The Last Debauch

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

1) OP made a post that seemed interactive but then

2) Did NOT want anyone to actually engage

I remember tumblr at the time. It wouldn’t have changed OP’s post so lmao big L for OP making it weird

But best of all:

Most people didn’t realize there WAS a response until this fuckin UFO went by.

people always say that internet spaces are americanised because the users are majority americans.

and i do always wonder how much of that is "there are actually a majority of usamericans" and how much is "usamerican cultural markers are a default for many online spaces, and non usamericans are often indistinguishable from usamericans unless you're actively looking".

so here's an incredibly unscientific poll reblog for reach or whatever

#i am saying this every single time i see such polls but i am compelled to say it again#you are inevitably getting skewed results by even asking the question in english#i learned english as a second language but i feel comfortable enough in it to live in English-speaking internet as normal#there's many people i know who don't. and who will not interact with english posts as much because it takes effort#and your mind gets burnt out after focusing so much on foreign language content#not ideal for something you do in your free time#i know there's not much you can do about it#i just wanted this to be remembered

I don't have much to add to this (besides that I am one of the sad anglosphere people who is only fluent in one language - I used to be competently conversational in German but that's the highest I've ever got in any of the languages I've tried to learn, and I'm definitely not conversational in it now!), but you're absolutely right and it should be borne in mind.

#the language poll doesn't even have an option for non-English speakers#i think both Europeans and Americans have a great deal of privilege#so that their culture and especially the English language has been forced on the rest of the world#all to say that we must acknowledge Western-centrism when discussing American-centrism#polls

I didn't add a poll for non-English speakers because the polls themselves are in English, so it seemed fair to assume that most if not all people who interact with it would have at least some English.

like, you're not wrong, but putting "I don't speak English" in the second poll would have given an artificially low number of results in that category while implying it was accurate. looking at the current results it's easier to simply assume that people who don't speak English are fully unrepresented, and to mentally recategorise the results as "tumblr users who speak english"

like I don't necessarily think this was the best methodological approach, and nobody should take these data as representative in the first place (bc this is a scratch poll not a well-designed survey), and you're absolutely right that Anglocentrism needs discussing just as much as America-centrism, but I also want to be clear that this wasn't "I didn't consider that non-English-speakers might exist on Tumblr" - whether or not to include "I don't speak English" was actually the part of this poll I spent the longest considering.

Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK, a far right party who are currently in the process of a serious bid to become the UK government. they are just straight up evil.

Count Binface is an intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head. he likes to run as a novelty candidate in general and mayoral elections. a big thing he likes to do is run as a candidate against the incumbent prime minister:

(Also pictured: Boris Johnson, Elmo)

Anyway, in brief:

Nigel Farage is currently in the midst of a big scandal about his finances

He has decided to deal with this by 1) making a show of nobly resigning from parliament and then 2) immediately running in the resulting by-election

He has stated that he is letting 'the people' judge his actions and implied that if he wins that will prove that he has been exonerated in the court of public opinion

His goal was presumably to get a big resounding win over the other parties, proving that The People still love him.

the other parties have thus far decided that this is a 'vanity election' and, well, there is one very easy way to ensure that he will not beat any of them, and that is simply not to play.

and as a result the only person who has so far confirmed they are running against him is Count Binface. no matter the outcome this makes Nigel Farage look like, u know, a fucking clown.

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

Sanity

BY CAROLINE BIRD