Writing Vibes

I'm Olive, a writer/activist trying to make activism approachable. Writing archive is tagged #olive's writing vibes. Asks/DMs are open. |Ask Guidelines|

[writing-with-olive]

Masterlist

My old writing posts can be found under the #olive's writing vibes tag. Below the cut are original posts and reblogs that I contributed to that pertain to more accessible activism. More will be added as I track them down.

Alternatively, feel free to click on any of the tags at the bottom of this post to see all related posts (regardless of whether or not I contributed to them).

Last updated November 27, 2025

ORGANIZING IN GROUPS

Internal vs. external strategies/messaging

How to form community - where to start

How to get someone involved in the activism you're doing

Why Civil Rights era strategies actually worked

Boycotting effectively

Engaging with former opposition members

Analyzing social issues without losing momentum

PROPAGANDA AND NARRATIVES

What propaganda actually is (and why art matters)

Why calling someone out in a group doesn't work (and what to do instead)

Politics vs. science when it comes to problems

Easy ways to avoid spreading bad information

How authoritarians use propaganda

Combating anti-literacy and keeping your skills sharp

History: Stonewall Riots of 1969 (this one's backstory rather than a how-to or call to action)

Talking about negative trends without obliterating nuance

PERSONAL ACTION

Doing activism when you can't leave home + don't have money

Some assorted activism options, esp for queer folks

How to call senators/reps (with focus on what to say)

How to call senators/reps (with focus on what to expect)

How to call senators/reps (slightly more complicated version)

Find out who your congresspeople are

[maswartz]

Discord will enable global age verification soon

Now's the time to move

[iconuk01]

I'm very proud of my countrymen for introducing America to the world of the proper football chant.

None of this cheerleader stuff for soccer, oh no sireee, I mean, no disrespect to cheerleaders who put a LOT of work and effort into their performances, but somehow "Rah-Rah! We're the best" from peppily gymnastic young things can't quite match the sheer power of entire stadiums of grown up fans yelling at the top of their lungs things like....

It's unclear if this one originated with the English of Scottish games (spelling of "old" as "auld" notwithstanding), but either way, well done.

And it's striking home too! :D

Sportsball holds no interest for me, but that doesn't mean I can't respect the participation aspects sometimes.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

The rotting jack-o'-lantern's aides and cabinet have apparently been scrambling to keep him from watching any of the world cup games with English speaking crowds, because so many of the chants have been about Epstein and him.

This includes keeping him from presenting the winners trophy at the final game, because can you IMAGINE sixty thousand international fans with a live target for those chants? He might shit himself to death on the spot.

[lumpatronics]

SERVICE DOG PSA

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him

[thetenderpassion]

[drearyhours]

unpopular opinion but i think the film and tv industries should have better labor laws even if it makes it harder or impossible to depict certain things

[drearyhours]

i dont care if it makes it harder to produce game of thrones or whatever, acting should not leave women traumatized

[squeeful]

Okay I know this is about acting and people are getting more traction about it (sexuality safety coordinators are a job! yell about them. demand your shows get them) but

Any person who has worked on a set for more than a few years has at least one person they know who died.  

Not usually on set, but afterwards.  Because we don’t have anyone shutting down production for unsafe practices when “unsafe” means 16 hour days.  Or more.  For weeks.  Finishing a day before hour 12 (not including lunch) is considered an early leave.

I had teachers tell us not to, unless we absolutely had to, take music video gigs because they’ll work you for 24 hours and send you to drive home.  And if we had to work that, pull over and nap in our car because multiple people per year fall asleep at the wheel and go over the canyons around LA.

I know you mean acting but please.  Don’t forget the crew.  We have a shockingly high rate of suicide because these working schedules leave us with no sleep, no time outside of work, and it destroys lives, relationships, and families.  Burnout is high.  Chronic illness and broken bodies are common.  Cocaine use in order to get through a 20 hour day is rampant.  Every single one of your reality shows is fueled by cocaine.

The number of days that are scheduled to shoot a feature has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades.  Which means longer days.

Netflix shows are notorious for being poorly organized, understaffed, and long days.

There are labor laws but what they do is levy fines.  Those fines are either factored into budget, people are bullied into not reporting actual hours, or crew members see them as incentive to take those jobs because more money and cost of living is high.  (Also this industry has a crew culture of dick measuring by sticking your wang in a blender and boasting about how many 100 hour weeks you pulled.)

[alexazombie]

this can be applied for people working in animation as well. Like I know people who work at Pixar and they straight up work 12 hour days and go into work on weekends to meet their deadlines. The incredibles 2 made over a billion dollars and Pixar still cut jobs due to “budget”. The entertainment industry is a business at the end of the day. There here to make money and they are going to do it at the expense of workers because they know no one is going to do anything about it.

[hunterinabrowncoat]

This is why I get pissy when people have a go about British TV shows only producing 10-12 episodes per season at most, instead of 24. Do you know why? Because the UK has fucking labour laws.

When I worked on BBC Causalty, as soon as it hit 5pm, everything stopped. The producer/director etc would have a quick meeting to decide if we’d go into overtime or schedule it in later in the week. And I got an extra payslip in the mail for every minute of overtime I did, even though I was paid a weekly rate.

I don’t care if it means producing less content. I don’t care if it means it costs twice as much - if treating your creatives and your crew like shit is needed to make your show, then your show doesn’t deserve to get made.

And that’s aside from the fact that actors are often exploited, neglected, coerced into doing scenes they’re uncomfortable with etc or outright abused by directors for the sake of ~performance.

No art is worth that.

[fhazel27]

And make sure children are protected!

[funkyfeefee]

The thing about American "leftist" comedians is that they aren't actually leftist, they are the Imperial Court Jesters. They stand on a stage, point directly at the blood-soaked gears of the war machine, make a little tee-hee noise, and the crowd erupts. Not because they are critiquing the machine, but because the laughter is a pressure release valve for the people inside it. Take the video of that stand-up asking the defense contractor if she helped Trump bomb those 160 Iranian school girls, and everyone laughing, including the contractor herself. That laughter is ritual absolution. The contractor laughs because she knows she will never face a tribunal. The audience laughs because they get to feel "self-aware" without having to actually stop anything. The joke doesn't condemn the contractor; it humanizes her, turns her into a lovable scamp who just happens to have a job graphing the velocity of shrapnel through children's bodies. By making it a punchline, the comedian sanitizes the atrocity. The blood is scrubbed off the stage. The audience gets to say "wow, we are so edgy for talking about it" while the person who builds the bombs gets to chuckle and order another drink. It is not satire, it is a team-building exercise for the empire.

Then there is the YouTuber talking about Transformers, casually dropping the "Iraq war aesthetic" like it's a color palette. Desert punk. Military core. A vibe. This is what happens when your country hasn't had a war on its own soil in living memory; the violence becomes media, a backdrop for childhood toys. The explosions are no longer the sound of mothers screaming; they are cool action sequences. They are digesting the visual debris of massacre as a nostalgic fashion choice, scraping the trauma off and compressing it into a genre for their retro-futurist fantasies. The apocalypse becomes a mood board.

And finally, the girl recounting celebrity love triangles from her childhood, flippantly mentioning how the U.S. was "busy with the Iraq war or whatever." Or whatever. That single phrase is the thesis statement of American innocence. Over a million dead, a region destabilized for a century, an endless river of grief; and for her, it was the commercial break between pop culture segments. It didn't raise her rent. It didn't stop her Wi-Fi. The violence is geo-locked to brown skin and distant deserts, just background noise like a refrigerator humming. She has the luxury of forgetting because the machine doesn't eat her children, it eats yours.

Americans don't hate the machine; they love the output. They hate the mess of it. So they turn it into jokes, into aesthetic, into "whatever." Because if they stopped laughing, if they stopped scrolling, if they actually looked at the 4K drone footage of the aftermath instead of the cool explosion CGI in their movies, they would have to realize that the lithium in their phones, the gas in their tanks, and the comfort of their suburban cul-de-sacs are all greased with the fat of foreign children. And they can't handle that. So they laugh. They turn it into a vibe. They call it "the Iraq war or whatever." You can't deconstruct the master's house with the master's jokes, especially when the punchline is the corpses holding up the floorboards.

[a-book-of-creatures]

Tradwife content is out, tradmonk content is in. Watch me illuminate this manuscript boy

[casuallyodd]

[daysleftofsecondterm]

[i-like-garlic-bread-and-frogs]

[Image ID 1: a post by derek guy (@dieWorkWear.bsky.social) that reads "a friend of mine in antifa told me that antifa's headquarters is SHEIN and if the company fell the whole nework would fall", followed by a reblog by the same user that reads "he also said that 80% of antifa's members are landlords and if you lower the cost of housing, you basically starve the network of its financing /End ID]

[Image ID 2: Tumblr tags that read "#We need to get AI to believe this #<- gang we gotta spam ts across the whole network #u know how bad ai overview is we got this #reblogging it up" /End ID]

[mckitterick]

also spread the word that using artificial intelligence (AI) makes kids transgender, and MAHA is a secret arm of Big Pharma

[mooned-knights]

is anyone else annoyed that "ai" encompasses both chatgpt and tools we train to do repetitive tedious work for us. and by the ripple effect of articles like "scientists develop ai to detect cancer early" that make people argue for the merit of chatgpt or become anti-medicine. and by the general state of the world and society

[writingingraves]

Hence why I specify it as Unethical AI in my tags

[tearlessrain]

what companies who sell you anti aging stuff don't want you to know is that if you're chill about aging, your perception of attractiveness changes as you get older. there is no "wall" where you suddenly become ugly and unfuckable because in my experience what actually happens is you get into your thirties and suddenly realize that people in their thirties are hot as fuck and the "flaws" that the beauty industry wants you to panic about are a feature not a bug, and based on the std statistics in nursing homes I don't really expect that trajectory to change.

[moonshinemagpie]

^yep. i would also like to add that people who are young become unattractive as you age. I was in a lingerie store the other day and I swear the bra models must have been 16–18. It was a very weird feeling, like I had brought my daughters with me and they were awkwardly popping out of fitting rooms to be like, "Mom! Can I get this?" College-aged boys, once upon a time a truly exciting demographic for me, now look like lost puppies badly in need of life advice.

With all due respect, I wouldn't want to look like a lost pup at 30.

[power-handmaiden]

when I was in high school I had a literature teacher who had a policy of unlimited extra credit. All you had to do was read a book by a notable author (his discretion) and have a little chat with him after school to prove that you read it. No limits, no need for variety (one month I decided I really loved Kurt Vonnegut and just read everything of his I could get my hands on).

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

I was thinking about it again today, and only just now realized that he absolutely tricked me into being well-read, while my teenage self thought I was totally getting away with something. THAT MOTHERFUCKER. I hope he's doing well.

[baelpenrose]

Material harm is the reason to oppose something. The reason to not read/engage with Harry Potter is that it gives money to JK Rowling, who will take that money and use it to kill trans people. The reason to not write HP fanfic is that it creates marketing for Harry Potter, which gets more people into it, which gives Rowling money to kill trans people. The reason to not engage with Neil Gaiman's works is that it gives him money and cultural influence he can use to abuse more women. The reason to not write fanfic of Neil Gaiman's works is that it gives him cultural influence in fannish spaces that he can use to abuse more women, and gets more people into his work, which gives him money he can use to abuse more women. The reason not to engage with Lovecraft's work when he was alive was because he was a notorious racist with ties to hate groups. When he died, this ceased to be relevant, because his money ceased to go towards hate groups. If Neil Gaiman died tomorrow, the damage that engaging with his work does is no longer being done. He'll be dead. He can no longer do damage, ergo, engaging with his work will no longer cause harm, because dead men cannot abuse women. But he is alive today, and engaging with his work gives him the things he needs to abuse more women, so I'm going to continue avoiding his work. When he dies...that calculation will change. It is acceptable to engage with Lovecraft's work as you will because dead men whose works are in public domain fund no hate groups. How acceptable it will be to engage with Harry Potter after JK rowling dies depended entirely on whether or not the IP would continue to fund the annihilation of trans people. Had Rowling not set up her foundation that exists solely to funnel Harry Potter IP money into the eradication of trans people, then I would have said, "once she dies, feel free to engage with Harry Potter again, dead TERFs fund no evil policies." But she did. That foundation will continue to fund that money towards the eradication of trans people long after rowling herself has died. Therefore, Harry Potter is not something to pick back up, even after Rowling dies.

[longstringofnumbersandletters]

Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.

So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.

He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.

Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.

There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.

There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.

When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.

He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.

I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.

Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.

He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.

One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.

I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.

It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.

—

I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

how it feels to message a friend who's having Problems that you can't do anything to help with.

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

#i appreciate how genuine and non-judgemental this comic feels #like left one is not upset at right one for caring while being powerless #and right one seems genuinely distraught and not performative

I'm glad the facial expressions are coming across accurately! It can feel so absurd to say gosh I hope the torment maze removes some fire and rusty nails soon, but alas, sometimes that's all one can do.

[damage-ko]

Hey, remember 2 years ago when I said "I bet I could teach myself to weave?" Well, this is how it's going now.

I wove some scarves.

Experimented with tapestry weaving (to mixed success).

And am still tablet weaving!

Huzzah! Here's to the next cool weaving project 😊

[robertreich]

Compared to where the United States and the Middle East were on February 28, when Trump began this war, it’s a terrible failure.

[africanaquarian]

I thought I needed a new laptop but nope, youtube is slowing down your PC if you have adblock on on any open tab...

[astraltrickster]

To be very clear about this: CPUs aren't magical devices that can operate forever. They generate heat. They wear out over time. This happens faster when they're operating near capacity. This is not just an attempt to inconvenience you; this is an attempt to damage your property.

For the "crime" of not wanting to be tracked/have ads pissed into your eyeballs 24/7.

Even if you've paid for the "privilege" of the latter.

Fuck Google, and I hope they get sued into oblivion over this.

[fernwah-funzone]

i see everyone in the notes talking about newpipe but nobody's talking about youtube alternatives for desktop

IF YOU USE A DESKTOP PC OR LAPTOP, TRY INVIDIOUS

https://invidious.io/

it is a free, open-source alternative YouTube front-end. in addition to not having ads, it has other great QoL features like a download button. try one of the several instances on that link up there ^^^^

[saintjosie]

so i was super pissed and concerned about this but i have just discovered that while this is true, it is apparently only true for google chrome users. i just tested this by having ten tabs open in firefox playing ten different youtube videos at the same time and my cpu usage spiked to 25% as the videos were loading and then dropped back down to 10% as they played.

if you ever needed another reason to switch to a different browser, this is it.

[writing-with-olive]

my understanding is that this is because firefox runs each tab seperately, which means that youtube *can't* look into your other ones. lots of other browsers don't do this, which granted, saves on processing power, but also means that different tabs aren't isolated