the kawaiiest

It’s time to activate it…

Bites The Dust! now this entire post will be reversed!

You have to understand that nature does not work in the same timeframe as ours. Protecting and restoring ecosystems is RIDICULOUSLY inexpensive and requires very little industrial technology; shovels and saplings are not exactly high-tech. But it takes time and long-term projects with people determined to do it. Maybe we are too focused in our "we want it now" thinking, but what you see today is not what you may see in 10, 20, 50, even 80 years if you live that long.

This article talks about this very much in the "see? ecology can help the economy too!" tone that unfortunately is sort of necessary to convince people in the current capitalist system. But I don't want you to focus on this right now.

I want you to KNOW how doable this is. How inexpensive this is, how POSSIBLE THIS IS. That people working and loving the land and nature they live in is possible. That these projects WORK, THEY DO restore and preserve ecosystems. That humanity is neither a plague that destroys everything or a passive bystander on its own destruction but that these are actual things that can be, are, and will be implemented, backed by actual science and results. This is not empty #hopecore #hopepunk feel good stuff, these are things you can learn about, even work towards, and you can most certainly demand they are part of our society.

This orange peel story was huge years ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/a-fruitful-experiment-in-land-conservation/

Beavers reintroduced to historic wetlands improve them at such a level that we can see the improvements from space: https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/nasa-satellites-reveal-restoration-power-of-beavers/

Africa is successfully slowing desertification and restoring historic farming soil with their Green Wall project: https://welcomeafrica.org/en/africa-combats-desertification-with-a-belt-of-life/

There has even been success at regrowing coral reefs--something which I am old enough to be told was impossible. But people have been hard at work for decades since then, and this is one of the results: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.htm

REPAIRING THE DAMAGE IS ENTIRELY WITHIN THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY.

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

@lisxdumbr excuse me as I borrow your tag for a moment, cause we're onto something.

Rent-lowering gunshots aside, I think this highlights a pretty fundamental quality to tumblr memes, which is they're meant to be fun, not funny.

Most Goncharov content aren't funny. They don't make you laugh as an audience. In fact, there's some serious and awe inspiring quality fanarts, music, fanfics, and analysis on a non-existing flim. It's not about making the funniest joke, it's about having fun making the joke.

Tumblr memes aren't meant to entertain a passive audience. The entertainment value is in the participation. And this quality is present in a lot of long-form tumblr memes. Colour theory, urban gothic (short lived but glorious), hawkeye initiative (short lived but glorious), making shitpost arguments into shakespeare, @theshitpostcalligrapher (excuse the tag) and other shitpost calligraphy. A lot of these memes are about taking silly things seriously. And even passively reblogging these memes are about participation. "I can take this seriously too." Or, in Goncharov's case, "yeah I'll help collectively gaslight the internet".

Another big part about sharing it isn't about how funny the joke is, but how impress you are with the effort. As an audience you can feel the love artists/musicians/writers put into their Goncharov fanwork, and can't help but have respect.

This same logic goes for how coffeeshop fics are fun to write, but they aren't funny. The charm for the reader is that someone loved these characters as much as you did.

In contrast, when you look at viral tweets, they're often one-shots. They're very funny and witty but you don't tend to get the same degree of repetition and variations. Because twitter is built for consumption and snappier participation, and the increasingly algorithm-driven navigation makes content more competitive, which means quality lies in individual tweets, and not in the whole phenomenon.