Titled

not everyone is pan

me: "I don't give a shit who you're attracted to but you don't have to go up to minorities and announce that you find them unfuckable"

Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution:

fascinated by this. seriously? you think it makes total sense? read the tags in the notes, and note how many people totally failed to realize the "intended" pattern was even possible. yes, people tend to start with a brightly-colored thing, but once they start reading, they tend to read nearby text next rather than jumping around.

so once you've read "it is against the law to", your brain isn't coming to the poster fresh looking for the most brightly colored text it can find, or looking for something on the same circle but oriented the opposite direction with respect to the circle's path; it's going to look for a new line of text that starts just below the line of text it just read, and get "keep alcohol out of", and keep doing that, getting "it is against the law to keep alcohol out of the hands of youth supply alcohol to minors".

if you don't follow that, well, look at the mockup i did, and note how many people read it as "graphic passion is my design", because top-down wins over outside-in.

this is one of those things where if your academic model of the thing is not predicting the real-world outcome, it's very important to recognize that since graphic design is about communication, and communication is about what people actually get from seeing the work, if lots of people are "reading it wrong", that means it is designed wrong. doesn't matter that you have an abstract theory about how they "should" read it.

Well maybe I don’t WANT to work double as hard as abled people!! Maybe I deserve a BREAK!! Maybe I’ve been working MORE THAN double as hard for MY WHOLE LIFE and it’s led me to immense burnout & caused me to develop several MORE disabilities!! Maybe I should be ACCOMMODATED so I don’t have to KILL MY BODY AND BRAIN over trying to do what abled people can do!! Maybe I DON’T have to work double as hard!! Maybe if there’s the option to let me NOT work double as hard, I should have it, because I’m already working double as hard JUST TO SURVIVE!!

no matter what the situation is, they're always bringing the social interaction to a screeching halt with these jokes. nobody ever wants to participate in this joke with them. nobody agrees with the premise. nobody ever knows what to say afterwards, it's just an awkward moment and a subject change. but they just keep doing it.

we learn to put ourselves down like this as a reaction to someone with power over us (parent, peer with social capital, etc) routinely punishing us for some way we are "wrong", often in confusing and contradictory ways, and forcing us to placate them afterwards.

when the person dictating the rules is irrational, the only thing we can rely on is that we've done something wrong, and so all we can really do to try to avoid being punished is demonstrate our willingness to be wrong. often, this isn't enough, and we respond by demonstrating it harder because it's all we know how to do.

the people who did it to you had some version of it done to them, that's why they treated you like that. if you're willing to treat yourself like this, you risk treating other people like that, even if only in your worst moments.

nobody should be treated like that, even if it's you and at your own hand entirely inside your own mind.

I know it's not your fault, you didn't ask to be this way, but you have to be better than them. I'm not mad at you for apologizing, it's not like it makes you a bad person. you'll learn how to do it less with time and care, you have good reasons for finding it hard to trust that people won't hurt you.