and on a quest we'll go

I was heartbroken and felt tossed aside. I didn't understand why our friendship wasn't worth anything to him if he couldn't have me romantically or sexually. I felt betrayed and dehumanised, like I didn't matter to him as a person but only as a romantic prospect.

When I told other friends about it, to my surprise they all sided with him. "He is heartbroken, it's hard to get rejected" even my THERAPIST said this. It's not like I didn't empathize with him, but wasn't I rejected too? No one else could see that but me, they placed me as some sort of villain that had power over him in that situation, when all I did was set a boundary between friendship and romance. All I did was not consent to the terms he wanted for our relationship, I rejected them, my terms were different and he rejected those.

I've had my heart broken by friends over and over and it hurt the same, if not more, than any romantic heartbreak. Why is friendship undervalued next to romantic feelings?

i desperately need people to stop avoiding what this post is actually about. stop derailing and trying to make it be about something else instead.

THIS POST IS ABOUT ROMANTIC CONSENT.

even if the person in question didn't want to fuck them, even if he just wanted a wholesome, purely romantic, nothing sexual at all relationship, it would STILL be fucked up to BLAME someone for rejecting that.

similarly, if someone really wanted to just fuck, but they were honest and clear about that, and handled rejection gracefully, there would be literally no issue with that.

you'll never believe. whose main blog that post was from. hi, it's me, tumblr user radioactive-yuri, formerly known as thermodynamic-comedian. this is my side blog. and a good few years ago, i made that very post on my main blog.

Here are some basic primers. If someone is wearing what look like Meta glasses, they usually have a small circular camera in the outer corners of the lenses, like the one on your phone.

I would also regularly check their own product pages so you're on top of what the models look like. They tend to have larger frames, but come in a variety of shapes and colors.

A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. The app scans for smart glasses’ distinctive Bluetooth signatures and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.

The American Foundation for the Blind has said that "The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are an accessibility tool only by coincidence. That makes them more affordable and, in many ways, unaware of the needs of users with reduced vision" although they do have seemingly positive views on Meta Glasses as a whole. (source 10). It also seems like their marketing push as accessibility devices began last year (source 11).

But to add even more into the nonsense, Meta is now toying around with adding a "limit" to the functionality of their glasses unless their users pay for more access (source 12). AND, as stated above, Meta has officially added facial recognition code in their glasses and only admitted it after being called out, which is basically the death of privacy as we know it (source 13, source 14, source 15). And oh look another lawsuit because of it (source 16) THAT THEY LOST (source 17)!

Long story short: I don't begrudge someone using them as a disability aid overall, but ultimately both their privacy and other people's privacy are being disregarded by Meta and that is not and should not be acceptable by any means.

I understand there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but there is a level of personal responsibility someone has to take when using them if they truly truly need them, such as opting out of sharing information, not filming strangers without permission, not posting footage of strangers online, opting out of facial recognition if possible, etc.