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#the internet is a public space but the things on it are not all public property

antimony-medusa · 1 year

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Okay so inspired by nothing in particular (it's inspired by reading the notes on the ace swag final poll, fun stuff in there), I have been thinking about being Cringe. Cause like, you enter a fandom, and usually, you find out shortly that somebody else hates that fandom. There is no fandom niche enough that it's not Weird to somebody, and there's no fandom mainstream enough that it's not Annoying to somebody else. And given the fact that some people do hatred recreationally, there's often going to be somebody mad enough about your fandom that they're going to go on diatribes about how your fandom is bad and actually harmful and destroying the fabric of civilization, etc. They're gonna pull out anything negative and blow it up until it's the size of the skyline and attack you for liking this negative thing.

Fun times, we've all seen it.

And the thing is, there's an impulse to have this happen and immediately find somebody else to point to and say, yeah, well, I might be weird, but at least I'm not THAT guy. I might read YA, but at least I'm not a Furry— those guys are sexual deviants! I might be into actual play podcasts, but at least I'm not into mcyt— those guys are all harmful and my guy is fine. I might be into danmei, but at least I'm not into bandom— rpf is so gross. I might be a furry, but at least I'm not into mainstream romance novels— senseless drivel aimed at middle class white women. Y'know. Immediately find someone to punch down on.

And boy do I understand why you want to do that, when people are pointing at you, but I don't actually think that it's helpful.

Cause like, every fandom has a logical train of thought and reasonable human impulses behind it. You might not share those impulses— I'm not a furry I don't think, I don't really get true crime— but that doesn't mean I can't have it explained to me by a very patient person in in the writer's workshop common room and go "oh, yeah, kinda pretending to be an animal, but you're gay about it, yeah, makes sense", or "oh yeah, morbid curiosity from the safety of your headphones, it's like a horror movie but real" and nod. Like there isn't a fandom or group out there that doesn't look weird from the outside, and there isn't a fandom or group that can't be explained if someone has thought about the human psyche enough.

And that isn't to say that there isn't sometimes salient critiques for what fandoms are doing or not doing— to grab the two examples above, I have heard people talking about issues with true crime reinforcing the current fucked up justice system, or bigotry at furry cons. But a) most of the time, there is already somebody inside that community that's fighting against those issues, and you just threw them under the bus with the problem they're trying to fix b) you don't usually know the nuances of the actual conversation and problems, you saw a couple callout posts. You saying "Yeah I'm a board game nerd but at least I don't play competitive trading card cames, those guys are doing nothing but feeding the capitalist machine" is not usually helpful towards fixing the ctg scene. It's just a cheap way to score points.

Like, I assure you that the YA scene is aware of the calcification of the genre into a tighter and tighter romantic form and their dependence on going big on tik-tok to sell enough to keep publishing. They know.

You specifically saying that your fandom is better cause it's not [problems you heard about other fandom having] is not actually going to make the person who's hating on you stop hating. They already decided that you're the person they're better than and that they're punching down on, you passing the punching down on to another fandom just makes more people sad on the internet, and potentially starts yet another chain of someone punching down at someone else. The wheel grinds on, everybody gets punched.

I guess this is just kinda turning into a "why hate on the internet, what good does that do" post, which is broader than I meant it to be. But like, there's a difference between thoughtful critique of problems (complicated to do fairly but very necessary) and finding someone new to curbstomp to make yourself feel better/morally superior (look, I'm writing this on a mcyt blog, we've all seen this happen, it does not increase the joy in the world).

Like in MCYT, we all decide to punch down on [other server we hate], or RPF, or people who write kidfic, or people who write e-rated fic/art, or people doing the popular trope of the moment, and sure, it lets you feel morally superior for the moment, at the cost of slapping the guy next to you. Haven't we had enough slapping the guy next to you? There but for the grace of god (got a fun idea/watched the wrong stream/ended up in the wrong brainstorming circle/got fixated on the wrong funny guy) goes I. You're not better than another group just because you saw a couple more callout posts (usually from people inside the community trying to fix things) about them.

We are all Cringe. There is nobody who's not Cringe. Don't say that you're not Cringe because someone else is more Cringe. Stop that.

#discourse #This is another thing where the public/private rule applies too I think #cause social media is public and what you do there is governed by different politeness rules #walking into your friend's dms and saying GOD I AM SO ANNOYED BY [other fandom] is a normal human impulse #posting that where other people can see that is potentially much more like shouting in the face of a random person #idk this is potentially something where me having a thousand followers is warping the perspective #cause I try to be really aware of the fact that who knows what people who see my posts are into #there's nobody I can throw under the bus and not have them see it #if you have eight followers all of which you know #you're much more effectively in a private space #idk #boy reading the tags on that ace swag poll was kinda a Oh Yeah They Really Hate Us moment #I forgot that cause I was just happy over here #but boy are we still an internet's favoured punching bag #and I just think making an effort to not continue to punching bag people might be good #fandom meta

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hedgehogofspades · 1 year

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Haha, no dude, it's uuuuuuuh, totally normal to treat people's personal creations like a corporate franchise, nah nah, it's not even a little weird that the only way you interact with fandom is by mindlessly consuming content and reposting other people's work, I'm sure it's totally fine to just disregard the creator's wishes as long as you get to have your 2 minutes of fun with "your" new blorbos before your criminally short attention span moves onto the next thing for you to mindlessly consume, yeah, haha, I'm sure framing the creator's struggle to keep control of their work as a threat to your future ability to continue to consume content isn't totally self-centered or tone-deaf. No yeah man, haha, totally normal

#Can you tell that I'm extremely mad at the state of things?#I don't know who all is following Clown's struggles with W/elcome H/ome #but I'm extremely upset on his behalf because so many people are treating his passion project so mindlessly #And like fuck man he's struggling with this new found popularity and so many people just rushed to see his work as a product to swallow up #And it's mind-numbingly horrible to me that so many people can't see Clown as a person #This isn't anything new there have always been these mindless content consumers in internet spaces #but damn it's so bad now because content consumption has just become so easy and people don't really interact with art like they used to #Like it's so disappointing for me to see how thoughtlessly people have disregarded Clown's rules about his work #Like fuck have y'all see how fast people made public merchandise of his work??? It makes me sick to my stomach #I was already following Clown's work before Welcome Home blew up and I really feel for him right now #Sorry for the whole post written in the tags lol

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year

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And so it makes sense that these are now the places where fascism grows; that’s what these places were designed for. The suburbs were invented as a reactionary tool against the women’s liberation and civil rights movements. The US government, in concert with banks, landowners, and home builders, created a way to try and stop all that, by separating people into single homes, removing public spaces, and ensuring that every neighborhood was segregated via redlining. The suburbs would keep white women at home, and would keep white men at work to afford that home. These were explicit goals of the designers: “No man who owns his house and lot can be a Communist,” said the creator of Levittown, the model suburb. “He has too much to do.” The reason Target has become the locus of today’s particular right-wing backlash is the same reason countless viral TikToks attempt to convince women that they’re at risk of being kidnapped every time they’re in a parking lot. It’s the reason why true crime is one of the most popular podcast genres in America, and why many refuse to travel without a gun by their side and shoot people if they set foot on their driveway.

[...]

It is of course true that these mass hysterias are part of an organized right-wing movement that is attacking human rights across the country—through legislation banning abortion, gender-affirming care, and books, and making it illegal for educators to teach American history accurately. But the shape this movement has taken is not coincidental; it is in fact the product of the unique shape of public life in America, or lack thereof. Suburbanites do not have town squares in which to protest. They do not have streets to march down. Target has become the closest thing many have to a public forum. We often hear that urban areas are more liberal and suburban ones more conservative, and we’re often told that this is because of race. That may be partly true, though cities are whiter than ever and suburbs more diverse than ever. Instead, it may be that suburbanism itself, as an ideology, breeds reactionary thinking and turns Americans into people constantly scared of a Big Bad Other. The suburban doctrine dictates that public space be limited, and conflict-free where it exists; that private space serve only as a place of commodity exchange; that surveillance, hyper-individualism, and constant vigilance are good and normal and keep people safe. It is an ideology that extends beyond the suburbs; it infects everything. Even cities, as Sarah Schulman writes in The Gentrification of the Mind, have become places where people expect convenience and calmness over culture and community. What is a life of living in a surveilled and amenity-filled high-rise and ordering all your food and objects from the Internet to your door if not a suburban life? To make matters worse, the people who have adopted this mindset do not see it as an ideology, but as the normal and right state of the world; they, as Schulman writes, “look in the mirror and think it’s a window.” So when anything, even a gay T-shirt, disrupts their view, they become scared.

#lgbt #fascism #usa #suburbia

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foone · 1 year

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Look if there's one thing, just one thing, that I wish everyone understood about archiving, it's this:

We can always decide later that we don't need something we archived.

Like, if we archive a website that's full of THE WORST STUFF, like it turns out it's borderline illegal bot-made spam art, we can delete it. Gone.

We can also chose not to curate. You can make a list of the 100 Best Fanfic and just quietly not link to or mention the 20,000 RPFs of bigoted youtubers eating each other. No problem!

We can also make things not publicly available. This happens surprisingly often: like, sometimes there'll be a YouTube channel of alt-right bigotry that gets taken down by YouTube, but someone gives a copy to the internet archive, and they don't make it publicly available. Because it might be useful for researchers, and eventually historians, it's kept. But putting it online for everyone to see? That's just be propaganda for their bigotry. So it's hidden, for now. You can ask to see it, but you need a reason.

And we can say all these things, we can chose to delete it later, we can not curate it, we can hide it from public view... But we only have these options BECAUSE we archived it.

If we didn't archive it, we have no options. It is gone. I'm focusing on the negative here, but think about the positive side:

What if it turns out something we thought was junk turns out to be amazing new art?

What if something we thought of as pointless and not worth curating turns out to be influential?

What if something turns out to be of vital historical importance, the key that is used to solve a great mystery, the Rosetta stone for an era?

All of those things are great... If we archived it when we could.

Because this is an asymmetric problem:

If we archived it and it turns out it's not useful, we can delete.

If we didn't archive it and it turns out it is useful, OOPS!

You can't unlose something that's been lost. It's gone. This is a one way trip, it's already fallen off the cliff. Your only hope is that you're wrong about it being lost, and there is actually still a copy somewhere. If it's truly lost, your only option is to build a time machine.

And this has happened! There are things lost, so many of them that we know of, and many more we don't know of. There are BOOKS OF THE BIBLE referenced in the canon that simply do not exist anymore. Like, Paul says to go read his letter to the Laodiceans, and what did that letter say? We don't know. It's gone.

The most celebrated playwright in the English tradition has plays that are just gone. You want to perform or watch Love's Labours Won? TOO FUCKING BAD.

Want to watch Lon Cheyney's London After Midnight, a mystery-horror silent film from 1927? TOO BAD. The MGM vault burnt down in 1965 and the last known copy went up in smoke.

If something still exists, if it still is kept somewhere, there is always an opportunity to decide if it's worthy of being remembered. It can still be recognized for its merits, for its impact, for its importance, or just what it says about the time and culture and people who made it, and what they believed and thought and did. It can still be a useful part of history, even if we decide it's a horrible thing, a bigoted mess, a terrible piece of art. We have the opportunity to do all that.

If it's lost... We are out of options. All we can do is research it from how it affected other things. There's a lot of great books and plays and films and shows that we only know of because other contemporary sources talked about them so much. We're trying to figure out what it was and what it did, from tracing the shadow it cast on the rest of culture.

This is why archivists get anxious whenever people say "this thing is bad and should not be preserved". Because, yeah, maybe they're right. Maybe we'll look back and decide "yeah, that is worthless and we shouldn't waste the hard drive or warehouse space on it".

But if they're wrong, and we listen to them, and don't archive... We don't get a second chance at this. And archivists have been bitten too many times by talk of "we don't need copies, the original studio has the masters!" (it burnt down), or "this isn't worth preserving, it's just some damn silly fad" (the fad turned out to be the first steps of a cultural revolution), or "this media is degenerate/illegal/immoral" (it turns out those saying that were bigots and history doesn't agree with their assessment).

So we archive what we can. We can always decide later if it doesn't need preserving. And being a responsible archivist often means preserving things but not making them publicly available, or being selective in what you archive (I back up a lot of old computer hard drives. Often they have personal photos and emails and banking information! That doesn't get saved).

But it's not really a good idea to be making quality or moral judgements of what you archive. Because maybe you're right, maybe a decade or two later you'll decide this didn't need to be saved. And you'll have the freedom to make that choice. But if you didn't archive it, and decide a decade later you were wrong... It's just gone now. You failed.

Because at the end of the day I'd rather look at an archive and see it includes 10,000 things I think are worthless trash, than look at an archive of on the "best things" and know that there are some things that simply cannot be included. Maybe they were better, but can't be considered as one of the best... Because they're just gone. No one has read them, no one has been able to read them.

We have a long history of losing things. The least we can do going forward is to try and avoid losing more. And leave it up to history to decide if what we saved was worth it.

My dream is for a future where critics can look at stuff made in the present and go "all of this was shit. Useless, badly made, bigoted, horrible. Don't waste your time on it!"

Because that's infinitely better than the future where all they can do is go "we don't know of this was any good... It was probably important? We just don't know. It's gone. And it's never coming back"

#Archivist ranting

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helloyellow17 · 1 year

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Idk man I might get torn to shreds for saying this, but I simply cannot understand the new trend, particularly among younger internet users, where people write a laundry list of their triggers in their bio and then expect everyone to read and cater to said list on a PUBLIC PLATFORM.

This is the same mentality that drives people to attack appropriately tagged fics on AO3 for having x y or z content because “How dare you post this when I have trauma about this???” Obviously if someone is going to write a super heavy and highly sensitive fic and NOT tag it properly, they ought to be called out on it. But this isn’t about that, it’s about the people who don’t curate their own content, it’s about the people who enter public spaces and demand that the general public cater to THEM specifically.

Additionally: Listing out your triggers for everyone to see is just ASKING for trolls to come into your inbox and flood you with triggering content. (Unfortunately, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, the internet is full of selfish jerks who don’t give a crap about anybody’s trauma.) Not only this, but the algorithm does not read your bio. The algorithm does not care about your triggers unless YOU make sure to block specific tags and content.

YOU are responsible for curating your own content, and nobody else.

Obviously this is not to say people shouldn’t try to tag their posts for common triggers, because that’s the common courtesy thing to do. But if Becky has a phobia of bees, it is on her to block that tag and curate her feed around it, and she does not get the exclusive right to suddenly demand that nobody talk about bees within a ten mile radius of her. If Alec has a phobia of dogs, then it is well within his right to avoid contact with them, but he doesn’t get to go to a public park and yell at anybody who brings their dog there. It is his responsibility to know his own limits and seek out parks that are dog-free. (If someone brings a dog to a dog-free area, that’s a whole different issue that I won’t be getting into rn but yes, the person who does that is in the wrong there.)

The internet is widely a public space. If you want to create a safe space completely and utterly free of your specific triggers, you have to put the work in to make that space for yourself. You don’t get to ask other internet strangers to do it for you.

I’m saying this out of genuine concern (and admittedly, frustration) because there are so many young teens in fandom nowadays who don’t understand this, and they end up putting themselves in extremely vulnerable and even downright dangerous situations because they don’t understand that putting your well-being in the hands of a stranger is a terrible idea.

Please be safe, and for the love of all that is holy, be reasonable. Curating your content yourself is just as much a protection for you as it is a vital key that allows public communities to function.

#hyramblings #fandom culture #internet discourse #trauma triggers #anxiety triggers #safe space #if I get one person saying “BUT WHAT IF SOMEONE IGNORES X AND DOES IT ANYWAY #we literally went over this #they’re a jerk and have responsibility too #but this ain’t about them rn #ya feel?#internet communities #fandom community

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gwydion-aacblog · 1 year

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inaccessibility cycle

inaccessibility

disabled people unable to participate

disabled people not visible in public

disabled people seen as outlier/rarity

"so there's little/no need to consider them"

yes . internet not physical space but still important . community places online have bias to people with less needs not OK actually . sometimes biggest reason why higher needs person not have internet is because abuse , because no one want teach how connect and give that choice that opportunity .

" but might spend all money , might believe catfish , " so on . dignity of risk . dignity of risk ! people is people is people . that means should get to learn how avoid these bad things , but not that anyone control unless that person ask for and want that .

no there is not near as much high support people online as low ones . that not mean OK just keep talk over , and keep say things that ask not say , and keep treat like rare spectacle even if " true " . should all work learn how life work and learn how can make things better and learn how treat like people . because some do find ways connect online , be in communities online , and more should get that chance .

#nonverbal #actuallyautistic #aac user #disability #inaccessibility

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nervoussagittarius · 2 months

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what could possibly go wrong?

matt sturniolo x influencer!reader

summary: matt tries to teach his girlfriend how to play fortnite on a twitch stream, request

warnings: lots of fluff, swearing, fortnite?, some suggestive jokes, yapper! reader

“babe, come sit with me. i just started the stream. people are joining, only for you i think” matt laughed

“of course they are they love me. i keep it real and i’m hilarious” you replied pulling out the extra chair by matt’s desk and sitting down.

“okay, so here’s your controller, and i’m gonna put the headset on you so people can hear you talk.” matt gently placed the headset on you and brushed a piece of hair out of your eyes.

matt got up for a second telling you that he was going to the kitchen to get a drink. you jokingly slapped his ass on his way out. you quickly looked between the camera and the chat trying to read what everyone was saying.

“guys, you want to know what i was thinking about today?” you waited to see their responces even though you were most likely going to tell them anyway.

“so i was driving around la today, and it’s getting hot out again, so everyone’s driving their convertibles. and i drove past like four of them. all i could think about was how easy it would be to steal the car, not that im going to, but how do people feel comfortable leaving their shit open like that”

matt walked back in as you continued to rant about convertibles, “i don’t know about you but half of my life is in my car. if i had a convertible people could easily just take all of my stuff”

matt looked at you dumbfounded, “what are you on about kid?” you looked up at him with admiration on your face.

“im telling them how i feel about convertibles. look they’re mad that you interrupted me.” you pointed at the chat. they were all waiting for you to finish your thought. “this is why we don’t like men guys, they just like to interrupt and be the center of attention”

matt cut you off before you could go on another tangent. “okay, we all know they love when you come on here, but let’s play fortnite.”

you looked at matt trying to hold yourself back. you looked at the camera and gave them a wink.

“what”

“… that’s what she said”

you stood up when you noticed something on the shelf about matt’s desk.

“dude you ass is in my face, and your…boobs… are in the camera” he said awkwardly as he pulled your arm for you to sit back down. he waited to see what you grabbed.

“don’t act like it’s the first time my ass has been in your face,” you sat down holding up your space camp lipbalm to the camera. “shameless plug. go buy it right now. immediately. instantly.”

you applied the chapstick as matt looked at you with puckered lips. he was expecting you to apply the lipbalm on him but instead you gave matt a kiss with a giggle.

“okay so fortnite” matt said trying to get you back on track, blushing.

“yes yes let’s do it” you replied.

“do you know how to use the controller?”

“yes sir, i think i do”

matt looked at you with a raised eyebrow in question. you didn’t let up though, you were sure you could figure out how to use the controller in secret.

“so you have to start by picking a character.”

“i’m indecisive. can you pick for me?” you said with a smile.

“no babe, you got it just pick one.” matt said with a chuckle. he set his chin in your shoulder to get a better look.

“i’m gonna go bonkers if i have to make decisions this whole time, matt”

“no there’s just one i promise. everything else is preloaded from me so you don’t have to worry,” he leaned forward to kiss your neck lovingly.

“i love when you make things easy for me. thanks baby.” you said taking your hand off the controller for a second to lace your arm through matt’s.

matt and you had been together for a while now, and with you both having lives on the internet a lot of your relationship was public.

the fans went crazy for anything related to the two of you. they loved you guys together. you had very different personalities, but it seemed to click flawlessly. they always said that opposites attract.

while matt was more reserved, you tended to speak your mind and talk about anything and everything. you were a certified yapper and proud of it, baby. your yapping kept the fans fed on the insides of yours and matt’s relationship. consensually of course.

“okay, so you’re just going to drop in and see what happens”

“what do you mean drop in? im just letting myself fall?” you were very confused on the workings of video games.

“yep, now just make sure you aware of your surroundings”

“making sure i’m aware of my surroundings, got it. i’m just gonna run over here and see what i can find.” you drowned on.

things went smoothly for a couple minutes. you managed to stay alive and not show that you really didn’t know what you were doing with the gaming controller.

all of a sudden you heard distant shots being fired from behind you. not thinking anything of it you kept of running about.

“y/n they’re shooting at you.”

“oh! wait what? where?” you had no clue what was happening. things were going by so fast.

“turn around and shoot at them.”

“matt what?” he was trying to point to where they were on your screen. “dude i don’t even know how to shoot”

“what! i thought you said you knew how to use the controller”

“yeah well i lied” you said panicked.

“these teenage boys are probably laughing at me and that’s a scary thought. teenage boys are scary.” you whined.

you kept pressing random buttons trying to figure out how to fire back, but it was no use. you rushed and threw the controller in matt’s hands so he could take over.

he some how managed to get the kill and your player only ended up injured.

by this point you had given up on the attempts to play fortnite.

you let matt fully take over now. as he played a few more rounds you began to converse with the chat. answering questions and just rambling about some interesting topics.

“y/n what’s going on in your head right in this moment?” you read from the chat. “um, i was thinking about how i was vlogging earlier and there was a spider in my room. i simply couldn’t believe it. i trapped it, but i made matt come get it out of my house”

“that’s very true. i had to drive over there for moral support.”

“my knight in shining armor.” you smiled, looking up at him. “my handsome prince”

matt blushed from your comment as he finished the game he was in while you continued taking to the viewers. you guys decided to wrap things up 5 minutes later.

“how are you feeling now that you know kinda how to play?” matt questioned.

“i feel like i’d rather sit next to you and talk to the chat while you play then actually play myself. i think i’m more content watching you play, but it was a good experience. thank you for teaching me, baby” you kissed matt on the cheek as he began to end the stream.

“i’m gonna be honest, i was stressed for you.” matt stated.

“i was to anxious. i didn’t like having to be in high alert 24/7”

“alrighty, bye guys thanks for hanging out with us”

you blew a kiss to the camera as the filming came to an end.

“can we go to bed now,” you questioned matt as you stretched and got out of your chair.

“yeah of course we can” matt replied pulling you over to his mattress with him.

an: i hope you enjoy this. tbh i know nothing about fortnite so i hope this made sense and met your expectations 🤍🤍

#matt sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo x reader #nick sturniolo #chris sturniolo #chris sturniolo smut #matt sturniolo fluff #matt sturniolo smut #matt sturniolo imagine #matt x reader #sturniolo fanfic

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dukeofankh · 4 months

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Trying to find progressive masculine community is so exhausting.

I've flipped through local men's groups, trying to find places to explore masculinity in a chill, progressive setting. First of all, they mostly seem to be modelled after AA, and like, my gender isn't a debilitating addiction, it's part of my identity actually, but also, the invite and description of the event have maybe a short paragraph tops actually waving vaguely in the direction of what the purpose of the group is, and then ten to twenty paragraphs breaking down the rules. One spent longer talking about the hand signals he would use to direct conversation than he did describing what the conversation would be about. Another had a full paragraph explaining that if the group thought you were evading what they thought your "real" problem was, they'd probably "call you to take accountability". Like...I don't even know who these people are yet and they're already letting me know that they view it as their right, no, their duty, to bully me into seeing things their way. Like, this is in the invite.

...and this warning is there instead of any sort of breakdown of like, I dunno. Whether you should be a feminist to show up. Whether it was a safe space for queer men. What the hell they wanted to talk about. Joining a men's space is on some level inherently submitting yourself to the authority of the leaders of that group, and you don't usually get a particularly clear breakdown of what the values and goals of those leaders are, because on some level the answer is always going to be "whatever I want"

And like, unfortunately you do need to filter men to build a men's space. You do need to remove or chastise men who act in ways that are toxic or disruptive or misogynistic. If you don't things turn into an MRA chapter pretty quick. But the sort of emergency powers that leadership takes on as a result of that...just kind of naturally end up reproducing masculine heirarchies.

MensLib, the only online community of progressive dudes talking about masculinity that I'm aware of, is...on Reddit. So there is a moderator system. In theory, a moderator is there to...moderate. This is a space where people are going to be talking, and mods are there to make sure things don't get too toxic or off topic.

The issue is that, on some level, that is technically a leadership position. In a sub trying to rehabilitate masculinity. So you've got a bunch of folks who view themselves as the leaders of this bastion of goodness standing against the depredations of the misogynistic internet, guiding the hapless smooth-brain neophytes towards The True Way.

In practice, this looks like 95 percent of the posts submitted for the subreddit being rejected. That isn't hyperbole. On average, the sub has about one new post per day. Almost all posts directly relating a personal experience are deleted immediately, in favour of articles written about masculinity in traditional media publications, which are considered more trustworthy than the sus lived experiences of the guys in the sub. The post I wrote here about the effect of purity culture on male sexual shame that's sitting at about 15K notes was based on a 10K word post I wrote for Reddit that was deleted because "I didn't cite any sources to prove that there is a link between purity culture and male sexual shame, or that my experience was anything more than anecdotal". I get comments deleted on a regular basis, and after paragraphs of protesting in modmail that my comments are both fully in line with feminism and not against the rules, the mods have just finally told me that the rules don't actually drive their actions as a team. They delete anything they feel leads the conversation in a direction they personally feel is unproductive. The rule cited at the time of deletion is really just the broad category of why they decided to hit the button that says nobody is allowed to read what I wrote.

The issue is kind of twofold. First of all, progressive men do not trust other men. A good dude knows that he, individually, is a good person, but literally any other man external to him is on thin ice. Do you really want to tie your wagon to that guy? Do you trust him, really? How do you tell the difference between a guy criticizing an article because it's factually incorrect and criticising it because a woman wrote it? Probably best to play it safe and delete it. Weight of the odds, he's probably a misogynist, right? This is the internet.

And thats the other half of it. If you view yourself as part of the leadership of The Good Guys, and you're getting hatemail from incels and facists all day, you get to the point where most of the time people challenge your authority it's because they're a terrible person. It is very, very easy to get to the point where someone challenging you is seen as evidence that they are a bad person. And now someone is challenging you (and therefore bad), in an environment where you are in charge, and you have a "make your opponent disappear" button.

I know. A Reddit mod was rude to me and now I'm butthurt. It's petty and stupid. I'm just feeling like there's nowhere else to really go, and I'm pretty despondent that literally every space I've seen that even looks like it might be for progressive men has the same deeply hierarchical structure and constant status-oriented squabbling as patriarchal spaces.

#me writing stuff #positive masculinity #menslib

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luvhughes43 · 4 months

Text

so it goes | jack hughes

[journalist!au masterlist⭐️]

the previous part is linked here !

word count: 6.5k

jack hughes had thin curtains. you would think that a 22 year old millionaire would invest in good curtains, but alas here you were. the sun shone into his room, and you could do nothing but groan as rays of warm light illuminated your face and his.

you swore jack was a cat with how completely unbothered he was all the time. he’d happily lay and soak up the sun, not bothering to twist away from the light now encasing the room. you look over to your daughter, who slept exactly like her father. leighton was sprawled out on her back, completely content as the sun shone off her.

“you need better curtains,” you mumble, too awake now to fall back asleep. jack snores lightly in response, and so you move to drape one of leightons baby blankets over the top of her bassinet to help shield her from the light.

“where u goi-ing?” jack's speech is slurred, and you watch with butterflies as he stretches out across his bed and paws at the empty space where you once were resting. It felt wrong to want him. nothing had happened last night, and yet you were wanting him as if it were two years ago and you hadn’t broken up with him. you wish one of you had been smarter and been the first one to pick up the phone.

speaking of phones, you pick up yours only to see a slew of messages from friends. you click on claudia's first, and your heart immediately drops.

claudia: i think vivienne was talking about you and jack on her podcast??

claudia: idk she said Jack may have cheated and now ppl are going crazyy

claudia: this is genuinely insane when I catch vivienne…

you: did she mention my name?? did she say anything about leighton ?

you wander out into the kitchen, perching on an island stool with your lip between your teeth.

claudia: link

claudia: no she didn’t drop names but people are digging. some of jack's fans on twitter are putting the pieces together and speculating that you're the ex but it hasn’t gotten out yet.

you: wtf

as soon as you send the last message your phone rings with a call. “hello?”

“what are we going to do about this?” claudia's voice rings out through my speaker and you hastily turn the volume down.

“well, there's not much that I can do right now”

“uh, you can sue her ass! hello!”

“sue her for what?

“i don’t know… defamation?” you put claudia on speaker and then swipe up on the call. you do a quick search on twitter, and by screenshots and transcripts it's clear the podcast was solely focuses on jack and whether or not he cheated. “i’m not going to sue her,” you sigh and claudia groans in annoyance.

“why not?”

you take a second and pause, “well if i sue her everybody would know that i was the ex and also, i don’t even think there’s legal grounds for-”

“okay jack can sue,”

“i don’t think anyone needs to sue,” you reply, setting your phone on the countertop so that you can make yourself a coffee. hopefully jack had some pain meds because your head was starting to throb…

“i’ll talk to Jack about it, but things like this go away. i’m not going to risk leighton getting exposed to crazy fans and to be subjected to vivienne's publicity”

“vivienne has already damaged that little girl's life,”

“and so I'm not going to let her do anything else! if vivienne speaks on leighton then i'll look into my legal options. but no, i'm not going to let her get any more of my time. i need to focus on my daughter, and my family, so if some influencer wants to go on the internet spreading lies then so be it! i’m done with her. I can’t handle any more than i already have,”

claudia's silent on the line and for a brief second you're afraid she’s hung up the phone. “claudia…?”

“she’s going to get her karma. she can’t be let off the hook forever”

“oh, trust she will. but i’m not going to have a hand in it,”

⋆ ★

vivienne

liked by oliviajade, alisha, alix_earle, and 267 092 others

vivienne as promised… some exciting things are coming your guys’ way! follow viv212 to stay in the loop! 💆🏼‍♀️🍾

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oliviajade cant waittt!! <3

alisha youre stunnninggg ! cant wait to have you on the pod!❤️

user01 ahh so excited to see what u have in store viv!!

user02 we know what u did!!!

user03 ?

user02 don't question me.

claudiasphotos posted 2 years ago !

Liked by ynuser, jackhughes, and 581 others

claudiasphotos yn 📸🥂

tagged: ynuser

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ynuser love you!!! thank you for the incredible photos🫶

jackhughes ❤️‍🔥

newest comments

user04 jacks heart?? the tag?? is this his ex gf

user05 wait what

user06 claudia is yn’s friend! they both follow each other

user05 maybe yn just modelled?

user07 how tf did u guys find this acc? Im crying there's no way😭😭

⋆ ★

when jack found out about the podcast episode he was beyond pissed off. vivienne telling everyone that he was a cheater was one thing, but spreading those lies knowing that she helped keep him away from his daughter… he had never felt rage quite like it.

“i’m getting lawyers involved,” is all jack says to yn when he passes her phone back to her. “i don't want her speaking about us ever again,” jack’s voice is steady and firm.

“what are you asking the lawyers to do?”

“sue her, make her take down the video, i don't know they’ll find something,” jack rambles, pulling out his own phone from his pocket.

“i just want to make sure that she doesn’t speak about leighton,” you say, deliberately choosing not to say vivienne's name.

jack looks away from his phone to make eye contact with you. “i swear i’ll make sure of it,”

“thank you,” you respond simply, cradling your head in the palm of your hand. when was this nightmare going to end.

⋆ ★

“you’ve got to take the video down,” viviennes manager, louis reiterates for the tenth time.

“well, no” vivienne sasses as she scrolls through her social blade. “it’s pulling in insane numbers i’m not taking it down because of one complaint,”

“lawsuit, it’s a lawsuit vivienne” louis sighs, cursing himself for even taking influencers on as clients.

vivienne sighs dramatically. “i dated jack for months, the video should be my compensation”

“his lawyers want you to sign an NDA,”

“well i’m not signing or taking down anything,”

theres a tense silence for a minute before louis groans in frustration. “he doesn’t want you talking about his kids,”

“kid. singular. he only has the one,”

“can you stop being difficult? you’re going to lose more money than you’ll gain if you don’t just settle with jack. delete the video, and sign the NDA that his lawyers are going to send over,”

“but-”

“but nothing! your brand is dropping next week. if you delete the video now people will be tuned into your next moves,” louis explains his business plan, even though he’s mentally cursing vivienne in his mind.

“fine.” vivienne stubbornly admits defeat as she switches off her social blade and logs into her podcast channel.

⋆ ★

it was the beginning of december now, and jack’s schedule has picked back up now that he was back to playing. as well as the busy schedule, vivienne had finally signed the NDA jacks lawyers had sent over, and with her podcast episode scrubbed from the internet all was well for the moment.

on jack’s days off it wasn’t uncommon to find him at his ex-girlfriends place, which is why when y/n got off work she didn’t bat an eye that jack was chilling on her couch with their baby in his arms.

“did you pay the babysitter?” you ask absentmindedly as you shrug off your coat and let your work bag drop to the ground.

“yes i did! isn’t that right leighton? daddy paid the sitter?” jack coos, eyes never straying from the little girl in his arms. leighton giggles loudly, her little hands smacking at her dads cheeks who grins in delight.

“thank you!” you call out as you round towards the kitchen. “are you staying for dinner?”

jack gets up off the couch and settles himself in the kitchen. leightons little hand grips at her dads shirt, the other tugging on his finger. “do you mind?”

“no,” you reply softly, and when you look up from the pantry you catch eyes with jacks. you immediately feel delighted and delirious at the sight of him (looking handsome) with your girl resting happily in his hold. “leighton, do you want daddy to stay for dinner?”

“dada!” leighton squeaks, and both yours and jack’s heads whip towards the small girl.

“did you just say dada?” jack giggles, his face lit up with pure joy.

“dada!” she says again, wiggling in his grasp.

you gasp, “our baby’s first word!” and rush to be by jack’s side. he looks up at you fondly before using one of his arms to bring you closer to his side. “leighton! say it again, say dada!”

leighton doesn’t respond this time, just giggling happily at her parents' happy words and sounds of encouragement. “she said my name,” jack whispers sappily, and when you look at his face you see tears line his eyes.

“she knows who her daddy is,” you smile tearfully, leaning your head against jack’s who leans his against your chest.

“i’m so happy i get to know her,” jack’s voice is quiet as he gazes at his daughter. he still wasn’t over the fact that he missed your pregnancy and the first few months of leightons life, but hearing his daughter call for him certainly helps ease some of the sadness.

you don’t reply to jack’s comment, knowing that there’s nothing in the world that you can say that would erase any of the past. so instead you brush your hand through jack’s hair, and enjoy the happy moment.

⋆ ★

vivienne

liked by viv212, alixearle, and 137 008 others

vivienne so beyond excited to announce that my haircare brand viv212, is being released next friday! please follow the viv212 account for updates, posts, and product info before the first launch! i love you guys so much! mwah <3

tagged: viv212

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alixearle loveeeee

alexandracooper Cannot waitt!!

user08 AHH VIV!! <33

user09 saving up as we speak🫂

user10 another influencer brand… we do NOT care!!

⋆ ★

jack’s voice rings out through your phone's speaker, his face half in view as he brushes his teeth and gets ready for bed. you guys were just talking nonsense now - you had both put your daughter to bed a long time ago but jack didn’t get off facetime like you had expected him to.

you were both distracted which if claudia asks, is your excuse for staying on facetime with him so late. because really, you were catching up on work and it just so happens that jack was talking to you in the background.

“do you think if i started reading now then my brain power would double?” jack asks absentmindedly through a mouth full of toothpaste. he spits, “quinns doing it and he says he feels smarter. but i don't know,”

“i don't know about double… but it’d definitely help!” you tease, looking up from your mounds of documents to catch jack pouting at you.

“that's kind of mean!” he replies as he rinses off his tooth brush. “but whatever, what are you doing for the holidays?”

you watch silently as jack pulls his phone off the hotel bathroom counter, and tosses it on his bed. you stare at his hotel room ceiling as you reply, “my parents are going on vacation so i’m just gonna stay here. do you have any plans?”

jack picks up his phone - shirt noticeably gone - before he settles himself in his bed. “my family’s gonna fly in to jersey. quinn’s coming too. it’s just easier with our schedules and luke and i being here already,” he responds, and you nod along to his words. you missed the hughes family. they were so unlike your family growing up. their parents were present and not always gone for work, and it felt so nice to be around siblings who weren’t constantly at each other’s throats.

“that’s really nice,” you hum. “i have a few days off during your break. you should pick a date when we’re both free for your family to meet leighton,”

“mom’s so excited,” jack chuckles. “i keep sending her photos and videos but it’s never enough,”

“your mom’s so sweet,” you smile, leaning your head in your palm as you look at jack. “she texts me everyday just to check in and wish me well,”

jack smiles back, and you would pay any amount to know what he was thinking. “quinn’s excited too. luke keeps teasing him about how he met the baby first,”

you roll your eyes - that was such a luke thing to do - and before you can reply there's a sharp succession of knocks at your door.

“are you expecting someone…?” jack asks with a frown, and you shake your head.

“not that i know off… one second,” you walk towards the front door and if you had brought your phone with you you would have seen the worry and concern etched on jacks face.

you look through your doors peephole, before shouting a quick, “it’s just claudia!” which causes jack to visibly relax.

“just claudia” the woman in question mimics as you finally open the door. “who are you talking to,”

“jack,” you reply, and claudia rolls her eyes dramatically as she pulls her shoes off and wanders over to your phone.

she waves at jack, before telling him that you have to hang up. you barely get a good-bye in when she’s hanging up the call and turning towards you with a grin. “you're still talking to jack? at 9:30pm on a monday…” she teases, and takes your spot at the counter.

“we were putting leighton to bed!” you refute, ignoring the knowing looks your best friend was sending your way.

“uh-huh,” she shakes her head. “you’re unbelievable!”

“no i’m not! that’s my daughter's father! who, by the way… was her first word,”

“yah yah, if auntie c were easier to pronounce she’d call my name first,” claudia laughs before composing herself. “but seriously y/n, you guys broke up for a reason. you can’t just forget all about that now that you see him with the baby,”

“i’m not getting back together with him! it’s different now. we’re just friends,” you defend pathetically, knowing very well that you were already re-developing feelings for your ex.

“i just want you to be careful,” claudia stresses, grabbing a hold of your hands and pulling you into the chair next to her.

“i wasn’t in the right headspace last time. i was insecure and i-”

“he was still liking other people’s posts and staring down models babe, just be careful please,” claudia reiterates.

you nod, knowing that she was ultimately right. “we have better communication now. we’ve grown,”

“whatever you say!” claudia wraps up the conversation, before diving into the reason she actually came over. “okay, but i logged into my photography account and people are starting to connect the dots that you’re, well… you”

“what do you mean?” you question, picking up all of your work documents and placing them back in your bag.

“there’s a few instagram comments speculating. jack left a heart comment on one of my posts about you when you were still dating, and his fans have just found it now. do you want me to go private? delete the comments? i don't know,” claudia explains, pulling up her photography instagram and scrolling through the comment section of said posts.

you think for a minute, before responding simply, “keep it up, i don’t really care”. claudia nods and logs out of the account.

⋆ ★

drama.alert

liked by trevorzegras, and 11 913 others

drama.alert people have finally received their viv212 hair products after a massive delay in shipment, and unfortunately the product is causing their hair to fallout :/ despite being asked to comment, vivienne nor her team have responded to the accusations. not the best way to start a brand is it? what are you guy’s thoughts?

tagged: vivienne, viv212

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user11 whoever buys haircare from an influencer deserves it lowkey🤷‍♀️

user12 yikesss😬 looks like the products were rushed and there wasn’t a lot of time to get the formula right… i hope everyone who lost hair grows it back quickly. what a shame.

user13 i honestly can’t believe she hasn't spoken up yet. the people who bought her products were all fans so this is just soo disappointing. she better apologize and start refunding people soon or she’s going to lose A LOT of loyal fans and viewers.

user14 YUP! this! and did u see the pr reviews? lotss of acting going on lol. you can tell that nobody likes the products and it's obvious as to why! very messy and not good at all.

user15 trevor? wtf are you doing here??😭

user16 he stands on business

user17 trevor is so damn messy liking this im cryingg

user18 who tf is trevor?

user17 jacks best friend lol

user18 ohh that's so nasty..😭

vivienne

liked by mikaylajmakeup, tanamongeau, and 68 002 others

vivienne i hope u guys are loving all the products! let me know if u guys got anything💐

tagged: viv212

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viv212 😍😍✨

user19 yeah girl we did get products… AND NOW MY HAIR HAS STARTED TO FALL OUT!

user20 this is so out of touch. you’ve ruined so many peoples hair!! apologize!!!

user20 youve really shown ur true colours lol.

user21 posting this as if u haven't ruined so many of ur fans hair… wow..

user22 ignore all the hate viv! I know u just haven't seen the reviews! take all the time u need to respond <3

user23 bffr she's just money hungry and dgaf if she ruins her fans hair for money. shes weird af

⋆ ★

if you thought work was rough before - with all the bad articles you were given- you weren’t prepared for what was waiting for you on monday. after a peaceful weekend with your babygirl and your best friend claudia, the last thing you were expecting was to receive the worst case you’d ever been assigned.

“y/n, we need you to cover social media drama today,” your boss had said. there were a million headlines rushing through your mind, from small scandals to non-disclosure disputes, you hadn’t even considered you’d be assigned to write about… viviennes new brand.

“i mean, are you fucking kidding me?” you whisper-shout to claudia through the phone. you were pacing inside the girl’s washroom, disbelief written across all your features as you stare perplexed at the folder in your hand. “her brand is making peoples hair fall out. and i have to write about it… this is a joke. this actually can’t be real,”

“are you even allowed to write about her? with jack’s NDA and everything?” claudia asks from the bathroom stall at her work.

“i mean, it was just about leighton and my identity, and the whole jack cheating thing, i don’t think it applies to this,” you're beyond stressing. the story had to be finished by lunch and here you were, pacing the bathroom borderline having a panic attack. “i think i’m going to pass out,”

“okay breathe! breathe!” claudia's voice was loud and clear on the other line. “you’re just going to write the article with indifference, and everythings going to be fine!”

“indifference? she fucking kept jack from finding out about our baby and harassed me?” you seethe, stopping in front of the sink to splash your face with some water. “this article is going to be so biased,”

“regardless of your history, she's an asshole. i mean she’s literally causing people’s hair to fall out,” claudia states, flushing so her coworkers don’t get suspicious of her long bathroom break.

“i’m just going to write it and i’ll call jack once he's out of practice,” you settle, knowing there is really no way out of your work. even if you told your boss you had a history with vivienne and that there was going to be bias, they wouldn’t care. they just wanted the story posted so they’d garner as many clicks as possible since it was going viral right now.

“okay, good luck! love you,” claudia says her goodbyes, and with a quick i love you back, you hang up on your best friend and prepare to write.

⋆ ★

you had called jack after his practice, but with the articles deadline hastily approaching there was nothing you could do to delay writing the article. jack of course understands, offering a quick, “i’m sure she won’t read it anyway,” before he was called back into whatever a hockey job required on the daily.

once the article was published on the newspaper's website, and vivienne hadn’t outright harassed you, you take a deep relieved breath before continuing with the rest of your day.

⋆ ★

of course, vivienne the lurker had seen y/ns article about her hair products. she’s seen every little message and video about the whole situation, and so as tempting as it is to find y/ns number and send her a… compromising video of jack, she resisted. instead, she took her anger out on her manager who insisted she sign an NDA in the first place.

“you made me sign that stupid document! now i can’t even say anything about her! she's slandering my name and brand!” vivienne yells, fuming as she paces around her office. her manager, who was sitting on one of her chairs, rolls his eyes.

“you wouldn’t be able to say anything regardless of the NDA. you know you’re in the wrong with the whole, y/n-jack-baby situation. and plus, lashing out at journalists won’t do you any good when you post your apology,”

“it's not fair!” vivienne whines. “what am i supposed to do? she’s just going to get away with this?”

“your interns and i have worked up a statement for you to record. you should probably try and get ahead of this now before it's too late,” her manager finishes, placing a small packet of papers on vivienne's desk.

“whatever,” she huffs stubbornly, leafing through the small apology packet.

⋆ ★

after a rough two weeks, it was finally time for the rest of the hughes family to meet baby leighton. ellen and jim were beyond ecstatic, carrying armloads of gifts for their granddaughters first holiday season.

the family comes to visit after leightons nap, so for the grand reveal you sit the family down in your living room and bring your daughter to them. “awh… she’s so sweet!” ellen immediately starts to tear up as you slowly place the tired baby in her arms. “leighton baby,” she coos, finger tracing leightons little nose as the baby looks up at her. “she looks just like jack when he wa a baby,”

“she’s perfect, guys,” jim speaks next, gently holding little leightons hand in his larger one.

quinn sits quietly just taking in the sweet moment. he remembers the night jack first called him, panicked and lost about the whole situation. he was just so glad everything was working out for his younger brother, and to see jack become a father? it was surreal.

“i don’t think i want to let her go,” ellen laughs softly as tears spill down her face. jack discretely wipes away his own stray tears as he watches his parents fall in love with his daughter.

“that’s how i felt when i first met her too,” jack laughs weakly as he presses the corner of his sleeve into the corner of his eyes. you stand close behind him, rubbing his back comfortingly and he leans into your touch. every time you were reminded of what happened, you felt such a strong pang of guilt. like it was somehow your fault that jack didn’t get to experience the pregnancy, birth, and first few months of his baby’s life.

ellen passes the baby to her husband, and then slowly makes her way over to you. she holds out her arms, and you easily walk into them. “you did so good,” she says, and all of your feelings bubble to the surface as you softly cry.

“i’m really sorry,” you whisper to her and she only holds you tighter. “i should've tried harder - i thought that he didn't want to be in her life,” you gasp through your tears. ellen squeezes you and whispers reassuringly in your ear. she was always so kind to you and it made you feel sick sometimes - this family loves so thoroughly and effortlessly, something you missed from your own parents.

when your calm enough, you remove yourself from ellens arms. jim was now cuddling leighton and quinn was leaning over his shoulder. luke was teasing jack about something, having already met leighton a long time ago. when jack notices you're no longer hugging his mom, he grabs hold of your hand and gently soothes his thumb across the back of your hand.

you spend the rest of the evening in your apartment surrounded by family.

⋆ ★

ynuser

Liked by jackhughes, trevorzegras, claudia, and others

ynuser leightons first holiday season🥹🤍

tagged: jackhughes

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jackhughes to many more!❤️

colecaufield did you get the gifts i sent?

ynuser yes! leighton loves all the habs merch!

jackhughes but she loves the devils more!

trevorzegras cant wait to meet her!❤️

_quinnhughes lee is the cutest!❤️

claudia loveee😭😭🫶

user1 happy holiday sweetheart!

jackhughes added to his close friends!

⋆ ★

after viviennes less than impressive apology, her fans quickly gave up on the star. people who were only invested in vivienne for the jack hughes drama, grew bored, and angry fans were boycotting viviennes videos and social media platforms to show the influencer their disappointment with her behaviour. she lost thousands of followers, and she was absolutely pissed off.

behind the scenes, her friend emily was fuming. vivienne had promised her a shoutout on her pages in order to boast the girls social blade, and with all the recent drama vivienne kept pushing the dates. so, emily did what she thought was best.

REDDIT SNARK PAGE

user455595654: vivienne aiden sent nasty messages to jack’s ex girlfriend while she was dating him from random instagram accounts. here are some of the tamer ones lol. she drunkenly confessed to me one night and i got her to send me ss to keep as collateral incase she fucks things up as usual. so there's that

jack hated you so bad that he couldn't stand being a father to his child... and you know that he wants to be a dad in the future. gonna make him a dad and send u the pics. know ur worth nothing

he never wanteddd you... and know he doesnt want his baby

happy birthday to your baby! thought i'd send u a message since we know jack's not.

crazy that you get to look at your babygirl and know that she was abandoned. probably hurts

he's all up on me :)

⋆ ★

“did you want to take any of the clothes leightons got for your house?” you ask jack as you fold leightons laundry. jack’s family and friends went a little overboard with the gifts, and so now you were left with dozens of little onesies and clothes in various different team styles.

jack glances over at you and nods, and you can’t help but wonder what’s got him so distracted. he’s barely taken his eyes off his phone in the past half-hour, and even though it was none of your business you were starting to worry.

“do you have any preference?” you follow up, hoping to get at least a response.

“uh,” jack tears his eyes away from his phone and takes a deep breath. “i’ll uh, whatever you think,”

you sit in silence for a moment, thumbing quietly through your daughter's pile of clothes before deciding to question jack. “okay, what’s going on is there-”

“did uh, did vivienne…” you pale immediately at his words as your heart starts racing. “the messages she sent you uh,”

“what-”

“someone posted them online and i just - they got sent to me and i need you to confirm if they’re real of if someones just fucking around,” jack finishes shakily, and you sit in shock as he passes his phone over to you with unsteady hands.

there were so many messages, each taking you back to when you first received them. you remember the panic each time a new one came in, how you kept blocking viviennes accounts and how a new one always replaced it. you nod slowly, and jack breathes in.

“i’m going to- i-” he stutters, cluelessly trying to piece together a coherent plan.

you pass his phone back, and slowly focus your gaze onto jack. his hands are trembling, and his jaw keeps clenching as he scrambles to make sense of what he’s been reading. “why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

“i’m sorry,” your voice is quiet and jack has to strain his ears to hear you. the familiar pang of guilt wells up in you again and you so desperately wish that you had just told jack the full truth. that there were dozens of more messages, and that you had been receiving them for much longer than you had let on. that you received instagram follow requests from accounts impersonating your coworkers and friends in attempts to bait you to accept them. you knew vivienne was borderline stalking you, but you didn’t want to worry jack further. you witnessed his reaction to the first batch of messages, how he gagged and cried and blamed himself. you shouldn’t have hid the rest from him, but you didn’t want to be the one to expose him to all the hurtful things you were dealing with. you wanted to put an end to the past and to move on, but it seemed vivienne and whoever was in her close circle were determined to keep you hooked and battered.

“is there anything else? i want to know everything,” jack replies, his hands twisting together as he fidgets. you nod slowly, and jack looks sick with worry as you beckon him to sit down.

you take a deep breath before pulling out your phone. you still had all of viviennes messages saved in your dm requests, and you click on one of her burner accounts. “she uh, sent me these pictures after i had given birth,” you explain with a shaky voice. when you pass over your phone, jack sees all the lewd pictures his ex had sent to you. pictures of the two of them, cropped so you couldn't make out the faces but it was still so blindingly obvious. some of the pictures were tame, jacks back to the camera as he cooked with a simple caption “he’s so sweet to me❤️”. others not so much - dark lingerie, jacks hands wrapped around viviennes body and cupping her boobs. a picture of his head resting against her naked chest, her hand buried in his hair. it went on and on, all with annoying captions talking about how he was hers and that he didn’t want a family.

the worst picture though was of an unused pregnancy test sitting in the palm of viviennes hand, “he’ll love our baby!❤️” .

it took awhile to go through everything, and jack sat unusually quiet as he switches between different message threads. “i, i don’t know what to do,” jack admits after you had showed him everything.

“there’s nothing that you can do,” you reply simply.

“i didn’t get her pregnant,” he states, completely disregarding your reply. “she was just being cruel and trying to bait you or something-”

“jack i know-”

“and you know that if i knew about leighton i wouldn't have abandoned her, and those pictures, i didn’t know she was taking half of them let alone sending them to you, i just-”

you place a hand on jacks arm, silently urging him to stop explaining. “i know,”

“i’m just- learning about all of this for the first time-”

you let your hand trail down jack’s arm, and then you slip your hand into his. you squeeze twice, and then run your thumb along the width of his hand - a habit you picked up when the two of you were dating. jack squeezes back.

you don’t have time to say anything else before leightons soft cries spill out of the baby monitor. “da-da,” she whines, and when you turn to look at the monitor you see her thrashing around in her crib.

“i’ll get her,” jack says with a gentle tone as he squeezes your hand one more time.

you cuddle into your throw blanket, completely and mentally exhausted from the night's events when you hear jack’s soft voice through the monitor.

“i’m always gonna be here for you okay? dada will always be here,”

“i love you my sweet girl, always.”

⋆ ★

he had liked her. he had actually liked vivienne when they were together and the thought makes him feel sick.

jack had first met her two months after his breakup with y/n. it was way too soon in his opinion - but his teammates were relentless and tired of his moping around. so, instead of picking up the phone and dialing y/ns number he had agreed to meet the girl everyone seemed to think would be a good match for him. and she was at first, it was simple and there were no complicated feelings. jack didn’t promise to be anything, and vivienne was fine with that. there was no pressure to stay hidden, they went out and had fun. not that y/n didn't go out, but there was a clear difference between both girls and jack wasn’t mad about it.

that didn’t stop him from thinking about y/n though. he still had a photo album dedicated to their pictures together, and he still had her favourite music neatly organized in one of his playlists. he never deleted the list of her favourite things from his phone, never unpinned the addresses of the new museums, art galleries, and coffee shops they wanted to try. jack hadn't done anything at all, instead he let himself drift and he found some comfort in a girl he wasn’t sure he even understood properly because really, there were two sides to vivienne aiden and jack didn't have a strong grasp on either.

now that he was with y/n again, or at least raising their daughter together, he can’t help but feel the urge to get to know her again. he wanted to do everything a boyfriend would do, but the timing was always wrong. they were parents first now, and it was way too soon to start a relationship up again.

plus, they broke up for a reason. jack would be the first person to admit that he was in the wrong. liking other girl’s picks and lingering on girls in public… meanwhile he had the most amazing girl he’d ever met on his arm. he felt like such a fucking idiot, and ruminating on those facts on the drive back to new jersey seemed like a constant these days. his communication was awful too, not apologizing and not realizing the problems sooner. now he faced those consequences, driving an hour each way to spend time with his daughter. he should be there all the time, or they should be here - whatever.

traffic stalled, and jack sat in uncomfortable silence. no depressing country song would even come close to how awful he was feeling right now. then when he got home he’d be faced with luke and his family, all doped up on all the quality time they were fortunate enough to scrape together between everyone's busy schedules. he was so tired, and everything just seemed to keep piling up. he didn’t want to hide anymore, he was tired of vivienne dictating his life and making y/n feel awful.

therefore a week later with your permission and before jack boarded his flight for his roadie, he posted a simple but effective instagram post.

jackhughes

liked by trevorzegras, colecaufield, dawson1417, and 361 299 others

jackhughes baby’s first holiday season❤️

view all comments

trevorzegras does she love the duck teddies i sent?

colecaufield little love bug🐞

dawson1417 my best girl !

_alexturcotte dads a dad🫡

holtz_10 bring her to the rink when were back

_quinnhughes best duo💯

lhughes_06 tell everyone who her favourite uncle is (it's me)

nicohischier happy holidays!❤️🎄

user24 WHAT THE FUCK?????

user25 JACK?? DAD??? IM SO CONFUSED WTF

user26 this has to be a joke

user27 im crying so hard is he actually a dad?? this is my worst nightmare omfg

user28 congrats on the baby hughes! being a father is hard work but its rewarding!

user29 who’s the mom??? vivienne??

user30 no its 1000% his ex. look jacks name up on twitter and you’ll find all the threads!

user31 omg…

user32 im in disbelief i think i passed out what the ..

user33 this HAS to be yns baby omfg. If u compare the backgrounds of these photos it’s literall her apartment

user34 ? how tf do u know what her apartment looks like?

user33 it’s the same background in her friends pics of her

user34 that sounds genuinely psychotic im sorry!

user35 DAD JACK DAD JACK DAD JACK

everything had already gone viral with vivienne, and there was nothing else for jack to add to the public speculations aside from be truthful. so he worked behind the scenes to protect his family, and made it known he wasn’t hiding or playing anymore.

vivienne got what she deserved, and her career would surely be over with the massive amount of hate she received, and jack knew it too. the countless voicemails she left told him enough, and with every swift delete and the final press of the block button - he felt a massive weight lift of his chest.

#journalist au!#jack hughes x reader #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes fic #jack hughes blurb #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagine #nhl blurb #nhl fic #quinn hughes x reader

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lesbxdyke · 10 months

Text

Decided to steal my own tags from This Post because I didn't want to detract from the very good points being made about wheelchair accessibility in the art

So I'm disabled. And I often have to use crutches as a mobility aid. Sometimes one, sometimes two. And even with that, I still sometimes can't get around.

There have been numerable occasions in my life where something has been marked as 'accessible' that is not accessible to me, because it was made with ONLY wheelchair users in mind.

And like I said in my tags, it's a genuinely great thing that things are now being made with wheelchair users in mind! I am genuinely heartened and happy that wheelchairs users are being recognised in public spaces and accommodated for!

But they are not the be all and end all of physically disabled people.

I need the extra space of a disabled bathroom. Especially as another physical disability of mine causes me to often require space to change underwear or clothing.

However, if I'm having a bad pain day, I can't wash my hands. Because the only sink is at the height for a wheelchair user. So my options are to eschew hygiene and pray that a cleaner wipes down the door handle regularly so others aren't interacting with a thing that I have touched without washing my hands, OR risk furthering my own pain by bending to reach the sink, which could end in me stuck in the bathroom as my back seizes and I cannot move.

As I'm sure you can imagine from reading that, neither option is a good option, but one is a safer one for me. And I hate it. I'm 'lucky' in that I have to always carry baby wipes with me anyway so I'm somewhat able to mitigate the hygiene issue, but what if I didn't? What if I didn't have the extra disability and just had the back problems that required the extra space of the disabled bathroom for my mobility aids? What then?

I also have a radar key (for those not in the UK: disabled bathrooms are often locked. A radar key is a skeleton key for disabled bathrooms all around the UK) so I can always gain access to the disabled bathrooms. Except... I often have to find staff to help me open them anyway because the door handles are low and I can't bend to press them.

Now this post isn't me saying that the world should be built only to cater to me in particular (tho gods it would be nice!)

This post is talking about competing support needs and how my experience as a disabled person, struggling with how so much 'accessible' stuff is only designed for wheelchair users is just as valid as a wheelchair user celebrating that they can use an ATM and a public bathroom without needing the aid of a stranger or a carer.

I've seen quite a lot of people, in real life and elsewhere on the internet, want to call it Ableist when people ask for there to be a different option that would be inaccessible for a wheelchair user to use within an accessible area like a bathroom. They think it's able bodied people, or parents (since often in the UK, disabled bathrooms also double as baby changing, which is a whole different kettle of fish) demanding we take away the accessibility that the bathrooms are there for. They don't think about people on crutches, or canes, or with mobility that changes by day, or who can walk unaided but cannot bend, or, or, or.

Two sinks in a disabled bathroom would change my life. One wheelchair accessible, one not. I could wash my hands. Other people who needed the bathroom could wash their hands. Everyone could be hygienic in an accessible way!

Two ATMs, side by side. One lower, one higher. I can access my money. Wheelchair users can access their money. Everyone can withdraw their money safely in an accessible way!

Maybe there's no solution for some (like the door handle) but if others were solved, then the remaining ones would bother me a lot less. It's a lot less frustration and humiliation inducing to say "Hey, can you open the bathroom for me?" When you know you'll be able to wash your damn hands once inside, yknow?

#disability #disabled #physically disabled #competing support needs #personal #okay to reblog

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mostlysignssomeportents · 16 days

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You were promised a jetpack by liars

TONIGHT (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

As a science fiction writer, I find it weird that some sf tropes – like space colonization – have become culture-war touchstones. You know, that whole "we were promised jetpacks" thing.

I confess, I never looked too hard at the practicalities of jetpacks, because they are so obviously either used as a visual shorthand (as in the Jetsons) or as a metaphor. Even a brief moment's serious consideration should make it clear why we wouldn't want the distracted, stoned, drunk, suicidal, homicidal maniacs who pilot their two-ton killbots through our residential streets at 75mph to be flying over our heads with a reservoir of high explosives strapped to their backs.

Jetpacks can make for interesting sf eyeball kicks or literary symbols, but I don't actually want to live in a world of jetpacks. I just want to read about them, and, of course, write about them:

https://reactormag.com/chicken-little/

I had blithely assumed that this was the principle reason we never got the jetpacks we were "promised." I mean, there kind of was a promise, right? I grew up seeing videos of rocketeers flying their jetpacks high above the heads of amazed crowds, at World's Fairs and Disneyland and big public spectacles. There was that scene in Thunderball where James Bond (the canonical Connery Bond, no less) makes an escape by jetpack. There was even a Gilligan's Island episode where the castaways find a jetpack and scheme to fly it all the way back to Hawai'i:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0588084/

Clearly, jetpacks were possible, but they didn't make any sense, so we decided not to use them, right?

Well, I was wrong. In a terrific new 99 Percent Invisible episode, Chris Berube tracks the history of all those jetpacks we saw on TV for decades, and reveals that they were all the same jetpack, flown by just one guy, who risked his life every time he went up in it:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/rocket-man/

The jetpack in question – technically a "rocket belt" – was built in the 1960s by Wendell Moore at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, with funding from the DoD. The Bell rocket belt used concentrated hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which burned at temperatures in excess of 1,000'. The rocket belt had a maximum flight time of just 21 seconds.

It was these limitations that disqualified the rocket belt from being used by anyone except stunt pilots with extremely high tolerances for danger. Any tactical advantage conferred on infantrymen by the power to soar over a battlefield for a whopping 21 seconds was totally obliterated by the fact that this infantryman would be encumbered by an extremely heavy, unwieldy and extremely explosive backpack, to say nothing of the high likelihood that rocketeers would plummet out of the sky after failing to track the split-second capacity of a jetpack.

And of course, the rocket belt wasn't going to be a civilian commuting option. If your commute can be accomplished in just 21 seconds of flight time, you should probably just walk, rather than strapping an inferno to your back and risking a lethal fall if you exceed a margin of error measured in just seconds.

Once you know about the jetpack's technical limitations, it's obvious why we never got jetpacks. So why did we expect them? Because we were promised them, and the promise was a lie.

Moore was a consummate showman, which is to say, a bullshitter. He was forever telling the press that his jetpacks would be on everyone's back in one to two years, and he got an impressionable young man, Bill Suitor, to stage showy public demonstrations of the rocket belt. If you ever saw a video of a brave rocketeer piloting a jetpack, it was almost certainly Suitor. Suitor was Connery's stunt-double in Thunderball, and it was he who flew the rocket belt around Sleeping Beauty castle.

Suitor's interview with Berube for the podcast is delightful. Suitor is a hilarious, profane old airman who led an extraordinary life and tells stories with expert timing, busting out great phrases like "a surprise is a fart with a lump in it."

But what's most striking about the tale of the Bell rocket belt is the shape of the deception that Moore and Bell pulled off. By conspicuously failing to mention the rocket belt's limitations, and by callously risking Suitor's life over and over again, they were able to create the impression that jetpacks were everywhere, and that they were trembling on the verge of widespread, popular adoption.

What's more, they played a double game: all the public enthusiasm they manufactured with their carefully stage-managed, canned demos was designed to help them win more defense contracts to keep their dream alive. Ultimately, Uncle Sucker declined to continue funding their boondoggle, and the demos petered out, and the "promise" of a jetpack was broken.

As I listened to the 99 Percent Invisible episode, I was struck by the familiarity of this shuck: this is exactly what the self-driving car bros did over the past decade to convince us all that the human driver was already obsolete. The playbook was nearly identical, right down to the shameless huckster insisting that "full self-driving is one to two years away" every year for a decade:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/23/23837598/tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-false-promises-land-of-the-giants

The Potemkin rocket belt was a calculated misdirection, as are the "full self-driving" demos that turn out to be routine, pre-programmed runs on carefully manicured closed tracks:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-autopilot-staged-engineer-says-company-faked-full-autopilot/

Practical rocketeering wasn't ever "just around the corner," because a flying, 21 second blast-furnace couldn't be refined into a practical transport. Making the tank bigger would not make this thing safer or easier to transport.

The jetpack showman hoped to cash out by tricking Uncle Sucker into handing him a fat military contract. Robo-car scammers used their conjurer's tricks to cash out to the public markets, taking Uber public on the promise of robo-taxis, even as Uber's self-driving program burned through $2.5b and produced a car with a half-mile mean time between fatal collisions, which the company had to pay someone else $400m to take the business off their hands:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

It's not just self-driving cars. Time and again, the incredibly impressive AI demos that the press credulously promotes turn out to be scams. The dancing robot on stage at the splashy event is literally a guy in a robot-suit:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-ai-day-tesla-bot-is-just-a-guy-in-a-bodysuit-2021-8

The Hollywood-killing, AI-produced video prompting system is so cumbersome to use, and so severely limited, that it's arguably worse than useless:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

The centuries' worth of progress the AI made in discovering new materials actually "discovered" a bunch of trivial variations on existing materials, as well as a huge swathe of materials that only exist at absolute zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

The AI grocery store where you just pick things up and put them in your shopping basket without using the checkout turns out to be a call-center full of low-waged Indian workers desperately squinting at videos of you, trying to figure out what you put in your bag:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

The discovery of these frauds somehow never precipitates disillusionment. Rather than getting angry with marketers for tricking them, reporters are ventriloquized into repeating the marketing claim that these aren't lies, they're premature truths. Sure, today these are faked, but once the product is refined, the fakery will no longer be required.

This must be the kinds of Magic Underpants Gnomery the credulous press engaged in during the jetpack days: "Sure, a 21-second rocket belt is totally useless for anything except wowing county fair yokels – but once they figure out how to fit an order of magnitude more high-explosive onto that guy's back, this thing will really take off!"

The AI version of this is that if we just keep throwing orders of magnitude more training data and compute at the stochastic parrot, it will eventually come to life and become our superintelligent, omnipotent techno-genie. In other words, if we just keep breeding these horses to run faster and faster, eventually one of our prize mares will give birth to a locomotive:

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

As a society, we have vested an alarming amount of power in the hands of tech billionaires who profess to be embittered science fiction fans who merely want to realize the "promises" of our Golden Age stfnal dreams. These bros insist that they can overcome both the technical hurdles and the absolutely insurmountable privation involved in space colonization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

They have somehow mistaken Neal Stephenson's dystopian satirical "metaverse" for a roadmap:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

As Charlie Stross writes, it's not just that these weirdos can't tell the difference between imaginative parables about the future and predictions about the future – it's also that they keep mistaking dystopias for business plans:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/

Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion. Please, I beg you, stop building the fucking torment nexus:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

These techno-billionaires profess to be fulfilling a broken promise, but surely they know that the promises were made by liars – showmen using parlor tricks to sell the impossible. You were "promised a jetpack" in the same sense that table-rapping "spiritualists" promised you a conduit to talk with the dead, or that carny barkers promised you a girl that could turn into a gorilla:

https://milwaukeerecord.com/film/ape-girl-shes-alive-documentary-november-11-sugar-maple/

That's quite a supervillain origin story: "I was promised a jetpack, but then I grew up discovered that it was just a special effect. In revenge, I am promising you superintelligent AIs and self-driving cars, and these, too, are SFX."

In other words: "Die a disillusioned jetpack fan or live long enough to become the fraudster who cooked up the jetpack lie you despise."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds

#pluralistic #99pi #99 percent invisible #rocketeers #jetpacks #ai #full self-driving #fsd #absent indians #hoaxes #fake it until you dont make it #Bell Aircraft Corporation #Wendell Moore #podcasts

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lil-shiro · 12 days

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I can't believe i have to write something like this in our good year of 2024 but PSA:

Keep RPF related things on tumblr or in a private space! DO NOT repost to a public social media account, especially one with a lot of followers. And DO NOT screenshot someone's tags, meant for their blog, either!

I'm gonna say outright that this is aimed mostly at people on Twitter who have decided to also use tumblr. I completely understand reposting a funny meme or text post, I've seen my own get reposted and acknowledge that you'll see funny tweets on tumblr as well so im not trying to be a hypocrite here and say reposting is forbidden. It's the internet after all.

HOWEVER there is a big difference when you repost something that concerns RPF/omegaverse/etc. and it elicits a negative public response or can potentially be seen by someone it involves, even if you did not have bad intentions.

Some people don't understand that on Tumblr, the rule is that: It's not that serious and will never be serious. This is a good post that explains it.

And if you won't wanna see that stuff on tumblr. Please learn how to block tags. Most of us are very good at tagging our stuff. Or just block whoever you don't want to see.

(Disclaimer: sorry for putting this in the Lance tag but there are a few people who i want to see this feel free to repost anywhere)

#lance stroll #f1 rpf #pinned info

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dromaeocore · 11 months

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So, Peer Respites are a not-very-well-known alternative to psychiatric hospitalization. They are 100% voluntary and staffed by peers, AKA individuals with lived experience of mental illness/emotional distress/what-have-you. Generally, they are a homelike environment where you can come and go as you please, and there is lots of voluntary programming like groups, art, yoga, etc. You can bring your own food or cook meals together with staff and other residents. Stays are usually anywhere from five days to two weeks, depending on the respite house and also your own wants and needs. There are no restraints, strip searches, or seclusion.

They're also on the rise!! I know this because I've spent all day today compiling data on peer respites in the US so I could create this fun graph for ya'll.

In the past ten years, at least 38 new peer respites have opened in the US. The data for 2023 is incomplete, but at least one has already opened, and another is scheduled for a soft opening later this year.

Some things about the data:

I did not include peer respites which were permanently closed (2) or could not find an opening date for (1)

I used the National Empowerment Center's Directory of Peer Respites, along with some internet sleuthing to find a few more (and to find the opening dates for each one). Because of this, I may have missed a few.

There were a handful of peer respites for which I could not pin down a for-certain, exact date for. I did include these in the dataset as I was able to find rough estimates.

I have also not done a deep dive for all peer respites that were unsuccessful, which may skew the data a little bit.

I included Soteria Vermont as well, as it technically fits the definition despite being specifically for people with psychosis

If you would like to help get a peer respite off the ground, I would recommend donating to Peer Support Space Inc.'s Orlando FL Peer Respite. Their soft launch is November 2023, and they are scheduled to open to the public in January 2024. This is really important, because Florida's only peer respite has recently permanently closed.

If you're interested in starting your own peer respite, the National Empowerment Center has a list of resources here.

If you are interested in seeking help from a peer respite, there is a directory of most of them here. You can also look at the Google Doc I created to compile my data, which has a few more/is slightly more updated - though it's not nearly as nicely put together as the other one!

If anyone would like to add any information, non-US peer respites, etc, feel free to!

#peer respites #peer respite #psych ward #psych hospital #psychiatric hospitalization #psych critical #psychiatry critical #anti psychiatry #antipsych #antipsychiatry #mental illness #neurodivergency #disability #hospital diversion #psychiatry #disability pride month #psychiatric survivors #putting in all the tags I can think of so ppl see this lol

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