Enigma 2 Me

"Investigators are currently searching his car to see if there has been any evidence of catraband, such as excessive doses of catnip or distracting squeaky toys or springs. Mr. Tibbles has refused to provide any comment, only giving a slow blink, which may mean he loves you, or he is stoned out of his mind on catnip. We're not entirely sure. Investigators can only say this:

Mr. Cookie and Ms. Lulu: While toxicology reports are not conclusive, if it is proven that Tibbles was on substances, he can expect at least 6 months in the Cone of Shame, with shaved fur for the necessary injections and surgeries, as well as a permanent ban from operating any vehicles larger than an empty shoebox on wheels by the Department of Motor Felines. We are only lucky that he did not cause any injury or damage to anyone except himself. Back to you Tom."

"Thanks. And that's the local news of Feline Action Network. Back to you, Nya-san."

I will admit I REALLY like the recent improvements they've added to tumblr's search (you can exclude terms now!! you can search multiple tags!! and time frames!!) so it's not like they're incapable of adding useful features. it might be mutually beneficial for us as users if we were more vocal about things we want and don't want. Some features I'd like to see added:

spoilerable text

spoilerable images

the return of hover text!! remember when we had that?

ability to embed videos in reblogs

ANIMATED GIF ICONS!!!!!!!!!!!!

the ability to turn off other people's animated gif icons

the ability to filter original posts on a user's ENTIRE blog, not just a tag/search

more html support, like what if we could build tables

adding reactions to replies! I'm glad we can like them more but it'd be nice if we could take this further

embeddable tiktoks?? I don't even use tiktok but I remember trying to embed one in like 2020 and I'm surprised we still can't! even vines were able to be embedded

being able to search in your DMs. not being able to do this is why I tend to redirect mutuals to discord

MUTING USERS POSTS/COMMENTS WITHOUT BLOCKING THEM! just cause I don't want to see someone's posts doesn't mean I don't want us to never interact ever

a mutual-only dashboard feed

a feed for the blogs you're subscribed to

get rid of tumblr tv lmao I've literally never used it

"mark as read" button for communities without opening them

please dear god no AI shit unless it's a way for me to filter/block it easier

Have you noticed that a lot of people on social media don't ever feel compelled to explain themselves?

You've seen this, right?

The folks who proclaim a strong moral view on a controversial topic...then use any excuse to avoid supporting it when they get any polite pushback or questions? The way personal feelings are elevated above objective facts or reasoning? The way they avoid or shut down any meaningful discussion?

I think this is caused by a set of related ideas and biases which are in ascendence and I think younger generations are more vulnerable to being manipulated by bad actors who capitalize on them.

Before we get into that, let's look at some of the ways this phenomenon manifests on social media...and the sorts of biases/concepts at play.

___

"I’m just speaking my truth."

Translation: "Challenging the conclusions I draw from my emotional experience is immoral."

This converts subjective perception into absolute truth, which not only discourages fact-checking, counterpoints, or curiosity, but labels them as oppressive.

Bias/Concept: Emotional Reasoning, Subjective Validation

___

"I don't have the emotional labor for this."

Translation: "I don't want be feel challenged, only validated."

This frames disengagement as a righteous act of self-care, rather than avoidance of intellectual discomfort.

Bias/Concept: Therapeutic Culture

___

"I feel attacked."

Translation: "You’ve introduced an idea that unsettles me."

This reframes an intellectual disagreement as personal harm, making the speaker immune to critique.

Bias/Concept: Emotional Reasoning

___

"That’s problematic"

Too often, this means "This topic made me feel bad, conflicted, or uncertain - and I don’t want to examine why."

It shuts down discussion without defining terms or explaining logic. It implies moral failure without needing to explain the moral reasoning.

Bias/Concept: Concept Creep, Virtue Signaling

___

"Centering [X] is violence."

Translation: "I disagree with your priorities and framing that as harm makes me morally right."

This uses inflated, exaggerated, hyperbolic language to shut down any competing narratives or uncomfortable truths.

Bias/Concept: Concept Creep, Emotional Reasoning

___

"It's not my job to educate you."

Translation: "I don’t want to explain, defend, or support my belief. That would risk them being challenged on their merits. I just want my feelings validated and for my community to affirm I have expressed the correct views."

This avoids meaningful dialogue by asserting moral high ground and demanding deference...without reciprocity.

Bias/Concept: Virtue Signaling, Social Identity Theory

___

"As a [victim identity], I shouldn’t have to…"

Translation: "My group affiliation makes my views untouchable, questioning them makes you a bigot."

This uses identity to shield ideas from scrutiny. Lived experience becomes a veto power over disagreement.

Bias/Concept: Social Identity Theory, Motte and Bailey

___

"This is trauma-informed."

Translation: "You can’t question this without being insensitive"

This weaponizes therapeutic language to preempt dissent. (My therapist HATES this one.)

Bias/Concept: Concept Creep, Therapeutic Culture

___

"That’s giving [insert negative vibe or label]"

Translation: "Your argument feels like something I’ve been told to distrust"

This uses emotional associations instead of logic to delegitimize a person or point.

Bias/Concept: Emotional Reasoning, Subjective Validation

___

Do you see it?

Facts which conflict with feelings aren’t debated - they’re deemed hostile, even violent.

What all of these have in common is the primacy of emotion over reason.

Emotion isn’t the start of a thought for the people who make a habit of these behaviors - it's a substitute for thinking.

I don’t believe this shift is driven by malice or conscious dishonesty. Most people haven’t stopped caring about truth - they’ve simply come to discern what truth is through emotional resonance instead of through evidence or reasoning.

"Truth" now arrives on screens dressed in vibes and aesthetic cues tailored for their existing biases, bypassing critical thought and offering the dopamine-releasing comfort of certainty without the messy, time-consuming burden of understanding.

When Emotion Becomes Authority

Here's a recent example which is getting some deserved mockery in the last day or so:

I know, I know. listening to Theo Von talk about war is like listening a possum try to to sell you on cryptocurrency.

Scratch that - Theo Von is what we'd expect to see if a pair of Truck Nutz were to gain sentience in a laboratory accident.

Theo couldn't speak for his generation any more than a broken Roomba could speak for Artificial General Intelligence, but he's doing something here which is alarmingly and increasingly common for his generation of media personalities. He's using his feelings as a replacement for thinking.

...it feels to me...it just feels to me like it's a genocide that's happening...

Theo doesn’t check facts, definitions, sources, or context because he doesn’t have to. He just invokes a vibe, a moral mood. "It feels like genocide." That’s enough.

Theo has 3.9 million subscribers on YouTube. Estimates suggest his total reach is about 16.2 million people.

The Era of Vibe-Governed Reality

In 2025, truth is not discerned though evidence or reasoning, but through emotional resonance.

Feelings are like the new science, but they're peer-reviewed only by your immediate social circle and validated by the count of reshares.

This is NOT a crotchety right-wing Fox News viewer shaking his fist at clouds and ranting about "kids these days."

This isn't even a critique of liberalism or leftism (because I'm a lifelong left-leaning liberal who grew up in a liberal/socialist family).

It's an examination of what has become a common strategy for mass manipulation which is alarmingly effective, especially with younger generations.

The Water We Swim In

Political operatives and influlence campaigns from every perspective are capitalizing on it, too. Influence campaigns from Russia, Iran, and Qatar; PACs; lobbyist firms...everybody - and we don't really notice these maipulations any longer. Why don't we notice them?

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water? -David Foster Wallace

We don't notice because we're swimming in them.

Every day, we see provocative social media posts which prioritize shock value and emotional impact, aiming to capture attention and convey political stances through intense feelings rather than through facts or reasoned arguments.

Appeals to emotion have been used to bypass logic and reasoning for millennia.

You're probably familiar with these:

Every time anyone ever said "think of the children," you're supposed to clutch your pearls in fear and horror.

US War propaganda in WWII used emotional appeals like "I WANT YOU" or addressed attrocities meant to hit Americans in their emotional center.

Joseph Goebbel's speaches and films used fear, disgust, and resentment to enflame existing negative German feelings against Jews and other minorities.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe constructed scenes of immense emotional intensity to provoke outrage and sympathy, especially among white Northern readers in hopes of galvinizing anti-slavery sentiment.

So appeals to emotion aren't new and aren't always dishonest.

What's new is the increasing, overwhelming spread of this way of reaching conclusions in our public discourse replacing other modes of communication, other means of persuasion, and other ways of "knowing" anything.

What's new is that our post-truth, postmodern academic models validate this.

What's new is how this is being weaponized against us, especially younger generations.

How We Turned "I Feel" Into the New "I Know"

This shift didn’t happen overnight. It’s the product of decades of cultural, technological, and psychological changes converging to create a perfect storm where feelings have become a replacement for thinking.

First, there’s the growing cultural emphasis on authenticity and personal experience as the highest forms of truth. This began as a perfectly reasonable corrective to rigid institutional authority and exclusionary narratives but has morphed into a worldview where subjective emotion is treated as inherently more valid than objective evidence.

At the same time, therapeutic culture expanded its reach beyond therapy offices into everyday life, encouraging people to view disagreements as trauma, debates as emotional violence, and intellectual challenge as psychological harm. The result of this is a protective reflex to avoid uncomfortable facts or nuanced arguments that might trigger emotional distress.

If this sounds familiar, note that it's something I've touched on before. The people doing this habitually don't take their positions based on moral principles, facts, context, nuance or reasoning because what motivates them is emotional comfort.

(Experiment: Keep this idea in mind while you're scrolling online and see it that rings true when people will not or cannot support their assertions.)

Social media platforms are engineered to maximize engagement, right? The fastest way to do that is by appealing directly to emotion—especially outrage, fear, and identity affirmation. Algorithms reward the most emotionally charged content because it keeps users scrolling, sharing, and commenting. Nuance, complexity, or even honest uncertainty rarely go viral; they don’t light up dopamine circuits the same way.

That's bad enough for our mental health, our intellects, and our public discourse, but the greatest danger is in how these emotional shortcuts to baseless conclusions create fertile ground for bad actors who want to manipulate public opinion en masse.

Your Feels, Their Power: A Beginner’s Guide to Being Played

Whether it’s state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, political operatives, or interest groups, these manipulators know exactly how to weaponize the primacy of emotion.

Russian Interference in the 2024 U.S. Elections

In the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. elections, Russian state actors engaged in disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining Democratic candidates and bolstering Republican ones. These efforts included spreading false narratives about candidates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, such as fabricated stories of personal misconduct. The campaigns utilized social media platforms to disseminate emotionally charged content that resonated with specific voter demographics.

Operation Overload Targeting USAID

A Russian disinformation campaign known as "Operation Overload" targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by producing AI-generated fake news videos. One such video falsely claimed that USAID paid Hollywood celebrities to promote Ukrainian President Zelensky. This content gained significant traction after being shared by high-profile individuals on social media, illustrating how emotional manipulation can amplify disinformation.

Far-Right Exploitation of Social Media Platforms

Far-right groups have effectively used platforms like Instagram and TikTok to disseminate emotionally charged content targeting young audiences. By leveraging visually engaging media and exploiting platform algorithms, these groups spread divisive messages that often go unchecked due to inadequate content moderation.

Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior in Anti-Vaccine Campaign

During the COVID-19 pandemic, coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) networks spread anti-vaccine misinformation across social media platforms. These networks used fake and duplicate accounts to amplify emotionally charged narratives, undermining public health efforts and exploiting fears related to the pandemic.

Bad actors craft messages designed not to inform or persuade through reason but to resonate emotionally - often through fear, anger, or identity-based grievance.

These messages bypass critical thinking by activating deeply held feelings or tribal loyalties.

Younger generations, raised in a world flooded with emotional messaging and taught to prioritize feelings as a moral compass, are especially vulnerable.

Social media doesn’t just deliver content, it delivers community validation. Likes, shares, and emojis, no shit, reinforce emotional responses as truths.

This isn’t just an accidental byproduct. It’s a deliberate strategy and it's been developed to an art form.

Polarization: By amplifying outrage and framing complex issues as zero-sum battles of good vs. evil, manipulators ensure people become entrenched in their “side” and reject any nuance.

Echo Chambers: Algorithms funnel users into filter bubbles where their emotional beliefs are constantly reinforced and opposing views are demonized or erased.

Identity Weaponization: Bad actors exploit identity politics to turn social groups into ideological fortresses where dissent is branded as betrayal or bigotry, shutting down dialogue and scrutiny.

Emotional Hijacking: They flood social feeds with rapid-fire emotional content, making thoughtful reflection impossible and replacing reasoned debate with knee-jerk reactions.

The result is a feedback loop. Emotional responses breed more emotional content, which breeds more disengagement from facts, nuance, or evidence...and the cycle repeats.

If you wonder why almost every attempt to have honest conversations about politics, culture, or identity have become so fraught and fractious, this is why.

So what can we do about it?

We’re definitely not going to get the platofrms to change their algorithms.

We’re not going to manage to out-meme every bit of authoritarian / antisemitic / bigoted propaganda.

We can't stop people from replacing thinking with feeling.

Maybe, though, we can push back in meaningful ways by starting with how we think, speak, and engage.

Feelings Are Real - But They’re Not Facts

Start with yourself. Recognize that emotions matter, but they don’t get the final word. Treat your emotional reactions as data, not conclusions.

Ask: Why am I reacting this way? Is there more to the story? Your habitual curiosity can interrupt the feedback loop.

Seek Discomfort (The Good Kind)

If everything you read confirms what you already believe, you’re not learning, you’re marinating. Deliberately engage with credible voices you disagree with. Not to convert, but to understand. Intellectual discomfort isn't harm, it’s a way to grow.

Don’t Outsource Your Thinking

If your arguments are mostly reshares and TikTok duets, you might be mistaking social validation for understanding. Read full articles. Watch entire interviews. When an assertion really appeals to you, ask yourself: "What evidence is this based on?" Then fact-check the evidence.

Value Nuance - Even When It’s Boring

Nuance doesn’t trend. It’s slow, hard, and less emotionally satisfying than hot takes.

It's’s also where truth lives. Learn to sit with complexity. Practice saying things like "It’s complicated," "I’m not sure yet," or "Both things can be true.

Stop Feeding the Rage Machine

Every time you rage-share a headline without reading it, or dunk on someone for clout, you are feeding the same system you claim to hate. Don’t give your attention to people or platforms that reward outrage over insight. (I need to work on this.)

Reward Substance Over Vibes

Like, comment on, and share posts that show integrity, humility, and reasoned thinking - even if they’re not flashy. That’s how we might tilt the algorithm. Influence is a numbers game. Elevate voices that model real thought.

Normalize Saying "I Don’t Know"

Admitting uncertainty isn't weakness, it’s maturity. It’s how real conversations happen. When someone asks for your take, it’s okay to say, "I’m still figuring it out" or "I want to learn more first." You're not required to have a take on everything.

Ask Better Questions

When someone makes an emotional claim, don’t attack - ask. Not "How could you believe that?" but "What led you to that view?"

Good faith questions can defuse bad faith conversations.

Protect Conversations Like They Matter (Because They Do)

Modeling intellectual honesty and emotional maturity in your own circles has a ripple effect. Be the one who brings it back to evidence, back to reason, back to shared humanity. Conversations are culture-shaping.

Remember That Culture Is a Team Sport

We got into this mess together, and we’ll get out the same way. Culture is just the cumulative effect of individual choices repeated at scale. Choose better. Think better. Talk better.

You don’t have to be louder than the noise.

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about the name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

Reblog with your codename btw I'm curious-

You can host a website on Neocities for free as long as it's under 1GB (which is a LOT more than it sounds like let me tell you) but if that's not enough you can get 50GB of space (and a variety of other perks) for only $5 a month.

And if you can't/don't want to pay for the extra space, sites like File Garden and Catbox let you host files for free that you can easily link into NeoCities pages (I do this to host videos on mine!) (It also lets you share files NeoCities wouldn't let you upload for free anyways, this is how I upload the .zip files for my 3DS themes on my site.)

Don't know how to write HTML/CSS? No problem. W3schools is an invaluable resource with free lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and a whole slew of other programming languages, both for web development and otherwise.

Want a more traditional social media experience? SpaceHey is a platform that mimics the experience of 2000s MySpace

Struggling to find independent web pages that cater to your interests via major search engines? I've got you covered. Marginalia and Wiby are search engines that specifically prioritize non-commercial content. Marginalia also has filters that let you search for more specific categories of website, like wikis, blogs, academia, forums, and vintage sites.

Maybe you wanna log off the modern internet landscape altogether and step back into the pre-social media web altogether, well, Protoweb lets you do just that. It's a proxy service for older browsers (or really just any browser that supports HTTP, but that's mostly old browsers now anyways) that lets you visit restored snapshots of vintage websites.

Protoweb has a lot of Geocities content archived, but if you're interested in that you can find even more old Geocities sites over on the Geocities Gallery

"The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for. Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others. 

"Americans are prosperous, but without any deep sense of obligations to others. We are a highly commercial, individualist people, and when we let go of even a thin liberal conception of the public good, we become nasty, petty, small, vindictive and irrational.

"... This is a disease of affluence, not poverty. This isn’t a story of a working class that is being pinched. It’s the story of a working class that is doing better than any comparable working class ever has and a professional class who are angry about that. Who feel that this newfound security means they no longer show proper deference to their social betters. 

"... many Americans, including many non-white Americans, are deeply troubled by the prospect of a symbolically equal citizenry.

MOST of the antiwar organizing was helping people fill out conscientious objector applications, help cobble together legal support for protesters, write letters to the editor/the congressman, and organize the planning meeting for the church service that would end with congregants burning the draft card with the pascal candle.

My mom would take the train into new York City every week to protest outside the UN building.

I think the reason why the Palestine scams are successful is because people want to be heroic, and simply calling your congressman every day and donating to Anera aren't heroic. You don't get to claim that YOUR 10 dollars was the difference in helping a family escape Gaza.

the southern appalachians are facing catastrophic damage after hurricane helene, what people have been calling a thousand-year storm. the region will forever be changed by this event. entire towns have been washed away, there are currently no open roads out of much of the region, and power and cell signal is scattered.

across the southeast people have been running supply drives and fundraising to get aid into the affected areas. mutualaiddisasterrelief and mergoat.mag on instagram are currently platforming a lot of supply drives and updates. please also check their posts if you’re not in the southeast- there’s lots of groups accepting donations right now to fund supplies for people on the ground.

I get really frustrated by the argument on Tumblr of "voting is just one step, it's not the only thing you can do!" because I can never tell if that person is saying "your activist credentials aren't hurt by voting, you can still do all those other things!" - which is true! and good! and some people need to hear it! - or "it's just one of many types of activism that you can do, it's one option" - BAD. It is not. It is the foundational step. You can't really do all that other stuff, or can't do it as well and as effectively, if you don't have the infrastructure in place that you create by voting in the right people and voting out the wrong ones.

This is especially weird given that the Republican Party is increasingly flirting with the idea of violent retaliation against peaceful protesters - and that our history is replete with examples of that happening when they did it in places with hostile politicians, e.g. the civil rights movement in Southern states. Yeah, that imagery ultimately helped them, but it's not the 1960s anymore, we don't have three TV channels everyone watches, you can't guarantee that the people who most need to see it will, or without it being filtered through a bunch of bullshit demonizing the protesters. And a lot of people died or were otherwise hurt in the process, and their lives should matter to you. And a lot of how we ultimately defeated that was because the federal law forced Southern states to comply with all that. Because the people in the federal government making these decisions (like LBJ) were open to the cause of civil rights - which was one of the reasons that civil rights activists made voter registration so key to their efforts in 1964! It wasn't a thing that the activists in those states were able to force on racist, hostile politicians in places like Alabama without help from other people they voted for in the federal government.

There are lots of dedicated activists in Texas who want to help women there get abortions in every way they can; they still could only do so much once it was totally banned there, once Roe fell, and now their work is largely focused on helping Texas women travel out of state. The nationally-celebrated abortion clinic where I lived in Austin had to close and move to New Mexico after the Dobbs decision. Who is in power matters. The laws they pass matter. The way you do something about that? You fucking vote.

Likewise, a lot of this website and the broader left-wing Internet seems to acknowledge that trans rights are way worse in red states like Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, etc. than in blue states like on the West Coast or in New England/the Mid-Atlantic, or even in purple states with Dems in power (e.g. Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Pennsylvania). Same with reproductive rights. Okay, why do you think that is? Do you think the activists in Michigan or Massachusetts just care more than the ones in Montana? Or do you think it perhaps has something to do with who's passing laws? And why do you think this pattern holds so consistently in terms of whether that state is run by Democrats or Republicans??? In Michigan and Arizona in particular, they got where they are specifically because voters rejected extreme Republican policies en masse.

there are things you should be doing now to prevent yourself from starting to look like 🥀

Why does it matter? Future you would like to avoid the pain, limited motion, and fall risk that goes along with worsening posture.

What’s the focus?

1. Keep the flexibility in your spine

2. Stretch the muscles in the front

3. Strengthen the muscle in the back

Here are some simple things you can do daily while sitting and when you get up to go into the bathroom or the kitchen

Keep the flexibility by doing these repeated movements: 10 repetitions several times a day

The goal is to give yourself a double or triple chin. Keep your nose pointing forward, don’t let it tip up or down

Thoracic extension- use a chair with a seat back that comes up to the level of your shoulder blades. Try to bend back over the top of the chair without arching away from the seat back and without extending your neck. If the pressure from the top of the chair is uncomfortable you can place a towel there

Stretch the muscles in the front by using a door frame. This one will feel good afterwards

If this isn’t enough of a stretch you can do one side at a time. If you have the right arm up step forward with the right foot and turn slightly to the left. Then do it on the other side.

Strengthen the muscles in the back by squeezing your shoulder blades together for a count of 10 and then repeating 10 times. You can do this several times a day Hint: Don’t lift your shoulder blades up

There are lots more exercises for strengthening your back muscles but this is a good starting point and easy to do. I like doing it while driving

Tips:

Do the best you can

If it hurts stop

you can find it here: https://campster.neocities.org/

Look at him!

Also he was separated with one of his parents when I saw him but obviously wanted to Be Where The People Penguins Are so they’d set him up with a little rock stool so he could gaze upon his brethren:

Which enabled me to capture the single funniest video I’ve ever taken of anything in my life: