CaiArchive

(there are very many people who do this, actually. they can speak but it comes out in a way that changes the meaning of what they want to say, or speaking causes them too much pain even though they can do it, or just to save energy in between speech loss episodes.)

you don't need the stamp of nonverbal or mute to use your AAC all the time. it's literally allowed and you can do it.

Add a profile picture and any words to your "about" section (or old users will think you're a bot and block you)

Reblog stuff liberally. (Liking means less here, there is no algorithm. Also an empty blog makes you look like a bot too)

It's NORMAL to spam like/reblog or like/comment/reblog on post that are decades old here. Seriously. No one cares. Artists would actually be thrilled

But other people are getting these too? Sheesh.

...And the sheer witlessness of them astounds me. (eyeroll) Yes, at my age of course I would absolutely start purposefully dulling down my general mental acuity, and allowing the writing skills I've accrued over nearly fifty years of sweat and toil to atrophy, so that I can be permitted to pay somebody else to use a tool built by stealing my own work (and that of thousands of my colleagues) and prostituting it to make some billionaire vulture capitalist richer! Why do you ask?

it's in your search results? stop using Google (it's been enshittified for years, anyhow). then turn off everything "AI" in your preferred search engine (DuckDuckGo has it on by default, but it's simple to disable)

it's in your browser? there's plenty of non-Chrome-based browsers that make it simple to disable (like Firefox and its cousins) - tips in this post: X

it's in your operating system? if you're using Windows, it's easy to disable using Group Policy - details in this post

it's in your phone? that sucks, but I'm sure experts here can offer suggestions (mine is to use an older device and never update the OS to one where "AI" cannot be disabled. also to get a properly rooted phone that you control rather than some corporation)

all your friends are doing it? c'mon, aren't we past that now that we're adults?

that way we know we’re from tumblr without revealing anything

I’m just going to say this to strangers until i find a tumblr person

must keep reblogering!! Im going to be so suspicious if any one tells me this now!

Remember the answer is: I stole them from the president.

Like, you have no idea how much that sucks.

I get it, I totally get it. My demo (white men between 45 and 65, more or less) went hardest among all demographics for Shitler and Jeffrey Dahmer Vance, and there is just everything in the world to hate about that.

But the Boomers are our parents, and they are the ones who voted for Nixon, twice. They voted for Reagan, twice. They voted for W Bush, twice. They invented "political correctness" and mastered the art of the racist dog whistle.

They suck so hard, and a whole lot of us in Gen X have spent our entire lives trying to clean up the mess they made.

And I know this comes off as hashtag not all men, but I have to say it: there are so many of us who despise the Boomers, grew up listening to punk rock, hating Reagan and both Bushes, invented Grunge, volunteered for Obama and our local version of Bernie, and feel closer to Millennials than we do our parents. We hate Late Capitalism even more than you do, because we remember a time before the Boomers handed the keys to the oligarchs. We remember a growing economy and a president who wasn't a complete fuckup, surrounded by complete fuckups.

We are on your side, we listen to you and we hear you the way we wanted to be heard. We scold you about Chat GPT because we care about you and don't want you to become functionally illiterate.

I know I'm not the only Old who feels this way. We love you damn kids today, and we're doing our best to support you.

In other words:

Marital rape became illegal in 1993 but is still not prosecuted in many places.

Roe v Wade is dead and women's rights to their own bodies is not codified in law.

Almost all medical testing and development testing is done on men, usually cisgender white men of average build. This has far reaching consequences and thousands of women die every year because the treatments being applied were not designed for them. Artificial hearts fit men about 80% of the time. For women that number is 20%. There are so many examples of ways this type of testing and development harms people, take a moment to read up on it when you can.

Women are more likely to get custody in a separation, but not support. Unless the spouse she is getting away from can and will follow support arrangements, she is on her own. Same for new mothers of any variety. No paid leave, no childcare, no real mental health support despite alarming rates of ppd and related conditions. Nada. You will be heavily criticized and possibly have your child taken from you if you fail to thrive in these circumstances.

Women are still regularly fired for getting pregnant/having a baby. Is it illegal? Well yes and no, states like mine with at-will employment don't have to provide a reason for the termination, or will just make one up. Performance issues, attendance, attitude, whatever. There is little to no recourse.

The list goes on. There is so much to it. Social dynamics, what is considered normal, legal loopholes and straight-up discriminatory laws still on the books and more being added. I can't enumerate it all here but it is worth knowing about.

And this all includes everyone socially and/or legally perceived as a woman btw. They will assign you "woman" based on what they are trying to do. Trans women, intersex people, trans men, nonbinary people, GNC people, absolutely anyone and everyone under the queer umbrella, they will call a man to paint as a predator and deny support, and a woman to paint as weak and deny rights. It's nuanced, it's complicated, there's a lot to it, but it is a very real and still existing problem. For all of us, regardless of identity.

Celebrate the progress, celebrate the wins, celebrate how far we've come. But don't speak of it like it's a thing of the past. Posts like this are a call to keep moving forward, not just a glimpse at life in the past to observe like a museum exhibit.