MolePerson

this is my sweet baby Ringo. someone said she's a classic tabby tortoiseshell (classic torbie), thoughts?

species and descriptions are in the alt text; sorry if it reads weird, this is my first time writing descriptions lol

More generally. I wish in-toeing wasn't treated like this cute thing. I don't have it as bad as other people, I didn't have to wear braces or anything growing up (just inserts), but I still get the odd comment about how I'm walking funny. And like I said, the physical effects aren't negligible. Plus a lot of peoples' in-toeing results from other conditions, which cause other physical effects (which I could go into but I'm tired lol). I guess I wish people were just more mindful about.

MEN, GET IN THE KITCHEN

basically, instead of looking up the meaning of a word on their own, someone will comment asking what that word means. the reason i think it's so interesting is that it shows how social media is being treated more like an irl conversation than i think it has in years past. what do i mean by this? well, if you were talking to someone irl, you probably wouldn't pull out your phone to look up a word they said- you'd ask them for clarification. however, when you talk to someone online, you're already on your phone, so you cooould just look up the word. but instead, some people will comment asking what the word is like they would in a regular conversation.

this is so baffling to see happen. like, the only circumstances in which i will ask what something is/what it means is if i've stumbled across niche internet drama that i know i won't be able to get the full context of without at least an hour of digging, and a short, surface-level summary from someone who's familiar with the situation helps me avoid that- or if there is genuinely zero context in the comments and i'm super confused. basically, if i can't find the info myself, then i'll ask. but i'm seeing people do this for the definitions of fairly common words or terms, something it takes SO little time to look up. besides, if you looked it up, you'd get the definition far quicker.

what does this mean, and is it a bad thing? i have no idea. it's certainly frustrating when people offload the responsibility of staying informed on other people instead of simply taking the time to look things up themselves. god knows this affects disabled people, who i see needing to re-explain their disability to half the people in their comment section over and over again because people REFUSE to take FIVE SECONDS to google the EASILY RESEARCHABLE MEDICAL CONDITION that this person mentions having, or even check other peoples' comments to piece together what it is.

it's also made me realize that it would genuinely be helpful for me to treat my own comments more like emails or forum posts- not only would it increase my willingness to research stuff before i blindly regurgitate it on the internet, it would also decrease the amount that i'm commenting overall, because it would help me prioritize what i actually want to spend time doing.

anyways yeah. i think some of this is a symptom of the greater issue: we're spending so much time on the internet that for a lot of people, it's started to replace irl social interaction. there's good and bad to this. some people genuinely wouldn't be able to find people they connect with if they didn't have the internet, but others grow more isolated from their real life support systems because of it. and it wouldn't be as big a deal imo if people weren't more isolated than ever right now, and if people weren't assholes on the internet. one of the cons of treating internet interactions more similar to irl ones is that it sort of gives you a distorted view of how cruel people are in the world around you- oftentimes you're seeing the worst of people, and engaging them as you would in real life makes it harder to just put the phone down and remember that people have a great propensity towards kindness when they're given the opportunity.