Before Today

fishingboatproceeds:

TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, misogyny, general horribleness

I am asked all the time why I think Professional Internet Types tend to be male more often than female. Is it because women aren’t as aggressive about building an audience and so struggle amid the media saturation? Is it because women aren’t as funny, or aren’t as talented, or blah blah blah?

Maybe we need to consider that one of the central reasons women artists/vloggers/musicians/etc. are less likely to rise to prominence online is that whenever women build an audience online, men threaten those women with rape and murder. And unlike traditional celebrities, most of these women do not have the resources to hire the kind of lawyers and bodyguards that one needs to stay safe. 

Like all misogyny, and I want to emphasize this, this is bad not just for women but also for all human beings. We are better off as a species if everyone has a chance to be heard, and we are worse off if talented people like Kitty Pryde don’t have the basic safety and security that one needs in order to effectively make and share stuff.

But it’s not just these kinds of horrifying threats (which as pointed out above is “the most normal thing”).

I also want to say something to all those guys who are like I was as a teenager, the people who aren’t sick people trying to get someone’s attention by harming or threatening them but who do have weird relationships with the women who make stuff they like.* You think that if this person knew you, you could be friends…maybe more than friends. And so you want to get her attention, so you can get to know each other, because then you’ll definitely become friends or maybe—

Stop.

When you start falling down that rabbit hole, stop. I know it’s hard. But stop.

What we love—even if these people make highly personal and confessional vlogs or whatever—is the stuff they make, not the people themselves. And what we really want is for more of that stuff to exist in the world. So the only proper way to be a fan is to let them be, so that they can bring more good and useful stuff into the world for us to enjoy.

* EDIT: Many people are yelling at me for saying the person in the above ask is not a sick person harming or threatening people. That is not what I am saying here. I am speaking to the people out there who are NOT like this person, but whose excessive and sometimes romanticized attention can shut down discourse. I thought that was pretty obvious from the grammar, but I just want to underscore it.

FUCK YEAH GIFTED!!!: Gifted Traits Commonly Misdiagnosed As Mental Health Pathology

fuckyeahintellectualgiftedness:

Just a random list of common Giftedness Characteristics misdiagnosed as something else

Via SENG - Practice Opportunities with Gifted Children

• Attention Deficiency
• High Activity Level
• Highly Emotional
• Frequent Mood Swings
• Difficulty with transitions
• Impatient
• Impulsivity
• …

fishingboatproceeds:

bbc-bestbromancecompany:

Nerdfighter Benedict? Or just failed Vulcan?

As far as I can tell, there are eight possibilities here. (I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about this.)

1. Benedict Cumberbatch is a hardcore nerdfighter and when Martin Freeman threw up a gang sign, Cumberbatch was like, “I have one of those.”

2. Cumberbatch, who obviously has a relationship with Star Trek, just naturally changed the Vulcan sign (pulling in the thumbs, turning the palms inward, crossing the arms) in precisely the same way that I happened to change the Vulcan sign when I first made the nerdfighter sign in the halcyon days of 2007.

3. One of the interns on set who has gained the trust of Benedict Cumberbatch was like, “If you do your hands like this, the Internet will get really excited.” And so he did.

4. BBC, in their infinite wisdom, staged the entire photo and Cumberbatch was taught the nerdfighter sign (I MEAN LOOK AT THE PERFECTION OF HIS NERDFIGHTER SIGN! He seems so comfortable and confident in it, almost as if it is muscle memory, almost as if he has flashed it to his laptop screen on hundreds of occasions in the past, but I digress) and this photograph was staged to get people psyched for Sherlock, although what tiny segment of nerdfighteria is not already psyched for Sherlock? Also, if this is the case, who is Martin Freeman trying to advertise to? Residents of the West Side?

5. Benedict Cumberbatch has a relative or a friend who is a nerdfighter and so he is passingly familiar with nerdfighteria and liked what he has seen and wanted to make us all very happy.

6. The nerdfighter sign also happens to be the hand sign of some obscure English gang with which I am unfamiliar called like The East London Wanderers or The Slightly Intimidating Liverpudlians or whatever.

7. Nerdfighteria actually figures in the plot of the new season of Sherlock. Perhaps a nerdfighter has been (wrongly no doubt!) accused of a murder.

8. Benedict Cumberbatch was playing some kind of British version of Rock Paper Scissors against two invisible opponents, and he went double scissors (as any smart person would).

John Green and Benedict Cumberbatch and Nerdfighteria. The world gets no better than this.

This is how I picture Vespa.

(via fishingboatproceeds)

John Green's tumblr: The Commencement Address

fishingboatproceeds:

Some people have asked to read the commencement address I delivered this morning to the 2013 graduates of Butler University. So here it is.

My own commencement speaker, who shall remain nameless, began with a lame joke about how these speeches only come in two varieties: Short and bad. This…

lift up your lonely heart &walk right on through: the millennial problem:

oursisthecupcake:

gyzym:

two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles per hour. one of them has been coated with the most extravagant paint money can buy, but their steering apparatus is locked up until that coat’s paid off; the other’s breaks have been ripped out…

loveforalia:

You know you had a Catholic upbringing when somebody says “May the force be with you” and your instant reaction is to reply with “And also with you”.

GPOY.

(via johnwatsonismyspiritanimal)

against-stars:

gyzym:

callingoutbigotry:

Congrats on promoting rape, Heineken

Dear Heineken:

Long time drinker, first time loather! I write to you today to clear up a couple of quick points about your Premium Light ad, the one with “Now Seduction Can Happen Anywhere” emblazoned across the top.  

1. Seduction is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the act of persuading someone to have sex with you.” So, uh, hate to break it to you and everything, but that could (and does!) already happen anywhere. Prehistoric caves, plague-ridden shacks, hotels, motels, Holiday Inns, aaaactually pretty much any location that can sustain human life for long enough for copulation: if people can live there, people can probably fuck there. If people have lived there, people have probably fucked there! Shit, I personally have been ~seduced~ in such locations as a golf course, a train station, and a bush (go ahead, judge me, I dare you) without the aid of your product. I mean, this is like advertising toothpaste with the tagline “Now You Can Scrub Your Teeth To Clean Them!” No fucking shit, dillholes.
2. Oh, but wait, wait, I get it. You packaged an incredibly obvious fact in phrasing meant to imply that your product has something to do with the truth of that fact, when, in reality, it doesn’t at all; excellent marketing strategy, way to go! Shame what you’re talking about is seduction and your product is alcohol, because that means this ad is really saying, “Now the act of using alcohol to persuade someone to have sex with you is possible anywhere!” You know, in the state where I live, that’s rape. Cheers, Heineken. Real nice. 
3. But wait! Just in case the implication wasn’t clear enough, you’ve got that word beneath it, the name of this whole ad campaign, “Irresistible,” to really drive home your point. Heads-up-seven-up, Heinekin, but an “irresistible seduction” — that is, a “seduction” that someone is not capable of resisting — is not in fact a seduction at all. Denying someone their ability and right to resist sex is not persuading them to have sex with you, it is forcing them to have sex with you, which, just so we’re really clear, is what the word rape means. And if you want to claim that you were using “Irresistible,” to describe your beer and not to make horrific rapey implications, then I still have you on false advertising, because I can personally prove to you starting right now how very very easy it is to resist absolutely any product with your name on it. You just watch me not drink your beer, Heineken. You just watch me never, ever give you my money again. 

In conclusion: I’m going to take your advice to heart, and enjoy Heineken responsibly by way of ensuring that neither I nor anyone I know ever enjoys any brand of yours again. Thanks so much for being the sort of repulsive shitstain fuckheads who use rape as a marketing tool; I’ve been meaning to switch to Rolling Rock. 

Yours Sincerely,
A Former Customer

P.S. Just in case you want to defend yourselves by pointing out that this ad seems to have been released way back in the ancient times of 2007, and claim, as such, that I am uninformed and you’ve changed, really, of course you have, I invite you to check out this fucking disaster of an ad from 2012, in which you instruct Heineken drinkers on how to buy a girl a drink despite “coy objections” like “no means no,” on the theory that “some girls insist on playing games.” Aaaaaand I also invite you to go fuck yourselves, because, seriously. Go fuck yourselves.  

holy shit that 2012 ad literally has “so… maybe?” be the suggested response for a flat “no means no”

no that’s hideous get the fuck out

omg Julian, their tank tops.

teabeforewar:

I got bored of working on sheetlock so here’s a squishy hedgehog.

omgzzzzzzzz.

(via against-stars)