more good news from tiktok: they’ve started blocking celebrities.

they’re calling it block party 2024. just blocking and ignoring countless celebrities who havent said shit about palestine. influencers, actors, anyone who went to the met gala, whatever, they’re getting blocked. and people keep talking about how cathartic it is, how good it feels, how they never realized they could DO that. there was some kind of subconscious law against blocking famous people, but it’s broken, and people are LOVING it. and it’s WORKING. a social media/digital advertising coordinator was talking about how ad companies are PANICKING, because they can’t accurately target anymore. so many big influencers, including fucking LIZZO started talking about palestine the MOMENT their follower counts started going down. and the best part? no one is forgiving them. lizzo posted a tiktok asking people to donate to palestinian families, and all the comments just said you’re a multimillionaire. put your money where your mouth is. blocked.

i feel like i’m witnessing the downfall of celebrity culture, right here right now. people are waking up.

PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP. so many comments saying “blocking x celebrity was hard until i remembered they don’t care if i die. it got a lot easier then. they aren’t my friends, why should i feel like im betraying them?” what a beautiful thing to see

does this not fill you with immense pride and joy

(screenshot from stickbugss1 on tiktok)

Earthbound Fanart WIP I never got around to coloring :p

the current trend of "tumblr users embarrassing themselves by proudly announcing why they don't listen to any music made by black people" is really astounding.

i cannot help but think this is a direct result of liberal White Guilt and how people have interpreted "anti-racism" as form of cultural self-segregation - the kind of person who thinks trying to cook chicken curry is cultural appropriation, or sends white people anon hate for wearing a kimono (yes, this kind of discourse happened). like, "oh, no, i could never participate in this culture, i'd get my evil white hands all over it! it would be more Progressive if I only did White things."

if you're a poc you've seen this, i'm sure - this deer-in-the-headlights stare you can get from white people when you play music / show art / share a story / anything that is Racially Coded, this total refusal to actually engage with it out of fear that it is in some way Wrong for them to have any opinion on it. because they read somewhere that it's bad to use AAVE but the only lesson they actually learned from that is "gotcha, white people are not allowed to interact with other cultures as punishment for my White Crimes. this helps to fill up the gaping pit of my white guilt and makes me one of the Good People." this transforms their discomfort around non-white cultures (black culture, especially, i should add) into a kind of virtue

anyway if you are white and reading this. go listen to some fucking haliu mergia. ethiopian jazz. will knock your dick right off. go listen to rap or reggae or bollywood and have a genuine reaction to it - like, an actual, from-the-heart reaction. you are allowed to not like some of it. but you will definitely like at least a little. yes, you can compare it to lemon demon (or whatever) if that helps you get into it and that's your only point of reference. maybe don't say that part out loud. but don't, like, separate yourself from it, like you are seeing it in a museum and the only polite thing to do is go "ahh, huh, very interesting, so much culture here."

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

#these tests always do shit like this#and its just like why would you phrase it like this when its specifically a symptom to misinterpret this (via @tbhliteraltrash )

ok hold on actually i rb'd this before with just tags but im going to come back in on this again

any medical diagnostic you will ever undergo does not mean "always 100% Every Time Ever you have this problem". And it sucks because they will phrase it in a way that SOUNDS like 100% Every Time including on the testing for being a person who has trouble with how specific phrasing is supposed to be.

literally the example I always use is I spent way longer without glasses then I should have because the eyesight chart diagnostic is "identify the letter", so I went 'ok the point of this is to do good identifying letters'. Then i realized

they want to know if I can see. Not if I can identify that a blurry shape is an A because of its unique outline.

So i started qualifying my answers with "blurry". Blurry A, Blurry Y, Blurry Z. Now I have glasses.

they do not make this clear. I do not know why. But you can more or less apply this to any medical diagnostic, and if it's a written diagnostic if your answer is 'sometimes' and the only answers are 'yes or no' you put Yes.

Do I have trouble getting out of bed? Sometimes, yes. So the answer is Yes.

Regrettably tests are made for and by non-autistic people and aimed at non-autistic caregivers and medical experts, which isnt how it should be, and makes it one more complicated thing to navigate. World a hell.

vent post. There are two stories i was told in my teenage years that even before i had a real concept of trans issues made me uninterested in discussing the supposed sacredness and safety of separated sex-based spaces.

First, when i was like 13 or 14 my PE teacher told us about a time she went to a women's public restroom, some guy was hanging out outside the bathrooms, she didn't think anything of it, went to the bathroom, and he walked in after her and like, creeped on her over the top of the stall. She was ok, she wasn't telling us this to scare us, just telling us what to do in situations like that (and iirc she was telling the whole co-ed class this, not just girls, bc it's useful for everyone), but this taught me immediately and forever that there's nothing actually keeping these spaces separate really, that anyone can be a creep in any space, and that establishing a space like that as for women only isn't actually particularly useful for safety.

Second, when i was 16 i was at an anime convention, a friendly acquaintance of mine and i ended up in conversation outside, and he showed me his bare wrist and told me he'd been kicked out. A female friend of his had stepped in dog poop outside, and between that and the stress of the convention she'd had a bit of an emotional breakdown, so being her friend, he started comforting her and ushered her into the women's restroom so they could wash the poop off her shoe together. And because he was a man who went into the women's bathroom, he got kicked out, no matter that he was doing something that was actually beneficial to a woman. Punishing a woman's friend for supporting her was supposed to... protect her somehow? This made it clear to me that a no-exceptions rule separating the sexes like that wasn't actually inherently good for everyone.

And this isn't even getting into me as a child needing to accompany my younger sister to the restroom when we were out with just my dad because she had certain support needs past the age he felt comfortable bringing her into the men's room with him. And what if I'd been born a boy, or she'd been the first born? Who's helping her then?

And of course even putting all this aside, we should always prioritize compassion and support anyway. But i never even needed to meet a trans person to know that "keeping men out of women's bathrooms" is silly nonsense. But trans people also need to pee anyway and as humans they have that right, so leave them the fuck alone. your precious women's restroom is just a fucking room with a door, holy shit give it a fucking rest, if someone is attacking you in the bathroom that's bad and if someone is in there to pee that's good and it doesn't fucking matter what their junk is or was when they were born.

a woman could have done the exact same thing to my PE teacher and it would have also been bad no matter how "supposed" to be in the restroom she was, and no one should ever be punished for helping a crying friend wash their shoe.

Anyway i know I'm speaking to like-minded folks here, i just think about those two stories literally every time bathroom gender shit comes up and it pisses me off.

just once I want to see a good post critiquing makeup culture that doesn’t turn out to be made by some janky radfem blog

oh hey!! I’m not a janky radfem I can do it myself!

makeup culture is wack and normalizes a ludicrously high bar as the bare minimum women can do. I saw a “lazy"makeup tutorial the other day that listed 22 separate goddamn products. you’re supposed to buy and know how to use 22 different things on your face just for the privilege of being considered lazy and that’s uuuuuuh what’s the word? bullshit.

Really, five products could work, even 3. Just frame the face, eyes, lips, and you’re done.

0 products also works great

because I’m gonna be real here, the idea that 22 products is a minimum sucks but it’s really upsetting that any amount of makeup is the bare minimum at all

I would really just suggest some powder foundation, concealer, mascara and lipgloss/lipstick, or tbh just mascara works too, but that’s up to you

I’m sorry if I didn’t express this clearly enough in the original post but I’m not really looking for more concise makeup regiments. my intention was to point out how it’s Bad that makeup is considered a bare minimum at all, regardless of individual feelings on the matter

no face should be “required” to have “a minimum” of makeup. makeup has no health benefits and does nothing but fill the pockets of companies that prey on women and our insecurities.

makeup should not be seen as hygiene because it isnt. get that shit out of your head.

this post: makeup culture is ridiculous and 22 products should not be considered a minimum requirement for someones face. no one should have to do that

the notes: so like……. what youre saying is……. we need to make the minimum about 5 or 6 instead… i gotcha

Really the only makeup you need is eyeliner but that’s just my personal opinion

okay

where did we lose you

why are people like this

#nobody survived this post

too sleepy to elaborate at this time but I miss the old fandom culture of interacting with fanfic writers and fanfic artists as members of the fandom community who enjoyed engagement and discussion and feedback instead of the modern trend of seeing us as content creators up on a pedestal who don't need positive feedback but DO need to churn out constant content to feed the a03 machine

tags that im going to print out and frame via @flightlessangelwings

Ugh, was having a great time mocking my recently imprisoned rival when I noticed the camera positioning makes it so that I appear behind the bars, thus framing me as trapped in a metaphorical prison of the narrative, now my whole day is ruined. Fuck.

I get it, man. The other day, I survived a shootout, only to realize that a stray bullet went through a mirror in such a way as to look from the camera's perspective like I got shot in the head through the mirror, so now I have to acknowledge that something that could be reasonably referred to as "me" really did die that day, and it's just like "jfc, gimme a BREAK"

ugh dont even get me started on how the other day i tried to sit on the throne of my conquered foe and light a cigar to celebrate my victory but the lighter wouldnt work and it had to be lighted by the vizier who used to work for my enemy but that i enlisted to work as a double agent and help me in my coup. that jerk afterwards said with a devilish smile "ill always be at your service my liege" and i just KNOW that he said that exact same thing to the previous ruler. signifying that my victory was phyrric since i am still caught in an endless cycle of violence and betrayal. that really spoiled the whole mood

an interesting take on this from matt braly, creator of amphibia

Imagine being a business that has managed to get THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE, and you've managed to make it so this is a bad thing.

You did it. That's late stage capitalism in one sentence.

"What was promised as infinite growth proved to be finite" feels like a very concise summary of every business person ever everywhere.

outcast of the village

I'm so glad to see this blow up actually. this piece feels very important to me, especially that it's not a fanart

Confession of a grieving Palestinian, forever away from home.

(For the record, hopelessness does not mean giving up. When you feel like you can do so little, just do what you can. Donate. Protest. Scream the truth.)

today i learned twitter artists are posting their own art but captioning it as if they're reposting someone else's work, bc it gives them waaay more engagement. and its worked every time. the state of social media is truly so over 😭

like what is going on...

Honestly I would bet solid cash money that this comes down to social dynamics, what the different kinds of interaction mean to a viewer, and viewer's trying to avoid awkward-feeling/demanding-feeling social burden.

It's the same reason that people want to make a private discord server to talk with their buddies about their favourite fanfics, but get awkward and anxious and inhibited when it comes to talking to the actual author of same.

Squeeing on the server, or interacting with a reposter, is low social stakes and low demand; all it means is that you liked a thing and wanna go "hey dude look at this". The reposter doesn't give a shit about what you think about the thing; presumably your buddies on the server don't either. No pressure, no emotions, life moves on.

Interacting with a direct post from the artist or author feels way. more. risky. Saying "man I love this stuff" to another third party is a different emotional landscape from "man I love YOUR stuff" directly to the creator of said. Because now you are commenting on/reacting to the work AT the creator of the work. Now suddenly that creator can see YOU.

Now you're in a direct social interaction, even of a very sideways kind, With The Person Who Made It, and that is always less comfortable and always just a little more emotional work to actually engage with.

The further you are out from being a creator yourself, the more that is the case, ime.

To be clear: this is unfortunate and if you are an audience member I’m definitely not blaming you? But it’s a good idea to be aware that this pattern is UNBELEVABLY DEMORALIZING for creators at best, and can make a career non-viable at worst.

Saying this is not trying to shame anyone. It’s attempting to point out a cause-effect Problem with this very natural human tendency. Creators are human, and even if we are totally inclined to continue with our art Just For Ourselves, SHARING IT is work. Is labour. Even “just” uploading it to social media does take effort.

If you want art shared in places you can see and access and enjoy it, you really, really need to keep in mind that the creator needs a reason to bother with that labour. If sharing art gets us nothing at all, or worse penalizes us while enriching others (giving reposters traffic and attention and potentially revenue, unfortunately, in this economy) eventually one stops bothering.

If all the positive feedback and attention and engagement and affirmation that there’s any point to this goes on where we can’t see and we get nothing? We might as well keep the art to places we KNOW give us something back.

That’s not a threat or a shaming; it’s just a cause effect chain.

That doesn’t mean you have to do EVERYTHING right in front of the creator. But especially when no money changes hands at all, keep in mind that essentially, you need to feed and water your creators or eventually they’ll die out and go elsewhere. Even if they just means “no longer bothering to make their art accessible on your fave social media site.”

I realized I want to give Paula frilly clothes

LISA 2024 Zine Application Deadline Extended + UPDATE

After some discussion, the mods have decided that 2024 will be the last year we'll be hosting the annual zine.

Due to this short-notice announcement, we've decided to extend the zine sign-up deadline to April 7th! Over the past two years there's been a ton of incredible art, writing, and music contributed to this zine—so for our third and final year, we want to finish off with a bang to show off the talent and passion that has always made this zine so special.

Let's make this a good one! Here is the link again for anyone who wants to participate:

why would you like media that is good if you can like media that is bad instead and pace around your room like an insane person thinking about What If It Was Good

"you will look for themes and motifs in media that isn't worth the effort" i will look for themes and motifs in the dirt. on the ground.