goofy goober central

And as for Debbie, I will always repost my stance on her end.

I’ve said it a million times - if Debbie had listened to what the Addamses were saying in response to her tales of woe, she’s have realized that they understood completely. She had found her people, and was too wrapped up in herself to realize it.

If they could have, they’d have burst from their bonds, hugged the stuffing out of her, bought her a Bentley (and a vintage Ballerina Barbie) and declare her an Addams.

we can all piddle-fart around for a hundred years trying to explain to conservative straight cis het allo white peri people all the history and vocabulary and everything in the middle of a Starbucks line-up while they argue back about what thing isn’t real and who says what and who’s hurting who, but at the end of the day making snide remarks about a person’s body and clothing and voice and posture and mannerisms is rude in a way that you can’t rules-lawyer your way out of.

It is everything. There’s not one answer. I could talk about this forever so instead I set a five minute timer on my phone and wrote a list of as many of the many things that are causing this on a systemic level that I could think of:

It’s parents not reading with their kids (a privilege, but some parents have that privilege to be able to do this and don’t.)

It’s youtube from birth and never being bored.

It’s phasing out phonics for sight words (memorizing without understanding sounds or meaning) in elementary schools in the early aughts.

It’s defunding public libraries that do all the community and youth outreach.

It’s NCLB and mandating standardized tests which center reading short passages as opposed to longform texts so students don’t build up the endurance or comprehension skills.

It’s NCLB preventing schools from holding students back if they lack the literacy skills to move onto the next grade because they can’t be left behind so they’re passed on.

It’s the chronic underfunding of ESL and Special Ed programs for students who need extra literacy support.

It’s the cultural devaluing of the humanities in favor of stem and business because those make more money which leads to a lot of students to completely disregard reading and writing.

It’s the learning loss from covid.

It’s covid trauma manifesting in a lot of students as learned helplessness, or an inability to “figure things out” or push through adversity to complete challenging tasks independently, especially reading difficult texts.

It’s covid normalizing cheating and copying.

It’s increasing phone use.

It’s damage to attention span exacerbated by increased phone use that leaves you without an ability to sit and be bored ever without 2-3 forms of constant stimulation.

It’s shortform video becoming the predominant form of social media content as opposed to anything text-based.

It’s starting to also be generative AI.

It’s the book bans.