Psychological thermal vent.

This is where the spicy parts of my brain go.

[boyfrienby]

you guys Need to start seeing bugs as animals im not even joking anymore. the second u start seeing them as tiny animals the more your world opens up and the more you accept different types of life Into that world. youll begin accepting that even life you cant understand is still worth living. and itll legitimately make you a better person. fuck

[sharkface]

Honestly when people say their art needs to get "more weird" they usually mean that as in "less commercial/less broadly appealing" and I think the answer to this is not to insert artificial Quirky Weird Style Stuff into it I think you just need to get uncomfortably earnest. What's the thing you really want to draw but feel shy about putting the effort into because it'd be too sincere an admission. You need to draw that. I want to see it

[queerautism]

"Porn is bad because (something that happens because of lack of sex education)" is such a frustrating and common opinion tbh

[kiwisandpearls]

I wanna see a version of that one post going “our generation would protest slavery” with the reblog: “y’all can’t even boycott chick fil a” but instead it’s:

“Our generation would be better than previous generations and not shit all over newer ones”

“Y’all can’t even get over Gen Alpha humor and can’t even not call kids being kids cringe”

[justnoodlefishthings]

The way people demonize seagulls is actually unreal. Almost all of their natural habitat has been destroyed (almost all coastal areas have been developed, destroying natural sand dune ecosystems) and they're doing their best to adapt. They're literally just trying to survive. You're in their home. The vitriol some people have for these gorgeous sea birds just because they're not shy about snatching food if you're not cautious is insane

[queeranarchism]

One of the most important things that I learned from Susan Stryker is that the basic tendencies of nationalism can pop up anywhere.

Those tendencies being: 'This territory/group is better than others and must be kept unified by a coherent shared identity and by keeping out those who fall outside that identity'.

You apply that thinking to the group 'women', you get terfs.

You apply that thinking to the lgbtia+ community, you get exclusionist, you get 'drop the t', you get anti-ace discourse.

You apply that thinking to a political group, you get thought police and echo chambers.

You apply it to a subculture and the subculture becomes insufferable and eventually dies.

Learn to recognize it and go 'no, we're not doing nationalism, we're a coalition of people with diverse experiences working towards shared goals' and you're stopped like half the possible bullshit you can fall into.

[rimonoroni]

you have GOT to be able to admit when you’ve believed something bigoted in order to improve as a human being. like you NEED to be able to handle that if you want to act in line with your values

[handmedownpocketpussy]

I just want to add that bigotry is a marble layercake, it's not a black and white infographic of good versus bad. Some bigotry is up front, "Oh, why do I assume that particular accent makes that person sound stupid?" and easy to point out to yourself Some bigotry is more hidden, "I feel unsafe in certain locations, despite no signs of danger" which could very well not be bigotry but you gotta get in the habit of questioning those knee jerk reactions before just blindly assuming you're having them for valid reasons A lot of bigotry is just stuff you learned and never unlearned, so when it's pointed out to you your first response is NO! THAT'S A REAL THING I LEARNED! the best antidote to this is learning that we are all ignorant gits and lifelong learners, and it's ok to be wrong. Learn to laugh at yourself and you'll have less hard of a time unlearning stuff I promise

[orcboxer]

one of those things you really gotta learn is that it's insanely easy to get people to get mad at anything if you just phrase it the right way. slap the word "woke" on anything you want conservatives to hate. call something "extremism" or "radical" to get a centrist to fear it. say that a particular take "comes from a position of privilege" to get leftists to denounce it (that's right, even us leftists are susceptible to propaganda that uses leftist language). all these are simplistic examples of course, but it's all to say that certain terms, slogans, and phrases just kind of turn off people's critical thinking, especially ones with negative connotation. there are so many words that are just shorthand for "bad." once a term reaches buzzword status, it becomes practically useless.

it goes for general attitudes too. "this piece of news is a sign that the world is getting worse" is a shockingly easy idea to sell, even when the "piece of news" in question is completely fabricated. I'll often see leftists uncritically sharing right wing propaganda that rides on the back of the "humans bad, nature good" cliche, or the "US education system bad" cliche, or even the current "AI bad" cliche. most of the details of a given post will go entirely unquestioned as long as they support whatever attitude is most popular right now. and none of us is immune to this.

(the funny thing is that I'm kind of playing with fire here even making this post. folks are so used to just reacting to shit that I have no way of predicting which buzzword I included here will trigger a negative association in someone's mind and convince them I'm taking some random antagonistic stance on a topic that they've been really fired up about lately.)

[spicy-vent-central]

Also, the fact that "younger generations have no common sense or practical skills" is so fucking intentional. It is such a capitalist oppression thing, for literally every person.

TL;DR: PLEASE understand that there's a really good chance that it's capitalism's fault that young people "have no common sense or practical skills" not your meemaws fault or your grandkids fault, y'know?

For example in the US, people who became adults during the great depression (the great grandparents of Millennials/Gen Z), knew how to do a huge amount of practical, everyday things. They could farm, do household repairs, many of them had carpentry skills and automotive/equipment repair skills. They made many of their own clothes, grew and preserved most of their own food, etcetera. This meant they held little need for the larger capitalist system and had very little motivation to uphold it if it mistreated them. They did not have many material assets but they had valuable knowledge that made them more independent from capitalism.

Now look at Gen Z, we are becoming adults in a time in America where we have EVEN LESS purchasing power than our Great Depression counterparts. On top of that, factually, we have exponentially less individuals with this large variety of everyday skills. So for many of us, when our car breaks down, we have no knowledge on how to fix it and we own no assets. All we can do is sell our time in order to pay someone else to do it. When we are hungry, we have minimal access to land, many of us don't have the knowledge and skills to grow our own food, we have to sell our time in order to go to a grocery store so that we can eat. Unfortunately, we as a generation "need" capitalism for this because we do not have the skills to do these things on our own anymore.

Now the question is why don't we have these skills? Well, I've seen a couple schools of thought but I think both of them are at least partially incorrect.

1) Kids today just don't care about stuff like that and don't want to learn! Kids have never wanted to learn "boring" adult skills. Kids have and always will be kids, but as adults we appreciate these skills and understand the value of knowing them and passing them on to your kids (even if they find it boring). PLUS, many kids do have interest in these things if they're encouraged to give it a chance. I don't think this is truly the issue.

2) Boomers didn't care to teach us! They were lazy and now we are suffering!! They likely didn't believe these skills were necessary for young people anymore. From their perspective the economy had been flourishing for as long as they could remember, why believe that would change? I'm not saying the lack of foresight isn't detrimental, but the viewpoint can be explained. I don't think this is a notable part of the overall issue either.

These two schools of thought lead us as the working class to blame each other for the deficit. It divides us. I propose a third theory on the matter: these skills were systematically stomped out in younger generations to make us more reliant on capitalism. Through assorted methods:

- removal of hands-on classes from school through budget cutting, etc (wood shop, agriculture, home ec, automotive, etc) (PS: this is isn't a "bring back gender roles" take just because I included home ec in the list, every gender should learn home skills like cooking, mending and cleaning, as well as skills such as automotive and carpentry.)

- distraction via the promotion of unhealthy overconsumption of media (video game/TV/social media addiction) (PS: this is not a "technology bad" take, tech is fine but OVERconsumption of media is unhealthy and is even a problem in older generations now.)

- devaluation of these skills via the conflation of them with an archaic and backward social period (Yes, people in older generations were and largely still are racist, sexist, homophobic, and that's fucked. That doesn't mean growing and canning your own food or learning from peepaw how to fix a carburetor makes you any of those things.)

- the manufactured institution of lawns, "landscape" and HOA's preventing us from growing our own food at home on the land we DO have access to

- many others I don't feel like unpacking here as I'm already writing a novel in this post apparently, but you get my meaning

So I guess my point is that we need to unpack our feelings on this and understand that there's a really good chance that it's capitalism's fault that young people "have no common sense or practical skills" not your meemaws fault or your grandkids fault, y'know? As the working class we have to stop punching left and right and start punching up. Also, since I already hear "but boomers own all the stuff and bought their house for $5 in 1970!" (which is a valid sentiment) I share with you an important (paraphrased) quote I heard the other day:

"When the lord of the land commands the people to go out and work his lands in the sun, your enemy is not the man who is wearing a hat."

Other generations aren't the real enemy here y'all, it's the capitalist billionaires. Please see that.

[spicy-vent-central]

If you are a Millennial or Gen Z in America and are genuinely taking the piss out of Gen Alpha for "not being able to read" I just want to let you know (as someone in your age group) that you're turning into your parents in a lot of unhealthy and harmful ways.

Who's fault is it that these kids aren't learning phonics pal? Look around yourself at who is responsible for our government/public schools and who is raising them. Kids are and have always been kids, adults however change drastically over time. You can't blame Boomers for your problems but not accept (at least partial) responsibility for Gen Alpha's problems. These are the children of our generation and it's our responsibility to give them a solid foundation and if we don't do that, we cannot blame them for not having it.

We are all victims of the larger political system and Gen Alpha is already being systemically repressed. They will grow up from birth with the whole sum of human knowledge and access to instant communication in the palms of their hands. This makes them EXTREMELY hard to control from a governmental standpoint. Why do you think we suddenly have this unwarranted, unprecedented and illogical change in how kids are being taught to read? The system is already trying to rob these kids of their power to make change by denying them access to information in the only ways it can. Instead of seeing that for what it is and helping empower the next generation, a lot of you are continuing the trauma cycle of "younger generation bad" and it's really disappointing. I see and hear your struggles, especially millennials. Y'all have been getting blamed for shit since you had no control over since you were kids, let's not do that to the next batch of kids though okay? It's our jobs to build these kids up.

[spicy-vent-central]

Idk if this is still a take like it was a few years back but I have a question for anyone who is upset Quasimodo and Esmeralda didn't end up romantically together. Do the relationships between people only have value if they are possessive or sexual?