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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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When we say cultural mosaic...

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What horsie song is your favorite?
Old Town Road (Lil Nas X)
Dark Horse (Katy Perry)
Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones)
Wild Horses (Natasha Bedingfield)
What even is a 'horsie song'? (Song that mentions a horse in any way at all)
Other
i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
OP this is EXCELLENT
Now THATâS a self care resource! If youâve gotten distracted by capitalismâs appropriation of âself-careâ and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.
I think people get mixed up a lot about what is fun and what is rewarding. These are two very different kinds of pleasure. You need to be able to tell them apart because if you don't have a balanced diet of both then it will fuck you up, and I mean that in a "known cause of persistent clinical depression" kind of way.
When people say they enjoy things, they usually mean one of two things. The first is that these things are fun; that is, they satisfy immediate emotional needs or desires for pleasure. Candy Crush is fun, for people who are into that sort of thing; waterslides are fun, watching TV is fun. Fun, in the way I'm defining it for this post, is the party food of pleasure; immediately and usually temporarily satisfying, and after that, mostly satisfying only as a happy memory (although some of these activities, like watching a TV show, can generate further opportunities for pleasure down the line like daydreaming, discussion, and making fanart). Like party food, this kind of fun is a good thing to have, and someone who doesn't get enough of it is at high risk of stress-related health concerns. Also burnout. A lack of fun is a major contributor to burnout.
The second kind of pleasure that most people talk about is rewarding activity. The lack of rewarding activity in one's life is a major contributor to depression. It creates a sense of purposelessness and worthlessness and generates a low attention span, sapping the ability to feel long-term motivation or pleasure. People usually try to pick themselves up with the first kind of fun, which is a band-aid but not a very sticky one; the lack of rewarding activity grows and festers over time. Rewarding pleasure involves working on something long-term that feels worthwhile. There are usually also spots of fun (or you wouldn't have gotten into the activity enough for it to become rewarding), but there also tends to be long slogs that aren't that fun. Nevertheless, when people report on doing said activity, they will speak about it with great enjoyment and remember it being enjoyable and claim they like it. (I like being a writer. Writing can sometimes be boring as shit.) (Look into CsĂkszentmihĂĄlyi's work on experience sampling and flow states for more info on this, it is FASCINATING.)
In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal sums up what she thinks are the most important contributing factors to rewarding activity. These are not the only factors, but I agree that they're a good baseline of the critical ones. I'm going to paraphrase them using different language. The four big contributors are:
Satisfying work. This is the vaguest one because different people find different things satisfying. Basically, the task itself should feel productive, and you should not feel bad about doing it to the point where it causes you distress. Satisfying work involves clear goals with actionable steps and a clear product, preferably something that you can see, touch or use. A clean house, a new high score, a freshly built table, a happy child.
Mastery. Rewarding pleasure is often something that you can get better at. There are things to learn, practice, improve. Improving your ability to solve tricky code problems, getting better at painting landscapes, figuring out fun new strategies in Magic: The Gathering, being able to build computers better or faster or cheaper. Mastery does not require becoming the best at something (although some people enjoy that specifically also), merely seeing progress in yourself and being able to take pride int he fact that you are better than you were.
Social connection. Rewarding pleasure often involves social or community connection. A long-term social group that discusses fan theories of their favourite show. Your weekly tabletop rpg. Teaching a room full of kids who to make leather belts. Working at a small bookshop and making small talk with all the tourists. Some people find social activity to be fun in the 'immediate pleasure' kind of way, some don't, but it is a critical factor in mental health and in the long-term... rewardingness (?)... of a hobby. Animals can also partially fill this niche, but be warned, they are far, far less effective than people. Your cat might be able to stop you from committing suicide today. You cat alone will not make your life satisfying.
Contribution. Humans are community animals and have a need to be something larger than ourselves or, more specifically to be of service to something larger than ourselves. Looking after kids, cooking big meals for others, creating art or physical products for others. Teaching the next generation how to read. Serving your God. Saving a species of small fish from extinction. Volunteering at your local charity shop or soup kitchen. Being a member of a crowd to reach the Guinness World Record for "most people fit into a storage crate". Making useful tutorial videos, being an entertainer, joining your local queer support group or political organisation. Humans fucking love to be part of something bigger than their own brain and they fucking love to help people.
The world is full of rewarding activities, and not all of them rate high in all four categories. The woman working in the charity shop warehouse and chatting with her coworkers isn't necessarily all that interested in mastery of her job (although I've worked in these places and some people do take pride in learning to be as efficient as possible), the musical hermit training to become the best violinist in the world might not be all that interested in social connection or how the audience actually feels about him. You might have noticed that I've listed hobbies, jobs, and non-employed but important life work (volunteering and childrearing) as possible rewarding activities; you can find rewarding activities everywhere. (In fact the lack of rewarding pleasure in our work lives is a very serious problem that companies keep trying to condescendingly band-aid over. The late David Graeber had a lot to say about this and I highly recommend his work, particularly Bullshit Jobs, which is a book specifically discussing the lack of above points 1 and 4 (satisfying work and sense of contribution) in so many modern workplaces and its distressing psychological ramifications). Rewarding activities are not 'fun' all the time; in fact, CsĂkszentmihĂĄlyi's work found that many of them are quite unfun most of the time. They do, however, create long term pleasure, and are emotionally and psychologically critical.
One final point: research shows that computer stuff counts less. This isn't a 'hurr durr edison was a witch get off your damn computers and get a real job' point; plenty of people do most of their rewarding activity on computers, because the supply cost is so low (most of us already own some kind of computer) and it's so much easier to find an existing community. But it does, psychologically speaking, count less; your brain isn't very good at seeing computers stuff as as 'real', on a primitive sensory level, as things you can touch with your hands or people that are right in front of you. Your massive community of fellow fans on the internet are less effective at filling your social needs than the crochet club at your local library, even if you like the people on the internet much more. It doesn't have to be everything, but ideally you should have at least one physical meatspace social club and at least one physical meatspace hobby, craft, or volunteer job. (They can be the same thing. You can volunteer at a soup kitchen for both.) They don't have to be the most important thing -- I care way more about my writing (electronic) than my crochet (meatspace) and I do the writing a lot more -- but the meatspace thing should exist, if you can manage it.
#wow this did not go where i expected it to go#i thought this was going to be about like. when games make you feel like you've accomplished something so you keep playing#without realising you're not actually having any fun
You're talking about extrinsic vs intrinsic reward systems, which are a different but equally interesting thing! Games (and jobs and schools and other things) will sometimes try to instil motivation by over-relying on extrinsic reward mechanisms without bothering to make the activity itself fun, rewarding or meaningful. This does work in the short term but it does not help your mental health like properly rewarding activities do, and people who don't become "addicted" tend to bounce off them unless there's something else to hold onto them (such as a sunk cost, or a social circle of other gamers they really like, or a lack of alternate activities, or something).
subtle intimacy is so soft. knowing someoneâs routine and slowly becoming a part of it. memorising favourite teas and soups and drink orders. good morning and good night texts and messy paragraphs of love written half asleep. nicknames only you know. just small things that say âlook how dear you are to me.â

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not gay as in happy, but queer as in i love you
i donât mean this as a joke. i mean this as an expression of what queer means to me. this is the core of it: love, but radically. love, but in defiance. and i donât mean âlove is loveâ either; i mean love like militant solidarity between queer women and queer men and all other iterations and permutations of both and neither and something else. i mean love like trans self love. like decolonizing gender. i mean love like found families, like vows beyond and intentionally distinct from marriage. i mean love is a riot. i mean a love that transcends hunger. i mean love like disruption, like breaking concrete foundations like frost and thaw because to live otherwise is unthinkable or unlivable or simply and plainly unwanted
i mean queer like a shot-glass or a sledgehammer. something that shatters borders, that tears down walls and does not, cannot build them. i mean genderqueer queerplatonic weâre here weâre queer qpoc queer theory queer liberation queer Queer QUEER
i love this so much, this is fucking everything
Not to sound like a 90s shallow prep, but how you dress can affect your self esteem, and putting energy into wearing things you actively like and projecting an ideal of yourself through fashion instead of seeing clothes as things you have to put on out of obligation helps.
It also can give you a sense of control over your appearance that you otherwise wouldnât have lmao
I bought a cape because of this
this post is written in a humorous tone but this is the realest shit.
two years ago i wore baggy sweatpants and flip flops every day because i was depressed but then decided eh to hell with it and bought some black edgy emo clothes bc thats how i always wanted to dress but never got a chance to and it was only then that i realized that the sweatpants flip flops look was just keeping me in my depression funk. i didnt like the way i looked and i didnt identify with the clothes i was wearing and it only made me feel worse.
i then went through my entire wardrobe and got rid of everything that made me feel that way.
now i have multiple outfit possibilities requiring different levels of effort but on days where putting on clothes just seems like a project i just have to put on black jeans and a band t-shirt and i can still feel good about the way i look which is a really good way to start off my day.
i can not recommend this approach to clothing enough.
Can I just say this is the healthiest mindset related post I have seen on this sight and I want every single person on here to read this
"you looking for a friend?" she leans in, "or perhaps... more?"
your eyes widen; two friends?!
For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public percepti
"For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolismâa body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your bodyâs energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.
The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call âthe lean unhealthy.â A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people."
A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there's still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the "clean eating" variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.
Not only do we know that weight loss isn't sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about "health" then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.
And this article doesn't even touch on "the obesity paradox"(the fact that fat people survive heart attacks and injuries BETTER THAN thin people) or the fact that dieting, especially "yo-yo dieting," is a better predictor for heart disease than weight, and that many of the fat people who have cardiovascular diseases have a long history of dieting that (understandably) didn't work.
encouraged to rb but fatphobes will just be blocked.
The Shape of Water (2017) dir. Guillermo del Toro
The literally silent women protagonist leaves a super bad taste in my mouth.
Sheâs deaf and speaks with sign language, sheâs not a silent woman. Like, can we agree that deaf representation in media is important? Can we agree that ASL representation in media is important? This is an adult-oriented romance/sci-fi movie where the female lead is a deaf woman. How can you act like this isnât significant? The last gif has a deaf woman in the 60s standing up to an aggressive man and telling him to go fuck himself.Â
This movie is doing something that has probably never been done before. But hey, she canât talk ânormallyâ like a hearing woman and thatâs bad, so go off I guess.
From the trailer it looks like sheâs mute, not deaf. So Iâm gonna add that on an artistic level, the mute protagonist is also probably a direct homage to the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid.
I saw a quote somewhere from Octavia Spencer, saying that she thinks one of the best things about this movie is that, since the two romantic leads are mute, much of the dialogue in the movie is spoken by a black woman and a closeted gay man, two people whose voices would have been silenced in real life by 1960s society.
ok what the fuck how did i not know about this

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Thematically speaking, the most important thing Terry Pratchett taught me was the concept of militant decency. The idea that you can look at the world and its flaws and its injustices and its cruelties and get deeply, intensely angry, and that you can turn that into energy for doing the right thing and making the world a better place. He taught me that the anger itself is not the part I should be fighting. Nobody in my life ever said that before.
So this is a totally useless rant, but as a skinny girl, Iâm getting extra, extra tired of fat-shaming.
I work for a corsetier at a Renaissance Faire. We sell corsets. Not flimsy bullshit costume corsets; like real, durable, waist-training corsets. Today a woman came in with her boyfriend, so I helped her pick out a corset and try it on. While her boyfriendâwho was decidedly enthused about the whole corset thingâsat watching me lace her in, he told me, grinning, âOf all the good jobs at the Renaissance Faire, I think you have the best.â
I shrugged in agreement. âI touch butts and reach down cleavage all day; I meanâŚâ Because we like to be a bit rakish at the Faire, and, yâknow, itâs true. Tying people into corsets pretty much invariably requires getting handsy.
The couple laughed at that, and the boyfriend said, âThatâs the job I would want!â But then he chuckled again and said, offhand, âOr maybe not; while we were looking at the racks, there were some pretty big sizes on there!â
Our sizes are all done in inches, and the biggest we make is a 46. And youâd better believe our large sizes sell. For a second I wasnât sure what to say to the guyâs comment, but I answered him casually. âWe get a lot of beautiful big ladies in here.â Because we do. âWe make corsets for real women, not Barbie dolls,â I added. Wasnât trying to be smart, just kind of tossed it out there because thatâs the line we like to use when people ask about larger sizes, and because, again, we do.
The boyfriend went quiet at that; I didnât think anything of it, I just kept on lacing. A moment later, he said, a little awkwardly (but sincerely enough), âDidnât mean to be offensive.â
I quickly smiled and brushed it off, said he wasnât, said I was just saying. (Donât want to make the customers uncomfortable, you know?) And that was the end of it. His comment had rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasnât a big deal. Now, I wear a 20-inch corset. Iâm a few cup sizes short of being one of the Barbie dolls. Like his girlfriend, Iâm one of the âhot chicksâ; he doesnât have to worry about offending me by implying that I wouldnât be fun to poke and pull at.
Honestly though, of all the people I fit sexy technically-undergarments to in a day, fat girls are maybe my favorite people to lace up. Because they are just so damn happy that we have stuff that fits them. They are so damn happy that the corsets we make in their sizes are all the same pretty, shiny colors and cool flower/dragon/skull/etc. prints that the smaller corsets are, not ugly beige and boring âgrannyâ colors. They are so goddamn happy that at least one (of several on the grounds) corset shop carries things that they can wear, that they actually want to wear, and that they look fucking awesome in. This is only my second season working, and weâve fit 60+ inch waists and double-K busts. The only people weâve ever had to tell sorry, we donât have anything that fits them, are twelve-year-old kids.
Itâs half-wonderful, half-heartbreaking how excited those women get. Women who say with sad smiles, when we ask if they want to get fitted, âOh, no, you donât have anything that fits me,â and then are stunned when weâre 300% confident that yes we do, and we have options. Women who canât stop smiling and looking at themselves in the mirror after weâve got them laced in.
I had a lady last week whose waist I measured (cinching the tape tight, as per procedure) at 41 inchesâhonestly not all that big. So she picked out a 41-inch corset to try on. I could tell halfway through getting her laced that it was going to be a bit big for her, so I mentioned it and said she might do better to try a smaller size. She started crying on the spot. She was so overwhelmed; she couldnât believe someone had just told her that a 41 was too big. She told me about how hard clothes shopping was for her, how her mother would tell her she needed an XXXL instead of an XXL, how she had recently lost weight but still couldnât wear certain colors because they didnât fit or she wasnât confident enough.
She did end up getting her corset, and after I checked her out she asked if she could give me a hug, so we ended up standing there hugging each other for a minute. While we did, I told her, âDo not ever let anyone tell you any bullshit. You are gorgeous.â She said, âI have a new boyfriend and he keeps telling me that.â I told her he was right, and to just keep telling herself sheâs gorgeous; it was okay if she didnât always believe it, but to keep telling herself anyway. (Thatâs how I talked myself through shit when I had bad anxiety.)
We all know fat-shaming is bad. The stupidity, fatphobia, and misogyny of it has pissed me off since I first became aware of it. But working with clothing, especially as figure-hugging and precise as corsets, has given me a new perspective on itâhow much it affects people and just how shitty it is. Like, what does it say that I had a grown, only average-big woman crying into my shoulder because she was so overjoyed not to be the uppermost extremity of what a manufacturer can clothe?
My job rocks and itâs really rewarding, but sometimes it highlights some of the ugliest shit about society. Iâm so glad I work at a shop thatâs not bullshit about body types and operates with more people in mind than just scrawny white chicks like me. The fat women I work with are a ton of fun to lace up, and theyâre so much more than their sizeâtheyâre cool, theyâre smart, theyâre funny, theyâre sweet, theyâre great to talk to, and yes, theyâre hot. Iâm so damn done with them getting short-changed and shamed by petty fucks who refuse to make them nice clothes, who refuse to even try to work for them, who refuse to consider them pretty. This whole rant was useless and wonât get read, but I had to vent because itâs been driving me nuts.
So actually, screw you, random dude. Fat girls are the highlight of my job.
This made my eyes water
i cannot stress enough that because of how social media and communications platforms work, if you put something out into the world people will 1) see it 2) react to it and maybe even 3) reply publicly. unless it is a private journal or such, you should accept that if you put something out there that is inherently divisive, you will receive comments that may make you unhappy.
if you blaze a post (force randos to see it) intended for an inherently niche audience (fanfiction consumers), that's one thing. appending "minors dni" to what should be a perfectly innocuous post while also fucking blazing it (again, forcing randos to see it, including minors), will get you made fun of. doubly so if this leads people to look at your fanfics, and quadruply so if said fanfics are omegaverse stories about real people
posts that replicate the feeling of seeing a massive plume of black smoke coming from somewhere on the far horizon
no shit.
This weekend I was told a story which, although Iâm kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrityâs body, including their outfits when theyâre out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individualâs widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. Thatâs how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps canât ever find a pair that doesnât gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while Iâm wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things donât fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didnât think that having everything tailored was something that people did.Â
Itâs so obvious, I canât believe I didnât know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your âproblem areasâ and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where Iâve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times Iâve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way itâs supposed to. No one told me that it wasnât supposed to. I guess I just didnât know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didnât fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are âwrong,â who canât find a good pair of work trousers, who canât fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesnât mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe weâre not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldnât find a cute pair of jeans, and didnât know why.

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Altea De Luca - Jellyfish, 2020
Hey so I still see people utterly baffled by how religious fundies (still a majority in America and moreso its senate) react on certain issues so uhhh is it actually not common knowledge what the antichrist is all about? You guys know his defining characteristic is ending war, right? That he's foretold to unite the world under his leadership by preaching global peace and solving basically every single problem in the world? So you know when you try to talk to these people about equality and togetherness they literally believe that's what makes you an agent of the devil right???
im sorry what. so. ok im assuming they think that this is all like. to gain trust and then take over or something? because.
Yes, he's called the "antichrist" because he's an imposter Jesus and the majority of the world will love him when he ends all class divides and erases all borders, creating one world government with him at the top. That's the "new world order" they're terrified of. But they think he'll oppress true Christian believers who see through his ruse, which is why they're constantly looking for signs that they're being discriminated against and panic when they lose any control over government. This is why they fear diversity, immigration, socialized anything. The less religious right are pretty clearly still running on the same logic; they might drop some of the spiritual lore but this is where they get the idea that all progressivism leads to the "real" fascism. Some believe the antichrist isn't a literal person either but just that entire set of beliefs, so everyone protesting against war and trying to feed the hungry is a *collective* antichrist.
So from the notes it turns out people are MUCH less familiar with all this than I suspected and thatâs honestly kind of alarming, guys, you should really really pay attention to things that affect so much of this country. No these are absolutely not obscure or fringe beliefs, these are MAINSTREAM with megachurches, Trump voters, the GOP and a vast proportion of the wealthy. Alex Jones and multiple Fox News hosts openly believe word for word what I described here. And yeah as several people pointed out it isnât even explicitly in the bible, but something some radicals pieced together in maybe only the last century. My uncles all believe it to the letter and they all believe itâs what the Bible is âsupposedâ to be communicating. A lot of people are also confused as to why they would believe the peace and unity are villainous things and what the difference even is then between the âantichristâ and actual Jesus, which brings me to another thing I realize some folks CRITICALLY overlook about American Christianity, which is that they do not believe in good or bad deeds. They believe the same deed can be right or wrong strictly according to whether or not itâs performed by a believer with Godâs stamp of approval. Like, they KNOW the Satanic Church and Witch Covens do community service or donate to cancer research and they are not confused, surprised, bitter or embarrassed by that at all. Itâs exactly what they expect. They believe the forces of Satan do primarily âgoodâ things so people will think heâs just as good or better than God. If a pastor heals a sick child with a prayer then thatâs good. If a âwitchâ heals the same sick child with âmagicâ then thatâs a false miracle from the devil and the child was better off dying because now everyone involved is a sinner who deserves hell. Theyâre taught to view you as a ridiculous fool if you donât grasp this difference. After all, they think our entire existence on this Earth is an insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things. The suffering in the world isnât a bug to them, but a feature that God set up to test everyoneâs worthiness, test their faith and teach them lessons, so they genuinely do believe that there MUST always be suffering and death and that there are many circumstances in which saving lives is genuinely more âwrongâ than killing them.
And speaking as a Christian here itâs why itâs so frustrating to deal with. They consequently donât care about our OWN scripture that also contains parables and lessons about âYou can claim to be pious as much as you want, but youâre fucking people over. Look at that dude over there - not part of our faith, but actually helping people. You care more about the APPEARANCE of piety than doing the right thing.â These are the REAL problems we have within Christianity - not âwars on Christmasâ or culture war nonsense or âMARXISM DESTROYING OUR âMURICAN VALUES AND JESUS WAS âMURICAN.â Itâs people who believe and consequently teach that being a good person, that helping people, being charitable, that all of those things are wrong just because the magic sky man isnât the target of their worship. You want to know the real greatest trick of Satan? Making people believe that doing good things is wrong.
This is the kind of church I grew to in and it's a weird fucking experience. OP isn't lying that they freak out over everything but, in my church at least, there was also this sense of celebration? The world kept getting worse and their reaction was "This is fantastic because it means the antichrist will come which means we'll be raptured before anything bad goes down."
There's this constant dissonance between being afraid of persecution and the loss of power on the one hand, and a earnest glee that soon god will take them away from the world, leaving all the sinners to die. Seriously, people would talk about the four horsemen and the angels who rise up ouy of the rivers in Revelation with this bright eye excitement. They were estatic over billions of people dying, like everything was a movie and that's when things would finally start getting good again.
But like OP said, it's really important to understand that there is no compromise with these people. They literally believe that the only true solution to the world's problem is for them to be the only ones in it. You can't gain their compassion because, if you're a nonbeliever, your death and eternal punishment is the world working as it should.
So, yeah. Learn more about the death cult with a strangle hold on our politics. It's sort of important
So what does a good believer do? Hereâs some tips from a cult survivor:
1) Recognize faith is not a virtue, no, not even when its put toward your god of choice. Having faith isnât like having empathy, it does not improve you on the experiences of people around you. The amount of faith someone has/professes is no reflection on their goodness.
2) Enforce your religionâs own rules about false prophets among your own congregation. Iâll let you pick which law (manâs or godâs) you apply.
3) If you see abuse, report it to the actual law and media. If that means you get ostracized, excommunicated, or otherwise marginalized, ask yourself if you want to be accepted and loved by people who allow such things to happen. Do not trust your congregation to handle it internally. Chances are they already know.
3) Advocate for the elimination of unfair privileges for religious institutions, such as the revocation of tax exempt status, the use of religion in court-mandated alcoholism sentences, and the use of religious conversion as a merit for prison release.Â
4) Speak out against people using governmental power to enforce religious behavior, especially when its your own religion.Â
5) When others of your faith claim to be oppressed, call them liars to their faces. Be mean about it if you have to. Speak out against moral panics.Â
6) If your congregation has any punishment for apostasy, of any kind, of any severity, find a new congregation.
7) Recognize that your virtues are yours. You and the fundie are both picking and choosing, you picked the kind parts, you choose the good parts, Take the credit. Do not engage in âno true Scotsmanâ behavior.
8) Do not support missionary work, charity-for-conversion, or any attempt to bring people âinto the flockâ when theyâre at their lowest point. Speak out against these actions and other predatory behavior.
9) Re-read your holy book, only this time imagine that all the non-in-group characters are actual people with lives, dreams and hopes, and donât make any excuses for the plain reading of the text. Think about what that means about the founders of your faith, and for the character of the deity in question. Recognize the fundies are on-board with what you just read. Consider if you should be.
10) If theyâre divine when decrying others and only human and deserving of forgiveness when they get caught doing wrong, never listen to them again. If you catch them lying to you, never listen to them again.Â
If youâre tutting and generally being silent, then youâre enabling.Â