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Screenshots are not sources. Headlines are not the full story.

That's all I mean.

"No I'm a good person" why? Because you've gotten lucky and not seen propaganda yet that perfectly hit your buttons? Because you had people to correct you when you fucked up? Idk man I don't think we're all so different from the bad people. We're all just people.

Reminding ourselves of our shared humanity with terrible people does NOT serve to justify their actions. It serves to remind us that the seeds of what happened to them could get into us as well, or might already have. It reminds us to be vigilant and interrogate the hatred inside us.

If you convince yourself that you're just an Inherently Good Person who would never believe hateful things well. Now any little hateful thing that makes its way inside you undetected is never going to be interrogated. It will be left to grow undisturbed.

“I GOT THE JOB!”

“I worked really hard!”

After that, this kid was cleaning out the fridge at least once a week, and I was like, “why are you always cleaning the fridge?” Like, I didn’t mind, but it seemed odd. And he said, “one time I cleaned the fridge and you said I did a good job. I wanted to make you proud of me again.”

Literally, I changed the entire way I interacted with teenagers after that. I actually got a package of glitter stars and I would stick them on their nametags when they did a good job, and they loved it.

My manager had commented on how hard these kids work and I said, “they’re starved for positive feedback. They go to school all day then come to work all evening and no one appreciates it because it’s expected of them, but they’re still kids. They need positive feedback from adults in their lives.”

Teens don’t talk to adults bc adults only ask „so, how‘s school“ to then interrupt them two sentences in. And because they can’t engage in a conversation about buying houses and working in a bank. I would’ve loved to talk about philosophy and politics and history with family the way I did with friends and in class but because I was young no one took what I had to say seriously.

And no, teens aren’t always on their phone. They’re on their phone when they’re bored. You think I‘m on social media when I‘m with my friends? When I‘m talking about something I‘m interested in?

Very frequently, when I first speak to a child while I’m at work, they’ll kind of withdraw and act uncomfortable and shy. Their parents will then rather frequently tell them to not be shy and try to coax them to talk to me – whenever that happens, I always, without fail, politely dissuade the parents from pressuring them.

“I’m a stranger,” I’ll tell the kid’s parents. “I don’t blame them for not talking to me – if they were anywhere else, they’d have the right idea, to not immediately trust me.”

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen that same kid – simply after hearing their initial reaction being validated, instead of reproached – immediately open up to me after that. I also cannot tell you how many times that child and I would go on to start a friggin’ marathon conversation, and I got to hear all about how great their day was or what their favorite Disney movies were or what rides they liked and didn’t like or how much they like a certain Disney character or song…all from me validating that initial feeling and showing genuine interest in what they had to say.

This isn’t just young children, either. I will always remember being positioned outside the Animation Academy one day and starting up a conversation with a young lady, perhaps 12 or 13, who joined the line with her father a full 25 minutes before the class was supposed to start. Now keep in mind, we do a drawing class every 30 minutes: there was no one else in line at that point, and no one else joined the girl and her father in line for a full fifteen minutes. So I could tell pretty quickly that this girl was very emotionally invested in getting a good spot for the drawing class: a conclusion all the more bolstered by the fact that she had a notebook under her arm. I asked her if she was an artist – she said yes, but seemed uncomfortable at the question, so I skipped even asking her if I could see her work, instead admitting that I myself wasn’t very good at art, but that I’m trying to get better and that I love the history of Disney animation. On the screens around us was video footage of different Disney concept art and animation reels, so I pointed one of them out (for Snow White) and asked if she knew the story behind the making of the movie. Upon confirming that she didn’t, I proceeded to get down on the floor so I could sit next to her and her father and dramatically tell the whole story of how “Uncle Walt” created the first full-length animated motion picture, even though everyone and their mother thought he was an idiot for even trying, and how the film ended up becoming the first Hollywood blockbuster. After the story was over, the girl’s father said that his daughter really wanted to be an animator when she grew up, and she finally felt comfortable enough to open her notebook and show me some of her artwork. It was wonderful! Every sketch had such character and you could tell how much work she put into it! And I could tell how much telling her that – and sharing that moment with her, where we got to connect over something we both really enjoyed – had meant. And after the class was over, she sought me out to show me what she and her father had drawn – and sure enough, hers was great! (Her father’s was too, really. XD)

-~-

I feel like I am obliged to add one more thing: don’t ever think that the kids won’t feel your unspoken judgements cause they do!

I felt always like a ‘problem’ in my family, until I was about sixteen, I got this teacher who was litterally the first to tell I was worthy. He changed my life up till this day.

She was shy, and kind of withdrawn, and extremely slow—it took this woman an hour to do a sink of dishes that took me 30 minutes and I was considered not particularly fast—but she was absolutely dogged. She would do her job and get it done.

So this one day I realized we had all kinds of “hey, great job!” cards on our little recognition board thing for almost the whole crew, but none for Susu, because “she won’t understand anyway.” So I threw a couple of simple sentences into a translation app and spent like half an hour very painstakingly drawing these sentences in Burmese characters (and drawing is really what it was—I felt like I was four years old and holding a pencil for the first time again) and gave her the card. She kind of glanced and it and went “oh thank you” and then did this massive double-take and raised it in front of her face and read it, and read it again, and then just about hollered “OH THANK YOU THANK YOU” and I showed her where she could pin it on the recognition board if she wanted. She chose to take it home instead, which, totally fair.

All it said was “thank you for your hard work, you’re very reliable.”

Everything changed after that. She started using her limited English more, picking up new words here and there (rather amusingly, ours was a multilingual kitchen but she didn’t know which words belonged to which language, and you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a tiny Burmese woman slap a fryer and say “Oy vay this thing, yeah! Pendejo!” I mean yes, completely valid emotion about that fucking fryer, but when this is how you’re discovering she’s picked up both Spanish and Yiddish and thinks both of them are English, lemme tell you, that sure is an Emotion), enthusiastically participating in things.

She was in her forties.

Nobody but her children had spoken a word to her in Burmese since she left home.

but "benefits" would be more accurately called "sole lifelong income"

"disabled people can't get married without losing our sole lifelong income" sounds a lot worse and like we're being intentionally funneled into abusive relationships, eh?

I have some older art tips that I keep forgetting to post here. I'll add a few in the next few days, at least those that aren't too outdated!

The most jarring thing was, the apes are completely unable to learn grammar, and would say things like "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you" (actual quote by Nim Chimpsky), which their handlers would interpret as a sentence, when in reality the apes are simply mimicking signs in hopes of getting a reward. Those hearing handlers would see things like "Nim eat" and "eat Nim" and intepret those as equally meaning "Nim wants to eat".

More damning, the lack of understanding of ASL by the hearing scientists meant that most of what Koko and Nim Chimpsky "spoke" was purely the scientists just seeing what they wanted to see. A Deaf person was brought in to interact with Nim, and they were instructed to not give him any food until he signed "food". They spent hours with an increasingly distressed chimp who did not sign anything, but Nim's hearing handlers would see him move his hand close to his mouth and go "oh! there it is! he signed it!", and while they spent the whole day signing, they didnt see Nim signing back.

With Koko, her handler would claim Koko would sometimes mix up signs like "need/knee", "I/eye", "people/nipple" because they "sound alike/rhyme" but... they don't. Those words rhyme in spoken English. They don't rhyme at all in ASL. Koko wouldn't know those words rhymed in english because she DIDN'T speak english, she "spoke" modified ASL. Of course, as the scientists did not speak ASL either, they didn't realize it, and just assumed random movements Koko meant were signs, and tried to think what she "could have meant instead" by thinking of what words sounded like the ones equivalent to what she had just "signed", even though an ASL speaker would not make a mistake like that.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that almost all of what those apes signed was due to direct prompting from scientists, the fact that they did not use language when alone, or the fact that most of what they answered was complete gibberish (which resulted in videos like Koko's climate address (yes, really) having to be heavily edited and cut to make it seem like she was actually speaking anything that made sense).

One really nasty side effect of this was like. The amount of hearing people who decided to try learning ASL and other sign languages because of the vague possibility of being able to communicate with apes, instead of, you know, the ACTUAL possibility of communicating with and appreciating Deaf people. (one person even said that Koko inspired them to learn ASL so they could communicate with their deaf friend, like... why the fuck did your FRIEND not inspire you to learn ASL??? did you really have to wait for a fucking gorilla failing to learn sign language to think "hmm, maybe talking to my friend would be nice!"??????)

The Koko/Nim Chimpsky experiments were a disservice to the develomentally disabled individuals I worked with. When things got tough some ninny would say, "It's not that hard, monkeys can do it." This drove my speech therapy director into snarling fits. The individuals we worked with learned the signs and then used them in coherent ways without any reward but the excitement of being understood. No M+Ms needed.