Racing Turtles

If EVERYBODY in your life hates your significant other then they are the problem. If it is one or two people like a family member you have a turbulent relationship with and one friend who’s always been kind of jealous, maybe they just hate your success. But most of the time that is not the case and the people who are closest to you and love you and have had your back for years probably know when your new relationship is toxic and/or doomed.

“My friends don’t talk to me anymore because of my boyfriend.” Who do you talk to now, other than him?

YES. A MILLION TIMES YES.

Inverse also true! If your partner dislikes most of the people you are close to or gets really pouty about you spending some time with them and keeping in touch, that's a huge red flag.

If you don't have people over anymore or don't take your partner places because your partner's behavior is embarrassing or noxious, something is very very wrong.

So this is crystal clear to me now, in hindsight because, y'know.. But also add on to that list 'I don't want to talk about my relationship with my nearest and dearest because I feel like I have to defend it' is also something to look out for.

anyway, you can learn to bend spoons and keys, but i don't think you can learn to be uri geller. The amazing thing about him is what he'd convince people to let him get away with, and they still leave believing the best of him. He manages awkward social situations like telling people his powers just aren't working right now. Or asking for ridiculous concessions during "experiments" without coming off as trying to get away with something. Part of it has to be his looks. Another is surrounding himself by people who want to believe rather than want to expose him, which I guess is a problem of reading intentions and personality.

On the other side I was actually amazed with Johnny Carson. Maybe this just shows I'm naive but I watch Geller on Carson show and Carson looks friendly, like he's on Geller's side. He manages to keep the whole vibe friendly, and when Geller gets uncomfortable, it's impossible to blame Carson, to frame Carson as the aggressor, the one who made Geller uncomfortable. How is that possible? Intellectually I know this was a set-up, a trap. How do you do this without coming off as sadistic? Carson tells the audience that he didn't let Geller have access to the props before the show, framing it as him helping Geller by guaranteeing the genuineness of anything Geller does. And at least to me watching, it doesn't come off as sarcastic at all. I'm looking at a practitioner of a craft I've never pursued. With both of them.

In Oct 2021, James Somerton was called out for stealing Hannibal fanart. He made a poll, and reposted 4 Hannigram arts from various (uncredited) artists, and asked his followers what they thought was the best one to use for his upcoming video thumbnail. The problem? He didn't credit them, and never asked them beforehand posting their work. When a number of Fannibals VERY POLITELY suggested that he not repost artwork, and asked him if he'd contacted the artists, he got extremely defensive and aggressive. He went rage mode, was arguing, and blocking anyone who said it was a breach of etiquette. He threatened to not release the video at all, and apparently was rude to someone IRL?

He was upset about people calling him a thief and scammer, yet... he is one. As we now know. I personally did not see a single death threat. He was blocking people for just saying "You should credit the artists, this isn't cool." He posted THIS as a response.

This was his "apology'. Yes, he uses his sick mother as an excuse. His sick mother that NO ONE even knew about. People were literally just saying "Hey, credit the artists, don't steal ppls art" and he immediately went into anger and defense and excuses.

After this, he deleted this non-apology, as well as the hannibal posts, and pretty much all evidence of what happened. He scrubbed it all really shortly afterwards. So believe me when I say this is a PATTERN with him.

I'm really not surprised his "apology" video went how it did. I just feel salty that he was GENUINELY AWFUL to multiple friends of mine, wiped all the evidence and kept scamming.

Anyways, I just don't want people to fall for his crocodile tears. I understand he probably DOES feel shitty. Because he was caught. He is hoping everyone just feels sorry enough for him that they'll keep paying him, and he can just leave up his videos and patreon.

my problem with the soylent packaging wasnt that anything is untrue, it's just... okay, there's 0g sugar, by including a lot of a sugar alcohol that is juust on that side of being classified as a sugar. It's a complete protein, in the sense you could live on it, but it's all soy protein, which only has like half as much methionine like 70% as much methionine+cysteine as whey protein, so it doesn't "count" for as much as the nominal amount if it's your only source. Yet this is what they put front and center on the label, 0g sugar, 30g complete protein. Do you not have the sense that when someone makes claims that turn out to have a lot of caveats, that seem true in a strong sense at first but in a weak sense after you look into them, that they are trying to get away with something? That they are making the interaction with you adversarial? You should have this sense! It's important to notice.

Yes! And you shouldn't, cuz this is advertising and Advertising is fundamentally manipulative. Never trust advertising!

Postcard from the artist collective project THINK AGAIN

How do they scare people straight?

threaten rejection from family and society, justify hate in the name of god, spread myths about perverts and molesters, incite fear about disease, spread lies about human sexuality, threaten rejection from work and community, propagate lies about sin, publicly humiliate queers, withhold information about sex, erase queers from history, allow homophobia on television, deny queers equal protection under the law, promote family values, promise happiness to those who conform.

it really is sad that algorithmic feeds have broken peoples' brains so badly. people really do come here and go "wait, i have to CHOOSE who i follow to get posts on my dashboard???" because a social media site working the way they were always supposed to work is so alien now. people will assume the site is a ghost town because they don't follow enough active users. there has to be a constant stream of New Content every time you refresh, regardless of whether or not said Content is any good

you can never just get caught up on your feed and put the phone down, because that's not what tiktok and insta and twitter and facebook have conditioned users to expect. putting the phone down means you're not looking at more ads and generating revenue for the site. when you venture off of the following feed twitter's algorithm is very transparently designed to show you bait tweets and other things that will make you angry, because getting people to argue is one of the easiest ways to drive engagement. it's no wonder threads just launched with no following feed whatsoever, just an infinite stream of algorithmic slop. these sites don't want you to curate your own experience because then you might develop a healthier relationship with them. that's not what they want. they want addiction

For those asking, this is a very nice primer on the subject:

and you know I'm always gonna trumpet Jesse Meadows on all things critical adhd studies:

and in fact Jesse is working on a book on this subject, so please subscribe to their substack to follow them as the project develops!

edit: oh shit they just dropped a new piece on the subject!

The myth that we all need "dopamine detoxes" from social media apps (because they're supposedly TOO pleasurable and TOO rewarding to use) only serves the interests of social media companies.

These apps overstimulate, isolate, and depress us. Our problem isnt too much pleasure. Pleasure is not the enemy.

#who is getting pleasure from social media is my question(via@xaveria)

Yeah, and like, compulsive behavior is not a pleasure thing. Nobody who played WoW for hours everyday for a decade did it cuz they were having fun. They did it cuz it felt like progress; cuz each quest was this (intentionally)frustrating but trivial little Task that sent you out to see some new place and maybe discover some resources for your crafting and, no matter how frustrating it might be, it would EVENTUALLY be done, and you could move on to something else(until they made them all into dailies, at which point it became a job-simulator and people started leaving en-masse). The emotional payoff is more like scratching an itch or working a job than anything else; it's "THAT'S Over with!" not happiness.

And you see the same manipulative design in social media. This is why Twitter started throwing all that "For You" stuff into your feed(so you'd never catch up with it and "be done" for the day, so you'd spend more time on the app), this is why Instagram shows you, like, 5 posts from the accounts you're following and then jumps to showing you random accounts, and it's why TikTok's interface is the frustrating autoload horrorshow IT is(I've never had an account on that but I have clicked through to a vid a few times).

None of this is to induce "pleasure"; it's to INTERRUPT your brain's "task complete" function so you spend more time on the site, and far from making you feel good this actually stresses you the fuck out cuz, when a task takes more time than your brain thinks it should that causes Frustration, and the longer the task takes to complete after that point, the more Frustrating it gets.

Thinking about the books it's apparent that a big part of harrow's whole deal is she can't necessarily trust that what her senses are telling her is correct. I mean, the journal describing her time at canaan house, the way she documents all the doors on paper, the way crux treats Nona who he thinks is harrow in ntn, but also the fact that at the beginning of htn she wakes up unable to understand her own experience & immediately takes the word of her past self like it's something she's had to do before.

but I do think that particularly in htn, the depiction of schizophrenia as it relates to like. Institutions of power like academia and religion is doing something interesting in text. because it's the whole experience of not being able to trust that your brain is showing you objective reality but *also* not being able to trust that other people are right about reality or have your best interests at heart either. The people in htn discount a lot of harrow's experiences because they perceive her as mentally unstable, but then it turns out that someone IS trying to kill her the whole time and she DID get into the tomb after all and she IS being haunted.

It speaks to an experience with authority that I think a lot of autistic people also relate to, the experience of knowing that you're not always able to process reality in a way that is helpful--but that to a certain extent, this is the human condition and other people are also misjudging things constantly. it's just that there are certain societal illusions more people/the people in power are buying into. and if you fall outside of those, you can even be right more times than not. but those people will not believe you. Because you're not acting how they want you to

If I were a beautiful woman and two men were in love with me I would manipulate them into doing gay shit with each other

Good for this person. This is exactly what you do. Screw the job.

I had a job that made me work an all nighter, 30 hours straight, over Thanksgiving. I resigned that Monday and it was one of the most satisfying decisions I’ve ever made.

Part 3:

Please pay attention to all the manipulation tactics this boss uses, because they’re pulling out every trick in the book.

This is like a 101 course in how employers use guilt trips to coerce you into putting up with their bullshit. This is precisely why you should never trust those employers who insist that they’re “like a family.” They are not. It’s just a ruse so that your boss can neg you into putting your job ahead of your actual life.

Special banner request for a friend!

Stop self-depreciating in the notes. Spending money on gacha doesn't make you a loser or an idiot. Gacha is a predatory system specifically designed to take advantage of people, it's like blaming yourself for getting robbed. The tone of the banner is harsh because it was requested that way and some folks need an incentive a bit firmer than just "reminder to not spend money on gacha" when they're on the fence on whether or not they should spend. You are not an idiot you are not a loser addiction is not a fault in your character and if you are currently trying to recover from it know that I am proud of you.

Truly is there a more insidious sleight of hand than someone telling you that you need to “respect their experience” or “not invalidate their feelings” and then what they mean is that they feel like [controversial and incendiary claim about reality besides them, including how ppl should respond to it] and if you do not agree this is functionally equivalent to telling them you are the real expert on whether or not they feel sad

If the children im manipulating believe me its literally their fault

Can confirm that these are, indeed, all toxic.

This is such a sad fucking story. A part that jumped out to me in particular:

How pernicious, the idea of usefulness; this ideology that says a life isn't worth living without purpose, that life needs it? This idea our society plants in all of us that if we aren't Important, Known, Famous, Active, then we're Losers. That losing is the worst possible thing a person can do. As if competitions, as if fucking GAMES, were more relevant than our very lives.

I know this article is about how conservatives manipulate and exploit detransitioners but it low-key lays out the ways our hierarchical, competition-obsessed society makes us susceptible to such manipulation so powerfully.

one of the most important things, perhaps the most important thing I have learned in my life is that nice people can fuck each other up in monstrous ways. people can be bone deep kind and loving and self reflective and still lash out under pressure. people can be earnestly neighbourly and charitable and hospitable and generous and still find themselves in situations where they become selfish. people can be well meaning and easygoing and gregarious and hold deep seated opinions that turn them into vicious little bullies under the right conditions. nobody is just one thing, and nobody stays one way. every person is a kaleidoscope and they will surprise you. you will surprise yourself. it's not a warning and it's not a judgement and it's not an excuse, and it's certainly not a reason to stop trying or to stop trusting. it is just a fact.

perhaps the second most important thing I've learned is that there are people out there who know this, and who prey upon it. it might look like a scammer making you think you can get away with something selfish; it might look like a radfem pushing on your pains and traumas to make you afraid of trans people; it might look like a 'life coach' pressuring you to retreat from your friends and family for the sake of personal wellness. stay on a swivel for the people who like you most when you act out.

I know some of y’all aren’t ready to hear it but Ianthe and Kiriona are Like That™ because the latter has never had a friend-friend before in her life! Sure it’s an incredibly toxic friendship and they also hate each other but like… are you telling me you don’t think Ianthe would build a creepy human skin blanket fort that Kiriona begrudgingly entered bc she’d never had a sleepover in her life??? Because that’s just not the world I live in.