#it's yours

[is-the-fire-real]

Another bit on the pro-Pal fandom, this one axiomatic

Being a good person is not the same thing as pretending as though you believe you are a good person.

Being a good person takes work. You have to do stuff. Doing stuff is hard. Doing good stuff is harder, because you have to put thought into determining what you think is good beforehand. That requires self-reflection, honesty, a willingness to challenge oneself, and taking in information from other people to verify that your concept of "good" is, well, good.

The nice part is that once you evaluate what is good and start doing good things, it becomes easier. You gain inner calm, peace, and even joy.

("Good" is not always the same as "necessary". Necessary work can be a slog, or it can be horrific. But there can still be a calming satisfaction at the core, the security that this is necessary and therefore worthwhile.)

Pretending to believe you are a good person takes less immediate work. You don't have to do anything that positively impacts the real world, and you don't have to do any of that annoying, time-consuming self examination. But in the long run, it's more exhausting. By far.

You are insecure about whether or not you are a good person. You're pretending to believe you are good. You can't feel secure in something you pretend to believe. That insecurity gnaws at you, especially when you engage in bad behavior--harassment, doxxing, posting gore, swarming tags, encouraging and promoting suicide among your fellow "activists", telling your opponents to kill themselves, stalking, spamming unrelated content with literal Nazi propaganda.

None of those are good things good people do. And you understand that. You would think someone was bad if they did those things to you. The cognitive dissonance between who you want to be and who you really are, as determined by your actions, is scary. It's painful. It rears up every time someone you have labeled a Zio colonizer scumbag asks you to please just stop and you remember a time when you begged someone--an abuser, a troll online, a 4channer, your parents--to just stop please just leave me alone.

That must feel terrifying, and again, it makes you insecure. It makes you question if you're doing the right thing.

So you do the work to pretend to believe you are good. And that's far more work than goes into being good.

You recruit others, and all of you agree that you will pretend together. Tabletop gaming has taught us how powerful this imaginative play can be. You all reassure each other that you are good and you are right. But since you're all lying to each other, that means you must spend more, and more, and more time every day telling each other that you are good, chasing that high, that feeling that you are a good person and your actions are justified.

You tell each other that your "opponents" in this "battle" are not people, so anything you say or do to and about them is okay. You look at lists of "dehumanizing tactics" and instead of internalizing what those lists are teaching you, you go: "Ah, so if I don't use the word 'vermin', anything I say should be fine!" And then you say it.

You do not smile over good news. You only smile when one of your opponents logs off Tumblr because you made the site unusable and unsafe for them. (The expression you make there isn't really a smile, but we'll call it that, since the corners of your mouth do turn upward.) You tell yourself you're just attacking Zionists and pretend you do not see how you're really going after Jews.

No self-examination; that would mean admitting that you're lying to yourself and others. Instead, you traumatize and exhaust yourself until you're psychologically incapable of self-examination. You watch snuff films. You stare at mangled bodies until you're weeping and physically ill (certainly, you're too ill to check whether the video is real, or if it was taken from this conflict).

You force your beliefs into your fandom spaces so that others, the bad people, cannot escape their complicity in genocide.

But more importantly, you do that so you can't escape.

You cannot engage in any fandom but the pro-Pal fandom because that takes imaginative energy away from your biggest pretense--that you're a good person.

You are NOT hurting people because you are striking a blow for Palestinians. You are hurting people, including yourself, because you do not want to do the work of becoming a good person. You are afraid that self examination, at this point, will reveal to you that you are exactly the sort of person you believe you are fighting.

That fear, that insecurity, that dread, that restless sense that if you ever rest or stop or think for just a moment, you'll discover something awful? That's your conscience.

I do not ask you to change your mind about your political opponents. Your defenses are already on your lips and in your mind; a thousand How Dare Yous for me hinting that you look at other people as people. What I will ask you is to consider this.

I came to young adulthood just as Bush was elected, and the Iraq War post-9/11 was the first war I really followed as an adult. I did what you're doing now. I forced myself to look at photographs of destroyed bodies. I looked at photographs of torture perpetrated by US soldiers. I blogged about it obsessively.

I told myself that I was Doing My Part to end the war. But really, it's that the anxiety of being an American during the war made me insecure over whether or not I was responsible for all of this, and therefore, a bad person. If I pretended my looking at snuff photos was activism, and that it was good, then I could pretend to believe I was good and shout "Not in my name" at protests. I could deny my responsibility.

What I really did was traumatize myself. It's been almost twenty years. I can still see some of those torture pictures in my head. In the end, that is the extent of the impact of my online activism. The blogs are all long deleted, and nobody remembers them.

Only my trauma remains.

I do not want this for you. I want you to be wiser. There is still time. You can stop.

Stop hurting yourself and other people. Do the hard work. Examine yourself and your actions. Consider what your own heart is trying to tell you whenever you start to get the shakes and your throat gets tight. Do not take that feeling out on random people online because they have a Magen David in their pfp.

Once you have done the hard work, it gets easier. You will be able to advocate and work for whatever causes you believe in because you know they are good, not because you're joining your friends in cosplaying goodness. You will still be traumatized, and you will still be sad, and you'll definitely still get angry. You will have to face how you've acted exactly like your own past abusers, and that's a real tough row to hoe.

But at the end, you will be able to advocate and work because you want to, instead of feeling as though you must in order to keep up the masquerade.

#free gaza #free palestine #palestine #politics as fandom #suicide #torture #trauma #worse than slacktivism #abuse #is-the-fire-real original #g-d damn it you've got to be kind #i understand you won't listen to this. it's okay if you don't #i may have addressed “you” but i was soothing my own conscience #because i think it's a good thing to tell people to stop harming themselves and others #and it's not my responsibility to change your behavior #it's yours #i'm also not addressing your antisemitic actions #not because you aren't doing that #but because that is between you and your dark night of the soul

[wejustvibing]

i'm still here and i'm still fighting and we've gotta get that number 8 so... - lewis hamilton 👑

#😏 #it's yours #lewis hamilton #lewis x tommy hilfiger #mercedes amg f1 #f1

[mikaelaryder]

This Halloween, a girl should do a video fucking various gourds and rating which type of pumpkin is the best hole

#excellent ideas #take it #it's yours

[junksterrr]

junodream

#junodream #award for the band with the worst sunnies #it's yours #it's that denim jacket again #dougal gray #will ryder #jake gidley #ed vyvyan #tom rea

[truthseeker-blogger]

Amen 🙏🙏🙏

#The Lord's Prayer #It's YOURS #Matt Maher #✝️✝️✝️ #🙏🙏🙏 #Matthew 6: 9-13 #🛐🛐🛐

[kaisollisto]

I love you! and your artwork! and how passionate and effusive and silly and loving you are!! ok bye 💖

i'm in love with you, i'll die for you, i'll do anything, name your price, anything

#you want money???? #my life?? #my devotion??? #my loyalty??? #my secrets?????? #my hopes and dreams??????? #i'll kiss you #it's yours #TAKE IT #I WANT YOU TO HAVE IT #I'D LIVE AND DIE FOR YOU #OVER AND OVER #ask #sobbing and crying in a ball on the floor #thanks <3

[peculiary]

A+X #5 March 6, 2013

#oh #sounds good #in that case #it's yours #have fun

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

'well fine, I'm going to watch the hbo show to spite you'

okay, if you say so, but that's you actively making that choice after we even asked you in the nicest possible way to not play the games and now we ask you not to watch the show. own your choices if you're so fucking proud of them then.

#anti jkr #this isn't our responsibility #it's yours #vent #rant

[eyeballhoarder]

Has anyone considered a Macbeth au for Goncharov yet? No?? Just me????

#goncharov #macbeth #honestly I think it would fit well #macbeth is permanently stuck in my brain due to school #and that's not my problem #it's yours

[shadowbugzimmy]

*Hands you this*

For youuuu.

#take it #it's yours

[powdermelonkeg]

#dunmeshi #go do your taxes

[whydidisavethistomyphone]

5 year anniversary of the miette post \o/

#miette #know your meme #anniversary

[theboxfort]

Peace and love

#pink posts #i saw a tweet that was like “i see other people's art” --> i get discouraged #i understand that seeing art that is prettier than yours can be discouraging but why not twist that a bit? #why does it look prettier to you? is it the colors #is it the textures they used? the brushes? #study them and try to put your spin on it #and maybe you'll find your art beautiful as well

[vamprisms]

i feel like a lot of the 'i hate kids' crowd would be more tolerant if they understood that due to a kid's limited experience of the world that 4 hour flight might just be the longest they've ever had to sit still for or that trapped finger might literally be the most pain they've ever felt in their short life or they might not have ever seen a person with pink hair ever so of course they want to touch it or nobody's told them yet that they can't run around the museum and they only just learned cheetahs are the fastest animals so of course they want to put that to the test. how were they supposed to know etc etc.

#like majority of the time kids are not just 'being naughty'. they have big feelings inside little bodies it's a lot #also like. #it should be illegal to dye your hair fun colours if you aren't prepared for kids in public to ask if youre related to a my little pony #EDIT: the notes on this post are an absolute cesspool. i don't care about your reasons for hating kids you sound like a disney villain

[peculiary]

Star Wars: Age of Republic Special January 16, 2019

#keep it #it's yours

[cahootings]

I redownload this app for one day once every maybe two months and unfortunately I’m rewarded every time

#everyone reblogging this needs to go stream our flag means death on max #and suck your friends’ fingers