Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

i think some of you guys are insane 👍 it's actually possible for a 16 year old to be online friends with someone in their 20s. source: teenagers are actually people who can talk to other people about shared interests.

21 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 that 18 year old is literally your college classmate. you are the same age. You Are The Same Age

like, the moral panic about age gaps in dating is one thing but this reddit thread was literally about Being Online Friends. you can be online friends with a teenager. they are actually people you can talk to. i promise.

it's very easy to not be a creepy adult when talking to a minor. step one: don't act creepy. that's it. that's all you need to do.

When I was sixteen, I and my boyfriend (eighteen) and his little brother (fourteen) all belonged to the same gaming group, which had been started by his father's friend Steve. We played twice a week with a bunch of people twice and even three times our age, and we learned that adults weren't aliens, they were people with their own feelings and fears and they weren't always right about everything.

Those years at Steve's table were incredibly important to my development as a person. And we had something in common: the game.

Here's the truth: when you grow up, as you go through the various developmental stages, there are things which are vital to happen for proper psychological and cognitive development. For example, when you're very young it is absolutely vital that you are exposed to language. A lot of language. Of varying levels of complexity and formality. That's vital for the healthy development of the language centers of the brain and for early socializing. It must happen. If it does not, you see severe dysfunction as they get older.

This is basic psychological and cognitive development theory. It's taught in pretty basic level Psych courses. This is known science.

Socializing with adults, of various ages, both related to you and not related to you, in various social situations from social equals to authority figure, is one of those vital landmarks. And it comes up over and over and over during development. As a young child you must interact with adults, who care for you, so you can understand care and safety. And it gets more deep and more complicated as you develop.

Preteens and teens must interact with people older than them, significantly older, in various ways, up to and including casual friendly socializing as equals, or they will not develop properly. This is absolutely vital. Your ability to function in the real world socially depends on it.

We are fucking destroying our young people with this bullshit.

Source: Majored in Psychology with a focus on childhood development in university. This is what I went to school for.

The elephant is making those chirps because they’re excited at the noise the drum makes. Some zoos give their elephants drums or horns to play with if they noticed they like making noise/“are musically inclined”. Shanthi of the Smithsonian Zoo became an internet sensation for her compositions on the harmonica:

Day 783 of reblogging videos of elephants.

Oh my goodness, the happy elephant chirps. I was dying from the level of cuteness.

@anexperimentallife the pie would like this

Holy fucking shit y'all.

ok but

Have some samples from the comments - 10/10 would recommend browsing them.

Celebrate transgressive art.

I really like dungeon meshi, so take this bit of propaganda

Bonus under cut

HEY! We were here first! Go find a spot somewhere else!

do y’all remember before direct messages tumblr had a dumbass ask limit of 10 per hour and communication was impossible until they introduced dumbass fan mail and we were basically sending telegraphs back in forth trying to communicate those were…dark times

Do y'all remember when they finally gave us direct messages and instead of doing it normally, they gave it to a few people at a time and we had to infect each other with it like a virus

remember when any post with more than like 6 people talking was unreadably smushed except for the last few additions remember when any post of over 500 characters became a link back to op’s blog readmore style remember when video and audio posts had about a 10% chance of working when you click play

As a recent user I love finding out shit like this from older users. What the fuck guys???? Why were you USING IT AT ALL?!??

believe it or not, we liked that more

its worth noting that immediately after these updates that made everything better, we were all angry about it

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.”

what's going on in the congo since there's also a genocide happening over there as well:

to sum it up, people in the congo are literally being worked as slaves to mine for this material called coltan, which is very valuable as its used for things like phones, laptops, just electronics in general. Congo is the number 1 producer for this material and the places behind this genocide is America, Britain, France, and Israel, wow what an absolute shocker. The worst places probably to ever exist benefit from a genocide. These places are funding Rwanda and Uganda military groups, to go into the Congo and kill MILLIONS of people. This has also been going on for YEARS. Many women have been SA'd and men are forced to work in INHUMAN conditions, resulting in their death and the colonizers are absolutely benefitting from this. 6 MILLION people have been killed and half of them are literally kids. Many of the Congolese people have also been displaced.

Please speak out about and raise your voice

My Star Trek friends, reblog with your favourite most ‘out of context’ Star Trek image

I’ll start:

here ya go

Oh my time has COME >:D

Excellent post everyone

star trek heritage post (April 8th, 2020)

Obi-Wan's shit eating smirk is EVERYTHING.

Every second of Obi-Wan's life from the beginning of time to after his death has been shaped and influenced by the Force. He's seen things some of the greatest Jedi Masters in history - some Sith Lords - couldn't conceive of. He's stood on a planet that was the Force, he's trained the son of the Force and embodiment of the Force's destiny, he's currently staring right at the grandson of the Force. He's spent years in hiding because his only hope was Luke's destiny, and now that destiny is in motion, proving his hope wasn't vain. He can feel the hum of every life in the universe on his skin, in his mind, in his heart. He can touch the fabric of the universe and has been doing it practically daily since he was a toddler. He has lost EVERYTHING and EVERYONE to the gigantic cosmic clash of the agents of light and darkness and yet he's still fighting because he knows the Force so well that he's sustained by the knowledge that good will prevail.

AND THIS GALACTIC IDIOT

WHOSE WOOKIE BFF WAS FRIENDS WITH YODA

WHO IS TRANSPORTING GENERAL OBI-WAN KENOBI AND THE SON OF ANAKIN SKYWALKER TO MEET WITH LEIA ORGANA

IN THE MOST FATED ENCOUNTER OF THEIR TIMES SINCE OBI-WAN AND ANAKIN'S

IS TELLING LUKE SKYWALKER

IN FRONT OF OBI-WAN KENOBI

THAT THE FORCE IS HOGWASH

Obi-Wan is DYING this is the most fun he's had since the early days of the Clone Wars the trip was worth it for this moment alone

Someone help him

It means a lot to me that when people send heart emojis, they have a specific color/style they use. And heart they choose to use seems to really reflect that persons personality and how they love.

Actually, do me a favor. Reblog this with the hearts you typically use.

💜💜💜💜

We really do need to bring back the word "trolling" and warning ppl not to feed the trolls

That TikTok of ppl pouring tomato sauce directly on the counter, adding spaghetti & mixing it with their hands while commenting how great of an idea it is? Yeah, we used to call that trolling, it's pathetic & bc all they want from it is attention, the best thing is not to give them any. Block & move on.

I keep seeing it on here too. Someone comments something outrageous on a post & gets dozens of ppl to respond, filling the entire comment section & making it unusable. And on Instagram, a comment saying "I hate colors" on a post of someone showing off colorful art gets 100 replies while positive comments get none. Congrats, you've fed the troll. Now stop doing it.

Trolling used to get you banned from forums. Now they call you an influencer and give you brand deals & ad revenue. That's why it's more important than ever not to feed the trolls, especially in spaces where any attention is good attention and getting yelled at by 10k ppl in the comments counts as "engagement", boosting your troll post in the algorithm.

Does it ever drive you crazy

Just how fast the night changes?