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Good lord. I leave PD for half a year and this is what my favourite shitposter gets up to?

Shitposting? :^)

Ironic shitposting is still shitposting. By the same token, so's unintentional shitposting.

Either way, still nice to see you're alive.

I believe it's your turn to be a screaming loon for a few posts. Racism is always popular now if you've got nothing else, it seems to be the general trend.

I feel oddly sane after reading about eco-fascism tbh.

Good lord. I leave PD for half a year and this is what my favourite shitposter gets up to?

Shitposting? :^)

Ironic shitposting is still shitposting. By the same token, so's unintentional shitposting.

Good lord. I leave PD for half a year and this is what my favourite shitposter gets up to?

I'll take that as an admission of guilt.

Ron Paul had entertainment value back when I was 80% sure he was being ironic.

Good lord. I leave PD for half a year and this is what my favourite shitposter gets up to?

Wait, dinosaurs were endothermic?? Why wasn't I informed of this?  So all that shite about the ice age wiping them out? Not even remotely funny 

That could still happen if it prevented plants from growing and starved them to death.

Hypothetically a planet on which an ice age extended glaciers to the equator and killed everything on the planet is certainly possible, but now we're talking about fantasy fiction, not about the Earth's history according to available geological and paleontological evidence.

Point taken.

Wait, dinosaurs were endothermic?? Why wasn't I informed of this?  So all that shite about the ice age wiping them out? Not even remotely funny 

That could still happen if it prevented plants from growing and starved them to death.

Depends what you consider "Anon" nowadays.

For example, a lot of the online Trump support has been organised pretty much directly from /pol/, 4chan's "politically incorrect" board.  The memes, edgelordism...it's all classic, if toxic, 4chan.

Yeah, nowadays they make shit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1w4IxCXIxU

[It's Time to Take Back Confusion]

Okay, here's my attempt.

It's Time to Take Back Confusion

Welcome to the parade! The noise, the glitter, the sweat and the screams: this is our day. I don't presume to know why you're here. You may be gay or lesbian, bi or pan or asexual, you could be trans or gender nonconforming or kinky or queer in ways I haven't even imagined. You could be a straight ally, here to support or just to participate in the festivities. It's hard to tell, with such a big tent of gender and sexual minorities coming together.

Really, the one thing holding us together is that none of us quite fit into the standard model. This applies even to LGBT+ allies, because they really should be participating in shoving us back in the closet but instead here they are appreciating our weirdness, like a bunch of freaks. We're unaccounted for, and that makes us unpredictable, and that makes us scary. We're dealing with thousands of years of tradition and assumptions, built up and calcified until it could all be taken for granted. Homophobia itself is something relatively new, historically speaking, but the things that homophobes feel we threaten are very, very old. The division of labor according to gender breaks down when there's only one gender in a home, so we have to think for ourselves, and that frightens those who have fallen back on complacency. If we have to think for ourselves and construct our own means of handling things, after all, maybe their way isn't objectively best, and if their way isn't best, what does that say about them?

It all comes down to the insecurity of lazy people who don't want to think. Listen to someone complaining about gay marriage sometime: "How am I supposed to explain this to my children?" That is the cry of a person who is not prepared to do any of their own thinking. When the fight was for marriage, we did the work for them "GAY MARRIAGE IS JUST LIKE STRAIGHT MARRIAGE" we screamed "WE ARE JUST LIKE YOU." And eventually most of them got that memo, and the Supreme Court decided that we were right, and now they don't have to think about it too much any more so it's less scary. NOW they've decided to latch all their fears on trans people, because if they can't keep the queers from acting like marriage is a contract between two consenting adults, they can at least make it hard to take a piss in safety.

But the thing is gay marriage ISN'T just like straight marriage, it's a thing that's not exactly the story we've all been told we have to live. It's thinking for ourselves, even for a moment, and deciding that what we want isn't dictated by centuries of expectations. It's a direct challenge to the authority of the dominant social narrative.

And if they were scared of that, just wait for what's coming down the pipe. Bisexuals screaming that not only does their sexuality exist, but that gay relationships aren't a consolation prize for the terminally gay? That someone who could pass as straight would put up with the hassle of fighting constantly for recognition as not-straight, would choose relationships that were harder just because that's what they wanted? What about all these trans people? Before they used to be punchlines and hookers, but now here they are in the news and on TV, having real jobs and acting like real humans all the while refusing to follow the script. And just wait til they catch on to the nonbinary or polyamorous folks!

How dare we exist? How dare we highlight just how nonsensical it is to think genitals have some kind of profound, mystical connection to who we are? Don't we know there are people whose entire identities are built on sloppy, unexamined foundations? Don't we know better than to shake things up? How rude of us. You could say identity itself is a crock, but that doesn't let our assailants off the hook. An identity handed to you on a silver platter is no more real than an identity you have to work for, and after all, identity plays a pretty vital psychological role.

We ourselves are no more confused than anyone else, but we're quite the source of confusion, aren't we? I think that's a good thing. People need to be confused. It forces them to think, it forces them to consider that they might be wrong, and honestly, that's the only way we learn anything. Of course, we don't exist for the purposes of straight cis people. We need to be confused as much as anyone else, as much as our enemies try to use confusion as a smear term. I've seen queer people treat other queer people like absolute garbage, and I think it's all in the name of avoiding confusion, just as much as bog-standard homophobia is, just as much as bog-standard transphobia is.

And it's easy to understand. When you have to deal with bigots' constant accusations that you're just confused, it's very tempting to say no, that you're very certain of exactly who you are, and that you haven't the slightest amount of doubt. But some of us don't have the luxury of certainty, and besides, this approach has other drawbacks. People are addicted to order, and to thinking we understand things when we really don't, and it's easy to get arrogant and dehumanize people. It's easy, but it's lazy. It's the same old shit we've all been putting up with from day one. Each and every one of us is a stick in the gears of someone else's worldview. We can't afford to fear the same thing, as a matter of common courtesy if nothing else. We've all had straight people and queer people alike tell us that we don't count one way or another, but I'm here to tell you that you do, whether or not you're certain of where you fit and who you are. To hell with their fake authority.

Looks good.

Just FYI, I'm doing Youtube videos again.  Next episode will be the big one - Bleak Falls Barrow.

I have to say, I'm kind of in love with the idea of Bleak Falls Barrow being a major challenge, after how easy it was in the default game.

[I Kissed A Girl & Realized Why Love Is Revolutionary]

Submitted for feedback:

I Kissed A Girl & Realized Why Love Is Revolutionary

She was so pretty, with her short hair and big, deep brown eyes and one of those smiles that you'd swear was photoshop but it's not because it's right in front of you. We were the same height, and her fingers were soft and perfectly tapered, and she worked in the sciences and I loved everything about her, just not for very long.

When you're bi, you have a lot of straight-looking relationships. Even if you're a mythical 50/50 split, even if you're 80/20 towards the gay end of the spectrum, societal pressure and other dumb shit makes it easier to default to straight-looking. And when you do that for a long time, you miss out on what it means to be with someone of your gender.

We stumbled, giggling through kisses and apologizing incessantly over email because we never knew where the boundaries were. But it wasn't just figuring out the geometry of a differently shaped body. We realized, both of us, that we couldn't fall back on "default." There were no expectations of who would take charge, of who would pay, of who would seek and who would offer consent. We were in uncharted territory, for us at least. We had to think for ourselves.

This is the threat, the thing they hate about us. There are people who look at the possibility of having to blaze their own path and they just fucking can't. There are only so many spoons to go around, and they have precisely zero available to reconsider the default configuration of their lives, and they are terrified that their children will grow up to be unrecognizable to them. They are not prepared for The Strange Times, they're barely prepared for fifty years ago.

I say we couldn't fall back on "default," but I guess I was wrong, because she did. I loved her for a week and she ditched me for safer ground. And it hurt, but it's the kind of hurt that means your heart's still working. I forget that I've aggressively selected for revolutionaries in my life, and it's no fault of hers she wasn't one.

But I always will be, and I hope you are too.

I like this overall. Looking back, I can see how it influenced my piece, especially this part:

There are people who look at the possibility of having to blaze their own path and they just fucking can't. There are only so many spoons to go around, and they have precisely zero available to reconsider the default configuration of their lives, and they are terrified that their children will grow up to be unrecognizable to them.

It's good to have a piece that explicitly talks about being bi; I'm bi too and my own piece doesn't even mention anything about it. I also really like that it's an account of an experience, and I think it's a good idea to round things out with a piece that has more of a personal tone like this one.

No apologies necessary on my end, I'd rather people speak up so we can examine possible problems than sit here huffing farts, and being grouchy about people ignoring/not knowing your bi-ness is about as essential to the bi experience as the actually being attracted to more than one gender part

I'm looking forward to seeing your piece! No one has responded positively or negatively to the one I posted, so I'm gonna assume it's insufficiently shit stirring to run with.

I'll comment on it in a bit. I got a little too absorbed in my own drama, I think.

I like where it's going, but it feels a little too dependent on previous discussion for stuffing in a stranger's hand. Do you mind if I take a crack at some edits?

No problem.

[It's Time to Take Back Confusion]

It's Time to Take Back Confusion

Really, the one thing holding us together is that none of us quite fit into the standard model. We're unaccounted for, and that makes us unpredictable, and that makes us scary. We're dealing with thousands of years of tradition and assumptions, built up and calcified until it could all be taken for granted. Homophobia itself is something relatively new, historically speaking, but the things that homophobes feel we threaten are very, very old. The division of labour according to gender breaks down when there's only one gender in a home, so we have to think for ourselves, and that frightens those who have fallen back on complacency. If we have to think for ourselves and construct our own means of handling things, after all, maybe their way isn't objectively best, and if their way isn't best, what does that say about them?

It all comes down to the insecurity of lazy people who don't want to think, and this is even more evident for trans people. I don't know if it's harder for binary or nonbinary people, and frankly, I don't care to start a pissing match over it. In either case, the question is the same: How dare we exist? How dare we highlight just how nonsensical it is to think genitals have some kind of profound, mystical connection to who we are? Don't we know there are people whose entire identities are built on sloppy, unexamined foundations? Don't we know better than to shake things up? How rude of us. You could say identity itself is a crock, but that doesn't let our assailants off the hook. An identity handed to you on a silver platter is no more real than an identity you have to work for, and after all, identity plays a pretty vital psychological role.

Basically, what I'm getting at is this:
We ourselves are no more confused than anyone else, but we're quite the source of confusion, aren't we? I think that's a good thing. People need to be confused. It forces them to think, it forces them to consider that they might be wrong, and honestly, that's the only way we learn anything. Of course, we don't exist for the purposes of straight cis people. We need to be confused as much as anyone else, as much as our enemies try to use confusion as a smear term. I've seen queer people treat other queer people like absolute garbage, and I think it's all in the name of avoiding confusion, just as much as bog-standard homophobia is, just as much as bog-standard transphobia is.

And it's easy to understand. When you have to deal with bigots' constant accusations that you're just confused, it's very tempting to say no, that you're very certain of exactly who you are, and that you haven't the slightest amount of doubt. But some of us don't have the luxury of certainty, and besides, this approach has other drawbacks. People are addicted to order, and to thinking we understand things when we really don't, and it's easy to get arrogant and dehumanize people. It's easy, but it's lazy. It's the same old shit we've all been putting up with from day one. Each and every one of us is a stick in the gears of someone else's worldview. We can't afford to fear the same thing, as a matter of common courtesy if nothing else. We've all had straight people and queer people alike tell us that we don't count one way or another, but I'm here to tell you that you do, whether or not you're certain of where you fit and who you are. To hell with their fake authority.

I've come to a mindset that simply accepts that this has the potential to stir up the gems and muck alike. If someone chooses to misconstrue something or it otherwise unforseeably blows up, well, there's no bad press as they say. The ones that see and have something stirred in them are all the effect that can be expected, but who knows? Q. G. is DOING IT.

For my part I'm adding my back to the press as I can, ready to run an audible as may be needed.

This did occur to me after the fact, but I didn't want to make my post a wall of text.
Another point, though I think QG already said it: The kinds of fucks who are inclined to tell us who can and can't talk really aren't the kinds of people we want anyway.

Hmm. As a trans person, I've noticed that there are a lot of parallels between Discordian approaches to navigating reality and the kind of approach you need to adopt in order to have a consistent model that accounts for nonbinary genders. Discordia's been a great help in trying to figure out how exactly my own gender works, and frankly, I think it could be useful as a means for breaking out of the kind of dogmatism that develops in a lot of spaces like Tumblr.

However, if there's one thing the queer community as a whole despises, it's being told what by straight people, or even by queer people who aren't the exact kind of queer that they are. I think TGRR/QG's pamphlet is good, but its fatal flaw is that it addresses the queer community from the outside; in my experience(which is admittedly limited and mostly consists of dealing with trans people), we tend to be clannish and insular, and extremely paranoid about outsiders. It'd work better if it said "us" instead of "you," but it'd be underhanded and dishonest for a piece written by TGRR to do so. Maybe I could write something up. But for now, I'm going to bed. I'll check this thread tomorrow.

Okay, pitch it.  Sorry I bothered.

Just talked to my younger son, who is trans.  He says you're full of shit and this is the sort of mind-game people play when they want to the the next big tumblrina on scene.

Having looked at again, of course he is right, given that the piece wasn't aimed at transgender folks, it was aimed at all LGBT+ folks, whom you are certainly not qualified to speak for as king.  Given that, I have to say that I am NOT going through THAT bullshit argument again, and I would really appreciate it if President Television never bothered speaking to me again, and I assure you that I shall reciprocate.

QG, use it or not, as you see fit.  President Television, dead serious:  Fuck off.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean it as an attack on either of you, on the validity of TGRR's piece, or on the legitimacy of QG's LGBT status. TGRR's writing and QG's graphic design were both on point. I agree that it's a mindgame people play, and I meant my post more as a warning of that kind of mindgame than anything else, which, looking back, was really, really, really stupid of me. I'd suspected that the flyers in question would end up plastered on someone's blog and PD admins would end up getting doxxed or something. I panicked, because not long ago I had "friends" who turned on me in a similar way, and since then I've been anticipating that kind of toxicity everywhere in the LGBT community. It was entirely my mistake. I respect both of you too much to pull that kind of stunt.

I'll write up a piece of my own as well, but nobody's obligated to use it. I apologize for everything.

Apology accepted.  I have very recently had the exact same experience, right here, and very publicly.  Something about Garbo.

In any case, post your stuff.  You don't need my permission, or that of toxic wannabe culture police.

Thanks. I don't have it written up yet, but I do have a couple of ideas floating around.

Hmm. As a trans person, I've noticed that there are a lot of parallels between Discordian approaches to navigating reality and the kind of approach you need to adopt in order to have a consistent model that accounts for nonbinary genders. Discordia's been a great help in trying to figure out how exactly my own gender works, and frankly, I think it could be useful as a means for breaking out of the kind of dogmatism that develops in a lot of spaces like Tumblr.

However, if there's one thing the queer community as a whole despises, it's being told what by straight people, or even by queer people who aren't the exact kind of queer that they are. I think TGRR/QG's pamphlet is good, but its fatal flaw is that it addresses the queer community from the outside; in my experience(which is admittedly limited and mostly consists of dealing with trans people), we tend to be clannish and insular, and extremely paranoid about outsiders. It'd work better if it said "us" instead of "you," but it'd be underhanded and dishonest for a piece written by TGRR to do so. Maybe I could write something up. But for now, I'm going to bed. I'll check this thread tomorrow.

Okay, pitch it.  Sorry I bothered.

Just talked to my younger son, who is trans.  He says you're full of shit and this is the sort of mind-game people play when they want to the the next big tumblrina on scene.

Having looked at again, of course he is right, given that the piece wasn't aimed at transgender folks, it was aimed at all LGBT+ folks, whom you are certainly not qualified to speak for as king.  Given that, I have to say that I am NOT going through THAT bullshit argument again, and I would really appreciate it if President Television never bothered speaking to me again, and I assure you that I shall reciprocate.

QG, use it or not, as you see fit.  President Television, dead serious:  Fuck off.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean it as an attack on either of you, on the validity of TGRR's piece, or on the legitimacy of QG's LGBT status. TGRR's writing and QG's graphic design were both on point. I agree that it's a mindgame people play, and I meant my post more as a warning of that kind of mindgame than anything else, which, looking back, was really, really, really stupid of me. I'd suspected that the flyers in question would end up plastered on someone's blog and PD admins would end up getting doxxed or something. I panicked, because not long ago I had "friends" who turned on me in a similar way, and since then I've been anticipating that kind of toxicity everywhere in the LGBT community. It was entirely my mistake. I respect both of you too much to pull that kind of stunt.

I'll write up a piece of my own as well, but nobody's obligated to use it. I apologize for everything.