a thin beam of light

“What if Japan took over the US during WW2?”

Japan didn’t want to take over the US. They wanted to eat the Pacific Ocean. They had a very specific plan in mind and were mostly just mad at the US for cutting off their oil supply.

“What if Hitler had taken over the world?”

As crazy and evil as he was, Hitler didn’t want to take over the world. He also had a very specific plan involving what he wanted. And taking over the world would be a lot of work. Likely impossible, actually.

“What if Alexander the Great had taken over Europe?”

Even if they had the technology to make the trip the Aztecs wouldn’t have wanted to take over Europe. The Aztec empire was more of an empire of influence and fear than an empire of direct control. Traveling that far to collect tribute and capture people for state sacrifice wouldn’t have been worth the trip when there’s neighboring city states and tribes right there next door.

“What if the Spanish caliphate had taken over all of Europe? Or even what if the eastern Muslims had taken over China?”

by Norman Rowland Gale

You voluble, Velvety Vehement fellows That play on your Flying and Musical cellos, All goldenly Girdled you Serenade clover, Each artist in Bass but a Bibulous rover!

I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.

Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!

But let me tell you a story:

I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.

One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.

At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.

I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.

Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.

The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.

And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.

So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.

So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.