Some of y'all talk mad shit about about found family yet y'all are totally unequipped or uninterested in taking care of your friends in any tangible way. I don't care how many "I love you and I want us both to eat well" poems and posts you reblog if you just fucking abandon the people in your real life at the first sign of their issues being too much for you! I don't care how many fucking orange slices you want to share if you wouldn't cook for someone bed ridden. Idc how much you care about altruism for fake internet points if all your personal dynamics are rotting and falling apart around you!!
Idk if I'm cynical or just black but tumblr and tiktok and cottagecore people and communist theory reading racist idiots have made me feel like we're in a new period of romanticization. Of all the things that make life worthwhile and/or all the actions it takes to make life worthwhile, and we're in this era where that aesthetic is performative.
I think we're in an era of romanticization of radical action and radically compassionate life... that is somehow synonymous with inaction. I don't think you get to be cold hearted and friendless and then post videos of James Baldwin online. I don't think you should post posts about random acts of love and then be nasty to the people who know you personally.
There is this performative persona of compassion here sometimes, and this wanting of unearned solace and reprieve that does not match up with the lack of hardship in some of your lives. I think when you spend time claiming someone else's hardship and romanticizing their rest, you end up with white women reinventing colonialism and gentrification for the cottagecore of it all. You end up with communists who don't even understand the interconnectivity of race and class.
You have a generation of people with the right answers staring them in the face and painted on their skin, but with spirits, like just nasty ass personalities, that are incapable of moving the world forward. You love me, and want me to eat well, but will you actually pick up that spoon and cook?
Hey I really appreciate y'all tagging this post with racism and white people and straight people and American individualism, but they were just the easiest examples to give! This is a generational observation I've made. If you're a poc you're not immune bc I'm not immune! I'm not! I've lashed out at the people I care about so much! And my maladaptive defense mechanism of choice is cutting people out of my life! I've had to come back around to people who have always cared for me like a fucked up boomerang! To have friends you have to be a friend. You ah e to be around and take care of people. You're really NOT exempt or given to that work just because you're black or not American. You're really really NOT exempt from this post being about you unless my words resonate specifically. Not skin color or queer identity!
