madeline / test device

take these tags, on somebody else's post (condolences pip)

the thing is. this is what i would call an inside thought. nobody would have known you didn't get it if you didn't tell them that. if you recognised that it was important but didn't have the headspace to process it, you can reblog without commentary for others, or to come back to later. or you can save it somewhere and wait until you DO have the capacity to read it over a few more times, ponder it, consider what it might mean, figure out how to understand it, and THEN reblog it

but no. rushing to reblog while it is still opaque. rushing to admit to ignorance rather than spend the time to achieve understanding. perhaps hoping that somebody will break it down for you more simply, though to my mind it was quite simply phrased in the first place. never stopping to take the time first

comprehension is not always instant! sometimes it takes a bit of time for something to percolate after you read it; sometimes you need to read it a few times; sometimes you realise you don't have the context for it and either go and get the context or accept that it's not for you right now

AND, on a personal level, as someone who is often trying very hard to articulate subjects that our society tends to not have easily accessible pre-existing concepts for: it FEELS BAD for me to read tags like this. it feels like someone staring at me while i work really hard to articulate something really integral to my existence and then when I'm done pausing and saying "anyway," and changing the subject.

I don't want to be like "let me google that for you" levels of flippant. sometimes a search engine seafch of keywords in a post will help illuminate something and sometimes it won't. checking the other notes in a post is often helpful. going back to the OP's blog and seeing if perhaps they have a tag they use for discussing similar subjects can be helpful. asking polite abd direct clarifying questions can be helpful. these will not only expand your understanding but they will make the person you are trying to understand feel engaged with and respected.

if you want to save a post to read later you can save it as a draft! and also frankly there's a lot of stuff that i read that gets me thinking that i need to sit on and rotate for a bit before i can see how it sort of... fits into things. even if you want to reblog something you are still chewing on, tags like "this post is giving me a lot to think about" feel a lot less dismissive to me personally

Tamara Santibañez