formerly librarianarchy

in my case it definitely helps that I teach kids martial arts classes at a boxing gym with a lot of women. so little boys just factually cannot tell me that girls can't fight or aren't strong or something, because they're constantly surrounded by proof that isn't true. also rules are very different in a boxing gym so if a kid is being a little shit I'm allowed to pick them up and put them in upside down air jail. you probably can't do this in most contexts.

I think the biggest thing is that they need to see men and other boys listening to women. they're following the example that's been set for that. at home maybe their dad never listens to their mom, but when they show up at my class all the other boys are following my instructions. peer pressure is real and you can use it to your advantage. I make a point to tell the biggest buffest manliest dudes what to do in front of the little boys. now this works because those dudes already listen to me, but getting any dudes to follow your instructions could probably work.

the best punishment is the natural consequences of your behavior. if a kid isn't going to listen to me, he doesn't get to do class. this works because class is fun and he wants to kick stuff and hit people with noodles. kids want to have fun more than they want to misbehave. as long as listening to me is more fun than misbehaving, they'll listen.

because these boys are learning this behavior from their dads, the dads also tend to be the kind of tough strict emotionally distant parents that would yell at "girly" behavior or crying. even when I'm strict with the kids, I never yell, I obviously never hurt them, and I always listen. they want to yap at me about pokemon or youtubers. it can be tough when they're really sexist at the beginning but eventually they will show you something that their dad wouldn't approve of, whether they want a pink noodle or quietly mention they like a girly show. this is the part where you simultaneously act like it's no big deal while encouraging it. you need show it's completely normal for a boy to want or like that. if you can, bring up another boy or man they know who likes the same thing. I always show off my nails to the kids and bring over the guy who also paints his nails. you'll probably get "boys can do that?" comments and I usually just go "well he's a boy and he did it, so unless his hand falls off right now I think it's okay"

for me, it's always eventually gotten to a point where the boys realize that everyone else thinks it's normal to listen to women, and that if they want to have fun they need to listen too. they also realize that these people and these women are nicer and listen to them more than their dad does. they notice how all these nice people that make them happy talk to women very differently than their dad does. when those boys yelled at their dads for being rude to me, I made a point to thank them and say that they were right and their dads were rude.

Back in 2023, @hugelunatic-deactivated20260510 gave @simnostalgia shit for archiving/scraping GoS “just in case,” citing concerns over scraping, bandwidth, and preservation itself.

Now GoS and Sims2Artists are suddenly gone, and people are left scrambling through remnants, mirrors, and whatever archives survived.

That is exactly why preservation matters.

You cannot discourage archival efforts and then act surprised when people are upset that massive parts of Sims 2 history vanished with little warning. You also cannot get angry over backlash when there was never any clear, direct communication to the wider community.

People were explicitly told that if GoS was truly at risk of going down, there would be an announcement.

No real community-wide warning was ever given.

And honestly, this is where the messaging becomes incredibly frustrating.

We were told:

hosting costs were manageable,

the site was not going anywhere as long as ads/donations covered most costs,

out-of-pocket expenses were still within budget,

scraping was mainly an issue because it increased bandwidth/server load,

“if I were not willing/able to continue, then there would be an announcement,”

and later posts even made it sound like things were functioning again after the PHP fixes.

Most people interpreted that as stability returning.

So yes, people are understandably confused and frustrated now, because the messaging for years was essentially: “Things are annoying, but manageable.”

Not: “Hey. This is serious. Archive what you can now. I may be done.”

And no, buried technical posts about PHP upgrades and drive failures are not the same thing as directly communicating that to the wider community.

I literally had to use archived Tumblr pages just to reconstruct the timeline before speaking on this.

And honestly, we are lucky @simnostalgia even had the foresight to preserve as much as they did back in 2023, because otherwise even more would likely be gone forever or nearly impossible to piece back together. But that archive is still missing huge amounts of resources, attachments, images, updates, and years of content added afterward.

What makes this even more frustrating is that @simnostalgia received backlash for trying to preserve the site in the first place. At this point, I honestly hope they feel vindicated, because this situation is exactly why archival efforts matter.

TheSims twitter: Sulsul Simmers! We hope you have a very Merry SIMS-mas!

His joy and whimsy at seeing this

His acknowledgement of it not being as interesting as the chase