ms-notebook replied to your post:
like, i know that most of my stress stems from me…

Wish I could send actual hugs. Have you told them how unhelpful those articles are?

So appreciated, babe <333 I think part of what makes it so difficult to address is that the intent behind sending me that kinda articles isn’t really to help, because me failing at anything has been, for a very very long time, a source of some kind of enjoyment to certain people. So if I’m succeeding at something, I get sent either that kind of articles, or basically get commentary on my life choices (mannerisms, clothing style, looks in general, relationships), to sort of get across the point that me succeeding at things isn’t in any way worth being proud about, because x y and z.

It’s something I had thought for a long time to be something only relatives did, but then I had friendships also fall apart because of that kinda stuff, so it does make me wonder if there’s something about me that invites that kind of treatment.

So yeah, it is what it is.

like, i know that most of my stress stems from me feeling like i’m never achieving enough at any given time, but like, knowing it doesn’t help. And there’re some ppl who keep sending me articles about ppl who stress a lot dying early and it’s like, dude, stress isn’t a choice?? I don’t choose to be stressed out all the time?? Don’t you think I wish I was more chill?

i’m so damn exhausted

‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America

tomfooleryprime:

What no one seems to get about the alt-right is that almost no one actually believes the content of alt-truth “news stories.”  Not many people are delusional enough to subscribe to the theory that Hillary Clinton died smuggling millions of George Soros-funded ISIS refugees from the migrant caravan across the Rio Grande so they could vote in the midterm elections.

This drivel is popular because cheerleading nationalist conservative principles has evolved into a fandom. Stories titled “Iowa Farmer Claims Bill Clinton had Sex with Cow during ‘Cocaine Party” are the fanfiction of the alt-right movement, full of massive exaggerations and fantastical plots that most people know don’t literally represent the current canon or reality. Instead, these stories reinforce themes they already believe to be true, or wish were true. 

Lies aren’t becoming truth online: they’re becoming the casual entertainment of people who hate progressive values.

‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America

people I still want to stab over a decade later:

vocifersaurus:

thebibliosphere:

morgynleri:

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

Creative Writing Professor at a former college: Welcome to creative writing! By the way,
you will not write fantasy, ghost stories, pranormal, or science fiction
in this class, as this is a creative writing course.”

What the ever loving fuck is with “creative” writing professors who think that speculative fiction of any stripe ISN’T CREATIVE?

I still remember my own creative writing teacher telling me this because he saw the Terry Pratchett book on my desk and got this smug smirk on his face like “aha, gotcha”. He had the nerve to pick it up and call it “popularist fiction”, like somehow being popular and easily accessible made it less inherent in intellectual value.

I had it in my back pack because I did my final thesis on the evolution of mythology and folk tails into fantasy and sci-fi and the societal importance of telling stories (before anyone asks, no I don’t have it, I lost it when I moved continents), and I used Terry Pratchett because there wasn’t a single humanitarian issue the man did not touch on.

Which I told him. And then he kind of floundered and went “ah, well but, it’s…well I mean it’s not exactly high brow”, like neither the fuck was Shakespeare or Dickens you self-important turnip. Dickens was literally selling his stories by the chapter. He was the popular author of his time. Shakespeare was too, he fucking made up words and phrases all the time because the language he needed to express himself didn’t exist in the way he needed it too.

Intellectual elitism is nothing more than a hold over from class warfare and the belief that only certain people should get to be truly educated. And it needs to be smashed.

neither the fuck was Shakespeare or Dickens you self-important turnip

pervocracy:

You can ruin almost any social system with enough bad faith.

It takes very little cleverness to go to a toilet with a sign reading “please do not flush paper towels,” flush gravel until it breaks, and then declare victory.

But victory over what?  You haven’t debunked the warning sign or the plumbing system; you’ve just abused them.  You have not made a persuasive case that the warning sign should read “please do not flush paper towels or gravel,” because obviously your wise ass is just waiting to see that sign so you have an excuse to flush a third inappropriate thing.  You also haven’t made a persuasive case that the toilets should be continuously guarded and all visitors frisked for non-flushable objects, because the vast majority of people aren’t as big of a jerk as you.

“This system can be broken by someone who exploits its rules in the most malicious possible way” is true of many otherwise fine systems, and unless the system is safety-critical or there’s a very large group of people motivated to break it, it’s not really an important point to make.

There is nothing original, helpful, or insightful about pointing out that one person with a firehose could ruin a whole sand-sculpture competition.  Yeah, it’s true, that is a risk we are taking.  Please don’t show up with a firehose just to prove your point.