Pandora

My advice is go for it. You can block them, sure, but there's never going to be a guarantee they won't see the channel on someone else's phone or even on a separate account. What they see or do doesn't matter as long as you're doing something you love.

And if you're still scared about them seeing it and recognizing you, you could make it faceless and use a voice changer or even just put on a voice yourself.

─── ⋆⋅⚝⋅⋆ ───

I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.

Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)

But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.

I couldn't even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I'm glad I stopped to read, because:

What you say on there won't be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn't even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)

Also, what you say on there? Is now...

Koko's intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including

Publicly performing or displaying your "content" (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation

Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them

Sell / share this "content" with other businesses

Any harm you come to using Koko? That's on you.

And Koko won't take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)

I was curious about their business model. They're a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They're also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)

They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn't find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of "People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find". Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.

So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.

(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don't read if you're not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)

Since I'm seeing more starseed content being posted, I'm gonna make another post on why the whole starseed thing and the surrounding New Age belief system are... not good.

So for those who don't know, New Age mythology is essentially a hodgepodge of cherrypicked and distorted myths from various cultures, racist pseudohistory, and far right conspiracy theories. To put it very briefly, starseeds are supposedly here to help Earth resist the reptilians, a race of politics-manipulating, war-starting, media-controlling blood-drinking aliens. For those who don't recognize the tropes here, these are basically all antisemitic canards. The reptilian alien myth as most know it today comes from David Icke, who ultimately cribbed a bunch of his material from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a Russian hoax created to justify violence against Jews. He was also influenced by the work of people like Fritz Springmeier, a hateful crank who based much of his work on other hateful cranks.

(David Icke, by the way, also claims that transgender is an evil reptilian conspiracy. You'll never find just one form of bigotry with these people.)

There are supposedly numerous alien races out there, and one of the most prominent among them are the Pleiadians, AKA Nordics. While modern depictions of the Pleiadians give them more variety in skintone, there's no denying that older Pleiadian mythology basically pictured them as Aryans In Space, even associating them with the swastika.

You see what's going on here? "Good" swastika-loving Aryan aliens versus "evil" Jewish aliens? Sound familiar?

Racism isn't just a tangential part of the starseed myth, either. It lies at its very core. It's inextricably tied in with the ancient astronaut hypothesis, which has a history of racist motivation behind it. The TL;DR is that a bunch of white people couldn't believe that non-white people had built a bunch of things they couldn't figure out how to build themselves (EG, the Great Pyramids), so they proposed that the real builders were anyone from Atlanteans to aliens. (Atlantis, by the way, never existed; it was a literary device created by Plato.)

One supposed purpose of starseeds is to help the world "wake up to the truth," which basically just means "convert people to New Age spirituality." New Age believes that world peace is contingent on a majority of the world being converted to New Age belief, and that resistance against their belief system is ultimately the work of the aforementioned reptilian aliens.

To put it another way, New Agers think they understand other cultures' spiritual traditions better than the actual members of said cultures, and think that anyone who disagrees with them is being manipulated by the conspiracy, or is an agent of the conspiracy. This includes Indigenous cultures which are already endangered from white Christian colonialism.

Essentially, endangered cultures cannot speak up for themselves and resist New Agers' efforts at cultural assimilation without being labeled a problem and an enemy. It's basically white Christian colonialism repackaged as "spiritual, not religious."

Again - if you heard from these people that some ancient text or myth describes extraterrestrial beings visiting our planet for one reason or another, you heard misinformation. They twist and misrepresent literally every myth and text they get their hands on. For example, you may have heard that the vimanas from Hindu traditions were actually alien spacecraft. They were no such thing. Or maybe you heard that the Book of Enoch describes aliens performing genetic experimentation on humans. It literally does not. At best, all of the stories they cite just kind of sound like aliens if you ignore most of their content and pay no attention to their cultural contexts.

The starseed movement preys on alienated people, especially autistic people and people with ADHD. You can look up nearly any list of signs that you're supposedly a starseed, and many of them will align perfectly with characteristics associated with autism and/or ADHD, or that people with these conditions commonly report. Some people within the movement even go so far as to claim that ADHD and autism don't even exist, but were actually made up by the conspiracy as a cover to suppress and control starseeds, which is some yikes-as-hell ableism.

So basically, people are being told that if they have these certain characteristics or symptoms, that means it's their job to spread New Age spirituality to defeat the conspiracy and help others ascend to the fifth density.

And what's the fifth density, you might ask? It's supposedly humanity's next evolutionary level, because New Age is also based on biological misconceptions. Supposedly once everyone's DNA "upgrades," they'll essentially morph into an aetheric form. Supposedly, this is preceded by a number of "ascension symptoms," including depression, headache, gastrointestinal issues, and any number of other symptoms that could indicate almost anything, including stress.

What many of these people don't realize is, this prediction has already failed. Back in the 2000s and 2010s, experiencing "ascension symptoms" was supposed to precede ascension to 5D beginning December 21, 2012. One lady, Denise Le Fay, was convinced that the hair loss she was experiencing in 2008 was an ascension symptom. As we can see by looking her up, she's very much still with us on the 3D plane these days, repeating the same tired old scripts New Agers recycle endlessly.

By the way, everything you near New Agers saying today about old systems being dismantled, dark forces being arrested or kicked off the planet, and new economic systems on the horizon? They've been recycling these scripts for years now. Take a look at this page written back in 2012. You got stuff about the complete dismantling of an enormous network of sinister forces," "the arrest and removal of a world-wide cabal," and a "new economic system."

("Cabal," by the way, is a dogwhistle term for "Jews.")

Furthermore, people in this movement are often encouraged to try and access past life memories through dreams or hypnosis, which makes the whole thing feel even more real to them. But the thing is, you can have incredibly vivid experiences about literally anything you put your mind to - the people in the reality shifting having vivid experiences of living another life in the Harry Potter universe are a great example of this. Just because you have vivid experiences, doesn't mean they have any bearing on anything happening in this reality.

I have always been weirdly connected to Zeus. Not in ways I fully understand yet but still. I have been praying to Zeus a lot recently as I'm moving across the country and I have been praying for rain to stop, to try and get tornadoes to avoid me, asking for it to be cloudy while I moved things. And every time without fail it happens, and it happens fairly quick.

This is always how it's been with Zeus for me. If I need a yes or no question answered I can ask for him to use the weather to tell me and without fail I get an answer.

“can i stop watching the rain now?”

*sends violently strong winds*

King Zeus was being so aggressive with these signs in the best way

As I got to my hotel it started raining such huge drops that it sounded like hail

I prayed to Zeus and asked him to please make the rain stop, or at least be light enough for me to walk my dog and get into the hotel

Within seconds the rain let up and fully stopped and didn't start again until I was in the hotel room with my dog

Heya friends! This post is a bit different than my normal posts, but I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately.

I’m a trans, gay Irish/Celtic pagan and folk practitioner, and I haven’t been able to find a community wherein I’m able to thrive like this. None of my friends practice paganism, and it can be hard not having folks to talk to, even though it seems so trivial. In most queer spaces, spirituality is sort of laughed off, and if anyone has any resources, or is in a similar spot as I, please let me know!

I apologize for the downer vibe of this post, but I just hope folks stay happy :D

Trans, queer, autistic Hellenic here ^-^

Hey! Are you broke but still wanna offer something up to the gods? Don't worry! (So am i) So here's a guide of things that are either free, low cost or that you probably already own to slap onto those altars. Mind you: These are mainly modern offerings that I attribute to these different classification of gods. I'll likely update as time goes on with other classifications :)

General Offerings to Deities:

random flowers from outside

random sticks from outside

hand written letters/prayers

plushies of the animals they're connected to

raw/cooked meats as "sacrifices"

drawn symbols

Art/Creative Deities:

symbol painted bottle caps

pens/pencils/markers

old sketchbooks

stickers/prints

origami

comic books

figurines

Death Deities:

bones or meat from your meals

dirt from a dead plant

dying flowers

skull imagery

coins or other gifts for those passing

photo/belongings of your late loved ones

Familial/Household/Protector of Children Deities:

photobooth photos

jewelry gifted from family

baby teeth from your children

breast milk

old baby shoes

framed photo of family

cookies/bread

homecooked meals

Fire Deities:

birthday candles

charcoal discs

burnt herbs

alcohol

incense

tobacco

matchbox/lighter

Healing Deities:

your current medications

bandaids

water

skincare

vitamin gummies

spell jar in an empty pill bottle

Knowledge/Wisdom Deities:

old books & textbooks

pens/pencils

mini chess pieces

written down philosophical quotes

good test scores/report cards/degrees

Love/Lust Deities:

origami 3D hearts

chapsticks

unused makeup

love letters to deities

love letters about S/O or crush

current perfume/cologne

current lotions

apples

Nature Deities:

plants dedicated to them

herbal tea packets

feathers

milk

fruits/vegetables

spells using recycled materials (toilet paper rolls, etc.)

bread

acorns

Sea Deities:

beach sand

shells

sea water

tiny sea animal figurines

shared fish dinners

makeshift spell jar using a shell

Trickster Deities:

laffy taffy joke wrappers

cards against humanity packs

(I made a discord emoji of Apollon because why not? Also, YES you can use it for your own server! Hopefully, Apollon doesn't mind me drawing him like this, hshshs)

It's so weird. Sometimes, I'll see ai images of Hypnos when I'm looking for things related to him, and it always ends up making me feel super uncomfortable.

You're letting an ai take away the beauty in making something for your deity? Letting a soulless machine put zero love into it and steal from others? And you think the gods would like it?