bi, bee, bye

something goes here

[babyanimalgifs]

high five gone wrong

[ottermatopoeia]

HE DID A GOOD JOB

[topaf97]

I’m dead omg this is so funny and cute

[nuggetbuns]

PSA!!! Chicks and bunnies are not Easter presents. Choose stuffed animals, chocolates or Peeps instead!

[iridescentness]

Shelters become overrun with bunnies in the months following easter. They are not an easy pet to care for properly. It requires time, money, and a commitment to an animal that doesn’t always care that you want to play or snuggle. If you’re up for it they are great Companions (not toys or stuffed animals) and are well worth the effort.

[passionate-sharks]

[reptilisss]

give ur sweetheart a bouquet of sharks this holiday season

[caseyraenichole]

@western-sky-bound23

[babyanimalgifs]

[tanthesuperman]

Preferred place for guys to cum?

To his senses

[silverhawk]

some lesser known small cat species

the kodkod

the flat headed cat

the pampas cat

the andean mountain cat

the jaguarundi

[markv5]

Что Кошки думают о Нас???

[defectivegembrain]

If we’re living with autism it has to go somewhere so where do you keep yours? Mine currently stays in a book about morphology so it can enjoy some special interest time when we’re not doing anything

[spongebob-autisticquestions]

I like to keep it right next to my laptop

[asdcats]

Mine’s in my room somewhere

[setheverman]

[gif87a-com]

[catsbeaversandducks]

OH MY HEART

[american-auror-story]

“I’m not ready for kids” LOL

[weavemama]

[hundondestiny]

Instant revenge.

[virgo-79]

Somebody’s ass is walking from now on.

[orriculum]

yknow how you want to like female characters and not immediately hate them but at the same time they’re often written by those men that have a limited understanding of women as people and it’s really hard to like a character that is less meant to be a person and more of a wanking hand puppet intended for the male gaze

[cumaeansibyl]

the flip side is when we’re supposed to dislike a female character but she’s obviously a straw-woman the writer’s using to work out some unresolved issues he has with an ex or his mom or an unrequited crush so you actually kind of like her out of spite (especially when the narrative insists she’s terrible but the real person she’s based on was wholly reasonable and the writer can’t conceal that)

[prokopetz]

Bonus points when the dude we’re supposed to think she’s such a harpy for being hostile toward is just an endless parade of predatory red flags, but the narrative never acknowledges it due to the writer’s evident honest belief that that’s just how you interact with women.

[dream-of-phraxos]

[ohnonotgood]

Yeah that’s why they all died at 30 because they were so unhealthy but cool

[rosietheamazon]

Pretty sure it was the plague not heart disease.

[cr1mson5thestranger]

Pretty sure it was the Plague, childbirth, food spoiling, maltreated infections, smallpox, pneumonia, and/or generally unsanitary living conditions (such as dumping sewage and waste in the streets) and not health conditions caused by excess body fat.

Not to mention that the Renaissance standard of female beauty being plumpness and full-figured forms came from the fact that it was a status symbol. Plump, pale, full-figured women were wealthy women who didn’t have to spend their days in hard labor or raising children (or both) and stood a better chance of bearing healthy babies than commoner women did.

[sofiama]

Cultural “Oh Snap” I hate it so much when people pull out the “unhealthy” excuse for having a reason to body shame a person.

[fandomsandfeminism]

“Women died young in the 1700s because they were fat” is an amazingly ignorant statement

[apersnicketylemon]

Fun fact, the main reason the average life span is 35 is because infant mortality was so high. If you made it past age 10 you generally survived until 70, but because 40% of the people born were dying before age one the ‘average’ is low. So actually, the women in these paintings lived relatively long lives. (Being born into wealth also increased your chances for survival)

[smitethestate]

Oh my god they thought they were dying because they were kinda fat oh my goddddd oh my god oh my god oh my god deadhoneybadger just delete.

[skeletonsandwildflowers]

I’m glad somebody mentioned the infant mortality rate, because so many young girls were forced to go through with pregnancies.

[prokopetz]

While it’s true that a lot of telemarketers are just folks trying to make ends meet, you still shouldn’t feel bad about hanging up on them in mid-sentence.

Many telemarketers aren’t actually allowed to end a call without making a sale; if they did so voluntarily, they’d be fired. By corporate edict, that call was only ever going to end in one of two ways: with you buying something, or with you hanging up on them. There’s no point trying to end the conversation politely because the script they’re working off of demands that they ignore and obstruct any attempt to do so - and they will be punished for failing to follow it.

You hanging up on them is literally the only way for them to get out of a call that’s not going anywhere, so you might as well get it over with. You’re actually doing them a favour.

[condensed-theorem-shop]

Yes.

This is also an instance of a more general principle: notice when people are weaponizing social norms, and react by refusing to play the game.

Easy mode for this is the people on the street with pamphlets. They’ll weaponize social norms in an attempt to make you stop and talk to them. One script I see, for instance:

ACTIVIST: Hi! Excuse me, are you a student here?

PASSER-BY: –yes, I am.

ACTIVIST: Do you care about the ethical treatment of minorities on campus?

PASSER-BY: ….um, yes, but…

ACTIVIST: Were you aware that 90% of statistics about minorities are made up on the spot to serve as examples in tumblr posts?

PASSER-BY: …no, I wasn’t, but I really have to…

ACTIVIST: Here’s what our organization does to fight that!

…and so forth.

The trick here, of course, is that the first question is one which it’s socially unacceptable to avoid answering. If the activist opens with “would you like to help save a photogenic animal today?” you can say “no thank you.” If they open with “do you care about the whales?” you can grit your teeth and say “nope.”

But how do you respond to “are you a student here”? It’s a yes or no question, to which you definitely know the answer, so you can’t mumble something about not knowing. And it’s not explicitly related to their cause, so you can’t just automatically say “not today thanks.” (If you try either of those, they’ll call you on it – “what, you’re not a student today?”)

Ignoring them, or saying “that’s none of your business” or “leave me alone,” is a violation of social norms, and means you look like a jerk, because they asked a question that’s well within the realm of what’s socially permissible. So if you’re playing by social norms, you have to answer.

And then, once you’ve answered, you’re engaged in conversation with them. It’s an egregious violation of social norms to walk away from a conversation without going through the normal conversation-ending procedures. And they of course will not participate in those. So now you’re trapped, where you would have been free under social norms to walk past someone shouting at you about statistics if you hadn’t yet engaged with them.

The only way to escape these situations is to notice them and step outside the social game. This is hard; you will get intense this-is-awkward, I-am-being-awful-and-mean feedback from your brain, which has noticed you are violating the rules and would like you to stop. But walking away without saying anything, or saying “I don’t want to talk right now,” is in fact the correct thing to do here.

And that’s easy mode. People selling something play this game blatantly. Hard mode is people who play it expertly, within society, so that you have to go along with what they want or be forced into violating social norms. (And people will go along with a lot rather than violate social norms.) Friends who ask you for things in a way that makes it awkward to refuse. Family members who treat you badly but do it in a way contrived so that any complaint will constitute you being rude. In the really extreme cases, the same dynamic shows up in abusive relationships. It’s the adult version of an abuser convincing a kid he’ll get in trouble if he tells his parents.

So this is, IMO, a really important skill to learn and to deploy properly. Social norms are great, I love doing the dance of social convention, it’s lovely and satisfying, but if your partner keeps trying to stab you with a poisoned dagger, maybe it’s time to stop dancing. Even if that looks weird in the middle of the dance floor.

[fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton]

This is something I never thought needed to be broken down before, but once you did it helped make a lot of things clear. Like, I already knew that sales people are pushy and try to rope you into conversations that are difficult to terminate, but describing the reasons why those conversations feel so awkward to leave abruptly was super enlightening.

[toreblogallthethings]

Well said.

[elodieunderglass]

One other reason that people feel uncomfortable breaking social norms is the fear of retaliation. This is one that the face-to-face marketers tend to play on more than the telemarketers.

There’s a reason that chuggers (“charity muggers”) frequently pick on women - female-socialised people find it harder to say “no” and walk away from a social interaction. Some of this may be due to fear of retaliation. Lots of situations in which “a stranger forces you into weird public engagement” can escalate horribly, so it’s often easier to just mumble along with them and contrive an escape. Rejection (of the chugger/catcaller/marketer) is something that sometimes leads to retaliation, so depending on your experiences you might find yourself being afraid to “just walk away.”

I have had two experiences where chuggers caught me in public and reacted badly to my flat rejections. They were both men chugging for Greenpeace, and I actually complained to the organisation about them. Because they’re playing on social norms as well, using aspects of themselves in the marketing performance, they can get waaay too invested and in-character, and treat it as a social/sexual rejection, apparently. One of them actually lost his head and chased me down the street, shouting.

Anyway the best way I found to stop both of them was to stand at bay and scream “STOP HARASSING ME”, which created such public amazement among the other people on the sidewalk that the chuggers had to put their hands up and back away.

With the chasing-guy he sort of did a defeated primal scream and went back to his pitch, presumably having come back to his senses. but the other guy just raised his eyebrows like “hey WOW fair enough” so it worked out okay.

Basically even if there is retaliation, just remember that THEY STARTED IT and THEY MADE IT WEIRD.

[jottingprosaist]

Your number one script for the very first response is, “Sorry, I’m late, can’t talk.” And keep walking.

[elodieunderglass]

Oh absolutely. In the cases of the two Greenpeace chuggers I had initially flatly rejected and kept walking with a murderous pace; it’s not like I haven’t lived in cities. But the chasing-guy then followed me and touched my shoulder to stop me (departing wildly from the chugger script - they’re supposed to leave you alone if you say no) so I told him he was now harrassing me, which made him escalate. The other guy was more casual, but he still got in front of me and blocked me with his body. Both of these are seriously inappropriate, which is why I literally stopped and called them out, then reported them to Greenpeace.

The “fear of retaliation” is an incredibly important aspect of the social-awkwardness part of rejection, though. So I think it’s important to model how that can happen in aggressive-marketing situations. In fact, you have more power with marketers than when faced with a catcaller; you can get marketers fired for it, because there are rules about how marketing behavior is supposed to happen.

I know exactly what you’re saying, so I apologise for riffing on it, but I’m getting notes/activity that’s all bright and chipper and reccomennding doing the murderwalk to “simply not have the trouble in the first place” as if this is New Information.

And I think it’s a little unhelpful for people to be told “Well, just say ‘no’ and you won’t get into escalating situations” because that’s patently untrue, and doesn’t work in any sphere of life where you actually need it. And then when it does escalate, it automatically becomes a situation where “saying no and walking way” is ineffective because you’re already past that point. And it is deeply irritating for people who do end up having trouble: “Uhh why didn’t you practice the magic murder-walk ™ that makes people leave you alone? (insert gif of the lady doing the murderwalk) I do that and nobody’s EVER committted crimes against me, you should be more like me.” And it’s like, uhhhh well yes the murderwalk is great for walking past the drunk guy in the student hub, but when every pissed-off commuter in London is literally doing that at all times ANYWAY, then statistically a trained lancer in the Chugger Pack in a tube station Marketing Gauntlet is going to go for murderwalkers anyway, because they gotta make rent, and sometimes you’ll be one of them? It’s an evolutionary arms race. it doesn’t REALLY matter how you always walk past importunate homeless people while thinking about murdering Captain America, or whatever. You don’t get paid to do that, and other people DO get trained and paid to break into your personal bubble and sell things to you.

In conclusion: I think most people have, in fact, heard of the word “no”. Thus, telling them to “just use it” is not always that helpful (if you really want to help people). It’s like saying “if someone touches you, then do karate on them.” And if anyone has questions, then it’s like answering “just do karate! Do five karates!” and if it doesn’t work then it’s like saying “well, it’s because you didn’t do SEVEN karates.”

I’m not mad and everyone is absolutely right, it’s just that it can be true that “murderwalking” or “hanging up” or “saying no and walking away” is helpful, BUT ALSO, when that doesn’t work, that’s what the post is about - why it doesn’t work, and what happens next.

[workingitinportland-deactivated]

watching an actress in full makeup pretend to wash her face and then pat dry her still fully contoured cheeks for an acne wash commercial

when i was 13 i had no idea what make up looked like on. media literacy is important

[judeoceltische]

I especially like the makeup remover ads where she takes off her lipstick, to reveal lighter lipstick underneath.

[cupcakeslushie]

or the commercials for razors with women shaving their already baby smooth, waxed legs

[sakuraharunouzamaki]

[theconcealedweapon]

Disabled Person: “I can’t do this.”

Abled Person: “Yes you can.”

Disabled Person: “Actually, no I can’t. I wasn’t putting myself down. I was just stating a fact. Everyone has some things that they’re able to do and some things that they’re not. This just happens to be something that I’m not able to do. Maybe there’s something similar that I can do but not exactly this. Maybe it doesn’t come natural to me but I can do it if you explain in detail how. By placing a high importance on one particular skill, you’re the one putting me down. I’m well aware that the only reason you’re defaulting to ‘yes you can’ is because you expect it to be a skill that everyone naturally has, which means you’re implying that there must be something wrong with me if I’m not able to do it.”

Abled Person: “Uh … Yes you can.”

Disabled Person: (gets angry) “No I can’t! You just ignored everything I said!”

Abled Person: “Geez! Why do you get mad so easily? I was just trying to help.”

…

(autism tags were used due to personal experience, but this post can be relevant to other disabilities, so comments from people with other disabilities are welcome)