#threadings

[soracities]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[jei-rifni-syah]

Warlock eating a threadling while a hive worm watches

They’re having dinner

[mindlessfandomindulgence]

"I also just in my own person have like a, a delusional amount of confidence that everything will go my way, such that it doesn't really occur to me to think that anything could go wrong in the first place, but like truly, I mean, that becomes a self -fulfilling prophecy because… since when do things go wrong?" - Isamtu Gwendolyn

https://substack.com/@ismatu

[soracities]

"As an educator, I don’t just want you to feel what I feel. I don’t want you to consider me correct because I said it beautifully. I want to sharpen your critical thinking skills and your world-making capacities. I absolutely do not leave emotion out of that! Emotions are as central as the written, verbal, numeric, social, ecological knowledges we are able to gain to navigate this world and the next. I am just… extra cognizant of how much I can lead viewers to feel with me without further thought. The videos of mine that go most viral are ones where I show the most emotion, whatever that emotion is: hopeful, cheery, despondent, grieved, furious, combative. We love emotion. We live such isolated, stifled lives.

The challenge of reading is to navigate the narrative without the overtures of overt feelings. There is no face to latch onto, no music that sways you. Words on a page especially cannot compete with screen-time. They’re not meant to. The boredom opens up space in your mindscape to your own thoughts, opinions, and feelings."

—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings on Substack

[soracities]

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[soracities]

"Conclusions: reading, then, is a crucial act of resistance.

Not the only way, or the primary way, but a mode of literacy we must not negate or shy away from. Reading and writing are disciplines distinct from other forms of literacy: aural and oral proficiency (speaking and listening), media literacy (video watching, noticing), financial literacy, social literacy, numerical literacy (shoutout to the baddies with math anxiety rooted in the same oppressive upbringings). There are histories, blueprints, stories we can only access through the pages they’ve been printed on. If that was not important, we would not lock university libraries behind several hundred thousand dollars paywalls. If there was not agency and power to be found in reading, the empire would not work so hard to burn your hands away. If video learning is truly as harmless and neutral as we think, why are there screens everywhere in this world? Why are there so much advertisements, so much incentives, to spend all day looking at someone else making you feel?

—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack (bolded italics my edit)

[soracities]

"I am here to be educative. I want you to remember that I am a person with very specific lenses on the world. I want you to remember that everything about our current existence in the Anthropocene (as in, a human-sovereign world) is intentional and by design. The Anthropocene is intentional and by design. Someone(s) made all this up. World-making is an intentional and detail-oriented process; what can be made can be remade, over and over again."

—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack