GRR Terrible skiers, excellent eaters.   🏷️@strangeandunusual  

@wryderdie

GRR: Please stay safe this Valentine's Day, Scorpios are the worst 👀💦

One of the most disheartening things in social media spaces is how many people you’ll see repeat things like “remember, vet your sources and don’t share misinformation!” and then scrolling through their feed you also see them go on spree after spree of spreading completely unverified content because they’re terrified of not seeming Aware enough

Twitter is, officially, unironically, dead.

Early today, almost everyone was having trouble viewing anything on Twitter. Eventually Elon tweeted this: viewing limits for all users.

Verified accounts - people who buy Twitter Blue - are limited to reading 6,000 posts per day. Unverified accounts can only read 600, and new unverified accounts only 300. He later updated the numbers to 8,000, 800, and 400 respectively, but the impact is the same. And if you're not logged in, you can't see any tweets at all.

This isn't even interacting with posts, such as liking, replying, retweeting, or quote-tweeting. This is viewing. The one basic interaction required to use any social media site.

Elon Musk is clawing back every basic feature and pushing a pay-to-win scheme onto everyone still on the site. And what do you get if you pay? You get to be in a club filled with the most vile, racist, queerphobic losers on the internet who invest their money into crypto, NFTs, and all sorts of lousy scams. No sensible person is going to pay for that.

Once upon a time, Twitter was a fabulous hub for at-the-moment developments. If there was breaking news somewhere in the world, you could know it within minutes. It gradually became a general hub for people of all walks of life, from artists, activists, politicians, everyday ordinary people.

Now it's just a place where you pay $8 to lick Elon Musk's shoe.

To quote a good friend of mine:

I really appreciate that in your response to the Spotify wrapped post, you didn’t just put, “you are not immune to propaganda”, but actually followed that up with thought-provoking questions that help clarify what that propaganda can look like. That’s really helpful and considerate and I really appreciate how kind and thoughtful your response was. It really helped me recontextualize my experience of and reaction to the misinformation post when it went around. Thank you so much

You're so, so welcome. I'm really glad it helped. If you ever have any follow-up questions or just wanna chat, hit me up

I've fallen for misinformation, propaganda, and conspiratorial thinking in my life. Probably everyone has, to some degree. But I've also been kinda obsessed with the study and analysis of it ever since, so I feel like I'm obligated to try to help people to the degree I can.

I will say, it also "helps" that I have the privilege of not being in anyone's crosshairs and not having a personal connection to the issues, other than the basic moral concerns any decent human being would have. A lot of people don't have that luxury. When people are scared and hurting, it's inhuman to demand that they overcome that and put more energy into fact-checking than do those of us with less pain.

So I guess I'll try to condense some key ideas:

Reblogging ("keep talking about this!") is harmful if it isn't accurate. Inaccuracy contributes to the fog of war, causes agony to people directly involved (they see you on social media: the internet is global!), and discredits the legitimacy of a movement.

Misinformation/disinformation blends truth with lies. Seeing one thing you know to be true next to an unverified statement will make you trust that statement.

Crises make us feel helpless and small. But it is privileging your discomfort over the pain of victims if you shy away from tackling complexity.

Sometimes it feels like a betrayal to reserve a space in yourself for doubt. But disinformation trivializes important issues. If something really matters to you, then you will want it to be accurate.

People will make good-faith inaccuracies. I will. You will. Governments/organizations will. People on the ground will. No one is omniscient. Don't double-down in support of the mistake and don't let one mistake discredit a good source.

People in pain will be duped, lie, or exaggerate. Many are seeking meaning with a greater need than you are. You must find compassion for them.

Our best instincts (justice) and worst instincts (self-righteousness) will be manipulated.

Responsibility for fact-checking falls on those of us whose distress is moral, rather than personal.

Everyone is biased. Humans always care for some people more than others. Find two opposing sources and read both: you'll find the truth somewhere between them.

Truth is a hill worth dying on.

Sorry this is a long post and maybe it's useless but I thought it was important to try

sweet nothings

wc: 2.1k

preview: The rest of the world is so eager to view him like an object, assume that just because he spends his life in the public view, he’s somehow devoid of insecurities. But to you, he’s still the same Harry who cried backstage at Wembley after his voice cracked during a solo. The same shy, innocent boy who vomited backstage after his first show, terrified that he’d messed it all up.

An article criticizing Harry blows up on the internet, and it hits him harder than expected. Luckily, you’re there to help pick up the pieces.

MASTERLIST | READ MY LATEST SERIES

Industry disruptors and soul deconstructers, and smooth-talking hucksters out glad-handing each other

And the voices that implore, "You should be doing more," to you I can admit that I'm just too soft for all of it.

—Sweet Nothing, Taylor Swift

———

The article is released on a Friday afternoon. It's absolutely brutal—rips single every creative project Harry's ever done to shreds and leaves no endeavor unscathed. Every sentence is a biting remark, each paragraph swirled with vile accusations. It starts by criticizing his film roles, the creative direction he took in his third album, then accuses him of extorting his own fans. The author questions not only his artistry but his personhood, digs up unverified claims of rudeness and twists them into a narrative of Harry being an egotistical, ungrateful pop star. Within the hour, almost every major news station has picked the story up. It doesn’t matter how far-fetched it is. The internet takes to the author’s vitriol like wildfire, sharing it across social media platforms and online forums. Everyone wants to be the first to say they always knew something wasn’t quite right about him, that it’s about time someone knocked him off his pedestal.

It’s disgusting in every sense of the word. And it hurts even more because Harry is blissfully unaware. He’s asleep beside you now, the two of you having settled into bed to take a quick nap together three hours earlier, when the internet had yet to point their pitchforks towards him. You know he’s been overextending himself lately, still sleeping off the jet lag from tour but unwilling to slow down his life on account of tiredness. He’s always been like that, so dedicated to his music, because to him, putting less than two-hundred percent into the thing he loves most would be a waste. You can hardly remember the last time he’d slept earlier than two after coming home—even without touring commitments, he’s still found a way to keep himself busy—staying late in the studio and meeting with executives from his record label to review the marketing plan for his next album. He’s always thinking about the future, how he can reinvent himself and make sure he can stay doing what he loves for as long as possible.

It’s why he’d deserved this chance to unwind and relax in the quiet of your home. But now, he’s going to wake up to a rogue journalist completely assassinating his character, when all he’s ever wanted to do is sing and make others happy. The way you see it, it’s not the least bit fair.

You look at Harry and brush his curls away from his face gently so as to not wake him. Your phone is still turned on, the article glaring angrily against your palm as you watch him sleep. He looks so peaceful, his arm curled around your waist and his legs tangled with yours as if he can’t bear to be far away from you even in slumber. You wish everyone else could see him like this: soft and vulnerable, his lips upturned ever-so-slightly like he’s dreaming about something particularly pleasant.

The rest of the world is so eager to view him like an object, assume that just because he spends his life in the public view, he’s somehow devoid of insecurities. But to you, he’s still the same Harry who cried backstage at Wembley after his voice cracked during a solo. The same shy, innocent boy who vomited backstage after his first show, terrified that he’d messed it all up. Ten years down the road and he’s gained confidence, for sure. But when he’s not busy being this glittering, hip-wiggling rockstar who moves like he’s got the whole world in the palm of his hand, he’s just Harry. He still wrings his hands nervously before every performance, burns his tongue on hot tea that’s meant to preserve his voice. You remember what he said to you back in June before his first stadium show: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be someone who doesn’t care about what others think of them. He cares more than the article’s author and the legions of people criticizing his every move online will ever know.

You shuffle forward, closing the gap between your bodies and press a soft kiss into Harry’s forehead. You don’t expect him to stir from it, but it seems he was just about to wake up naturally before you disturbed him, so his eyes slowly open and he smiles when his vision focuses on you. You try to school your expression into something relatively normal. Unfortunately, Harry knows you too well and can immediately tell that something’s off. In any other situation, you’d be impressed by how well he can read you. Even with his mind suspended between alertness and sleep, he knows you’re upset and reaches for your hand in concern.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Harry asks, rubbing circles into the back of your hand. He knows the repetitive motion grounds you when you’re anxious, so he continues to graze your skin with his thumb, willing you to relax.

“H—“ you start to say, but you’re cut off by the sound of Harry’s ringtone. He reaches over you to grab his phone from the nightstand, his other hand still clasped with yours. When he falls back into the mattress, you manage to get a glance at his phone screen. It’s displaying an incoming call from Jeff. Fuck.

Harry accepts the call, still ignorant to the situation. His gaze flickers over your face as the line connects—he's clearly still worried about you.

"Hey, H," Jeff says. You can hear him sigh through the phone, "have you been online recently?"

"Been asleep for the past," Harry pauses to check the time, "three hours, so that would be a no."

"Shit," Jeff says, sounding significantly less collected than he usually does. "Okay. Um, do me a favor and stay off of social media for now. I'll call you when it's all been resolved."

"What?" Harry sits up slightly at the sound of Jeff's voice, running a hand through his hair. "I'm confused. Is everything alright?"

"Listen, it's fine. I've got it all under control, just... don't go on Instagram, or Twitter, or anything."

"Jeff," Harry groans, "don't be cryptic. You're obviously dealing with something that's got to do with me, don't you think I have a right to know what's going on?"

There's silence over line for a bit, Jeff clearly ruminating over whether or not to tell Harry the truth. You chew on your lip worriedly, waiting for his voice to come through again.

"There's an article that’s been published online," Jeff starts, "and it's highly critical of you. It's circulating through social media right now, and we're trying to put a stop to it. I've got a meeting with your label's attorneys in a few minutes, but seriously H, for your own good please do not read it. We'll have it taken down by the end of the day."

"Oh," Harry blinks, clearly caught off-guard. You can't blame him for it. People don't normally wake up from naps and find out half the internet has turned against them. "Alright. That's fine. Um, call me if you need anything. Good luck."

"H, I'm serious, don't—" Jeff begins, but Harry hangs up before he can finish his sentence. He's already sat up fully in bed, back leaning against the headboard as he types away furiously on his phone. You don't try to stop him from Googling the article; he deserves to see what's been written. You just sit up next to him and silently run a hand down his arm, tracing where the fabric of his t-shirt ends and the familiar ink on his skin begins. You reach for him and let him know that he has you to lean on.

"You know what they've written isn't true," you whisper, "you know that." It’s all you can say for now.

Harry doesn't respond to that, his eyes too busy scanning through the article. He spends the next seven minutes reading every word silently, taking each criticism and judgement in. When he’s finished, Harry shuts his phone off with a click and sets it down silently on the bedside table. You avert your eyes from him, afraid that if you look up you might be able to see every morsel of hurt on his face.

In the end, Harry’s the first to break the silence.

“Who approved that?” Is what he says, his voice faltering almost imperceptibly at the end. It’s quiet enough that only someone who knows him as well as you do would be able to notice.

“H,” you respond, splaying your hand across his chest and letting his head fall gently onto your shoulder.

“None of that is real. It’s not a reflection of who you are.” You say that with conviction. He’s got the most beautiful soul, does everything with so much heart. He’s so full of love that at times you worry he might burst from it. It’s completely unfair what he’s been reduced to.

“You can only read shitty things about yourself for so long before you start to believe them,” Harry says brokenly, and his composure gives away then. He takes a trembling breath in and you feel a wetness start to form on the sleeve of your shirt. You don’t have to look at him to know he’s crying.

It’s in moments like these where his façade starts to crumble, and you see him transform back into the boy you once knew, before the whole world knew his name. Spending every day terrified that at any given moment, people wouldn’t want to listen to his voice anymore and the rug would be pulled from under his feet. Fearing that he might wake up one day and have to return to Holmes Chapel, even though he’s always been too big for the small town he grew up in.

“Love,” you say, pressing a hand to his cheek. His skin is flushed and you can see the ghost of a tear falling down the side of his face. “How is anyone meant to believe anything they’ve said is valid, when they don’t know you? I know exactly who you are, and the person they’re talking about in that article is not it.”

Harry sniffles at that, pulling himself closer to you. You see him glance at his phone, so you turn it over facedown and revert your full attention back to him.

“You’re so incredibly special,” you continue, carding your hands soothingly through his hair, “you’ve achieved an immense amount of success in the last ten years. You’ve impacted so many people, used your platform to do so much good. There’s always going to be people who want more from you, who criticize and tell you you’re not doing enough. But you are doing enough, H. Seriously. You’re only human, and it’s not your fault that others expect you to be more than that. And even so, I think you make a pretty exceptional human already. You know how many people walk up to me when I’m alone and ask me to tell you that you’ve changed their lives? There’s so many that I’d lost track of the number about seven years ago.”

Harry opens his mouth to say something in response, but you pat his face gently and give him a smile as if to say, I’m not finished yet.

“And beyond that, who cares about the industry, about what faceless people online have to say about you? At the end of the day, you’re enough. I’m not here for the Harry Styles who fills stadiums or commands attention at movie premieres. I’m here for the Harry who accidentally leaves the coffee pot on for too long because he’s too busy trying to get me to dance with him in the kitchen. For the Harry who keeps movie stubs and pebbles deep inside his pockets because he wants to keep a souvenir to remind him of every little thing we’ve done together. The Harry who’s a huge sentimental sap, who’s got the biggest heart in the world.”

You finish with a sigh, gazing at Harry earnestly and hoping that he can feel the gravity of your words.

“You’re right,” Harry smiles softly, clasping a hand around your wrist, voice slightly raspy still. “I shouldn’t let it get to my head. It’s just hard sometimes, you know? I feel like I might be a little too soft for all of it.”

“I love your softness and vulnerability,” you say, “And getting upset when people are dragging your name through the mud is perfectly normal. I can’t even begin to imagine how overwhelming it is for you. But you’ll always have me right here beside you. And trust me, I’d be going to war for you over Twitter right now if I knew Jeff wouldn’t kill me for doing so.”

Harry laughs at that, loud and open in the way that you love. “My Princess Charming,” he says, wrapping his arms around you in a crushing hug. “Forever prepared to defend my honor.”

True to his word, Jeff and Columbia’s legal team get the article taken down in record time. They say Harry’s allowed to post a response to it, if he wants, but he’s never been one to start fights over the internet so he settles on this instead.

A single picture, posted to his Instagram of your hands, your fingers intertwined like the two of you were built to be extensions of each other. The caption is simple. It reads:

I find myself running home to your sweet nothings

Outside, they’re push and shoving; you’re in the kitchen humming

All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.

He turns the comments off, not wanting to entertain any further commentary. It’s a picture meant for just the two of you, a reminder that all the noise coming from the outside means nothing when you have each other. It’s sweet. It’s nothing. And yet somehow, it’s everything you’ll ever need.

———

reblogs & feedback are highly welcomed and appreciated <3

TAGLIST: @crazygirlinthisworld​ @grapejuice-rry​ @b-reads-things​ @s8tellite @michellekstyles​ @vrittivsanghavi @alienorknight​ @flwrmuse 

THOM HARTMANN: Science Explains Why Republicans Can’t Accept Trump’s Guilt (Sept. 12, 2023)

Scientists discovered a fascinating reason why Republicans can’t accept criticism of Donald Trump. Thom explains.

In the above video, Thom Hartmann refers to a Raw Story column by cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, PhD (shown below):

Here are some excerpts from Azarian's column:

In 2009, a study published in PLOS ONE challenged our understanding of belief systems. Researchers placed participants into the confines of an fMRI scanner and presented them with a mixture of factual and abstract statements. The results were illuminating. Disbelief, it turns out, is cognitively demanding. It requires more mental effort than simply accepting a statement as true. From an evolutionary perspective, this preference for easy belief makes sense; a perpetually skeptical individual questioning every piece of information would struggle to adapt in a fast-paced world. What does all this have to do with Trump supporters? Well, it’s far less cognitively demanding for them to believe anything their leader tells them. Any challenge to what Trump tells them is true takes mental work. This means there is a psychological incentive for Trump loyalists to maintain their loyalty. (I wrote about this phenomenon in a slightly different context in the Daily Beast article "Religious Fundamentalism: A Side Effect of Lazy Brains?") Molding of belief: neuroplasticity at play Now, let's consider the unique predicament faced by individuals who staunchly support Trump and want him to again become president. From the moment Trump began his political career and his social engineering career, his supporters have been exposed to narratives — Trump doesn't lie, Democrats are communists, the media is an enemy of the people — that emphasize loyalty and trust in their political idol. These narratives often steer away from critical examination and instead encourage blind faith. When coupled with the brain's inherent tendency to accept rather than question, it creates an ideal environment for unwavering allegiance. No matter that Trump, time and again, has been revealed to be a serial liar, habitually misrepresenting matters of great consequence, from elections to economics to public health. For example, in the Psychology Today article "Why Evangelicals are Wired to Believe Trump’s Falsehoods," I explain that the children of Christian fundamentalists typically begin to suppress critical thinking at an early age. This is required if one is to accept Biblical stories as literal truth, rather than metaphors for how to live life practically and with purpose. Attributing natural occurrences to mystical causes discourages youth from seeking evidence to back their beliefs. Consequently, the brain structures that support critical thinking and logical reasoning don't fully mature. This paves the way for heightened vulnerability to deceit and manipulative narratives, especially from cunning political figures. Such increased suggestibility arises from a mix of the brain's propensity to accept unverified claims and intense indoctrination. Given the brain's neuroplastic nature, which allows it to shape according to experiences, some religious followers are more predisposed to accept improbable assertions. In other words, our brains are remarkably adaptable and continuously evolving landscapes. For ardent Trump supporters, residing in an environment that prioritizes faith over empirical evidence can reshape the neural circuits within their brains. [color emphasis added]

[edited]

Since the wildfire smoke has been hitting the east coast, I've been thinking about doing a flowchart-style infographic on where to find US hazard information - so many of the comments on the info I posted were like "huh. I was wondering why the sky looked so funny." With the state of the Internet, search engines, and social media today, it really isn't intuitive where you can go to find reliable information on something so vague as "I noticed something a lil funky today," and so many of the platforms and accounts that emergency managers have spent years building up trust and visibility for have disappeared or become unverifiable because of Twitter's meltdown. Best to go to straight to the source when you can, as long as you know where to start.

This would just focus on the federal government, and mainly on immediate warnings and alert information...I'd rather just focus on natural hazards as well since those are the resources I'm familiar with, but that might be too narrow. Any ideas for questions and flowpaths besides what I've sketched out so far are welcome!

Literally the only news article I've seen that compiled the "videos" and the news of the "PIJ rocket" that hit the hospital and said they were unverified.

In the aftermath of a blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of Palestinian patients and refugees in the medical complex, rampant misinformation has once again clogged online information avenues. As has been observed since the outbreak of the conflict last week, instances of misinformation have largely presented themselves in the form of users, either intentionally or inadvertently, sharing old video footage as documentation of current events. Case in point: One viral video purporting to depict the blast on Tuesday — which shows a rocket veering off its intended course and back into the area from which it had been fired — was quickly identified as having been posted on X (formerly Twitter) in 2022.

Another video claiming to depict a rocket failing amid a barrage of launches from the Gaza Strip was identified as footage posted on the Israeli Defense Force’s YouTube channel in August 2022. The official X account for the Israeli government edited one of their tweets, which accused the PIJ of being responsible for the devastation in Al-Ahli Hospital. In its edit, the government removed a video purporting to show the rocket launches from their tweet after social media users pointed out that the timestamp on the clip was inconsistent with the reported time of the hospital strike.

X’s own changes to its verification system, which stripped previously verified reporters whose employment was confirmed through their respective news outlets, also contributed to the barrage of misinformation.

One account, operating under the name Farida Khan, claimed to be a reporter for Al Jazeera. The account posted that they had witnessed the strike themselves, claiming it was a “Hamas Ayyash 250″ Rocket. “It was Hamas misfired Rocket. Al Jazeera is lying. I have video of that Hamas missile landing in the hospital,” the unverified account claimed. Al Jazeera clarified that the account “has no ties to Al Jazeera, its views, or content,” and advised social media users to “exercise caution, [and] verify information prior to publishing.”

By Nachum Kaplan

Hamas correctly identified that antisemitism was only dormant in the West, and that they just needed to wake the sleeping monster. They knew this because there were clear tells, such as the international media’s fixation on Israel, the over-reporting of the country, and that the Pavlovian way the conflict becomes newsworthy only when Israel responds to an attack.Hamas stuck to what has worked throughout history. The blood libel trope was modernized into accusations of genocide and deliberate starvation, while the trope of Jews being responsible for their persecution was updated with the notion that Israel had turned Gaza into an open-air prison.They leveraged their numerical advantage.With more than a billion Muslims globally, Hamas knew it had a huge virtual army it could activate on social media to reach a global audience.Hamas flooded social media with lies to exploit the Repetition Bias, a heuristic (mental shortcut) in which repeated information feels more true than new or unrepeated information. Social media repeated these lies exponentially, aided by extensive use of AI-generated “photographs.”The Palestinians also exploited another numerical advantage, the number of Muslim states, which is 48. This has given them weight in forums such as the United Nations and its various committees and bodies, creating a suited army of bureaucrats with credible titles to tell lies to the international press.Almost comically, Iran has just assumed the presidency of the UN Conference on Disarmament. That is the same Islamic Republic that funds, arms, and trains Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen — and ships arms to Russia to use in its invasion of Ukraine.They controlled the information flow.Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have used traditional authoritarian tactics to control the information flow from areas they govern. Reporters cannot report freely or unfavorably from Palestinian-controlled territories if they want to retain access. Threats of violence keep the few unsympathetic local reporters in check.Exploiting the inability of most media to report from Gaza directly, Hamas has used local Gazan “journalists” to feed lies, distorting images, and fabricated data to the credulous international media. Time and again, the foreign press has swallowed them, including claimed civilian death toll numbers that are demonstrably untrue (and presume every person killed was a civilian).Hamas has only needed the media to report its numbers, knowing that if repeated enough, they be treated as true and that no one will pay attention to the fine print stating they are unverified. Hamas at one point even had the media complaining that Israel was simultaneously not allowing reporters access to Gaza and targeting journalists there.They mastered the 24-hour news cycle.The internet has blurred the traditional lines between print and television news, turning all news media into digital services beholden to the 24-hour news cycle.Hamas has understood that as long as it keeps manufacturing outrages, the news cycle will move on quickly, and they will never be held to account. The Qatar-funded Al Jazeera, which has the veneer of a real news organization, has played a key role in this.They have exploited a ‘post-truth’ world.Hamas recognized that the post-Modernist rot has resonated in much of the West, including across its media and universities. The belief that people cannot only have their own opinions, but their own facts, sounds laughable, but it has become worryingly normal.Political tribes express opinions mainly as identity signals, and tribal loyalty is more important to these people than truth, or even reality. Hamas has understood that this liberates it from any need to have a fact-based narrative.They use simple slogans.“

GRR Nobody I’m more thankful for in 2022 than my spooks 🖤 Nobody I’d rather have had as my lucky kiss at midnight than her.��@strangeandunusual understands me and my impossible ways and loves me in spite of them. I swear I will fill your 2023 with magic. To the moon, to the stars, to the end.  

@wryderdie

GRR posted a photo

Poseidon's revenge

batfam social media:

Bruce has a very boring insta, regularly updated and filled with pictures of galas and fancy dinners. he also has a slightly unhinged twitter where he "drunk" tweets and responds to his children's shenanigans. He also has facebook.

Dick posts workout posts to his tiktok. many of the posts come off as thirst-traps. he also has goofy-hanging-out with his friends posts on his insta. he also has twitter where he says some of the most questionable things you ever seen in your life. He's also old enough to have had myspace.

Jason just has twitter. it's an unverified account. everyone else in the family is verified. his digital footprint is super-light.

Tim posts skate-boarding videos to his insta and tik tok. he also does some of the tik-tok trends, usually with steph. He also does unboxing videos with Dick where they unbox the stuff companies send them and they review the stuff. tim and dick have a reputation for being brutally honest about the products, even having a popular meme created of them saying "you don't need this. don't buy it. it's just pretty landfill". Tim also does gaming videos with Jason on youtube/twitch.

Steph loves posting family fails to her tiktok, like Tim wiping out on her skateboard or jason walking into a street light. She also has a fairly wholesome insta that is her hanging out with her friends. she does little baking vidoes/pics with Jason, videos of her and Dick working out, pics of coffee dates with Cass, re-posts Damian's art, and does goofy videos of her and Tim etc. She got a lot of heat online, especially on twitter, when she dated Tim Drake Wayne so she's fairly careful about Twitter. She has it but doesn't post much, just jumping into the occasional bit of family shenanigans.

Cass has accounts for basically all the social media but doesn't post at all.

Duke works very hard to have a 'normal' instagram, twitter and tik tok presence. He doesn't want anyone to look to closely at his private life and worries not having 'normal' socials will raise flags.

Damian only has insta and twitter. He just posts his art on insta (never pictures of himself or his family/friends) and sometimes comments on twitter when someone's being, in his opinion, very stupid. All in all he doesn't post that much and the general public speculate it might be because Bruce is strict about social media. The batboys also didn't post much when they were his age (due to being busy with Robin) and publicly this supports the strict Bruce theory.

im trying to get into sleeptoken - one of my friends is dragging me into it and i love it - can you just give me like a huge timeline and lore overlook? im looking around your feed, and im SO confused but also SO intrigued !! would love to hear from you :)

Hi! New fans always make me so happy! I’m glad you’ve been shown Sleep Token and you like what you’ve heard so far! I always recommend this video and this article regarding Sleep Token lore, but… yeah, I will take a stab at a complete timeline for you. I’ll be honest: I never was very into the lore of “Sleep” as much as I was curious about the band itself (which is typically why I recommend the two above sources for lore purposes). I know that much of the lore is from fans’ deep analyses of Sleep Token’s lyrics and not anything official from the band or Vessel. Almost everything is fan-made, so there are a lot of differing opinions—anything official or stated by Vessel and the band in interviews I included. If anyone is interested in my take on the lore, I might make a separate post about that.

This ended up becoming a massive post. Take what you think is massive and then double or even triple it. Fun fact: I aggressively fact-checked this and actually learned some new things about the band myself. I have marked any unverifiable statements and opinions in this post with an asterisk. Due to the band’s secrecy, the sentences with an asterisk are either heavily opinion-based or my best guess at what might have happened during a specific time period. Take them with a grain of salt.

Anyway! I have a problem; below the cut, I am making it everybody else’s problem.

In September of 2016, a video was posted to YouTube. The video was a black-and-white depiction, through short clips and flashing images, of what appeared to be a lone masked man, Vessel, performing a ritual by candlelight. The music over the video, a hauntingly beautiful mixture of indie pop and prog metal, was met with heavy praise from commenters. The description had three links to a new band’s social media and a Bandcamp account. Below the links was the following description:

Sleep Token are a masked, anonymous collective of musicians; united by their worship of an ancient deity crudely dubbed “Sleep”, since no modern tongue can properly express it’s name. This being once held great power, bestowing ancient civilisations with the gift of dreams, and the curse of nightmares. Even today, though faded from prominence, ‘Sleep’ yet lurks in the subconscious minds of man, woman, and child alike. Fragments of beauty, horror, anguish, pain, happiness, joy, anger, disgust, and fear coalesce to create expansive, emotionally textured music that simultaneously embodies the darkest, and the brightest abstract thoughts. He has seen them. He has felt them. He is everywhere. Sleep Token, led by the perpetually tormented, supremely talented Vessel, creates music that brings to the fore our most submerged thoughts and feelings, coaxing them from the desolate, terrifying caves of our subconscious mind.

The band officially formed in April 2016 (The YouTube channel, for reference, was created on April 14, 2016), but things had already been in the works for nearly a year before the uploaded Thread the Needle music video. In July 2015, Vessel came into contact with a talent scout/independent project manager by the name of Tom (I won’t provide his full name since Googling him brings up biased, embellished, and most likely false information about the band and its members).* In 2015, Vessel was already a skilled, trained, and experienced musician with the ability to play several instruments, including the piano, guitar, and bass, and the knowledge to compose and produce his own music. That being the case, Tom introduced Vessel to a drummer, dubbed II, as well as a skilled producer by the name of George Lever.*

On November 10, 2016, a second video was posted to Sleep Token’s YouTube channel, a music video for the masked collective’s second release, Fields of Elation. Much like Thread the Needle, Fields of Elation was met with enthusiasm and praise by Sleep Token’s growing fanbase.

Finally, on December 2, 2016, Sleep Token independently released their first EP, aptly titled “One”, on their Bandcamp page. The EP included Thread the Needle, Fields of Elation, and a new song: When the Bough Breaks. Accompanying the three songs, the band also included piano renditions of all three songs, performed solely by Vessel.

On the last day of February 2017, Sleep Token posted another video to their YouTube channel, a sombre piano cover of Outkast’s Hey Ya. Following the release of “One” and the cover of Hey Ya, Tom, now acting as Sleep Token’s manager, got the band signed to a label called Basick Records.* By May 2017, the band had another three-song EP, dubbed “Two”, already written and set to release that summer. This was announced via the release of Sleep Token’s third music video, Calcutta. By this time, Sleep Token’s manager had gotten a stand-in bassist and guitarist, dubbed III and IV, respectively, for the band’s first live Ritual. This was mentioned at the end of Sleep Token’s first-ever published interview with Louder. You can read it and the accompanying short article here.

On June 17, 2017, less than one month after the release of the Calcutta music video, Sleep Token took the stage for their first Ritual at The Black Heart in London. The band played seven songs live, including the three songs from “One”, Calcutta, two unreleased songs, Nazareth and Jericho from their upcoming EP “Two”, and their cover of Hey Ya. Very little is known about this Ritual. Most online sources seem to not know of its existence at all. The only concrete facts known about Ritual I are that doors opened at 7 pm, it was 18+, and tickets were £8.00 each. It is unclear how many people attended the Ritual; no footage or pictures have surfaced from that evening.

Sleep Token’s second and third rituals were performed in London in October and November 2017. The band opened for Motorpsycho and Perturbator, respectively. Because they were openers, any visual or audio documentation is nearly non-existent, but the band did appear in a few online articles reviewing the concerts.

In this article, author Roger Trenwith wrote the following about Sleep Token’s Ritual II:

“The support act Sleep Token was an odd mix of metal and pure pop, played by a band in horror masks and cloaks. Musically they were somewhat formulaic, in the tried and trusted quiet-loud-quiet-F’KIN LOUD nature of most of the songs, and accompanying theatrics by rote. When they diverted from the formula, they showed some promise, mostly down to the singer, whose extraordinary range made them just about bearable.”

Ritual III was met with similar criticism. This article, written by a much more helpful and open-minded Chris Keith-Wright, stated the following*:

“Remarkably, by the time Sleep Token take to the stage to start the evening off, there’s a very respectable amount of people front and centre to check them out. Perhaps this is due to the up-swell of media attention on the band since their signing to Basick Records and the release of their second EP, cleverly titled Two, that landed this summer. [...] The conceit surrounding the group is that the band are representatives of an ancient deity known only as “Sleep”, and that their frontman is an appointed-one dubbed ‘Vessel’. Whatever one makes of that, the fact is that Sleep Token’s Vessel has a most extraordinary set of pipes. [...] With a lighting show in time with their music and Vessel’s strong, soulful melodic voice featuring some impressive falsetto, they quickly engaged the audience. With the amount of vocal harmonies and extra musical depth that came over the sound system, I have to admit that it felt throughout their set that they were missing a band member, someone who could control and wield the keyboards, samples and electronics in a live setting. Donned with the obligatory cloaks the band produce a strong performance with their points of difference, clearly thought out prior to their live debut only a few weeks before. Their odd masks obscure their faces and during the quiet, vocal-led passages the guitar and bass players stood stock still. It’s simple, understated, but effective, producing quite the spectacle. Sleep Token’s transition between soulful, repetitive vocal melodies and brutal Meshuggah-esque riffery, and after a few songs this formula felt well-trodden. This is unfortunate as on record these transitions between the two disparate styles are far better executed – live there was far too much juxtaposition. Despite this, I and the majority of the growing crowd were transfixed by their performance.”

In March 2018, Sleep Token opened for two Holding Absence/Loathe shows, two bands with which Vessel would later collaborate. By April 2018, Sleep Token had parted ways with their manager and the Basick Records label.* It is unclear if both of these departures were related or amicable. As a once again independent artist, Sleep Token released the single, Jaws, on June 3, 2018, using footage filmed for their Nazareth music video that their previous label did not utilise. Through the spring and summer of 2018, Sleep Token performed their rituals at UK music festivals, further growing their fanbase.

In August of 2018, Vessel gave his second interview to Kerrang! UK. Interestingly, the article refers to the frontman not as Vessel but simply as Him. The main focus is on Sleep Token’s music and the single Jaws, released two months prior. A transcribed version of the article can be found in my Google Drive

Following these successful rituals and the Jaws interview, the band released another single, The Way That You Were, on October 8, 2018, along with its music video on YouTube.

This release preceded the last Ritual the band would perform that year. On October 11, 2018, Ritual XI was held at St Pancras Old Church in London, dubbed the band’s Inaugural Headline Ritual. It’s rumoured that all 120 tickets to the Ritual sold out in seconds. The band performed ten songs in total, including the live debut of the song Blood Sport. It is also worth noting that this is the first ritual Sleep Token performed with an opener being a band called Exploring Birdsong, which would become a staple opener for later ritual dates. Several members of Exploring Birdsong would also later become touring members of Sleep Token as the Choir.

At an unknown date in 2019, Sleep Token signed with a new label, Spinefarm Records. Together, the band and label began releasing music from Sleep Token’s first full-length album, “Sundowning.” Starting with The Night Does Not Belong to God on June 20, 2019, the band methodically released a new song bi-weekly at sundown BST until the record’s full release on November 21, 2019.

Interestingly, Sleep Token’s biography on Spinefarm differs from what the band had previously had in the description of their first two music videos. It is as follows:

Beneath the Sleep Token banner, lies the unique, broad-based vision of one individual – anonymous, silent, masked, armed with a staggering vocal range, a deft touch on the keyboards, plus a live approach that is never less than fully engaged.

While all factual statements to Vessel’s capabilities and talents, it appears that the band and their new label had retconned the lore surrounding them, granting the creation credits solely to Vessel himself. This is further evident by the Kerrang! Interview Vessel had previously given, which was removed from the internet, as well as the band’s Facebook page getting scrubbed of all posts prior to April 2019. Replacing them is a video of Vessel sitting at a piano and removing his mask, reminiscent of what would later happen at The Room Below Ritual in 2022.

Sleep Token would return to the stage on July 2, 2019. During this Ritual, Sleep Token opened for Amaranth and headliner Babymetal. This Ritual is notable because two key stage members, the guitarist IV and the Keyboardist, were replaced. The new guitarist took on the same moniker of IV, and the Keyboardist was replaced with three women from Exploring Birdsong, forming the Choir (or, as fans have dubbed them, the Vesselettes). The Choir was not yet a ritual staple, and there were several festivals and rituals where they did not accompany the band on stage, such as Sleep Token’s first US tour from November 7 to December 15, supporting Issues on the Beautiful Oblivion tour. The replacement for IV, however, did accompany Sleep Token on this tour.

With the release of “Sundowning,” Sleep Token once again gave an interview to Kerrang! UK to accompany an article reviewing the album. The article can be found online here, but no longer has the accompanying interview section. A photo of the original magazine review + interview, and a transcription can be found in my Google Drive.

Returning to the UK, Sleep Token performed several more rituals in late January 2020. Due to COVID-19 and subsequent lockdowns, they did not conduct another ritual that year. Nearly one year after the release of Sundowning, the band released a deluxe version, including new covers of Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Billie Eilish’s When The Party’s Over, a piano version of Blood Sport, and a new original song titled Shelter.

Sleep Token would not perform another Ritual until the Download Pilot festival on June 18, 2021. Despite being Sleep Token’s first Ritual in over a year, this festival also had IV replaced again by another guitarist donning the same moniker. The Choir also returned to the stage with Sleep Token, completing the lineup that we know today. This festival was the same day that Sleep Token dropped their new single from their upcoming second album, Alkaline, along with a music video on YouTube.

Another reason the Download Pilot ritual was significant is that it was the first time a spoken message had been given to the attendees of a Sleep Token ritual, not by a band member but by a prerecorded, AI-generated voice. The following text was the message:

Let’s not deceive ourselves There is a reason we are here It follows us wherever we go We were in love We are in love It is what floats above us as we try to sleep It is what stands beside us as we gaze into nothingness It is drowning us It is eating us alive A million outstretched arms in complete darkness They will reach forever Remind me We’re both dying to find out what happens when we die We’re both scared of being We’re both stolen pieces of each other We’re both exploring our own frontiers of grief We’re both just strangers We’re both just particles We’re both so lost in what it means to be lost We’re both a house that remained unoccupied for too long Let’s not deceive ourselves.

Sleep Token released another music video for their upcoming album’s second single, The Love You Want, on August 6, 2021. Sleep Token played the same spoken message before taking the stage at the 2021 Heavy Music Awards on September 2, 2021. On stage, they performed several staple songs from “Sundowning” along with new singles Alkaline and The Love You Want, with the latter including the same dancers from the music video.

Two weeks later, on September 17, 2021, Sleep Token released their third and final single from their upcoming album, Fall For Me. Unlike the previous music videos for the band, this video focused on a single man, whom keen-eyed fans had identified as Vessel, though he was maskless, paintless, and in street clothing. Over the video, words will flash across the screen. When strung together, they give the following message:

The truth is I am due a harsh lesson In truth itself and how bitter it can be  Will you teach me? The truth is, I am ugly, I am inadequate, I am lost, I am no god The truth is, I want to want to live And so do you I just can’t do this any longer I am afraid Are you afraid? I want to understand what it is to let go So for now let me serve as a living drama of your pain If we are to be submerged let us be submerged  Together

One week later, On September 24, 2021, Sleep Token released their second full-length album with Spinefarm Records, titled “This Place Will Become Your Tomb.” This album was the first to find a spot on the UK music charts, reaching #39 for UK Albums.

That following November, Sleep Token had their first multi-date headline tour supporting their second album. They toured with another of their staple openers, AA Williams, and played eight rituals in total throughout the UK.

On November 26, 2021, an instrumental version of “This Place Will Become Your Tomb” was released, stripping all songs of Vessel’s vocals, except for Missing Limbs, which was not included. Surprising fans, just over one month later, on January 2, 2022, Sleep Token released a cover of Loathe’s song Is It Really You? The cover is listed as a collaboration between both bands but is simply (though still beautiful and enrapturing) Vessel singing alongside a piano rendition of the original song.* A year later later, the vocalist of Holding Absence, Lucas Woodland, would also announce that his band had collaborated with Vessel on an unreleased song on his Twitter.

This unofficial announcement accompanies another that was made in March of 2019 by Lucas, who stated in an interview that Vessel assisted Holding Absence with playing the piano in the song Purge.

On March 30, 2022, Sleep Token released an instrumental version of their first album, Sundowning. Nearly a month later, on April 29, 2022, Sleep Token, or rather Vessel and the Choir, performed an intimate ritual at the Lafayette in London. The Ritual was dubbed “From the Room Below.” This performance is one of the most significant rituals for two reasons. Vessel sang and played guitar for the first several songs, then removed his mask and played the rest of the set while sitting at a piano with his back to the audience. The second reason is that Vessel, once again, played an AI-generated message to the crowd of 600 people while he openly sobbed on the piano bench. His full message to the audience was this:

We are here to silently connect. To project ourselves onto one another. We are here to remember. We are here to forget. We are here to worship. Some time ago, I was given a message. It was a message that originated from one of you. Someone possessed by a strong desire to tell me something. The message read very simply: You saved me. I have thought about this message a great deal since. It left me with a feeling that I have somehow been mistaken for someone else. I did not save anyone. I do not believe I have the capacity to save anyone. All I have ever given anyone was a small window into the emotional waiting room of my mind. I do so whilst doing everything in my power to minimise my own vulnerability. In this way, I am selfish. I chose not to give what others can, and yet I am the benefactor of this thankful praise. I experience a great deal of pain in my life. However, I do not believe I have suffered as you have suffered. Perhaps that is another reason why we are here. At the very least, we have all suffered. I would also like to take this chance to tell you something. To love oneself is not the easy task we are sometimes told it is. We are all limited by something. We are all guilty of something. My own path towards a place of greater self-acceptance is paved with the art that I create. It is a path that I continue to stumble down at the expense of everything else. I am nothing without this music. I am nothing without this mask. So, in this sense, the message I received was true, but only in an inverse sense. The truth is I did not save anybody. You saved me.

After this first Ritual of 2022, Sleep Token had a busy year of touring, performing rituals in the UK, for the first time in Australia, and returning to the United States. In all, fifty-four rituals were performed, making 2022 Sleep Token’s busiest year— until 2023.

On January 4, 2023, Sleep Token dropped a new YouTube video, a visualiser for a new song, Chokehold, from their upcoming third studio album, “Take Me Back to Eden.” One day later, on January 5, Sleep Token posted another visualiser to YouTube, this time for the song The Summoning. This song is specifically responsible for Sleep Token’s sudden skyrocketing into the spotlight of modern music. To date (late November 2023), the visualiser has over 13 million views on YouTube, and the song has over 80 million streams on Spotify.

Around the same time as Chokehold and The Summoning were released, Sleep Token also added new merchandise to their store. Among the new “Take Me Back to Eden” themed shirts and pullovers was a crewneck sweater with a poem written in runes. The poem read as follows:

I am hunting something, and in turn, that same thing is hunting me. The beholder, the void beyond. I am the line between. I am the teeth of God.

Sleep Token released six singles for their third studio album: Granite on January 19, Aqua Regia on January 20, Vore on February 15, and DYWTYLM on April 19. “Take Me Back to Eden” was released on May 19. Dubbed the end to a trilogy, Sleep Token’s third album reached a peak point of #3 for UK Albums and #16 for the US Billboard 200. With this success, Sleep Token and Vessel were featured on several magazine covers, but the accompanying articles lacked an interview by the band or their servants.

Sleep Token spent the time between single releases touring Europe, the UK, and Australia. In September of 2023, the band returned to the US, for the first time with the Choir, for a headline tour, using AA Williams as their opener. At every date on this headline tour, a series of interludes were played between songs. All four interludes are below.

Interlude I Mask: They think you fake it Vessel: What do you mean? Mask: When you cry on stage, they don’t think it’s real. Vessel: That’s a reasonable assumption. Mask: Do you fake it? Vessel: No, I don’t. But it is something I do consistently, so if I was a member of the audience, I would probably assume that it wasn’t real. Mask: Do you ever see them crying? Vessel: No, I can only ever see them smiling. That’s good. I want them to smile. Mask: Do you think they want you to cry? Do you think they like it? Vessel: Not as such; I think they just want to know that I am feeling something, feeling what they are feeling, perhaps. Mask: Do you think that this amount of crying is healthy for you? Vessel: I don’t know. But at least I feel something; if I don’t feel anything, then why would I even do this?

Interlude II Mask: Why am I here? What is my purpose in all of this? Vessel: Your purpose is twofold. You protect me from them, and you also protect them from me. Mask: How is it that I serve to protect anyone from anything? That makes no sense. Vessel: In order for all of this to work, there has to be a certain boundary in place. They need to be able to project themselves onto this without anyone else’s identity getting in the way. In turn, I need to be able to show my true self to them in a way that does not compromise their ability to connect. Mask: So that’s what I am? A boundary?  Vessel: Yes. Mask: I don’t believe you. I believe there is more to it than that. I believe you are afraid of something.  Vessel: We are all afraid of something, are we not?  Mask: What is it you are so afraid they will see? Vessel: That I am exactly like everyone else.

Interlude III Mask: Are you afraid of me? Vessel: Sometimes. Mask: Why? Vessel: I think I am afraid of becoming you. Mask: What does that even mean? Vessel: My life is becoming gradually consumed by you. Before long, all that I am will be contained within you. Then, one day, when I no longer wish to wear you, there will be nothing else left. Mask: It seems you have forgotten who you are. Before you had me, you were nothing. All of this artifice, all this pathetic conjecture about your identity, it is nothing but a manifestation of how short-sighted and solipsistic you have become. I lifted you from misery and obscurity. You would be better to become me. You are nothing without me. You always were nothing without me.

Interlude IV Vessel: You. Are. Wrong. In the end, my fractured sense of self was only another piece of fuel for the fire that burns in the eyes of these people before us. They, too, are pained. They, too, do not know who they truly are. They are each stood alone on a stage of their own. And yet, they are here. United by that sense of never truly belonging. They see something beyond their own bleak horizons. And they reach for it. Together. So let us join now. To reflect their joy and to serve as a conduit for their anguish. To swallow their fear.

Though only one month remains in 2023, Sleep Token still has a set of rituals to complete in Germany, as well as their largest venue as a headliner: OVO Wembley Arena, with a staggering 12,500 capacity—tickets sold out in ten minutes when they went on sale earlier this year in June. With the band’s continuous and foreboding statement of “nothing lasts forever,” many fans worried that this would be the last we ever saw of Sleep Token, with everything starting from “One” and culminating to a peak with “Take Me Back to Eden,” only to evaporate into nothing come the new year. Fortunately, several 2024 tour dates have already been announced for Sleep Token, including a tour in Australia where the band will be supporting Bring Me the Horizon and a festival date for the USA in April. Though all we can do is speculate what may come next for Sleep Token, one thing is for certain: This is only the beginning for our favourite band.

News Literacy 101

So after seeing this (great) post and the reactions to it, it's come to my attention that many people on this site weren't taught basic news literacy—and that is NOT your fault. I don't know about other countries, but I do know it's not something we teach widely in the States. Frankly, the people in charge of our education have a vested interest in us being gullible. But that's a whole other post, I guess.

The point is... While I don't want to derail OP's post, I do want to talk about news literacy, how to spot trustworthy information, and why sharing doom-filled posts isn't as helpful as you might think. So, I want to give you a quick question to ask yourself:

Does it pass the SMELL Test?

Source: Where is the information coming from? Is it from a credible and reliable source, like a reputable news provider*?

Motives: Why is this information being presented the way it is? Are they trying to inform or persuade you? Do they use emotionally-charged words designed to outrage, shame, guilt, or scare you?

Evidence: How has the information been verified? Has it been verified? Can it be verified? Do they provide links to credible sources?

Logic: Does the information make logical sense? Look for over-generalizations, flawed comparisons (especially correlation vs causation), and over-the-top accusations.

Left Out: What have they left out? Information left out could change the context. Do you have more questions than answers?

* This gets complicated when we're talking about Palestine due to the fact that mainstream media is spreading Israeli propaganda, but there are MANY journalists on the ground and civilians sharing their experiences—this is a time where social media can actually help spread truth. Prioritize posts from these sources (or that at least link to these sources), rather than unverified text posts... especially if those text posts have no calls to action or resources.

Beware of Manipulation

Some posts are designed to manipulate feelings for likes, shares, or to spread misinformation. They also might fall into performative activism, where someone uses a social platform to shame, scold, or scare others while taking no real action to make change.

While it might feel like sharing these posts raises awareness, it often ends up spreading feelings of despair, which can discourage meaningful action. It even makes people more susceptible to conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Young people are once again talking about not voting because "there's no point," "the system is rigged," etc. after doom posts about the 2024 Republican platform started going around on this site. People are catastrophizing about AI, derailing realistic conversations instead of encouraging people to take action by demanding regulation. People are scrolling and sharing emotionally-charged posts about Palestine, then not participating in boycotts or emailing their representatives, or taking other meaningful actions.

TLDR; if a post doesn't have a reliable, verifiable source, has a scolding or hopeless message, makes sweeping accusations or generalizations, and/or has no suggestions for action, think twice before reblogging it. It may do more harm than good.

For more resources on news literacy, check out:

Center for News Literacy

The News Literacy Project

and Penn State's news literacy education.

Once again I am Posting to give you all a friendly reminder that most popular Covid-19 posts on this site contain some level of misinfo. Common types of misinfo include:

"heard from a friend of a friend" medical advice, including "twitter thread of things a nurse told me" or "opinion of a random unverified doctor on social media"-- NEVER follow this type of health advice without checking with proper sources first

anecdotal data provided as fact

misunderstandings or misrepresentations of what disease agencies like the CDC are doing, should be doing, or what it would even be possible for them to do

assigning numbers and statistics to things OP just made up. this ranges from saying something like "only 2% of people mask" to mean "anecdotally i see only a very small number of people masking in my community"* but the actual number is misleading to seem to seem like a real statistic.... leading all the way to people just making numbers up

overly dramatic language**

assigning moral values to things which have no moral weight (e.g., "I haven't gotten covid because I'm a good person who....")

misrepresenting the conclusions of current research. this one is tricky because you'd think linking a study in a high-tier medical journal would be a good source, but I frequently see the following mistakes: overly definitive language, including asserting causation when causation has not been established, or claiming a single study definitively has definitely proven something; not understanding appropriate extrapolations from a study's design (something that happens to cell in a petri dish is NOT definitive of what happens in a body); incorrect biological conclusions/assumptions, or else oversimplification that loses nuance; cherrypicking studies. Remember that Covid-19 is still a very new disease and the research is still evolving. A study that seems extremely important in one year might turn out to be bunk later, not because the study was poorly designed, but because we were missing key info. There is a lot we simply do not know and cannot know and we need to careful of our language when reporting on it.

just straight up made-up facts

Please keep this in mind if you choose to interact with a covid-19 post. Remember to click through on any sources to verify them, to be wary of a lack of verifiable information, and that a post making you feel overly emotional is a sign to double-check the facts and message.

*Clarification: assigning an estimated number to things you see is an innocent rhetorical device in terms of informal communication, which is what tumblr is for. I say things like this in casual conversation too. It only becomes an issue when whatever post is mass reblogged. I'm not saying don't post like this..... I'm saying know to recognize this in things you choose to interact with.

**Again, emotive language is fine for blogging. It's a natural part of human communication, and I do it too. I'm not criticizing that. I'm warning you to be aware of it as a potentially misleading rhetorical device before you hit reblog.