an_actual_pigeon [she/her, comrade/them]

  • 1 Post
  • 15 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2024

help-circle
  • I’ll never be able to think about Blizzard or any of their games again without thinking of that hilarious horrifying story of one of their employees stealing a coworker’s breast milk from the fridge. Like, it’s so disgusting and perverse and invasive, it actually loops back around to being a little funny. It sounds like a dumb Nick Mullen bit, like how is that real? How pathetic and weird do you have to be to do something like that? Actual freak shit, actual freak behavior. Imagine being that poor fucking woman, just knowing for the rest of your life that the milk your body worked so hard to produce to feed your beloved child, an ancient primal mammalian biological tradition between mother and child going back millions of years, some fucking anonymous bozo compsci grad who wears pre-faded superhero tees from target stole it and… did who knows god what with it. Drank it? Jacked off with it? Who fucking knows?! And she just has to live with that now?!

    as much as I enjoyed Overwatch at its height, I can’t see it or WoW or anything else Blizzard related without remembering

    “oh yeah, the fucking tiddy milk guys. the mommy’s milker thieves. the grown toddlers who stole some lady’s milk.”

    like its so absurd that its hilarious. what an absolute embarrassment and disgrace that they didn’t use any company resources to find out who this loser was and name and shame him - they’re a massive company, you can’t tell me those fuckers didn’t have security cameras in their office. And if they didn’t, well they pretty fucking clearly need cameras to supervise their gamer staff from stealing each other’s precious bodily fluids.


  • I mean, I know Fallout’s social commentary and heavy-handed attempts at poignancy is pretty on the nose in terms of the desolate mid-century american wasteland practically screaming at you “THIS IDEOLOGY AND LIFESTYLE LEADS TO DEATH AND ANNIHILATION”, but I’d say that Fallout is as much as celebration of 50s/60s americana as it is a critique of it. Like, yes, it’s literally post-apocalyptic, but its making constant adoring allusions to sci-fi drive-in B movies, midcentury pop culture, and pulp fiction. There’s a real unironic love and appreciation for that era of America on display in Fallout, much to my chagrin, even as someone who can deeply share that cultural reverence. Sometimes I feel like it goes down the “wow wasn’t the 60s cool and wacky?!” route a little bit too much at times, especially these days. Its like, yeah, but if you’re not further deconstructing it in some way or using it to make an interesting point, it feels a little hollow. Fallout is at its best (in my view) when it’s able to perform as a simultaneous celebration and deconstruction of Americana. I think it disarms people who might not be willing to accept a critique of America otherwise.








  • I know many people who have stated OP’s point are often being hyperbolic for the sake of comedy, but I really do think you’re on to something here, and I want to elaborate on it further. Nearly universally, every one of these online chuds who make endless waterfalls of “HAS insert media here GONE WOKE?!” content - if you followed all of their advice and listened to all of their complaints and did exactly what they asked you to, you would eventually just have hardcore pornography wherein someone who looks just like them violently fucks women and kills men. A snuff film, in effect. And every one of these “content creators” I mentioned, it should be said, just so happen to look like the sort of guy who just goons all day and loves jacking off more than anything else. I mean this, seriously and sincerely, and as someone who is generally sex-positive and pro-masturbation: these dudes have had their brains fucking COOKED and FRIED by watching too much hardcore porn and just gooning constantly. It’s almost self-evident, they’re practically telling on themselves. And now, any time they engage with media whose sole focus isn’t being titillating to their deranged viciously misogynistic fantasies, they throw a tantrum like a baby. More broadly, I think they apply this same worldview onto reality at a certain point too, and then their pornographic habits bleed into how they view the real world, and even worse, how they view politics and other human beings. Porn can be fine, isolated in a context, and so can self-pleasure, but these dudes are clearly taking it way too far and letting it infect how they see the rest of the world. Having 24/7 access to porn isn’t enough, they DEMAND like a petulant child that all media, universally, look exactly like the porn they consume.

    This is a thread I want to pull on more and an idea I’ve wanted to explore more. How men’s porn consumption habits (specifically hardcore, violent, and overtly misogynistic pornography, which is blasted everywhere online) can lead to real changes in their political views, especially if it’s something that’s done daily or every other day. Then, by demanding that reality conform to their expectations that have been established through pornography, they essentially non-consentually rope us all into their weird sexual fantasies and kinks. You see it with Muskrat and his breeding kink. You see it with incels and tradcaths. And you see it with this weird unwavering insistence that “NO! All women are SEXY BITCHES! It is woke BRAINWASHING to tell me strong butch women exist!! Theres never been a strong woman ever! I know that for a fact because every day I watch 3-4 hours of videos of women being overpowered and brutalized by men! That’s normal and healthy!! Shut up I don’t have a problem!!”


  • yeah, and like, I hope it’s clear in my OP, but literally all I want to know is what to do to not trigger their flagging system again. I have no idea what I did or why I was flagged as NSFW. If there’s something I need to do to prevent their automated algorithm from doing that again, I kind of need to know what it is to properly be able to use my tumblr blog in the normal expected way. I’m not looking to admonish anyone, I’m not looking to yell at anyone, or berate anyone, I just want to know how I’m supposed to use their website properly, and FAQs just don’t cut it. There isn’t a FAQ for my specific situation, lol.


  • That perspective makes sense, it’s definitely a “yes, and”, not an “either/or”. And while it makes sense from a business and logistics perspective, I think companies being more opaque and being harder to access is going to have severely negative effects over the long term. I think it’s only reasonable to expect that every organization with humans behind it should have some sort of human representative, even if it’s just a doorman at the office to tell you to go away. They benefit immensely from the public, why shouldn’t there be a way for the public to communicate with them? But earnestly, maybe that’s a naive and childish expectation for me to have.


  • Absolutely. I want to be clear too, I don’t harass or abuse these workers and I don’t encourage others to. These quests are just quixotic attempts of trying to find some official representative of the company who can tell me in clear language the information I need to know to properly utilize their product or service. If I’m calling someone who I know wouldn’t possibly be able to help me, I immediately apologize and ask them if they know who I can or should contact, and if they can redirect me. This has worked out for me pretty well in the past, but it’s often frustrating the amount of hoops that are put in place to make it so difficult to contact someone. I understand though, I’ve worked in positions where I’ve taken inbound calls from the public. I think it’s an element of hostile design that’s made all of our lives worse, and these companies love passing the buck around from department to department, from role to role, so that oops, nobody is ever accountable! Websites, Apps, Healthcare Providers, Hiring Agencies, Insurance Companies, Utility Companies, idk, it just sucks. But yeah, generally I’m a big believer you attract more flies with honey than vinegar anyways. I personally have a feeling it’s less likely that the public’s abuse of these workers caused this and more likely that it’s the result of profiteering strategies to make customer service cheaper and cheaper.


  • god and like, the way they try to sell the lack of phone calls, the lack of human connection as a positive thing.

    “oh it’s so easy! use our AI chat! use our app! we bet as a young person, you’ve got phone anxiety right? well do we have the thing for you, it’s a chatbox! we’ll text your phone instead of calling, don’t you like that? Don’t you love it? isn’t it convenient for you?! oh no, it’s entirely incidental that we saved millions of dollars by switching to this instead of having a call center or having to pay a couple people to answer phones, oh no no no, this is for YOUR benefit!”

    it’s so fucking condescending. i dont want an app, i dont want AI answers, I want to sit down with one of your employees for 5 minutes and talk to them about what I need, because I’m a person, a social creature who likes interacting with other social creatures. I’m not a god damn robot. where is the warm beating heart?! where is the fucking blood anymore?!



  • I heard once that anger is a misalignment with your expectations and reality. Once I heard that, it helped me navigate my anger a bit better.

    Like, for instance, you expected better treatment and behavior from your Ex. I think it was totally normal and understandable to expect that. I’m angry at the inhuman cruelty of capital, because I expect to live in a world where people are good and kind to each other. You’re right that anger can be a healthy drive, but anger can also be really overwhelming and get out of hand if you feed it too much, so you’ve got to slowly turn the burner down from “bout to go postal” way down to a calm simple “This is not what I expected. I deserve better.”. At that very very low simmer, it’s still a productive drive, it’s still an affirmation of your dignity, but it hasn’t become self-destructive or cruel.

    idk, hope that helps, comrade



  • I understand what you’re getting at - material conditions make it difficult for women to cycle, especially in North America - but as a woman who is literally a professional bike courier and spends most of my waking hours on the road cycling, I can’t help but take a little tiny bit of umbrage at your statement. Not only is “women don’t ride bikes” a factually inaccurate statement, it denies the actual courage and strength and bravery that existing women cyclists have to possess in a world that is actively hostile to us and our safety.

    There are many women who ride bikes in spite of how dangerous conditions are, and not a statistically insignificant number of them - they account for about 25% of all cyclists in the United States. I see hundreds of them every day. It takes courage from them. It’s the equivalent of reading “Well now you know why there are no women in video games” or “This is why there are no women in STEM” - again, I truly understand what you’re getting at, that there are material conditions that make these environments more hostile to women specifically. However, I’m sure you can understand why your phrasing feels a little insulting - as if these women, most of whom probably had to fight extra hard fit in, simply don’t exist. Their accomplishments, their names, mean nothing because “there are just no women who do that, sigh, what a shame - no women’s history here to celebrate”. An alternative and more accurate way of phrasing it would be “there aren’t as many women who ride bikes”. Sincerely hope I’m not being annoying or sounding like a scold or anything, but like, yeah dude, I’m a woman and ride bikes for a living, lol, there are women who ride bikes, idk what else to tell ya. also this isn’t even anything new, here’s some context on the long-standing and well-established historical strategic partnership between women and bicycles

    edit:

    In bike-unfriendly cities, only men with thick skin ride bikes

    look man, I know broad strokes paint a picture quicker, but come on, lol, that’s such a blanket statement