The blanket application and treatment against nudity and adult content in relation to Tumblr’s recent being caught-out for its years of negligence over its rampant child pornography issue is a really disgusting and thoughtless action of association. So many users (including users who largely or exclusively post adult content) over so many years have sought administrative support in addressing the issue of child pornography on this site, only to be met with lack of real decisive and thoughtful action on the subject. Now that it has become a financial concern (due to its being removed from the app store), action arrives in the form of a tactless and inconsiderate purge of all adult content. This purge draws an unreasonable association between general nudity and child pornography through its blanket treatment. It makes the assumption that there is a clean and clear division in content and values between blogs that exclusively post pornographic content and those that abstain completely. Such a division is non-existent as many blogs observably and commonly have played with a curation that accommodates both adult content and non-adult content as well as everything that falls in between.
This ban, if it’s anything like the measures and procedures shared by Facebook and Instagram, will certainly be a strict and indiscriminate one as it relates to the moderation of nudity that may also appear in artistic and cultural artefacts, imagery and photography (and those images that drift between art, the candid and the everyday which include nudity, which, through their dissemination and transmission have become cultural and aesthetic artefacts), and it will not be surprising when masses of these artefacts, artworks, photographs and images are erased without any further consideration. This ban is a clumsy and heavy-handed panic of corporate and financial concern masquerading as a caring and progressive project of ethical betterment. The ban’s authors absolve themselves of responsibility by applying this blanket-treatment, while failing to take responsibility and be held accountable for their own years of negligence on the issue, for their wilful accommodation of the issue. Perhaps, in the years of the issue being addressed by its users (who have certainly shown greater and more sincere dedication to the upholding of a morally-guided online community), the issue could have been addressed more thoughtfully and a more sophisticated solution could have been designed by those corporate administrators who only noticed the grave importance of the issue when their wallets started burning.
Intuition is real. Vibes are real. Energy doesn’t lie. Tune in.
This is actually called thin slicing. Your brain recognizes patterns from very small “slices” of information by comparing them to things you have experienced before. This all happens very quickly on a subconscious level without our conscious mind being involved. So intuition is actually really fast pattern recognition, and it can be very accurate. So yeah, if you have a gut feeling that a person or situation is not good, get the hell out. Your brain knows what’s up.
When I was young – because I’ve always been a big skeptical pain in the ass – I thought that when people were talking about interpersonal “energy,” they were on some Gay Ass Shit.
Years later, after spending hundreds of hours reading studies about intuition and neuroscience and pattern recognition and the processing power of the subconscious mind, I realized that that kind of talk – “she has such good energy,” “you need to read the energy of the room,” “I just got some really bad energy off of that guy” – is a convenient shorthand for the lightning-fast, weirdly-accurate, real-as-fuck subconscious processing of the probability of positive or negative social outcomes likely to result from hundreds or thousands of variables. That “energy” isn’t a tangible thing floating around in the air. It’s your brain updating you constantly with information about your situation. Listen to it. Especially if it’s telling you to be nervous or scared. Your brain is very good at recognizing danger. Let the enormous processing power of your subconscious mind protect you. It’s better at spotting patterns than you are.
“Bad energy” isn’t some hippie shit. It’s your brain setting off a claxon because it knows something’s not right.
Thin slicing is wonderfully helpful, but be aware that if it’s doing its pattern recognition from bad sources, you need to actively override it. We’re raised in a racist society, inundated with racist media, and bombarded with subtly (or unsubtly) racist advice. Thin slicing can save your life, but it’s also the cause behind the unconscious elements of racism (and misogyny/ableism/antisemitism/islamophobia/etc.) that we all suffer from
Trust your instincts, but if your instincts tell you something that seems prejudicial, double check their work.
this website is really uniquely terrible in nearly every way but where else am i gonna put my posts about batman being named after bruce springsteen. do i post that on facebook? do i email my mom
The best explanation of Tumblr’s appeal that I’ve seen
everywhere else you speak TO people, specific people, one at a time or in small groups
here you can scream into the void, and if a passing weirdo likes it they can give you a thumbs up or pass it along to their weirdo friends who might like it too
one of my friends is a very pregnant dog and like 3 times a day i say to her “hello! you are full of several other smaller dogs!” and she wags her entire body at me like “it’s true!!! i contain multitudes”
i love that ur friend is the pregnant dog. what a nice friend to have.
ya she’s my buddy i love her!
update: there were five (5) smaller dogs inside my dog friend, but now they are all outside of her instead (!!)
Listen I don’t give a shit what anyone says- you know your body better than anyone else. When you say you’ve hit your limit: stop. When you can’t keep your eyes open: sleep. When you’re hungry: eat. When you need to lay down and rest: fucking do that shit.
I’m tired of able bodied people trying to police our bodies and tell us to “push through” when that can seriously hurt or otherwise injure us.
Just because we can’t keep up with you doesn’t mean we’re not trying and just because you think we should be at a certain standard doesn’t mean we are OR EVEN HAVE THE SAME STANDARD.
Please just take care of yourselves y’all. Do what you can when you can and take a nap inbetween.
nightlilium 