me, looking at the current state of the world, crying:I wish none of this had happened…
Gandalf, materialising in my conscience, smiling kindly: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, besides the will of evil.
you know that line about “if a soldier forces you to carry his pack for one mile, carry it for two”?
there was a thing where roman soldiers could demand that civilians carry their gear, but only for a mile. obviously people did not like this. they had shit to be doing. they did not want to be some rando’s pack mule any more than people today would. also, it was kind of scary, because here’s this guy with a weapon saying “you’re my fetchit bitch or else.” and you had to go off with him wherever he wanted, up to one mile.
but jesus was all about the nonviolent resistance. i mean, sure, you could run, but then maybe they see you later and point you out to the cops, it’s a small world. maybe they chase you down and kick you around a bit. hell, maybe they show you their stabs. you gonna bring a sword of your own and make a duel out of it? that’s even worse than just carrying the damn pack.
so what you do is, you just keep carrying it.
at first they don’t notice the mile’s up. but then it starts feeling kind of long. they find themselves waiting for you to call time. but you don’t. you just keep going. they start checking the landmarks. are they lost? are they dreaming? are you stealing their shit? you can’t be, can you, since you’re right there. but you’re still HOLDING it. they’re wondering if they’re ever gonna get their centurion undies back. they could ask, but waitasec, you’re carrying their stuff, which is what they said to do, so that’s good, right?
but why are you still HERE?
are you trying to be friends? are you an assassin? are you a vet just helping a brother out? are you up to something? are you crazy? are you sleepwalking? are THEY sleepwalking? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ONNN NN N
at mile marker 2 you set the pack down and go “have a nice day!” and bail
and next time they think of handing their shit to some stranger, maybe they think again.
Yeh but you see it goes further than that. Roman law stated that any soldier could tell them to carry their pack for a mile, and that poor random person HAD do to it. But here’s the thing
They could only carry it for a mile, and if they carried it further (the assumption being that the soldier kept forcing the person to keep carrying it) the soldier could get in HUUUUUGE trouble.
So this soldier and some civilian (I believe it had to be someone who was not a Roman citizen?? I can’t quite remember) are walking along, and they hit the mile marker. The soldier demands his pack be returned.
“No no, allow me, I’m not tired!” Says the civilian, and keeps on walking.
The soldier keeps asking, maybe rather threatening, but the civilian just keeps kindly insisting to help, it’s not a problem, let me help you, etc. and continues walking.
It then gets to the point that the soldier has to be like “Hey, man c’mon, I could really get in trouble for this…please give it back”
What has just happened was a serious change in power dynamics. It went from the soldier being in control of the situation and treating the civilian as lesser, to the civilian being in control, and the soldier treating the civilian as an equal.
What Jesus was teaching was not to lay down and submit to authority, but how to passively command respect, to be treated as an equal.
I’m
It’s amazing how so many Christians have no clue just how radical Jesus was and how much they wouldn’t actually like him if he was around today.
Jesus is around today! He is the Black Lives Matter movement, he’s the Women’s March, he’s the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, he’s Planned Parenthood, he’s Pride, all of these protests and voices of the marginalized are the same message: treat marginalized people as human beings.
And yes, the people in power still fucking hate him and everything he stood for. It’s just a really sick irony that they claim to be his number one fans while shitting all over everything he fought so hard for.
there’s a reason he said “love your neighbor as yourself” – the point is that other people are the same as you. we’re all in this together.
and to paraphrase pratchett, there’s no sin that doesn’t boil down to treating people as things.
shoutout to depressed and anxious people who often isolate themselves because they don’t have the energy to socialize, they’re scared, don’t believe anyone genuinely wants them around, etc.
Crowd gathers to help push a giant manta ray out to sea after it gets stranded on a beach. Look how big that thing is! And it even seems to flap thanks to them at the end.
When you’re a little depressed and nobody takes it seriously or wants to help you, it’s really tempting to feel like if only you were MORE depressed, THEN people would realize you were in actual pain and actually get off their asses and help you.
As someone who’s been there: Nope, sorry. Our society is woefully inadequate at giving actual help and support to people with any level of depression. Like, when they realize you’re stuck in a really deep pit they might lower you a rope to pull yourself up with, but the rope’s still ten feet short. When you let other people decide how much help you need, they’ll probably always underestimate it.
The sucky part about depression is that the best way to get good help for it is to demand it. It’s to be, or have, a loud, active, pushy advocate for what you need. This disease is so deadly because right when you need to say, “That doesn’t sound like enough,” it pushes you to dully say, “Okay, I guess,” and stop bothering people.
Or they lower you enough rope and then pull you up …
… to that shallower pit you were in before.
And leave you there, except now you’re tireder and more messed up.
Yeah.
i feel like if i were more obviously suffering then i might be able to say i was Actually Depressed and seek help instead of, y know, just being unsociable, lazy, and lacking ambition. as it is, the last and only therapist i managed to drag my ass out to see seemed to be leaning towards "bereavement" and i cant scrape up the motivation to try another
It should be noted that a lot of therapists can’t actually diagnose (that’s a medical prerogative) and definitely can’t prescribe. Depending on where you are, but especially US and Canada, it’s worth going to your GP or even a walk-in, especially if you can bring one of the questionnaires and go “I self-scored X, I’d like a medical opinion.”
The thing is, from the inside, my own experience is that you’ll never be “suffering obviously enough”. Part of what depression itself will actually do is make it almost impossible to see “I am sick” rather than “I am unsociable, lazy and lacking ambition.”
I have had a medical diagnosis for over a decade, I have outright scared multiple health-care and mental health practitioners, my score on the screening tests is still scary, I have massive amounts of other actual evidence and, you know, suffering, including active suicidality … and my hindbrain still tries to go “but what if you’re just lazy and moody? what if you’re just looking for excuses?”
The disease literally does that. The chemical misfires in the brain trigger the “worthlessness” systems and they start attacking you. Guilt, shame, humiliation and the sense of Just Being Bad are literally symptoms of the disease. And it will always move the goalpost.
So you say to yourself “well if I were crying all the time, then I’d know I’m Actually Depressed, and seek help; but since I’m not, I’m just unhappy/grumpy, clearly I’m not Actually Depressed.”
Six months later when all it takes to burst into tears is knocking over a teacup, though, that doesn’t seem compelling. Instead, you think, “well if I wanted to kill myself, then I’d know I was Actually Depressed, and seek help.”
Six months later when every time you walk along the sidewalk you’re fantasizing about how easy it would be to step out in front of a high-speed car, or every time you’re driving you think how easy it would be to just … twist the wheel and ram headlong into the underpass, you think “If I knew I MEANT it, then I’d know I’m Actually Depressed and seek help.”
This can go on forever. I have known people actually in the hospital after surviving a suicide attempt who didn’t want to go see the psychiatrist after because, after all, this wasn’t Actual Depression, it was just them being a loser and doing something really stupid. If you make that kind of goalpost, the depression will move it. Constantly.
There’s different ways to address this. I personally do tend to self-score on the questionnaires on a regular basis. The most common score on the BDI is 0, and the vast majority of people, even in stressful situations, don’t score higher than 10. I know that’s hard to believe; I know a WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE READING THIS who live with mood disorders just went “that’s impossible”. It’s not. It’s true.
That’s HOW BADLY our brains not only fuck us up, but then lie about how they’re fucking us up.
So I self-score. I have gone into my psychiatrist saying “so I don’t FEEL like things are that bad and mostly I just feel like I’m being whiny, but on the other hand I’m napping all the time and my BDI pushed over 30, so …”
Internally, that’s what our brains do.
Externally, the problem is that honestly there isn’t a lot of help that isn’t driven by you – as @star-anise notes in the OP – before someone’s calling 911 on you. And that’s not a lot of fun. Moreover, the help that you do get at that point is focused on getting you out of crisis: out of the point where you’re a danger to yourself and/or others. And once you are you’re …back where you were before.
It’s kind of a bugger.
the teal deer version is: go see your doctor. If you’re miserable, you’re Depressed Enough. Promise.
in the US, your GP can prescribe certain antidepressants. there is no reason not to give it a go. you can’t get high on lexapro or sell zoloft on the black market. if you have symptoms of depression, and there isn’t a VERY OBVIOUS outside cause like divorce, getting fired, death of a family member, etc QUITE RECENTLY, then ask your doctor. and if your first try doesn’t work out, ask for another.
it’s a well-known phenomenon that whether an antidepressant will work is pretty individual, and most people have to try several before finding the right one.
i was lucky in that my only false try was wellbutrin – it helped me quit smoking, but made me even more passive and unmotivated than before, and when i went off it i immediately started smoking again. then my gp gave me lexapro to try, and it worked beautifully.
about two weeks after my first dose, i was able to look back on my life and go, “holy shit. i have been severely, cripplingly, horrifyingly depressed since i was a very small child. i am AWESOME for surviving this long!”
when you’re in the shit, it looks normal. but it’s not. and you can get out.
When I was 14 or so, I asked my grandmother why we didn’t have a “white club” at school. I don’t recall her response, but I do remember feeling particularly smug and vaguely angry that there was a “Latino” club and a “Chinese” club but not a “white” club.
Oh the unfairness! Oh the disparity! Why do we celebrate their heritage but not ours?
And I didn’t think about race again, at least not much, until I dated an African American man in college and a stranger whispered “nigger lover” in my ear one night as he walked by us in a grocery store. Disgusting.
I figured he was a strange exception of horrible racist creature. He was, after all, approximately 97 years old. (Well, 70, but he appeared 97 to my fresh young eyes.)
And then, a few months later, when my boyfriend’s roommate took me aside and asked why I have to “take a good black man who was in college,” when so many black men were incarcerated. I concluded she was crazy. And mean.
She hurt my feelings. Poor Janelle.
Beyond these few moments, and a couple others, I didn’t really think about race. Well, I thought about how people made arguments “about race” when clearly they were not. I mean why do they make race an issue? It’s obviously not.
Oh yeah, I had America all figured out: If ya work hard, you get ahead. And if you don’t get ahead, it’s because you made bad decisions. And if you get arrested it’s because you’re breaking the law, and people who break the law are more likely to be black. Obviously. That’s why they’re always getting arrested. (How’s that for some cyclic logic?)
I knew this to be true because:
America was awful to black people but that was fixed during the Civil Rights movement;
Therefore, we are all on equal footing now and if you don’t succeed it’s because you aren’t trying.
I learned it in school. It was fact. School teaches the truth.
And then, graduate school, and Professor Lee.
Oh, shit.
“Not all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.”
WHAT THE WHAT?
She made us repeat it like a mantra. At least 3 times. I read Tim Wise’s White Like Me (I have mixed feelings about him now, but I digress) and bell hooks and David Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness and learned how our economic systems benefit from racism and we read about thehistory of American immigration laws (have you ever read them?) and colonialism in the Philippines and elsewhere (yes, America has colonies but we call them “territories”), and we read about redlining and white flight (ever wonder how black people ended up in urban centers?), and we read some DuBois and Omi & Winant and literature by people of color and all of the sudden I realized I had been fucking lied to.
I understood America through white eyes. I understood the world through the mainstream, polished glasses of a nice clean history of “we used to be bad now we’re not the end.”
Go team.
I discovered I was white.
“Not all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.”
She wanted us to see that as individuals, not all white people are bigoted. But she also wanted us to see that every white person – whether they are bigoted or not – benefits from the racially structured hierarchies in America. They benefit from racism.
Yes. Even me. Even though I am not “racist.”
How? And she explained whiteness. She explained that “white” is the standard. White is the background against which difference is measured.
In other words, it’s “white” until further notice. It’s “white” until proven otherwise. It’s “white” or it’s the “other,” and it has nothing to do with actual numbers, percentages of “minority” population. It has to do with power. It has to do with the culture of power. What do I mean? If a comedy film features a white family, it’s a comedy. If it features a black family, it’s a blackcomedy.
Think about it.
White is the standard. And I’m white. Therefore, I am standard, and that benefits me.
When I walk into a room, I don’t fear that I’m representing my whole race. I have never acted badly then thought to myself “Oh shit, I sure hope they don’t hate all white people now.”
Or, in other words, even though pretty much every Columbine-type-school-kid-murderer is white, I’ve never developed a distrust for white, socially awkward high school kids.
A few do not represent the whole.
“Privilege is passed on through history.”
Whatever. I grew up POOR!
But then I thought about how, in the late 1940s, my grandmother was the first woman editor of the University of Washington’s newspaper. After she graduated, she and my grandpa bought and ran small newspapers in northern California. The family business they built employed my family members for 40+ years.
In the late 1940s, black people were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus.
How can I deny that my grandparents’ access to education and economic success did not materially affect me in a positive way, directly, through my father? I thought about the loans my parents were able to take with financial backing from my grandparents, and how that benefitted me. My life. My quality of life. The neighborhoods we lived in. The schools we attended. My cultural knowledge.
“Why don’t we have ‘White History Month?’”
Because White History Month is every month other than February, asshole.
Oh, shit indeed.
“The culture of power determines which version of history is told and retold.”
Prior to the Women’s Rights Movement, women were stuck in the home while men went to work and supported them. But then women were liberated and able to get jobs working outside the home.
Right?
WRONG. White, middle to upper class women were “stuck in the home.” Women of color have ALWAYS “worked out of the home.” In fact, the women of color were probably working in the homes of the white women about which our history is written.
So one of the most oft-repeated, trusted narratives about American history erases the history of women of color. It is dead fucking wrong. It isn’t even kind of right. They are erased. Non-existent. Unseen.
They are Chapter 10. They are a chapter that ends with “but then Martin Luther King, Jr., and all is well.”
They are Chapter 10. I am chapters 1 through forever, and every day I cash in on that fact, whether or not I support the systems making that happen for me.
I realized the reason I had never thought about race was because I was of the privileged one, because I didn’t have to, NOT BECAUSE RACIAL DISPARITY DIDN’T EXIST. I didn’t have to think about race because I was having a fundamentally different life experience than people of color. But I could ignore them, because of my privilege.
I was able to hang out in meltin-pot, “post-racial” land was because the structures of that society allowed (and encouraged) me to “not see race” while continually feeding me narratives about “equality,” “multiculturalism,” “color-blindness” and “ghetto urban lifestyles.”
I spent a lot of time in graduate school in the library, writing at a computer. Like, hours. Whole days. When I had to pee, I would ask the person sitting next to me to watch my stuff so I didn’t have to pack it all up and carry it down the hall to the bathroom. I did it a 100 times.
Once I looked over at the person next to me and my first thought was “Oh you can’t ask him. He’ll steal your stuff.
He was a young black man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt.
I was sickened at myself. I was horrified at my response. There was absolutely nothing different about him than the 100 other people I didn’t hesitate to ask, except he was black.
I realized that not only do I benefit historically and presently, every day, from the color of skin, I have also internalized cultural narratives regarding blacks and whites that manifest whether or not I support them.
“Hey, would you mind watching my stuff for a minute?”
But what now?
Does it mean my grandmother’s accomplishments are less badass? Nope. Does it mean I do not “deserve” success? Nope. Does it mean that I am a bad person? Nope.
It means that we live in a highly racialized society rooted in a history of discrimination and that we have a long way to go. It means that I have had an advantage over people of color. Yes, always. Yes, no matter what. Because even if you’re poor and white you can join the culture of power by learning the walk and talk. But you can’t change your skin color.
From the day I was first introduced to this “other story,” I couldn’t get enough. Not because I’m some sort of saint or conspiracy theorist, but because I was curious. I was interested out of a sense of shared humanity. And I was fucking angry that I had been swindled. I wanted the truth. Or, I wanted a fuller picture. I wanted more sides.
That, my friends, is pathetic in its privilege.
I learned in graduate school what every person of color knows through life experience. I learned in graduate school that we weren’t “fixed” during the Civil Rights movement.
But when this information was presented to me I felt a sense of relief, because I think deep down I always knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I don’t understand the white rage I keep reading on the internet.
Just another dead thug.
He got what he deserved.
Run over the protestors. They’re making me late for work.
STOP PLAYING THE “RACE CARD.”
I don’t understand it. What’s at stake, people? What’s at stake in accepting that racism exists? Or even entertaining the thought? Are people really so stupid they can’t fathom that other people might be having a different experience than they are? Is it really that hard to comprehend that something can exist EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T PERSONALLY SEE IT?
(Although you’ll see your privilege if you’re willing to examine your life honestly.)
Why the hell are people so unwilling to listen?
Let’s think about this for a moment. A whole community of people are saying this exists. Data shows racial disparities in economic, education, justice, and healthcare systems. Basically, ALL OVER THE PLACE. Unarmed black boys and men are killed without recourse. Repeatedly. The comment sections of these crimes are riddled with assholes shouting “Good. One less loser.”
But people still claim “Racism doesn’t exist.” But here’s the thing: The only way you can discount the words, lives, efforts and voices of hundreds of thousands of people is THROUGH THE RACISM YOU CLAIM DOESN’T EXIST.
You can only ignore them if they’re aren’t worth hearing.
You can only ignore them if they’re liars. If they’re just looking for a handout.
If they’re not human like you.
You can only ignore them by using the very narratives you claim aren’t happening.
And let’s be honest, we can only ignore them because it’s easy, because we’ll never have to walk a day in their shoes, and it’s just so much more pleasant to turn away, look away, focus back on our lives.
But the sand is getting skimpy and our heads are showing. At this point, if we’re not part of the solution we’re part of the problem.
I’m using my voice to talk to you. I’m using my voice to talk to my kids. But it isn’t enough. We’re looking for places to volunteer. I’m looking for actions I can take.
We’re at a crossroads. This cannot go on. We’re crushed under the weight of hatred, history, silence, violence, bullshit media and the insidious defense of systematic unequal distribution of resources, and at some point, none of us will be able to breathe.
It feels small and pathetic to be one person in this mess. I feel stupid and vulnerable and slightly insane to be writing this here, now. But fuck my feelings. Fuck feeling uncomfortable. Fuck the nonsense that keeps us quiet and content and cozy in our little post-racial dreamland.
They can’t breathe, and I’m breathing just fine.
And that is precisely the problem.
FUCKING SPREAD THIS TRUTH AND GIVE THAT PERSON A MEDAL DAMMIT
Share!!!!
WHY DOESNT THIS HAVE MORE NOTES?????
Wow….can this please make it over to white tumblr
READ IT ALL
AMAZING essay.
Wonderful content, but that quote isn’t by Dubois, it’s actually a tweet by Van Newkirk and I hate being that person, but every time I see it improperly credited I die a little and have to say something.
i think a lot of the rage reactions you see are covering a terror of guilt. people who have no idea how to handle the truth, so they react against it like a cornered, wounded animal. i have sympathy for that, honestly. but just like you can’t let a wounded animal live in your garage and bite you whenever you come near it, we can’t let the Angry White Boy Lashout be treated as okay and normal. we need to respond with patience, empathy, and firmness; like animal control officers, not debating partners.
as for ignorant kids like the OP describes being – white privilege is not being aware of these things, but that’s not the fault of the children. growing up without fear isn’t a crime. ignorance is completely curable. so i’d like to add a reminder that as adults aware of the issues, our job with regard to kids who don’t understand oppression isn’t to be outraged at the ignorant things they say, but to encourage them to find out the truth, and become helpers.
please teach children that having privilege doesn’t mean they’re a walking poison, it means they have leverage to help others.
“Diverse media is treated with a harsher lens than everything else” Probably because we’re assuming if you took the time to include us you’d do the bare minimum which is treat characters like us with respect and how dare we be upset when that doesn’t happen
True, but in a capitalistic-driven world like ours where media’s success is measured in revenue rather than it’s cultural importance, how we engage diverse media is literally a deciding factor of if we’ll get more.
And what type of media is it affects this even further.
TV shows and movies do not have a history of reacting to outcry or criticism by re-engaging and trying to fix it, they have a history of going “oh, right, no one wants [minority] in the focus, got it” and then shelf the project and go back to “white boy wonder #3000″ and his cookie cutter story that’s guaranteed to bring in money.
Videogames have a better reaction to critical commentary about their handling of diversity, hilariously enough. This is why we had things like Gamer Gate. Because the industry is willing to listen, much to the disdain and distaste of some of its fanbase.
I get it, though. White, straight, cis people have this pool of stories and if something is not to their liking, they can complain about it and go find another one they like better, because statistically, someone out there has tackled that specific take in a story. But if you’re in a minority and the movie/game/comic/THING you got is the only one you’ve got you want it to be everything. You feel it has to do everything perfectly, on every aspect. Because you don’t have anything else.
I sincerely believe that our engagement – critical and political – with diverse media needs to radically change, however. Because our own reactions to imperfect representations of ourselves – and let’s be honest, they’re ALL imperfect representations of ourselves, someone might find them suitable and someone might find them offensive, and we’re back with trying to make ONE THING that will satisfy ALL THE THINGS FOR EVERYONE EVER – don’t encourage people to try again and do better next time. This hyper critical culture in our own communities, that also has slowly been bled out of rational or structured long term planning, has resulted on people dogpiling anything that is even remotely “problematic” and decrying it as the Absolute Worst, thus demanding it be boycotted and as far removed from everything as possible. You’re not allowed to discuss the things diverse media did right, on penalty of being told you’re supporting everything they did wrong. You’re not allowed to say “Okay, it’s not FOR EVERYONE or ALL THE THINGS, but you know what, it’s doing THIS ONE THING really well”, because then you’re a traitor and must be destroyed.
I’ve seen people stirring in the Asian and Latino camps that Black Panther is not a big deal, because there aren’t any Asian or Latino people in the front and center of the movie.
I’ve seen people hissing that Wonder Woman should be boycotted because it’s an all-white imperialistic fantasy.
Look, guys. This approach to media betrays a simple misunderstanding of what Diverse Media is. Diverse Media is not the search for The One, you know, The One Good Book/Movie/Series/Game/Comic. Diverse Media is a road towards becoming Media, without qualifiers. It’s not about finding The One and stopping, because nothing will ever represent us that well ever again. It’s the constant road we’re paving, one step at the time, to reach the point where we too will be able to wrinkle our nose at any given piece of media and then shrug and go look for something else, like white, straight, cis people do today, with that same confidence that we WILL find something else, for whatever the reason, because we’re no longer genre pieces.
Be critical of Diverse Media, by all means. But be critical while you support it. Be critical while you scream at the top of your lungs that you want More of it.
And for the love of anything holy, please learn to engage media without that fucking Purity Culture filter bullshit that’s just ruining everything for everyone around you.
You see, while some people are very much excited for a new show about our pompous king of the assholes (and I say this as a term of endearment, having loved Lestat since I was a depressed teenager living in New York, shuffling through my mom’s fiction section) we need to pause and remember this:
Anne Rice does not support fan fiction or anything that is not glowing praise.
Read it again, slowly.
Anne Rice does not support fan fiction or anything that is not glowing praise.
This is difficult for younger fans to understand, but let’s take a walk down memory lane.
She has threatened to sue writers in the past. She is one of the most prolific writers of our generation, and she does not support people using her characters for their own work.
In fact, in 2000 she went on a binge-attack against her fans. She threatened legal action against fans who wrote or drew her characters, but especially those who wrote with them. She sent them weeks of harassing letters and doxxed them on the internet.
Let me repeat that.
She doxxed people who wrote fan fiction.
She harassed them online and threatened to contact employers.
She used her fans to outright attack other fans.
This isn’t even something she can just shake off now, with the comment of “It was so long ago” because she did this to a writer who wrote commentary on her story in 2013.
In 2013.
While it was not that she wrote fan fiction, she still shows that she has no respect for people who are in fandom.
Remember those disclaimers used in fan fics, at the beginning? “I do not own …. ”? Yeah, a lot of that has to do with the fact that Anne Rice and others like her would attack fandoms and threaten them, and was in hopes that they would just leave us alone. She didn’t.
In short: Do not trust Anne Rice. I love her writing, I have read every book she has even written, but I do not trust her.
You shouldn’t, either.
Anne Rice was and still is a bully. Don’t support her work.
She’s been like this since Geocities was the big place to have spec (that’s what fics used to be called, specs, as in speculative fiction) pages back in the mid 90s.
She use to threaten to sue anyone she found posting specs anywhere, and there was a whole underground network of people to share specs and fan art (which she also would threaten to sue over).
Anne Rice has always been kind of a twat about fan works based on her mediocre writing.
She’s harassed people quite recently. @jennytrout Wanna gossip?
What was that? “Raise your hand if you were ever personally victimized by Anne Rice?”
DISCLAIMER: this is not about fanfic, but it is about what she can do to you.
So, I totally idolized Anne Rice. Fully and adoringly so. One day, she shared one of my HuffPo articles with her “people of the page” and it was probably the greatest day of my entire career.
But she has this thing where she’s OBSESSED with bad reviews. At one point, she complained about a bad review she got for Interview from the New York Times or some such thing like forty years ago. She used it as an example of how reviews can hurt authors. I was like, seriously, lady, you have how many millions of copies of your books sold? How many movies have been made from them? *People try to find your house to take pictures of themselves in front of it.* But okay, everybody has their quirks. I just kind of rolled my eyes over it.
Not long after that, she made a post about this website that was made by a writer who apparently wasn’t getting the sales numbers or accolades they so richly deserved. The problem wasn’t like, the nature of the business or anything, nay, my friends, nay, but the fact that people–BULLIES!–left mean reviews on Amazon. So these people whom Rice so admired would make posts where they would reveal Amazon/GoodReads reviewers names and home addresses and such. One post even mentioned something like, “Between this time and that time every weekday, they go for a walk by the sea wall.” Scary, scary shit. And Rice LOVED these people.
I don’t know why I took it upon myself to argue with her. I really don’t. Maybe because I respected her so much and her support of the site was so disappointing? This was the result.
So, I’m a bully. Big whoop, right? And my feelings were a little hurt, but hey, never meet (or follow on social media) your idols, right? Lesson learned, and it wasn’t like this could destroy my fond memories of how much I loved her books, right?
So, fast forward, I think it was the next year, or at least a few months later, when I wrote a post about a dumb $0.99 Kindle book about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in a BDSM relationship. A pathetic little troll with too much hair gel and not enough parenting ran to his goddess Anne Rice to tell her how mean, mean, mean I was being. She posted a link to a blog post made about me on the reviews-are-bullies site and said something to the effect of someone needing to teach me a lesson or someone needed to show me how it feels or something like that. To THREE. MILLION. PEOPLE.
As a fan of Anne Rice, I am confident in stating that many of her fans are not okay people. And they heeded the command of their “queen.” Yes, they referred to her as such, flooding me with emails, tweets, FB messages, anywhere they could reach me. They posted my address, screenshots of google earth images of my house, they threatened to kill me, they made graphic threats against my children, one charming gentleman on parole from his assault sentence offered to make a necklace of my teeth to present to “my queen.”
When confronted about the fact that she had unleashed all of this on me, her response was basically: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
She insisted she hadn’t done anything wrong, she couldn’t control what people were doing, and oh yes, it’s terrible that people are saying this, but she NEVER. ASKED. THEM. TO. STOP. In fact, she joined her “people of the page” in mocking my appearance, mourning the horrible lives my children must have, and continuing to insist that my “prison tats” indicated that I was a member of a gang (I have “TIME LADY” tattooed across my knuckles in the 11th Doctor era Doctor Who font). Egging them on with this coy, “Well, we shouldn’t say things like that, we’re better than that, BUT” bullshit.
This all went on for weeks. Some of these people still occasionally pop up to threaten/antagonize. So, yeah. Steer clear. She holds a grudge, she can and will mobilize her fanbase against you, if she dislikes you she will ruin you, and she doesn’t care if her readers literally kill you.
“Organic” isn’t better for you or for the environment. It actually means nothing of any significance at best and is sometimes even the more wasteful, more hazardous option.
A shitload of “natural” food including a lot of imported produce is grown and harvested through slave labor in inhumane conditions.
Pizza, fried chicken, french fries, fast food, candy bars and chips ARE nutritious. They are loaded with good things. Just because they have an abundance of excess fats and might not be healthy as a staple doesn’t mean they are “nutritionless” or that their calories are “empty.” Those are hokey buzzwords pushed by the people in charge of how much you pay for the alternatives.
Eating healthier costs more. Much more. Looking down on people for their reliance on cheaper food is extremely classist and expecting everyone to be able to live off fresh veggies and cage-free meats is insultingly unrealistic in the modern world.
“Processed” literally only means the food went through some kind of automated process. This can be literally the exact same thing a human being would have done to the food for it to be labeled “unprocessed.” Being processed does not make something less healthy.
Chemicals with long, scary names are part of nature. An apple is full of compounds you probably can’t pronounce. A shorter ingredients label only means they didn’t bother listing all 300 things the product is actually made of and HAS to be made of.
Preservatives, artificial flavors and other additives are not the devil. Most are harmless and in general they are part of the reason you haven’t already starved to death or died of a food borne illness.
MSG is not bad for you at all.
The fact that something might be made of “scrap” meats like pig snouts or chicken necks only means one thing: that we didn’t waste perfectly normal, edible meat.
I DON’T KNOW HOW I FORGOT THIS IN MY FIRST VERSION OF THIS POST BUT GMO’S ARE NOT DANGEROUS TO EAT. GMO’S ARE SAVING LIVES. YOU’VE ALREADY EATEN GMO’S BEFORE YOU EVEN KNEW THE TERM. IT’S FINE. EAT THEM.
It pisses me off when big time chefs go “guys do you not know what goes into canned meatballs? They’re disgusting!” yeah parts of the animal they don’t use for anything else and also they’re tasty fuck you
I could find no material that references pig snouts and chicken necks as any different from meat from the more commonly eaten parts of those animals. Most people use them in soups to make a stronger broth, since they do contain a lot of flavor despite not a lot of tangible meat.
Hey thanks! I didn’t add sources to the original post just because I thought it was minor personal venting and not something that would get tens of thousands of notes.
just moving along like everyone else 