also... i can't tell if the posts from the few people i follow who are still here are in chrono order or sorted by some shitty algorithm like twitter or fb or instagram or
logged in for the first time since october last year and i do not recognize the layout or anything... there's so much random content from people i don't follow or know on the sidebar, on my main feed(? is that even the term we used?) and the colours aren't the same...
continuation.
I still don't have access to my old semi-private tumblr but I'm reading the newest posts there (from 7 years ago) and I wish I could give 20 year old me a hug, and tell her it'd be alright. It was difficult and emotional and filled with good and bad decisions, helpful and deceitful people, but it's turned out okay. I turned out okay.
thankful for the few people i know and follow who are still on this site, posting and reblogging and adding commentary in the tags.
everyone i know and meet these days mention they had a tumblr, but no one is sharing their urls or admitting they still log on.
i still miss the us of 6, 10, 12 years ago.
lol life is one distraction after another under capitalism
checked off the getting a degree, getting a job, moving out and soon getting a house (closing in less than two weeks!) but the goalposts keep shifting
yet they lead nowhere
i just want to have enough money to not have to worry about staying alive or paying utilities and "keeping my skills sharp" or "staying employable" and not be working for some company that really only exists bc capitalism has made it a "necessity"* so i can have free time to cook and read and garden and do all the art i said i wanted to do again and volunteer at the library to help kids with homework and immigrants with english and old people with technology
but i stare at my colouring pencils and my imagination is gone, sketchbook empty
disappeared sometime in between cramming for exams and keeping myself employable and useful to the machine
#adulthood 3#i work at a company that does meal kits#our selling feature is about saving people time bc the kitchens preprep the food rather than send a box of raw groceries#but why would so many people need to save their time if it wasn't for The Man stealing it#commutes and work and everything taking people from what matters like their family and hobbies
ghost towns.
i miss those days when we’d all be at home, supposedly doing homework but instead just browsing tumblr, drafting posts, reading each other’s thoughts as they popped up on our...dashboard? homepage? what do we even call this now? wondering how much they’ve kept to themselves throughout the day and only spilled onto the screen at night, a tangle of text disguised with the thin, straight line of a ”read more”.
words are strange. i haven’t attempted to even think creatively in what feels like years.
mostly, i miss the loneliness of being together but separated only by physical distance. their lights are on in the distance, and i can see when they’re home, when they’ve gone to actually do homework, when they sign off for the night.
now it’s more like actually being alone. everyone has moved on and out, and the houses have fallen into disrepair.
is anyone still here
horizontaltranslations reblogged
kendallroy-deactivated20210425
people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”
kendallroy
i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today
this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them
this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?
You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist.
When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective.
No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream.
A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’
You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions.
I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior.
I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are.
i don’t check tumblr for 3 days and i find out spn is still a thing but in reverse order of anything bc i first see a post about bury your gays??? but it’s art* bc it’s 12+ years of buildup and bait? and then im sleuthing to see WHAT fandom this is in and OFC it’s supernatural
also turns out my roommate watched/ watches spn and has all the previous seasons AHHHHH
horizontaltranslations reblogged
Dividing up eras of tumblr
It just occurred to me that I kind of arbitrarily started referring to “first age” “second age” and “third age” tumblr one day because I realized during a discord conversation that it really can be divided up very effectively between a couple major events that changed the fabric of the site’s culture almost overnight, but nobody but me ever refers to them that way, so by way of explanation:
- First Age: everything before Dashcon. Art communities were still largely thriving on the internet and social media still mostly existed out from under corporate monopolies, and people were just wildly guessing about how to use it. We were in the last hurrah of the internet wild west and lolcats were still a thing. Tumblr was just a fun and quirky place, we were blissfully writing unironic posts about tumblr university and fandom vs hipster and the “I like your shoelaces” thing, Hank Green wrote a goddamn song about tumblr, we were all like Adam and Eve dwelling in Eden unaware of their sin. Potterheads grab your wands.
- Second Age: post-Dashcon, but pre-Purge. We have all eaten the fruit of knowledge and there is no going back. There are no more secret code or tumblr university posts because everyone knows firsthand how badly that would go. Fandom culture is forever changed. We are now aware that we live in a hellish cringetopia but have absolutely no plans to leave, because by now a combination of monopolies and a sneaky rise in purity culture has the internet by the throat (but not in a kinky way, that would scare off advertisers) so there aren’t a lot of better options, and at least our relatives can’t find us here. A lot of artists now have their primary presence on tumblr. The lax policies regarding nsfw and controversial content mean it’s a good space for queer creators and sex workers despite the many shortcomings we’re now aware of. The porn bot plague really kicks into full gear to the point that every time our follower counts go up we’re ready with the block/spam button like the uncles from Secondhand Lions picking off traveling salesmen. The drama starts to get really fucking weird, with classics such as the human pet guy and the bone-stealing witch.
- Third Age: post-Purge. After changing corporate hands a few times, the drive to make the internet safe for our Good Christian Advertisers and hypothetical children has finally reached us, and brings with it TERFs, purity culture, and the Porn Ban, which was allegedly a solution to the porn bots except that it clearly wasn’t at all. The large community of sex workers and artists that was keeping tumblr afloat as anything resembling a viable social media site have made a mass exodus and a lot of the rest of the userbase followed them, mostly to twitter or a few doomed attempts at tumblr copycats. Tumblr is now a mad max clown car full of people too stubborn to pack up and leave for a functional website. It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland whose only remaining merit is that even without the ability to post porn we’ve managed to make ourselves such a complete anathema to advertisers that we’re mostly just left alone. We’re all just tired. Some people still run art blogs but nobody outside of tumblr ever sees them. Literally all we have going for us is that we’re not twitter and we have +5 resistance to capitalism. And Xkit.
horizontaltranslations reblogged
i am way too online
“hey man, yeah, i really wish i could enjoy that tweet you sent me, but unfortunately i happen to know that the twitter account it’s from is run by an insurance industry shill who spent the early part of this year ranting about how evil bernie sanders was, which makes it hard for me to enjoy his halfhearted dunks on trump. i know this because i’ve allocated an embarrassing amount of mental space to a shitty online culture war that no one in their right mind should give a shit about, but it’s there, and now i can’t unallocate it. anyway, have a good one.”
horizontaltranslations reblogged
i’m sure i’ve missed a few things, but i can’t stand to look at it any longer. i present to you: the good, the bad, and the ugly of tumblr throughout the decade
shiny-xatu
The 2020 one will be wild
I feel like I just watched myself grow up 😭
woke up in a panic at 10 past midnight bc i was convinced i forgot the url to my old sadblogging tumblr (which i no longer have access to after a tumblr upgrade in 2015 that required email confirmation and my email was locked by that point lol) but i found it and sometimes i wonder if 2015 fan would be sad about 2020 fan or if she would’ve expected this to happen anyway.
i don’t remember some of the other ones i’ve password protected but maybe those memories are better left forgotten
mid autumn festival life update
ya still depressed, still sleeping like shit, still unable to feel anything too much, still tired and despondent, what else is new
horizontaltranslations reblogged
good things will happen 🧿
things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿
passionate-lovely-soul
THIS ONE FUCKING WORKS. REBLOG IT.
Okay I reblogged and got into the entrepreneurship program I wanted. This WORKS
Reblogging for some added help for the coming months
horizontaltranslations reblogged
Gen Z is great, I’m glad they’ve already started calling out a lot of shitty things that millennials have done.
But some of them are edging into “ugh it’s so cringey that adults still like having fun and engage in fandom content” and I resent that I apparently have to give up all my interests and joys because I’m already considered decrepit at age 26.
Fight the power, kids, but Jesus H. Christ do not fall for the idea that life ends at 25 and everyone older than that is past their prime.
renniequeer
And to clarify, I don’t say this because some teenagers made me feel bad or something, I’m saying this because the idea that you have to live your life to the fullest and do everything you want by the time you’re in your mid-twenties has left me with debilitating depression, anxiety, and inferiority issues. It’s the same with most of my friends.
Life is long, y’all. You have so many more years left to live. You don’t have to cram a century of possibility into a quarter of that time. Adults need and deserve silliness, fun, and play just as much as teenagers and kids do.
my grandma died on saturday.
my mother finally called monday night. they last talked on thursday. she seemed fine. they didn't talk on friday bc grandma was fine, and mom had to get groceries and run errands before they drove my brother back to waterloo for the week. she figured she'd call saturday morning.
at work friday night, early saturday morning, a busy shift. my mom finally got a chance to check her phone at 1:30. a message from my cousin: grandma's gone. blank disbelief. impossible. but why would she joke about it? she called my cousin, got some details, continued to work. told my brother in the morning after she got home. "..is this a joke?" she was fine. he just popped in to say "hi nainai!" on mom's calls on thursday. why would she be gone now?
our last call was in january.
january was five months ago.
saturday morning in china. friday night in canada. my uncle asked if grandma needed anything. he was going to the market with his son to get groceries. she sat in her reading corner, feet propped up on the table. i must've inherited my restless legs and penchant for sitting in strange ways from her. "no, i don't need anything," closes her bedroom door, reclaims her privacy. uncle goes to chastise my cousin to move faster. the nanny they hired to keep my aunt and grandma company, both houseridden, knocks and enters grandma's room. runs out. "da ge, the old lady's lying on the floor".
there are two words in chinese for lying down. one indicates lying down on one's back, perhaps face up, enjoying the sunshine on the grass, a day at the park. the other is lying belly down, in this case a death sprawl. she used the first term. grandma was found in the second. my uncle rushes in, why would she be on the ground? did she fall again? but usually she would call for help, or get up herself... she's not responding. he moves her to the bed while frantically directing my cousin to call for an ambulance. the dispatcher walks him through cpr. they arrive and take over, take a look at her. how old is she? 86. they sigh, tell him they can try harder, but they'll break her ribs. uncle thinks a moment, passes on the offer. they take her to the hospital. she never regains consciousness.
cause of death on the certificate: brain bleed. they said it was fast. they said at least she didn't suffer. she's a model for us all.
birthdate on the certificate: 1934, november 25. wasn't her birthday on the same day as mine last year?
i knew her traditional, lunar calendar birthday was may 13. depending on the year, her birthday is anywhere from early to mid-June on our calendar. i thought the year was 1934. it was actually 1933. apparently my grandmother had made up a date for her birthday decades ago. she would have been 87 in july. instead, official records show her as 85. 85 or 87, a full life. she could never stop working, refusing to retire at the mandated age. she eventually retired briefly before a friend told her about her department needing more people to help. she kept working, right up to their first trip to canada to visit us. and then part time. fastidiously clean, she woke up at 5 to sweep and mop and scrub and dust. more than once, even after my uncle moved her in with his family, did i see her trying to climb up her reading nook to wipe the dust off the windows. even after arthritis had marred her joints and her back developed an increasingly pronounced hunch, she refused to stop moving. a life in motion.
a life we could not celebrate, in person. the morning they called the funeral home, and they agreed to hold a small ceremony, before she was to become ash. the afternoon they called back. covid cases have returned to beijing. the risk level has been bumped up. gatherings are no longer allowed. unlike grandpa, there would be no photos, no flowers, no body in a shallow box with eyes closed, skin waxy. the hospital shipped her over directly. they returned with the ashes. on my birthday, before i woke up, she was presented to my uncles in a red wrapped box.
she's with grandpa now.
her side of the headstone is incomplete. according to it, she is still alive, the dates of birth and death not yet engraved. the cemetery management told them there was a minimum 3-day wait time before they could send someone to update it, painting the date in gold. i don't know if they'll go back and take photos when it is. i'll have to see for myself when they do.