Postroll by The Folkmoss

the larger and more IRL my audience is, the more people I will think about catering towards, the quieter my voice will be. And I am not writing to contract, I am writing to expand.

A lot will be lost as the internet becomes less and less anonymous and age-verification sweeps the land. I think of the thousands of people in active addiction over at places like r/stopdrinking who either don't know they can be doxxed or don't post or ask for help because of the fear of losing their jobs.

We know that these platforms are bad for us as individuals, and for us as a society, no matter our age. Why are we drawing this arbitrary line in the sand that is based on whether you've had 16 candles on your bday cake or not? Why are we dancing around the real issue, which is that we have let Big Tech corporations build up platforms that make them millions/billions of dollars, that are hard to leave, and that we know are not good for our young people?

So much about identifying and calling out covert misogyny is about prior experience and gut feelings and hypotheticals, which makes it so hard; because overt, obvious misogyny is rarely worth a discussion and is a lot less controversial to name.

Men calling each other out online is accepted, even if harsh; criticizing some guy online as a woman is seen as extra humiliating and it gets treated like you’re ruining his life or reputation on the platform.

there is a restrained sense of maximalism here. finding this weblog is like finding a comprehensible book in borges' library of babel.

as the internet started to become more ubiquitous, the type of people using it expanded to include, well… everyone. And unfortunately, “everyone” sucks.

There, too, is hermeneutic labour. The work of understanding and coherently expressing feelings, discerning the feelings of others, and inventing solutions for relational problems. The work of translating the emotional world into legible terms so it can be processed. In heterosexual relationships, this work falls entirely on women, who become the relationship's expert, therapist, and interpreter simultaneously, often for partners who have never been expected to develop the same skills.

I hope liberation can somehow be found despite the steepest incline of the uphill still present. I hope trans rights become not a matter of political debate but a given—a basic recognition of humanity—globally.

Allyship that costs you nothing is not allyship.