I'm watching an argument that the expanding brain meme is "ableist" and should be removed from discourse.

Y'all, I'm definitely taking the day off from my allies.

@zebratron2084 a;reijs;bims;erjerg I was just having a conversation with @Jssra​ yesterday about the harm done by overpatrolling social justice spaces. this... is definitely part of that problem. :|

@green @zebratron2084 Anything like this comes with risk of a witch hunt if you overcorrect vs. the mainstream. It's worth trying to thread the needle, but oy, the facepalms when it goes wrong.

@Jssra tbh (btw @zebratron2084 lemme know if you want out of these thread-mentions) it reminds me a lot of the Tumblr "More Woke Than Thou" culture, in which points are earned by the amount of TURRIBLE INJUSTICES that you can ferret out amongst your peers--i.e., witchhunts for sport and social profit. :|

@green @zebratron2084 @Jssra I've always believed that Tumblr's inability to allow users to directly engage with each other or their readers promoted toxic forms of callout culture and performative wokeness. Even under the best of circumstances, the platform prevents people from telling others that they're doing harmful things, so people who're being hurt either have to disengage to avoid harm or start whisper campaigns to try to stop the harm. That can't help but create toxicity on the platform.

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@Jssra @zebratron2084 @green Compound that with the neoliberal guilt complex ("I know any choice to have a slightly nicer life in the world comes at the expense of people who're worse off then me") and late-stage capitalism's Red Queen's Race to stay one step ahead of Mammon and Moloch ("I don't have to outrun them; I just have to outrun the next victim"), is it any wonder that the impulse among leftists is to turn on each other as the system collapses?

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@literorrery @zebratron2084 @Jssra yesssss, this exactly. especially as younger folks who are just learning their way around more adult spaces on the internet encounter the circular firing squads and think that's just the way we do things around here. they don't know and can't see the history, or the wider context, so they absorb the immediate impressions, and the problems iterates through another generation...

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@Jssra @zebratron2084 @literorrery of course, "the younger folks" don't have any monopoly on this behavior; there are plenty of older folks who really should know better, but never weaned themselves from "arguing on the internets." which isn't intrinsically a bad thing, but when it's an addiction, well... endorphin rushes are a great way to counteract depression, eh? :|

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@literorrery @zebratron2084 @Jssra (I do not have a single stone to throw when it comes to "doing stupid shit for the endorphin rush to self-medicate depression," given the first twenty-ish years of my life)

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@green @Jssra @zebratron2084 I'm right there with you. I'm no stranger to actively inflaming conflict for the sake of trying to "prove" "my" "point." I really didn't start getting well until I was in my thirties.

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