van grants

"why are you here?" Older than Van Grants. Not a blog for minors. Content warnings galore. Cats Best Animal.

[folklorespring]

In 1966 two young men raised Ukrainian flag on top of university in Kyiv as a protest against soviet totalitarian regime. Writing on the flag says: "Ukraine has not yet perished, it has not been killed yet", first half of the sentence is a reference to Ukrainian anthem. Due to supply shortage in USSR flag was made from two scarfs. KGB confiscated the flag, conducted secret mass inspections searching for protesters, detained both of them and later they were sent to the labor camps.

[willgrahamscock]

I do the opposite of gatekeeping, I’m not going to shut up until you like this thing as much as I do

[willgrahamscock]

here’s a wet pathetic man in a gifset to get you started and then I’m going to send you memes as propaganda

[destinationtoast]

gatetossing: hurling the gate at passersby and attempting to capture them, regardless of whether they wanted to pass through the gate

[ihni]

[videogameads]

NEMO Capcom Arcade 1990

[hjbender]

The Four Discoursemen

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Me, tears streaming down my face, sobbing, as I stare at the stars: it’s just so beautiful

The medieval peasant I went back in time to give a bag of Doritos to, concerned: what terrible and powerful sorcerers they must have in your age, to be able to veil the vault of heaven itself from view, as you say

Me, sniffling: I didn’t realize, I can’t, it’s so much, I, I… are the chips good, at least?

Medieval peasant, trying to make me feel better: they’re… magical, strange traveler

[vangrants]

Regarding this post about antisemitism and Nazi talking points on Tumblr. I had some thoughts about how modern social media platforms enabled this but didn't want to distract from the main post itself.

I think a lot of things contributed to this even happening in the first place:

Reblogging to show moral support for a cause is part of the established culture and its extremely easy to do. One would assume that every reblog someone puts on their tumblr is something they looked at and considered deeply, but we all know a lot of people are looking at shit at 3am and just hitting the reblog button cause their 5 second glance let them think "this sounds right".

The nature of individual blogs existing means every person is an island who is handling following, blocking and all feed moderation on their own for their own personal view. You don't know whose blogs I choose to follow unless I reveal that information, and you also don't know whose blogs I've chosen to block unless I reveal that as well (though the blocked person could figure it out and post it themselves but that would seem wanky). This means you could assume that my morals are what I shared, but be unaware of whatever sort of vitriol I allow onto my feed that could be influencing my thinking.

The fact that a lot of accounts are JUST reblogging and very rarely meaningfully commenting on what they share probably contributes to this. There are some blogs I get the feeling are meekly reblogging what they "should" share but consistently keep their own thoughts and feelings far removed from the topics themselves.

It's well known that there is highly personalized "echo chambers" online as a result of both. What I see in my online experience is VERY unlikely to 100% match what you see online (unless you share YT videos with someone enough that your algorithms Become One). I may see a post about the sort of crypto-Nazi dog whistles to look out for, but if I don't share it with you then there's no guarantee you'd ever see the same post with the same information.

Tags on tumblr can sidestep this to some extent but if you blocked a person for liking a ship you hate, then you won't be seeing them in the tags. Tags can also be flooded, spammed, co-opted, etc. etc. You don't have the full-blown disconnect that more algorithmic platforms force, but you also don't have built-in communities where everyone already knows everyone else and has some understanding that they're participating in good (or bad) faith, particularly for a cause that has become quite popular with a very active tag.

There is next to ZERO guarantee that anyone online is who they say they are here. Good detective work can happen, but it can and has been revealed that Russian disinformation blogs worked overtime to sway the 2016 US election and we already saw Trump's second inauguration had several tech CEOs and owners of social media platforms present. I think it's a safe bet to say your online experience can and has been hijacked by Bad Actors.

"Listen to minority voices" is good and important but also neglects the fact that being from a marginalized group does not stop you from being bigoted in some other way. Usually whenever this shit becomes relevant, we handle it by going "oh well, that Cuban American, Iraqi Christian, Orthodox Jew, fucking Kamala Harris is basically racist and white-lite" (all examples I've seen on this very website). We can have a talk about how it's a weird Christian Purity view of "sin" (their racism) destroying their "innocence" (their marginalization) or whatever, but I think this has just turned into a hypocritical mechanism to "listen to minorities...right up until the point you don't want to anymore and now they're White".

Related to the above, how we define who is marginalized or not comes from a highly US-centric viewpoint so viewing anything outside of the US with that same lens is gonna get hella skewed in someway. Even if you try to account for it in good faith, you WILL get bit in the ass by your own ignorance. (I sure as fuck know I have Said Some Shit that needed correction myself).

Because we're talking about US-centric problems I'm going to throw in "the United States and its fucked up education system" into the mix alongside the Christian-Puritan-centric nature of it and the whole conspiracy-theorist-esque distrust in "main stream media".

Now what do all these things lead to together?

You have some ill-informed, well-intentioned people who want to be On The Right Side Of History reblogging stuff they see from a supposed minority that should know better about the topic and it sounds right, and like. Are you NOT going to reblog the post that says this evil group is actively killing innocent people? You don't want to be an EVIL person who DOESN'T care right...? So of course you have to reblog the "Evil Murderers are Inherently Evil and that's Bad and Obvious DUH" post!

And oh that post may have said something about how those evil people should all be killed but Kill All Bad Guys seems reasonable, who disagrees with that and why go into notes and comments to see the context of that post was in response to a hate crime that they are now justifying and which you never heard of cause it wasn't on your feed?

Oh someone ELSE said something that sounds...nuanced? That's difficult and takes time to process and think about and we'd have to fact check it...and why do that when this other post SAYS that that sort of talk is Evil Propaganda so best to block them and then move on? Surely there's no reason why say, a Jewish person is gonna freak out about "kill all zionists" posts. Your Jewish friends will understand you just mean the Bad And Evil Jews and--

Hey you haven't seen posts from them in a long time. Huh. Maybe that's worth investigating--

Oh damn! New fanart of my favorite character! Got to reblog that and OH LOOK! The artist has more! Gotta share ALL of that!

...Man what were we even thinking about before all this? Oh well, just continuing the reblog spree!

---

...I don't really have a good overview and don't feel equipped to get into how Israel-Palestine war discussion on this website was so easily co-opted by Nazis (but I suspect there's a LOT of bad faith actors involved), but I think the root of the problem is we all decided that we wanted our fun fandom happy spaces where we enjoy fictional media to ALSO be the place where we discuss social justice and this worked for a time when a website primarily filled with women wanted to talk about the male gaze.

It has completely fallen apart when Americans wanted to jump in and discuss foreign policy and war as part of the distinctly American cultural wars.

Genuinely, I've seen a post that amounted to "only Republicans support zionism, and everyone should support a two state solution" which tells me that they did zero research into zionism as a concept, zero research into why the USA kept going for a two-state solution as a political talking, zero research into what Israelis or Palestinians (or even surrounding nations) both today and in the past thought about that solution, and just went "well my conservative uncle says he stands with Israel but he did that cause he's racist".

And I'm saying that as someone that only barely knows shit myself. I already had the experience of learning that I was a dumbass parroting hateful rhetoric cause the framing seemed right. I'm just lucky I have patient as hell friends that are willing to verbally slap me when I'm being stupid.

Reblogging is not activism. Tumblr posts are not replacement for actual genuine research. Saying you care is not the same as active listening.

Making sure you block Bad People(tm) for their posts and only reblogging posts from Good People(tm) doesn't do jackshit if you don't understand the posts they're writing in the first place, and that's probably why you have dumbasses talking like weirdly progressive white supremacists all over this website.

[quietjellypeanut-deactivated202]

The trouble with a lot of this, the “punch a nazi” website, is that much of its supposedly leftist user base can’t tell a nazi or nazi talking points apart from a rock. A lot of people will talk about supporting Jews and the Jewish community, but this website’s userbase has also effectively ghettoized most its Jewish users. You don’t hear them talking about how terrified they are about the uptick in antisemitism from all parts of the political spectrum because you’ve blocked them all. Any post on Judaism, no matter how innocuous, it could be a cute picture of a cat in front of a plate of hamantaschen, that does make it through ends up being flooded with antisemitic comments. Because you’ve effectively allowed much of this website to become a nazi bar.

[triforce-of-mischief]

op's tags:

#antisemitism#nazism is a form of fascism that’s built around the idea of hating jews#it’s a central tenant of the ideology#and far too much of this website uses it as a generic insult#without recognizing that they’re parroting nazi talking points

[vangrants]

I tried doing a write-up but whenever I let myself go longer than two paragraphs I just go on unrelated tangents oops

But I think some of my past Van 'meta' has aged.........poorly, to put it politely.

[vangrants]

I was typing up a specific rant about a very specific person and realized I just needed the last line:

Social media addiction isn't the same as activism.

[vangrants]

Anyway if someone has been posting about the need for a REVOLUTION for like ten years now, I think it's safe to say they're either a bot or hoping someone else will heroically do the dying for them.

[vangrants]

I was typing up a specific rant about a very specific person and realized I just needed the last line:

Social media addiction isn't the same as activism.

[pyvorak]

Kushnir Veniamin (Ukrainian); "The Dance"; 1962

[melonramune]

2025-11-19

[vangrants]

Fandom Pet Peeve: when someone decides to complain about a common fandom-specific trope that keeps coming up and phrases their complaint as "Everyone keeps doing [common trope]! When will someone finally do [Really Interesting And Unique Twist On Trope]?"

...And then they proceed to never write it.

[vangrants]

I think it's largely good and healthy to enjoy both quote-unquote "Real Literature(tm)" and "That Romantasy Slop(tm)".

It's good to read for pleasure. It's good to read to challenge yourself. It's good to read both to broaden your horizons and have a better understanding of what you like, why you like it, and what it says about the time and place it was published in.

It's good to read.

[sweeneyarts]

I just want to live...

Is that so wrong?

•••

OKAY- after sitting with the movie for a day... I loved it, actually. Wow- so I locked in for my first fanart of Iron Lung. I'm gonna see again soon! I wanted to watch it once more before it left the theatre. I'm very thrilled to see it again 🥹

Enjoy!

✨️Please don't post my art without my permission 🥰

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: When exploring outdoors, don't act recklessly — not every body of water you see is meant for swimming. (cr 神秘园)

[vintage-ukraine]

Cow in the City by Ivan Marchuk, 1969