Why is next

Doug Sheppard (he/him, old enough to despair but trying to remain young enough to hope) is a software engineer, and a writer and improviser when he isn't doing the things that pay the bills.

[sirilyan]

The nice thing about being a Dropout subscriber and also a Taskmaster AU, Taskmaster NZ and Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee fan is that you get to have a favorite Oyama and oh my god it is very much not Zac.

[sirilyan]

It warms my heart to no end that the Washington Post (a billionaire-owned media outlet with global name recognition) gets less engagement on its right-wing garbage YouTube videos than two comments on a post about a girl who had an allergic reaction on an airplane.

(The comments in question were written by me, a non-billionaire idiot who barely has name recognition among the people who follow me on tumblr.)

[smbc-comics]

Things will never again be so beautiful.

Check out the bonus panel on the site.

Upcoming book signings this summer.

───── ◆ ───── ◆ ───── ◆ ─────

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Buy this comic as a print.

[sirilyan]

You think me a fool, to tell me of your trap and then lay it before me immediately afterwards.

[cipheramnesia]

Do you think the doctors in charge of Mitch McConnell's body and organs are like having a huge debate like, who gets to be the lucky guy to pull his life support? Is he an organ donor? I think if you told a bunch of guys one of them would get to hack up McConnell's corpse and pull out his guts, they'd start a fistfight to see who got the privilege. Imagine getting to put Mitch McConnell's heart into an incinerator. What a thrill!

[sirilyan]

I’m going to ask for some elaboration, because I’m not sure what’s supposed to be thrilling about throwing a rock into a fire.

[sceptixfakemon]

this heatwave fucking sucks how am I going to serve my liege like this

[sceptixfakemon]

im never leaving this hellsite

[sceptixfakemon]

i swear if this is the second stupid sword picture post i make that gets to 10k i'll just go kill someone

[sirilyan]

Like to engage in entrapment, reblog to become part of a criminal conspiracy.

[cipheramnesia]

I keep getting a recommended post of this art with dragons flying past a skyscraper, but all I can think is, a second dragon has hit the towers, what if 9/11 was secretly done by dragons, wholeass dragons diving into buildings and exploding, etc

[cipheramnesia]

Imagine dragons blowing up skyscrapers

[sirilyan]

That’s why they were put on that prison bus, you know.

[miku-earth]

Canadian Miku 🇨🇦 by you-are-my-fire

[meangirlnurse]

if the satanic panic was happening now a lot of you guys would be like “DNI if you don’t believe survivors of satanic ritual abuse at daycare”

[meangirlnurse]

have already been accused of being a fascist for making this post

[tragicallyphosphorescent]

I dare you to explain what "satanic panic" is supposed to symbolize here. Did you refrain from saying "red scare" or especially "war of drugs" cause you knew if you said that people would stop for a minute and consider before rebloging this nonsense post mindlessly? Or is this about survivor of violence or rape? Or just what tf is this about?

[meangirlnurse]

have you considered googling “satanic panic.” sometimes if you look up words you don’t know you can find out what they mean

[sexhaver]

war of drugs

[chai-spiciest]

Lol. Lmao even

[anoraktrend]

Hey, OP, I genuinely do want to know what you're using the satanic panic as a metaphor for. Specifically because I do think that it's vague enough that it can refer to anything from people who say "DNI proship" or "DNI antiship" to "DNI trans rights activists" (a transphobic dog whistle) or "DNI Transphobes"

[meangirlnurse]

it’s not a fucking metaphor

[elequosoraptor]

Ok, metaphor is obviously the wrong word here. But OP is making a specific claim, that people now would engage in certain behavior if they were around during the satanic panic.

Now there are two parts here that inspire curiosity: the exact nature of the behavior (or what it means to say DNI if, etc.), and why you would say that behavior would be engaged in (what causes are present that lead to people in general having this behavior trait). What people are asking about when they ask about metaphor is, what is it about people now, their current behaviors, thought processes, and reactions, that is leading you to conclude they would react in X way in Y situation. It isn't unreasonable to ask this, even if they lack the understanding to be clear about their curiosity.

The thought process is, "Here's a claim about behavior, the implication is that the behavior is bad (a judgement of badness always inflames interest), the OP might be drawing this conclusion if people are behaving similarly about something that is not the satanic panic (since people probably assume there isn't a current satanic panic), but something(s) else is occurring that's somehow similar, what is that something else?"

Because the post is phrased as a conditional (if this was true, this would also be true), the prima facie (on first look) reading is that it is not true (even if that isn't contained in the strict logical meaning of the words). That is to say, while there may be ongoing satanic panic with people including that DNI, phrasing it like this suggests to readers that this is not what's happening, but someone analogous is. This is because there is a general rule in conversation that if information is present, it is relevant, so to state a conditional implies it at least might not be currently true.

While there certainly some unreasonable reactions above, the core question represented by the metaphor question expressed by some comments is not an unreasonable reaction, and comes from an appropriate and good faith understanding of the OPs main claims.

Reading comprehension is not the issue here, miscommunication is.

[essaressellwye]

Yeah, seeing this again, there are certainly people who seem to think "Satanic panic" is a couple of words OP threw together, but the post does lend itself to the reading "just as people fell for the Satanic Panic then, now they're falling for ___"

[meangirlnurse]

#literally#OPs responses were so grating to read#not to mention ableist as hell

people on this website believed that if they ate chocolate in a specific way that it would break reality and they would receive infinite chocolate.

i also – and this might be crazy for you to imagine – have some level of intellectual curiosity about historical events, wherein many people with similar politics to your average tumblr user very much did fall for the Satanic Panic.

but instead you could be a whiny little crybaby in the tags. up to you!

[moth-fuzz]

oh hi!

Look I get that you're probably tired of dealing with a post from years ago, so maybe I shouldn't have left the tags. I believe you that what you're saying about your own intellectual curiosity is true. It's good to be intellectually curious! It's absolutely not hard for me to imagine. But even now you're doing the thing you say you're not doing - "many people with similar politics to your average tumblr user" - what does that imply? To what politics are you referring? Who is this 'average tumblr user'? What kind of tumblr user would make such a DNI as found in the original post? The intellectually curious person is the person who asks these questions. Can you exercise that intellectual curiosity you say you have and maybe practice a little empathy toward the fact that using loaded statements is gonna have people asking what you're actually loading them with? To try to understand, to ask "gee, I wonder why so many people are getting this reading from my post?"

I'm certainly not whining or crying over this, come on. I said your responses are grating, which they are. If enough people respond to your post, all pointing towards a similar reading, you can't just call them all stupid and be done with it, while remaining intellectually honest. I called your comments ableist, which they are. Again, calling huge swathes of people stupid over a misreading. We all know what the satanic panic was, that's obviously not the issue. The issue is your phrasing is implicative, that's all. If you didn't intend to imply anything, that's one thing, but if enough people are reading that from your post, it's not just because everyone on this site is illiterate. By the way, the whole chocolate thing was over a decade ago.

Hope you have a good day.

[meangirlnurse]

it's not a loaded statement, you're just the most annoying people alive. incidentally, suggesting that someone looks up words they don't understand is not 'ableist as hell.' hope this helps

[sirilyan]

I want @meangirlnurse to write a one-sentence post referencing the September 15, 2008 filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Lehman Brothers, including the name, the date, and the event, just to see what this website will say the post was actually about.

[queer-as-city-folk]

Anti-city people are just plain fascinating to me

[sirilyan]

This is the first post I saw after getting home from a 8-minute shopping trip for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch.

Probably should have been quicker, but we also spent a little bit of time picking out a nice yogurt.

[sirilyan]

Some people ask if the ents of Fangorn are any good at doing the nasty. Well, buddy, all I can say is

[milfyspamton]

anyone remember what these things are called like little cartoony expressive doohickies i think they have a real name but i can’t remember

[milfyspamton]

im not fucking crazy.

[milfyspamton]

if i have one more person say sparkles on this post im gonna blow i swear to god

[evengirlierballs]

They're squeans I'm pretty sure! If they pop like that anyway. But the term for this kind of "symbol to refer to the general vibe of something in art" is called "Emanata" because it emanates from a person or object.

[creepymutelilbugger]

what the fuck. comics are magic

[charlesoberonn]

somebody put a quimpsy spurl on my blorbo

[eirapparent]

she quimps on my jarns til I nittles

[sirilyan]

You used to have to CENSORED such things but that’s become obsolete with today’s relaxed taboos.

[sirilyan]

I’m so glad Toronto’s World Cup venue is downtown, because if it was as inaccessible from the city as Meadowlands is from NYC, we’d be in week five of “As A European, I Would Simply Paint A Crosswalk Across The 401” discourse.

[sirilyan]

The name is Moneyball. Birchpoint Moneyball.

[inevitablyuncertain]

VOTE NOW

"even the best pear is just a mid apple"

'you're right #applesquad'

'you're wrong #pearpeople'

Voting ended onMay 24

[inevitablyuncertain]

in my defense, i didn't think more than about 4 people would respond. if you vote for pears, tell me what kind.

[sirilyan]

The worst pear is orders of magnitude worse than the worst apple, and the best pear is orders of magnitude better than the best apple.

Are you going for consistency? Apple o'clock. Swinging for the fences? That fence is firmly in Peartown, comrade.

[theabigailthorn]

I made a Mii of you hope that's alright

hell yeah

i do like mozzarella lemonade and honey!

[strange-aeons]

I'm very tired and briefly considered the possibility that British people enjoy a weird delicacy called "mozzarella lemonade"

[sirilyan]

I heard there was a British drink

Italian cheese and citrus pink

But you don’t care for mozzarella, do you?

It goes like this, the zest, the curd

(Plus another thing, a secret third)

And a shame cube after footage from a Switch 2

[dogpuppy]

[sirilyan]

Tunnel Girl - Wikipedia

[aimerai35mm]

sunlight smile in the hallway // 2025 // shot with minolta riva

[sirilyan]

My Foyer Totoro.