Echoes

I can't post images that show too much of my stomach, because notable body fat trips whatever alarms are up in tumblr HQ. but advertisers can show me skinny white girls bouncing on it all day long bc like, they're advertisers.

getting tired of these kinds of responses. "you're only seeing porn because you look at porn and the ads are connected to your data huehuehuehue" like it's some kind of gotcha.

I am a sex worker - a porn creator. Yes, I spend a lot of time on porn sites! sometimes for work, sometimes for pleasure. I'm not embarrassed to admit it. Do you think I should be? I'm on testosterone, sometimes I jerk off four times a day. Get over it.

But it feels like every time someone makes a statement about advertising being obnoxious and inescapable while also flagrantly violating policy it always comes back to how it's actually your fault for seeing the ads in the first place. Something about the instant finger pointing whenever anyone brings it up is uncomfortably close to victim blaming to me.

Maybe if you hadnt walked at night time gone to those sites, you wouldn't be getting these ads. You're clearly asking for it. It's not a problem if it only affects bad immoral people people who's data shows they already watch porn. And why are you upset when you watch it anyways, it's what you wanted isn't it?

i know a lot of the time its just an excuse and the people who get so controlling about it don’t really care about “protecting” the kids, but i have seen a few too many users who genuinely seem to think its better for minors to be “shielded” from anything mature. and its so crazy to me??

like the day you turn 18 is not a magical day where you’re suddenly a completely functional well adjusted adult. if it wasn’t for the legality, it would not be a special day at all. and like- it benefits no one to be thrown into deep water with no prep or warning, so why would it ever benefit someone to be thrust into adulthood without the ability to process darker topics first??

like obviously so far, the youth still have access to that stuff and most of the gates in the way are easy to get around, but if the development continues like this i worry for them.

personally, i probably started with the internet too early- i made my first tumblr account at 11 and was already reading smut by then. but like i don’t think that really harmed me in retrospect; i didn’t understand a lot of it, but like i wasn’t disturbed by it. it was the same kind of curiosity i had about stuff like true crime or creepypasta at that age. and because of this personal experience, it’s just so annoying to see the amount of people who act as if any minor who reads something that, like, contains the word “boob” is gonna be traumatized irreparably.

like it’s a million times safer to read smut too early than to go out and actually do the thing too early.

and to prevent them from being able to read that will only do the opposite of harm reduction. and create even more young puritans, tbh.

--

I read far worse erotica stories on Usenet at 8 than I ever have on AO3 as an adult.

Kids will look at things if they are curious. It's not a problem unless they lack trusted adults and a supportive environment. I was reading some very dark shit, and I certainly did not tell my mother because I knew she wouldn't understand, but that was in a situation where I could talk to my mother about most things, and I had been taught to have boundaries and just stop reading something if I couldn't handle it.

I don't give a shit what age people find something like AO3. The bigger problem, and one that hits kids with good support networks too, is that the modern internet is designed to be addictive and to keep people angry and terrified to drive engagement. Even someone sensible will fall into patterns of doom scrolling and will train themselves to expect quick rewards for little effort from their social media use. Understanding how tiktok et al. are designed doesn't stop one from having a regular human brain that still responds to this style of manipulation.

It is more important now than in the past to give kids things to do that aren't online.

Also I came across this post

Abdul El Sayed winning in Michigan against a candidate in which AIPAC poured enourmous mounts of money is another big blow for the establishment democrats and their unconditional alliance with Israel. The voters are clearly saying it. First Mamdani in New York, now El Sayed, more to follow. I am sure the elites will try to downplay the result, but the message from voters is very clear by now. Genocide is the red line. Gaza has totally taken over the conscience of people worldwide and it will never go away. People that will continue to look the other way or defend what has been done will continue to get booted by voters on several levels. Despite all the mainstream media (certainly in USA) being heavily slanted one way, despite the decades of dehumanization of anything Arab, Muslim (in politics, popular media and beyond) and fearmongering, the shift in the perception is slowly but surely changing. May it be the first step to real and radical changes that actually have an impact on the lives of Palestinians and others. May the new generation be the end of AIPAC type of politicians.

(this post is among plenty of anti-democrats posts I came across which pushes the narrative of democrats generally being diet republicans)

These posts were from 2012-2013. Look at those note counts. I’m sure that actually trying to go through the notes would reveal deranged reblogs, but there’s no way any post praising a Democratic politician would get a lot of notes on here now, let alone that many. Yeah, yeah, you can argue these simplistic posts weren’t great either because politicians shouldn’t be stanned, etc, etc., but I’m pointing out how you used to be able to express positivity towards a Democratic president on here, and that this was a popular sentiment. Now, you can’t even tell people to vote for Democrats against a raping white supremacist without bloggers screaming bloody murder and accusing you of genocide. Forget about praising a Democrat as a person, as the above posts do: you can’t express preference for general Democratic policies over Republican ones without being called a bootlicker. You can’t point to objectively true things about Democratic policies—such as blue states having abortion rights and trans rights and red states not—without people losing their shit and lying about the parties being the same

I’m a broken record yet again but these posts were pre-2016, and the impact of 2016’s combination of online ratfucking campaigns, Bernard Sanders turning a whole generation away from Democrats due to his and his ilk’s “both sides, all corrupt, no war but class war” bullshit, and the birth of fucking cringe culture cannot be overstated. You used to be able to talk about how bad Republicans were on here without adding caveats that Dems totes suck shit too and omg plz still think I’m cool, guys!1! You used to be able to say you supported a Democratic politician without people having a Fox News style meltdown on you. I remember the 2012 election and people on here were able to say “omg Romney would be terrible, vote for Obama!” without much pushback. Compare that to what liberals faced when pleading with people to vote for Democrats against Trump.

Instead of working together to erase it, we see too much of either:

Making ones status as "oppressed" an identity to cling to instead of an injustice to resolve...

OR

Seeking only to switch places between oppressor and oppressed, continuing the same dynamic while self-righteously pretending that this vengeance is justice and that the crime is any different depending on the identity of the perpetrator of the identity of the victim.

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

Chattel slavery is an incredibly cruel and dehumanizing system.

So is every other kind of slavery.

This doesn’t diminish the awfulness of what people were forced to endure under chattel slavery.

I just think it’s useful to remember that cruelty is complicated and diverse and just because a cruel system is different doesn’t make it right by any means.

Roman slavery operated differently from slavery in the antebellum American south which operated differently from slavery in the Ottoman Empire which operated differently from modern prisoner chain gangs.

In the unit about physical work, he points out that work is, at its core, a measurement of labor, and that labor which isn’t done by a paid laborer had another name before the rise of automation: slavery. He has his students quantify the amount of physical work that you might expect out of a human slave, and then sets them to work calculating what that means for their own standard of living. If you wanted to live like you currently do in the ancient world, how many slaves would you need? Calculate your washing machine in slaves. Calculate your dishwasher in slaves. Calculate your refrigerator and your TV and your HVAC in slaves.

All of this is going to come back to haunt him. It doesn't matter that Stevens endorses him. This primary was too nasty, and there's still the legacy of Uncommitted.

That's EXACTLY what I'm seeing from so many people and why I barely check my dash right now. This idea that solidarity with people who don't have your exact experiences somehow "dilutes your oppression".

Even if it did—even if that was a sensible thing to say!—what victories do you think you're going to win based on the awfulness of your oppression? Do you still think your actual ideological enemies care about your suffering? Do you still think you can stir their hearts by protesting that it hurts, that it's bad? They know! They know it hurts! Wallowing in it doesn't empower you!