Quasinonymous

Southern greater kudu Tragelaphus strepsiceros strepsiceros

Practically every single person who has ever pet one of my peafowl has softly exclaimed "Oh, they're so soft!" so I feel safe in declaring that they are, indeed, soft, or at least that they feel very soft to many people.

But, there are definitely chickens who are softer than others, like a rooster is not soft a rooster is smooth, but has Textures because you can feel the shafts of the feathers, or because the iridescence is structural and that structure has Texture. A big, fluffy cochin hen is going to feel different than a cemani hen or a silkie hen or a frizzle.

If you pet a peahen down the back, she is Incredibly Soft. 11/10 can recommend. Her neck is smooth with very soft bumpy texture as you go over the scallop feathers in front.

If you pet a peacock down his neck, it is like petting a wire-haired dog that has been rolled in corn starch. 0/10 petting experience. Same for his train. But his back and wings are all smooth/soft, and the butt fluff is downy soft.

If she didn't like it, she would simply walk away from me! They do have distress noises, but they're usually either warning noises or panic nosies during restraint. I am seated in an Adirondack chair, with no way to force her to stand there or tolerate me annoying her, and even when petting her I am not restraining her movement. They have a 1200sq/ft flight pen + a, 8x24' coop, and my chair is in one corner, opposite the coop so I'm basically as far away from anything central as I can get. They choose to come over and interact (or sometimes they don't, and we just hang in different areas of the pen), and Mantis often chooses violence (biting me over and over again) to get my attention and get pet.

You'll also notice that I ask for permission twice- once when I hold out a finger and once when I hold out my hand palm up. Both of these are gestures that, for us, mean "May I pet?" and you'll also notice that she holds still when I do those gestures- that's permission, waiting for me to pet. This was a while ago; we're at the point now that when she comes up looking for treats I will say "Just pets" and she'll stop looking for treats and hold still to get a beak rub. You can see her at the end reaching for my hand with her beak, that's her trying to ask me to keep going (hence why no asking permission first there).

These are, despite what some people think, intelligent birds. They have social structures and rules, and some form of communication that humans can participate in if they are patient and observant.

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@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.

A – Z Wagon Station Encampment, Mojave Desert, California,