My floppy heart can't take it. @virkerdetsolsikke - Tumblr Blog

which of your features would people romanticize if u were famous… for me i think it would be my bunny teeth or the little scar i have on my forehead from hitting it as a toddler

#my eyes I’d have to say

luxlightly

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it a thousand more times: No piece of dystopian fiction has ever been a prediction of the future. They are observations and criticisms of the present.

luxlightly

“Wooow! How did Orwell predict the surveillance state so well in 1984??”

He didn’t. He was making an observation of the surveillance state that already existed in his present, and exaggerated it to make the metaphor obvious.

Learning and discussing these works in terms of them being predictions and having test questions like “do you think his prediction came true?” is not only pointless, but actively counterintuitive. When you frame these works as being ‘people from the past knew that the future would be terrible’ you shift the entire perspective to one of some kind of nostalgia for a past that didn’t exist.

These author’s aren’t oracles. They’re satirists. Their predictions ‘come true’ because they were already true when they wrote them.

luxlightly

It’s the same when people see tweets from last year like “It’s okay if people die as long as we can keep Outback Steakhouse open” and people posting the date of the tweet like “these tweets predicted the future!”

Those tweets observed the present. Because the capitalist idea of sacrificing lives for profit isn’t new. It’s just been taken to its extreme by the pandemic. The idea of “if something bad happens where our government and our upper class need to prioritize life over profit or thousands will die: thousands will die” is hardly prophetic, it’s basic perception.

Are these tweets eerie in how accurate they are, even coming from years ago? Yes, of course. Chillingly so. But not because they predicted something no one could have expected, but because it was already happening to such a degree and so obvious for so long that something would give, and the majority of us could do nothing but sit and wait for it to happen.

the2headedcalf-moved

being in your early twenties is like [grocery shopping alone] [having instant noodles for dinner] [remembering random details about that one friend you haven’t spoken to in five years] [feeling overwhelming guilt for every purchase that isn’t strictly “necessary”] [having midday naps] [finding out through facebook that the girl who was mean to you in high school has a husband and a baby] [falling a little in love with every stranger on public transport] [pretending you’re not afraid of being alone] [wondering when you’ll feel like a fully realized person] [listening to bands you liked in middle school] [blinking and it’s suddenly december] [failing to imagine yourself ten years from now] [feeling like you’re running out of time]