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The idea of “but everyone knows that” needs to stop.
I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.
Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!
But let me tell you a story:
I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.
One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.
At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.
I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.
Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.
The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.
And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.
So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.
So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.
By all means, let them know so they can make informed decisions, but being kind will go a lot further than attacking them for some info they might not know yet.
Keith Haring painting his mural "Once Upon a Time…" in a bathroom at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City on May 27, 1989.
ADHD pro tip: Use psychological warfare on yourself.
For example, in order to do long tasks, like folding laundry, I put on the Mario Hat:
The main feature of the Mario hat is that my headset does not fit over it, so when The Bees™ try to put me back in front of the screen, the headset issue forces me to remember why I put the Mario hat on, and back to the task I go
As a bonus, the Mario hat is also a very clear indicator to my housemates that business is getting done, and they have learned not to distract me when I’m wearing the “goofy-ass cosplay hat”
It’s not stupid if it works.
when i was in like eleventh grade i noticed i had gotten too gunshy about saying things and talking to people because i was scared that they would view me with contempt. i decided that to fix this i would wear a very stupid hat at all times, so that when i would think ‘i can’t say that, it sounds stupid’ i would realize 'well, i already look stupid, so nothing is stopping me.’
i wore this for like a year and a half during a very formative age and it worked perfectly. mean kids would be like 'do you think that hat actually makes you cool’ and i would go 'no but it does give me unearned confidence’ and i was right. it worked great. i completely stopped second-guessing whether or not what i had to say was stupid or embarrassing because no one could embarrass me more than i had already embarrassed myself. i had a great time, shared a million stupid opinions, and made lots of friends who forgave me my hat.
