We have an opportunity to add something, however small, to the world around us and our fellow creatures. We are a part in all this. You get to decide what that part is. Not entirely, obviously, but there is an element of choice in the decisions we make. We have free will, as Christopher Hitchens put it, with delicious irony, because we have no choice but to have it. We also get to traverse the world of human experience and perspective in reading, listening to and watching the stories of others. Whenever we feel lost, countless others have felt the same way too, and we all have something to say on the matter. This catalog cannot be exhausted.

In case this is all becoming too platitudinous, I’ll leave this diatribe with the short version of why I choose to live and not succumb to my illness. I love books, I love people, I believe in humanity, the fight for better days and the knowledge that, however many mistakes I make, the world turns. And Metal Gear Solid V is out in September.

The Myth That People Are Just Dicks

I've wanted to write something about this little topic for a while, so here's another one of my stupid little tumblr essays XP.

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard it said that a person behaving in a negative way is doing so for "no reason" or that they are "just a dick (or some other insult XP)". I'd like to briefly and simply point out why this doesn't make sense. No long-winded treatise, just a really easy to understand reason why this is rubbish.

Think back to a time when you last treated another person badly, when you lost your temper or did something that, in retrospect, you now consider unreasonable. Was it for no reason at all? Are you a machine? You are at least aware that your own behavior has underlying causes and influences, some of which even you can't explain. The same applies to everybody else on the planet.

The reason writing off behavior as something done "for no reason" or because they're "just an X" is meaningless is because nothing has been explained. You're acknowledging that someone has done something wrong and that you don't know what the reason is, yet this is treated like an explanation in itself, an end to the discussion. Describing a behavior is not explaining it or understanding it, human beings aren't just entities floating around, just doing shit.

As for me, I go by my own experience in these matters. Unless we're dealing with mental illness or psychopathy/sociopathy, people behave like shit when they feel like shit, or are otherwise conditioned to see those they are mistreating as being unequal to them, for whatever individual reasons. Either way, we gain no understanding or knowledge by simply stating the obvious: someone has been a dick.

Believe it or not, the reasons why people do what they do are rather important. Especially if you ever want anything to change. Nine times out of ten, behind anger is pain.

I've wanted to write a little follow-up to my previous entry for a while now; I'm finally dispensing with procrastination long enough to do it. Not that I expect anybody to read these bloody things, it's just a way of putting thoughts down.

Since early childhood I've always placed a lot of value in logic, tracing ideas and thoughts to their logical conclusions. Even when I was only 7 years-old I'd think about philosophy and the nature of the universe, even if only primitively, haha. The view of life that I expressed in the previous blog post is, for me, looking at life from a perspective of logic and cold, unfeeling evidence. I don't disagree with the conclusion, but, at the same time, in expressing it, I've omitted some very important things. This is generally due to the fact that I was miserable as fuck at the time I made the entry, so no surprises there XP. The fact is, there's simply more to human life than logic.

I do firmly agree with the proposition that life is, ultimately, going to end entirely and vanish without a trace. Entropy exists. In this respect, life is 'pointless'. In the previous entry, I mentioned that other living creatures don't contemplate their lives to the extent we do, their struggles in life are just struggles, without the philosophical perspective or the attainment of knowledge that extends beyond what they need to comprehend to survive. This is what exposes us to the bleak horror of perceiving the future but it also means something else: Since we think these thoughts, ponder meanings, we are also the creators of meaning and context. For us, life doesn't have to be pointless, its pointlessness is simply one of the ways of looking at life. It is this creation of meaning, artistic expression, philosophy, discovery, the complexity of human relationships that, for me, gives to life its purpose.

I may be in a lot of emotional pain, and have been for 20 years (thanks to depression), but there are books to read, people to talk to, cartoons to draw and escapism to be found, in fantasy and entertainment. It's hard as hell, sometimes, to stick around, but if there's anything that makes life worth it, for me, it's art and the pursuit of knowledge. Especially drawing cute furries. Extra bonus points if I'm being paid to do it.

Another piece of preachy crap that will never be taken seriously (and possibly shouldn't be), yay! XP

#inspirational

There are some sensitive issues, like sexism, racism and homophobia (to name a few) for which discussion is practically impossible. Unless you are a victim of some abuse or a member of a minority in question, you aren't considered to have an opinion worth listening to. What's more, an entire discussion can be derailed by the perceived misuse of a single word. I know you've all seen batshit insane arguments on the internet, with people essentially competing to create the cruelest insult or sharpest put-down.

It's a growing trend for people to attack others in the name of social justice, apparently it's an attempt to make sure that people are held accountable for the things they say. When it comes to the matter of an individual or individuals being abused I think there's something to be said for people sticking up for those receiving it. Trouble is, though, people are generally just looking to fuck with someone, so this attempt at justice bleeds over towards people who have just made offhand comments or jokes that others have found either offensive or insensitive. Everybody makes such comments but from the way the social justice movement behaves you'd never know it. It's ridiculous and achieves nothing worth having. All insulting people who have ignorant opinions does is give such people more reasons for having them, like sheer spite. Dunno about you but nobody ever convinced me of anything by screaming at me.

It's not for me to tell other people how to behave, but at the very least don't pretend like you're fighting for a cause or you're doing the right thing. Having ignorant opinions or making offensive comments doesn't make anyone a bad person; directly trying to hurt someone else does. At least have the honesty and integrity to admit that you just want the opportunity to be as horrible to someone else as you feel others have been towards you. You're part of the problem and the internet is a worse place for it.

Anyway, have a stupid little cartoon XP.

The problem I have with social media at the moment is this idea that people ought to be condemned for their opinions, that to express an unpopular point of view is to grant others the right to attack you. All opinions have a source in experience and knowledge; to know if your information or experience is incorrect is no easy task. In fact, it's a task most of us never actually want to do in the first place. Feeling right is a great feeling, to give that up isn't easy. You're not going to encourage anyone to examine their own opinions, with a view to changing them, by an attempt of force, ridicule or abuse.

It's no horrific crime to have a go at someone because they've expressed an opinion somewhere that bothers you, but don't pretend that it's a good action either. I read things all the time that piss me off but unless it has been said to me specifically I do not find just cause to retaliate or fire off my own opinion at the poor sod in question. Blogs, twitter accounts, social media accounts in general are personal spaces of expression, yet open to public view. However, just as someone would be extremely rude to butt in on a conversation overheard outdoors; on the internet, it is no less rude. It is reaching the point where a person can be hated as much for an opinion as someone who actually does something harmful to another person. They are referred to as "a piece of shit" or suchlike, regardless. This is complete bollocks and ignorant of a basic fact about all people. We all think of and say mean, irresponsible or ignorant things; it makes no sense to accuse someone as guilty of an action, as though unique, when it is something we are all guilty of.

Anyway, have a jogging bunny XP.

Quick sketch before I have to go do things. Oh and I'm not actually happy when I see people die, haha. Just wanted to add some text to it and this is what came to mind XP.

Quick sketch of a certain Norbert Beaver before I sod off to bed.

#angry beavers #norbert

It's been a while since I drew something that isn't a commission. So here's an idle little sketch of Tails in a slightly different style XP.

#miles tails prower

Been seeing a lot of these things for a while, image macros with stupid messages like "Make every day special!" or some such codswallop. It's like spam, only more irritating XP. People are happy for incalculable reasons, same goes for why people are miserable; it never has anything to do with 'inspirational' bollocks on the internet.

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