um, a blog, i guess?

this is officially my worst post... god... i've lost everyuthing... fuck... fuck....!

Marina Abramović and Ulay, Rest Energy, 1980

a) young children tend to do a lot of copying the behaviors around them, and

b) most of the people hanging around them are taking care of kids (them)

a lot of little kids REALLY want to take care of slightly littler kids. Today a toddler barely over a year old kissed a baby a couple months younger than him, tried to wipe his nose, and tried to feed him a toy apple. A couple kids older than Him then started trying to put him in a toy shopping cart to take him shopping. There's a 3yo who always tries to steal the babies' milk bottles to feed them. A 4yo tried to give a baby his own bottle once. A toddler too young to know any words yet will shush me if any of the little babies are laying down to sleep.

When in reality, if you go 'What year is this?!?' people will just say '2024. Crazy huh.' and you go 'Wtf where has my youth gone.'

"Hey, what month is it?"

Stumbling into a diner and asking "What town is this" isn't weird, the workers will think you're on a road trip

If you ask them "Where's the nearest Nano Deck?" they'll assume it's a shop they've never heard of and say "Sorry, I don't know where any of those are"

Going into a store and telling a cashier "I need pods for my comm device" will just get you a "Never heard of those, maybe try Radio Shack?"

Buddy ask the average White American how they feel about gay and trans people, since we're taking the census and the piss. Hell, look at the people in charge currently pushing anti trans and anti queer legislation and tell me how they identify. Look at the racial demographics of our last election and tell me who you think is out here going rah rah for the gays and theys.

The audacity to suggest that my entire community is homophobic (I.e., you spend zero time around Black queer and trans folk) but somehow yours is worthy of a closer, more nuanced look... Really some OG white supremacy, actually! "Those savages, they don't understand things like gender and sexuality, they're just angry uncultured brutes!" -mentality shared between 1700s race scientists and 2026 You, apparently.

Some reading homework and commentary to underscore OP's point, courtesy of Mekka Okereke on BlueSky and hachyderm (Mastodon).

IDs in ALT. Links to pictured posts: [1st post] [thread: 2nd & 3rd posts]

Some additional data from Pew Research Center shows that:

By 2017, 51% of Black Americans were supportive of gay marriage, up from 26% in 2007. That's a difference of 25% in 10 years.

The thing is, that increase is practically identical to the change in support among white people for that decade, who rose from 38% to 64%, for a total difference of 26% in 10 years.

We see that regardless of how or why Black Americans showed lower support before, they have been actively participating in constructing our new social values at the same pace as other racial groups (or better).

So, combined with that survey from the NBJC that points to an amenable perspective among Black Americans when the proper narrative on the topic is established (a narrative that isn't told from white perspectives of acceptance, but from a place of Black commonality, solidarity, and empathy for suffering)... there's honestly plenty of reason to hypothesize that Black support will continue to grow even as white support falters in the current political environment. :)

top: SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.