can you tell? does it show?

i read a few volumes of that Smoking Behind The Supermarket manga on a trip recently, and it’s… in theory, fine. on the surface it’s a perfectly inoffensive comic with great character designs. but it’s kind of impossible to overlook the weird implications of a pro-smoking manga lmao. the Tumblr Babygirl Fuckable Old Man Protagonist occasionally say things like “it’s so hard now that it’s socially unacceptable for me to stand by the entrance of a convenience store and produce enough cigarette smoke to choke a horse :(” and the reader is supposed to feel sympathy for him

in one chapter the Tumblr Babygirl Fuckable Old Man Protagonist bemoans how his boss scolded him for smelling like ass and the Twenty Years Younger Alt Girl Tsundere Deuteragonist is like "you should try brushing your teeth after smoking and using a deodorant spray" and the guy is like "wwwoooooaahhhh WOOOOOOOAHHHHHH" and it made me so mad i had to close the book and complain to my boyfriend about it. grownass man amazed by the concept of brushing your teeth

I don’t think we ought to normalize or justify bullying as a means to keep people from being annoying — a sentiment that in and of itself could make for a whole article’s worth of conversation — but I do think we should make a habit of politely but directly telling people “hey I didn’t like that”, “that wasn’t funny”, “you are mistaken”, and the like if it’s called for, and more importantly, you should be able to take a “that wasn’t funny” for instance without taking it personally, because protecting a polite harmony where no one can criticize each other, not even politely, is also really, really bad.

Sexting like “makes sense. sounds good to me.”

i think maybe we could spend less time thinking about things that make us angry and more time thinking about other stuff

Goodnight, and rest in peace, Marjane Satrapi. Thank you for your work and your voice. May we hear you.

Walk Like No One Is Driving

pewdiepie was one of the harbingers of the alt right internet apocalypse i hate that skinny white man with all my heart

I blame him (at least partially) for the rise in anti-indian racism in the late 2010s to today and people look at me like I'm the friend who's too woke when I say that. But it's true

and you’d be right to blame him. he normalized the rise in anti-indian and anti-desi racism through “jokes.” it took me forever to take pride in my indian heritage bc of the culture he helped set up.

the internet is a place for reading wikipedia articles and watching every movie for free. social media is an invasive species. never forget this