Heal Yourself

Let’s take a look at some screenshots of an article I was reading earlier today…

Keyword: was. They don’t support net neutrality anymore. Why you ask? well…

Tumblr is owned by Yahoo. Now that Verizon (a company that hates net neutrality) bought Yahoo, they have demanded that Tumblr must stop supporting net neutrality too. The Tumblr staff has stopped posting about net neutrality.

If this happens, people struggling with their mental health and/or abusive situations, especially teenagers, will have to pay for access to the many hotline/chat services for suicide/crisis prevention, mental health support, drug safety and intervention, and general information about life they don’t teach in school/sex ed. The many forums that exist for all types of disorders/illnesses, if they can afford to stay afloat, will likely come in a separate “Forum” bundle, too. And since we are talking primarily about teenagers here, they will more likely ask their parents to buy these things for them, which is a problem for very obvious reasons.

Have you ever talked someone down from suicide over the internet? Helped them when they were cutting? Gave them emotional support at a fragile time? Becuase without net neutrality, a lot of those people will be out of your reach. A lot of them rely on their internet friends, because they may live in a shitty ass place, full of ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and racism. This is their safe place, this is what keeps them alive.

How many people figured out that they are normal, valid, and ok, all because of the internet? I’m willing to bet a lot of you reading this. Perhaps, because of the internet, you found out what being transgender was, and you just knew. Maybe, you realized that being asexual didn’t mean you were broken. Possibly you’ve seen others go through your same struggle, with depression, anxiety, bipolar, phobias, etc, and suddenly you were not alone.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve told these kids that (a) the Romans believed there were demons in their public toilets and (b) the word for “janitor” comes from “ianitor”, which means “(door) guard”.