Microblog Memes

I've definitely done this, but I hate the way this is phrased. This makes it sound like the left are a big club with rules: "Thou shalt first acknowledge how shit the world is, or else." What BS. It disallows for the possibility that this is actually how people are feeling. They must be doing it because of social pressure. I don't think anyone on either side of the political divide would admonish you if you just posted about your engagement, but (for myself at least) it's legitimately how I feel about things right now. 100%, A-grade, home grown despair, baby! I ackowledge it because it's really how I feel, not because my friends would chastise me if I didn't.

I kind of get it, though. Like, things are bad and might be affecting the people who you're interacting with even more, and when things are generally shit and someone is just obliviously dancing around going "Look at this neat thing that happened today!", it's hard to tolerate. By saying "I know it's bad right now, but this small thing happened and I wanted to share it", it sets the proper tone to avoid that. Maybe that's just me, though.

I propose a replacement trend:

• "FUCK ICE we had a baby!"
• "BURN DOWN THE PATRIARCHY and come to my wedding!"
• "BE GAY DO CRIME it's my Birthday!!"
• "ORCAS ATTACK YACHTS let's have a goddamned LAN party!"
• "PUNCH A NAZI I got my PhD!"

Jake makes two mistakes: doesn’t realize people actually feel this way and thinks of people on the left as some organized group who stage this.

Someone isn't afraid of losing their rights

In the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event, this response is completely warranted. After 9/11, it was difficult in America to celebrate anything immediately after. You had to address it. "I know we are all in pain, but my son was born today and I'm happy."

The reelection was traumatic for those that remember the insanity of the 1st term. And it ended in a worldwide trauma that we are all still trying to wrap our minds around.

After a while, though, it can be seen as performative. But let's give people time to grieve if they need it.

i wonder if Jake Eaton is a young white cis male with a comfortable safety net 🤔

I get the impression that when he says "find your own way out," he actually means "stop caring."

If you keep basing your enjoyment of life of what other people say, it doesn't matter what they say, you'll be miserable.

Politics are politics, your feelings are your feelings, keep those apart for your own sanity.

Maybe we should actually try to fix societies problems so that kind of thing no longer feels necessary

I completely agree, there's a definite layer of leading with a statement that you're on the right side of whatever the dominant demographic feels strongly about. It seems like if you aren't personally suffering enough it means you're part of the problem. Call it non-poverty guilt?

How can this person sit there and say this and not acknowledge being kidnapped off the street by a terrorist group for nothing else other than having brown skin or dare being gender fluid and think for a second life can just go back to being normal?

What the actual fuck is wrong with you, Jake.

I agree with this.

As a leftist, celebrate life and fight so others can have those celebrations. Checking your privilege can be an entrance to that battlefield, but it can also stall out there. And it can feel like something important has been done because of how much feeling it has. But stalling out there does nothing to liberate anyone.

I feel this to the extreme, I got engaged shortly before the election and I didn't post an announcement or anything because it felt like the engagement was from a different era, at once only a few short weeks and eons ago

Sounds like this person doesn't understand empathy, which seems to be a common thing on the Right. It's way easier to say "F them, I got mine" when you have no basic empathy for other humans.

How about we all work together to make the world a more livable place for everyone, stop being so self-centered and willfully blind, and then there will be no need for preamble?

I had a long discussion with my father last night about this - I've had long discussions with everyone about this, actually, now that I think about it. Everyone agrees that the world is broken and the system is rigged; everyone agrees that if we all took care of one another more and worried about ourselves less that the world would be all the better for it. And yet, everyone seems convinced that it's impossible to do - that breaking away from this current mindset literally cannot happen.

Everyone always asks me "What's one man to do about it?" But they can't grasp that I'm not talking about one man doing anything. I'm talking about community, about brotherhood and sisterhood, standing together. This is especially disappointing to me because I come from an area surrounded by Coal. This was the place where people were shot and had bombs dropped on them by corporations and law enforcement alike - all because they were fighting for safety. For their lives. And now it's like it never happened. Everyone just wants to lie down like a dog and take the kicks.

They told me my whole life not to back down where my morals were concerned, not to stand by and watch helpless people be taken advantage of- and now, when we should all be a little more mad and a little more fierce, I'm the bad guy for speaking out against it.

It makes me sick. It's almost enough to make me want to leave them here to take their medicine. But I just can't bring myself to turn my back on them. I know they're just scared. But if they believed in me as much as they have all said they do, it would seem like they'd want to take my hand and stand next to me.