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niche trope I enjoy: person recounting a story of something terrible they did and the way they describe it makes it sound like an active decision where they were completely in control and knew what they were doing and enjoyed it, but if you look at the bare bones facts, it's like. are you sure about that? are you sure you didn't just panic and lash out and do something irreparable? are you sure that's what you wanted and you aren't just retroactively assigning yourself agency to cope? but you as the audience can't really know the answer to that, because the storyteller is the only one who was there and this is how they're choosing to preserve it, and that matters for how they want to be perceived going forward... but you do still wonder.

was gonna type a far longer post on this but don't really need to tbh. basically: MCYT fandom has a huge whiteness problem in large part because broader social structures make it very hard for non-white creators to become even slightly popular without being ignored/sidelined, demonized/nitpicked to death, whitewashed, or some combination of the three.

this is a hard sentence to grapple with, because "it's a structural issue" is something very hard to fix and "it's recreating existing social bias" puts the reader in a situation where they have to grapple with the fact that they may be unconsciously reproducing and spreading that bias.

in an ideal world, people would have all the time and effort and bandwidth needed to combat that issue by going out and actively seeking out more varied creators, but a lot of people will bristle at being told they have to put in a lot of effort to combat bias in what is supposed to be their relatively low-stakes space of engagement. whether or not that bristling is justifiable, we don't particularly care to talk about. that is not the point of this post. the point here is that we would like to propose something small that is a little more than "the bare minimum" of not being actively and willfully racist, something that should not take much more effort than MCYT fans are already putting in to find new creators they might enjoy anyway.

ready? okay.

treat recommendations for non-white MCYTers just a tiny bit more seriously than you would in passing.

that's it. seriously. if you get a random YouTube rec, treat it like a very tentative "you might find this cool" from an acquaintance. if you get a distant or tentative recommendation from a friend, consider it a little more strongly. if something seems "kinda up your alley", put it on the shortlist to watch sooner. if a friend is already going "drop everything and watch this now" then you were probably going to check that thing out anyway. in general, just... give things a tiny bit more of a chance when they are made by creators of color (and other marginalized demographics, but let's focus on one thing in particular here), understanding that those creators have to put in a little more effort to get to the same space as their more broadly acclaimed peers in the first place and they may even have to disguise things with clickbait.

you don't have to like everything you end up checking out, but give things a shot if they compel you. if you have a "guilty pleasure" kind of MCYT video -- low-effort machinima, snarky lists, crashing pay-to-win servers, some other drama -- then YouTube might serve you some similar stuff from a non-white creator at some point. show a little more interest. you might not find the world's next most best hidden gem, but you will probably find something you enjoy at least a small bit.

My resolution last year was to do one thing before bed that would make my morning feel easier, and that’s become a daily habit that I’m carrying into this new year.

Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.

Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.

And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.

What stayed the same each day is that I would take a moment to think of what I could do for my future self and do it, even after a hard day. And I would wake up knowing that I had done my best and any effort—no matter how small—was a kindness to myself.

This is a slow fandom zone

None of that "Oh no they bomb-dropped all the episodes in a week 1 month ago, I'm late!" "The tag hasn't been active all week is the fandom dead?" "I only got a hundred shares the first hour no one cares about my art"

Slow down

Take a deep breath and slow down

Fandom is YOU. And me and everyone. If we doodle stick figures for a show that ended 30 years ago we aren't "late" or "doing too little", we're playing dolls in our own time and having fun with works of art that mean a lot to us

You can literally watch and engage with something that aired in 2004 as if it aired yesterday

If the tag hasn't been active for 14 months guess what? If YOU post there, it isn't dead. Literally you can talk about anything you want whenever you want there is no weird law against watching things that people aren't actively talk about

Let's be deranged about stories together

i hate that concerns about urban gardening/foraging safety is often met with "What are you, a cop?" scorn. I believe it's a suspicion of anything that hinders the punk/anti-system urgency to jump in immediately and do whatever feels right.

Safety, ethics, and sustainability are all a part of urban gardening and foraging. I'm sorry that means you need to do homework before you can do anything, I know that sounds lame. But life is complicated.

I know anti-intellectualism is viewed as activist these days, but like, surely you don't want to literally eat lead, right?

last life