People use social media for different things. I never used Instagram to meet people, personally. I’ve posted art and I’ve uploaded photos just as a way to show long distant friends what I’ve been up to, but those friends and I mostly talked over text so I don’t know if I ever even looked at my DMs.

I do actually think social media has made me bad at talking to people irl though, but for different reasons. The way I made friends on Tumblr was I’d post a character design and wait for someone else who designs characters to comment, and then we’d talk back and forth about our characters for hours.

Now I’m trying to remember how to make friends in person and it’s so much more intentional. You have to actually ask questions and broadcast your interest in people instead of assuming they’re going to infodump on you. You can’t take five minutes to think up a reply because there’s no going afk. You have to have interests other than a gay man you made up.

Nah, it’s not a literal statement. It’s a rude way to say “I don’t want to talk about this”. It can be due to a genuine lack of interest, or if you’re trying to have an emotional conversation, it’s a malicious way to downplay your experience.

It’s a big old world and there’s always at least one person who will care about something.

I also don’t parade my identity at work but I’m obviously still affected by the false accusations and firings I’ve seen of other queer people. I’m single right now but imagine if the wrong person saw me getting picked up by my partner, my livelihood would be gone and I’d have to go back to my old dead end job where cis men were allowed to scream at me and throw things and management would make excuses.

(I was closeted there too, that place was just like that)

You are affected by anti-LGBT discrimination, you’re just not paying attention for some reason.

I’ll also add that one of the two parties actively wants to see me and anyone like me dead, so there’s a lot of pressure for many of us on simply surviving

Oh, for sure, hence why I’m not anti-voting. I still want to save my ass in the short term, even while thinking about the long term.

The USA’s two-party system is a fucking farce and we’re not going to see major, widespread change under either party. But if I bring this up I get called a “Russian bot” and accused of telling people not to vote… even though I vote.

OK lol maybe urgent is the wrong word. “Important” or “time-sensitive”, ig. Not something I’m cool with just closing the window and forgetting about.

Also I forgot this isn’t normal but I somehow fucked my phone up so bad when installing AdAway that I get an error when I try to disable it. That’s probably important context.

The classic example is whenever my mom got a new car when I was a kid, looking for it in a parking lot, suddenly I’d see it everywhere.

To be fair, I think “nuance” is genuinely being used a lot more lately because there’s so much backlash against the black-and-white discourse that dominated the internet last decade.

Thanks for the tip! That’s definitely a better option as I do kinda feel I’m taking advantage of the archive service sometimes.

Given the timing, I think it was inspired by the ending of the soap opera comic Apartment 3-G. The finale involved one of the main girls having some kind of psychotic break, but for whatever reason it coincided with the art style degrading horribly, so it was an incredibly confusing read. People appearing and disappearing from scenes at random, location changing from panel to panel, and everyone drawn so crudely you couldn’t always tell who was who. It was really hard tell when the character was supposed to be confused and when I was the one confused.

I guess the helplessness and horror of trying to follow a soap struck me so much I projected it onto SpongeBob.

Meowing despondently because she wants out, except she doesn’t want the snow or the kids playing across the street. What a cruel owner I am not to give her what she wants.

(inb4 lectures she’s leash trained)

Big sites have caught onto this unfortunately, but sometimes switching to reader mode is a quick bypass. Putting the link in archive.is usually works, that’s what I do if it’s urgent local news (eg when my state is flooded or frozen or perhaps on fire)

I don’t know if I experience smell, if I do I don’t remember it, but sound is very vivid in my dreams. I usually remember the dialogue pretty well as soon as I wake up, and the people in my life sound like themselves even if they’re talking about total nonsense.

Also once I dreamed I was SpongeBob having a stroke so I had to hear everyone in Bikini Bottom speaking what sounded like gibberish to me :( m

All the reasons people cite for supporting the ban are problems with other social media platforms.

Also I think it’s pretty dumb to support government censorship over cringe.

I went to see Flow! The ending made me tear up a little bit 🥹

Work

I cooked a lot, tried some new ingredients too! I frankensteined bits of this recipe for my work lunches this week. Made brown rice bowls with avocado, edamame, and salmon filets cooked with garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil. (Didn’t cube the salmon after my first attempt because I’m messy with a knife.)

Also for the sriracha mayo I had two failed attempts at making mayo from scratch. I’d say it was a learning experience but I’m still not sure what I learned.

Breakfast was just sandwiches, but I had a ton of ham leftover so now I’m making a quiche with spinach and onions.

Will probably make the same thing for lunch this coming week because it was really good. Every time I got a spoonful of rice with a lil bit of avocado in it it was delightful.

Clothes are expensive, I don’t throw anything out until it’s unwearable.

Only thing I’m worried about is pants. I shop for people for a living, so I basically power walk 7 hours a day. My thighs are constantly rubbing down to nothingness and patches don’t last long enough to justify the effort.

If I quit my job I can probably make it another ten years though.

I live in the US south. I work in retail. They’ve been calling for snow every day.

Consistently over an hour behind on orders because everyone acts like they’re never going to see food again.

I did make really nice rice bowls for lunch every day so I had something to look forward to, though :)

That’s true. I was even more tech illiterate back then than I am now and couldn’t figure out how to switch inputs without going through the menu, which I couldn’t get to without connecting to the internet and going through the whole setup process.

No going back now since I mostly cast from my phone these days since it’s the laziest way for me to watch without ads.