A Drag Performer Who Inspires Me?

Spicy-brained friends, I would like to propose an update to the very useful ‘if you hate everyone, eat, if everyone hates you, sleep, and if you hate yourself, shower’ mantra to live by

Have you suddenly become a petty, hateful little gremlin who thinks people should face the firing squad for (checks notes) leaving teabags on the counter, breathing loudly, or daring to exist in the same space as you? Perhaps mundane and reasonable requests like ‘hey, we agreed to hang out now, let’s hang out’ make you want to scream and move to a yurt in the woods.

You. Are. Overstimulated.

People talk a lot about being overstimulated, and the physical/mental effects of it. What I haven’t seen is people talking about what it does emotionally, and it took me an embarassingly long time to link up those nitpicky, resentful emotions with the state of overstimulation/meltdown/shutdown.

These feelings do not mean that you’re a bad person! They probably aren’t how you actually feel about the people around you. They probably do mean that your nervous system is at its absolute limit and any request/demand/stimulus is Too Much and taking you into fight or flight territory.

Go lie down in a dark room for an hour, or find somewhere safe and familiar to stim for a bit. If it’s happening a lot, schedule yourself regular low-stimulation shutdown time

Signed: someone who moved in with their nearest and dearest only to have a massive crisis of faith about Suddenly Hating All of Them. I don’t hate them, it’s just overstimulating living with people. If I can spare anyone else a similar 9 months of suspecting that they may actually be a bit of a shit person, then this post is worth it!

Listen up!

You see a post like this? Where OP might hurt/kill themselves? You hit that button that I circled

Hit that.

Click Suicide or Self-harm Concern

Yes.

Fill in the rest of it, and hit submit. The "content you reported" will fill itself in

Tumblr will follow up and help them.

Warning: this is only for mobile. If anyone knows how to do this for desktop, please add it!

This could SAVE SOMEONE'S LIFE.

YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE NOT TO REBLOG THIS.

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF IT DOESN'T GO WITH YOUR BLOG'S THEME.

And yes, REBLOG. Liking does no shit at all. This isn't ig.

You reblog, people see it. You don't, people don't see it. This shit's that simple.

This could save someone's life. It's not a joke.

Okay! This I can do! What’s your favorite LGBTQ book?

Well I just finished reading a book called “Meet Cute Diary” which is about a trans guy who writes a blog called the meet cute diary and it’s a bunch of meet cites involving trans people. The catch is though, that he made them all up and someone calls him out in it! The plot is him trying to find a way to prove that he isn’t a fraud and save his blog and maybe find love along the way!

I’m always looking for good queer books and just picked up another one recently although I haven’t started it yet because I’m saving it to read on the road.

Me having an insane attachment to shows/movies that I’ve never watched: “I’m a big fan”

I hate my love language

Hi I’m your local friendly AroAce.

And my love language is gifts. As I’m writing this I’m currently sitting on the floor making stuff for my friends for Easter.

I love to make gifts for people. Or even buying stuff for them. I will sew them a stuffie, draw them a picture, pain and item for them, make a piece of jewelry or otherwise.

But the issue is,

I like presents too.

That doesn’t sound like a problem except that the people in my life don’t really do gifts.

My parents will typically do something that I was already in need of as my present and my friends will typically just mass produce some sort of pastry for the group to share.

And I know it’s greedy and selfish to want something more, something with more meaning.

But I can’t help it. I don’t talk to them about it because I know I would sound greedy and selfish. I just need to rant about it.

I’m sorry.

Conventional health advice: you shouldn't crack your neck, you'll get arthritis

Doctors: fixing a subluxation quickly is important to prevent damage that can cause osteoarthritis and it can cause a cracking noise

Conventional health advice: you shouldn't chug water

Doctors: when someone chugs water, they activate a bodily response that can help pots patients mitigate their symptoms

Conventional health advice: you should sit still to say attention

Doctors: fidget toys and drawing can help maintain attention for things like classwork

Conventional health advice: Don't do that thing you do to feel better

Doctors: you should do that thing everyone tells you not to do to feel better

Me: hmm. This is a wild but like. Maybe trying to standardize medicine when the human body can't even agree on what it needs to be a person is bad actually. It's even worse when laypeople self-police and police others using this standardized advice for literally everyone without assuming they've tried it already. We shouldn't have to try things that we know won't work because otherwise we wouldn't have started doing the other thing.

PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.

anytime I talk about my chronic pain and fatigue and the limitations they impose on me, my mom's response is always "well you have to talk to the doctor" like firstly. I do. Secondly, I have an entire life to live between doctors appointments. 20 minutes with my doctor every 3-6 months is not going to suddenly cure me.

I wanna change my profile picture but I don’t know to what. I’m just really unhappy with my picture.

Hm.