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bijoumikhawal · 2 months

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a lot of the talk about Bushnell is reminding me of my "the "mentally ill" have their right to violence revoked" thing again

like. When you're deemed mentally ill, suddenly you must stress how you are more likely to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator to be deemed as human. Because any violence you commit, as a crazy person, is bad. It cannot carry rationale, because you are crazy. If I, as an autistic person, hit someone who was hurting me and got in legal trouble, I can be referred to as just "crazy" instead of as a victim responding to an aggressor. It's an underdiscussed area of dehumanization.

And that's before we talk about intersectionality, and before we talk about how this factors into the idea of ODD, and the "violent" responses patients have to doctors (including those who simply aren't white, and those forced on meds that hurt them, and those resisting sexual assault, and-).

But this is not just interpersonally political, it is political at scale. Black men were targeted by schizophrenia diagnoses during the Civil Rights era (and this is also around when schizophrenia became a "scary" illness). The crazy cannot have valid political criticisms, as a movement (remember that being "crazy" is a vector of oppression abd marginalization) or as individuals in other movements.

Ive seen both the sentiment of "oh Aaron is gonna be slandered as crazy" and exactly what the sentiment warns of- "we can't valorize suicide from the mentally ill". And the first isn't wrong, because society at large does view the "crazy" as lacking political agency, but it's lacking.

Bushnell had been trying very hard to get out of his military contract without being imprisoned at best, while witnessing genocide and knowing he was complicit. He may not have had clinical depression normally, but that would inspire a mental rational response of situational depression (and yes, mental health issues can be a rational response to horrible circumstances). Further, I know of instances of self immolation that WERE done by people who did have long standing mental health issues and were done to protest the treatment they'd experienced that caused them and that resulted from their existence. Mental illness and divergence from the norm is more complicated than just "these people are incapable of rationality, they are incapable of political thought, and they are incapable of agency".

#cipher talk #Aaron Bushnell #Ask to tag #Self immolation #Suicide tw #I'm thinking about how like. Chloe Sagal did what she did to protest how she was treated as a mentally ill trans woman and highlighted #Her mental illness and struggle with homelessness primarily. And it WAS a political protest #The only really. Sensible thing I've seen on this about how it was a suicide was 1) someone pointing out some people may relapse in #Response to this WITHOUT delegitimizing his actions and sharing helpline sources #And 2) another person pointing out it'd be absurd to accuse hunger strikers of promoting eating disorders #Like. You know what I think soldiers who are complicit in genocide probably DO develop mental health problems #And I see the idea that they do used in some pretty batshit ways recently!#But so- so fucking what #Resistance fighters and genocide victims have mental health issues too #Why is it for soldiers ignored or used to dehumanize victims until of the soldiers turns is gun away from them?#What's next am I gonna watch people delegitimize the actions of Palestinian resistance and the Bielskis and fucking #Unistʼotʼen as the actions of people who 'just have mental health issues' and therefore can't be political?#We also have the similar protests of Black people (two in the last 6 months) being swept aside

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satanfemme · 2 years

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with every passing day I just grow more anti-psych tbh. like. burn the whole industry to the ground and start over lol

#don't unfollow me I've literally got brain problems myself and support mental disorder rights and etc etc etc #but I’m serious. especially lately with the recent influx of casual ableism... has anyone else noticed that too or?#would apologize for not listing examples of what I mean but honestly.... there's so many examples just Look Around You #and it gets to the point where you ask ''is it fair to label all 'dangerous' people mentally ill?'' and the answer is:#any label that is being applied to both social classes ''serial killers'' and ''trauma/abuse victims'' is a fucking meaningless label 100%#and needs to be scrapped.#idc about who is or isn't ''technically'' mentally ill. it's a label that's being applied. look at who it's applied to.#if you think ''mentally ill'' is a neutral - let alone positive - label in our society idk where u live #and if u think about the full subjectivity of the mentally ill label - as well as individual diagnoses labels - for even one second #where stigmatizing labels can be applied or taken away by authority figures to anyone for any fucking reason they want!#...I mean! u see why maybe it's all kinda just one big pseudoscience huh!#even if ur using diagnoses for the ''correct'' reasons it's still borderline meaningless too tbh #you wanna diagnose people to 1. help understand a set of disabling traits that commonly co-exist in individuals #and 2. help predict the best course of ''treatment'' for that subjective group of traits #but???? I mean. actually look at this exact diagnosis process in action #where it's all about just Guessing based on ?personal anecdote and the therapist's personal biases???????#''you're sad a lot of the time. obviously this is because your brain is fucking broken with Too-Sad-Disorder --#-- no we aren't gonna do any objective medical tests lol I'm the doctor here I can tell your brain is broken just by looking at u obv 🙄''#and that's how u get diagnosed like 100 dif drugs to fix an environmental problem. it's insane #the way therapists are always underdiagnosing or overdiagnosing or #''well XYZ disorder is very rare and usually happens in rich boys so I think you have Hysterical Bitch Disorder instead <3''#and u can't even ''well not all therapists'' this cause like. why is it that every single person I know has had experiences like this #if it were really an isolated problem it would not be so universal. nor would it be fundamental to the field's knowledge #how is it anything more than a guessing game at best?#I'm serious. anyway. I wish every psych institution a very die

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touyyes · 1 year

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in my self sabotage era rn

#( ˙Ⱉ˙ )🗯️ — 𝐃𝑬𝐀𝐑 𝐃𝒊𝐀𝐑𝐘. . .#the urge to push literally everyone away is so strong recently #if ur a victim im sorry #just let me get myself out this weird headspace n ill be back to regular cewchie munching hours ⚰️#i havent felt like this in years god why now #i think it's cause my bday is coming up n im feeling an existential crisis creeping up on me

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echidnana · 1 year

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currently very angry at the state of psychiatry

#just thinking about how fucked up the system is . like in general but especially psych #the way people have been horrendously fucking abused. and stripped of autonomy.#and so beyond angry at the way ‘normal’ people treat the ‘mentally ill’#the institutional violence enacted upon people. it’s disgusting #it’s probably a combination of how we’re doing the yellow wallpaper + some posts we’ve seen recently #but all the victims of psychiatry. are weighing heavy on us. sending love to everyone #fukase.txt #ask to tag #psychiatry tw #abuse discussion

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rubberbandballqueen · 2 years

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holy shit the blueberries in the fridge taste really good

#for context i was recovering from plague at this time last year and didn't start getting my sense of taste back until summer #but even then so many things i liked tasted absolutely foul and fruit was a VERY unfortunate victim of this #and until recently actually i thought my sense of smell was just gonna be permanently altered until the other day #when i finally got the upstairs bathroom back bc my SISTER came home to quarantine from plague from her asthmatic roommate #i'd forgotten to bring my shampoo n conditioner down so i was using my parents' for that time period so i smelled my own again #and i was so surprised n delighted to realize it smelled as lovely as i remember it before i got ill #like i genuinely did not believe that i would ever smell it like that ever again so it was like 'OH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'#and blueberries are like my favorite fruit but then there was just something Wrong with them when my taste came back #so they'd sit in the fridge until the texture went bad and i wouldn't dare touch them #I ALSO MISSED MANGOES A LOT. JUST SAYING I MISSED THEM A LOT tho they were some of the first to return to normal #but yeah i was like 'man i guess i'll try the blueberries' when i wandered over to the fridge just now #next thing i know i am shoving them in my mouth by the fistful bc Eating Is Pleasurable Holy Fucking Shit #so like yeah i think i just had a proper blueberry eating experience for the first time in almost two years #the worm speaks

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age-of-moonknight · 2 years

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“The Uses of Restraint,” Moon Knight (Vol. 5/2006), #13.

Writer: Charlie Huston; Penciler and Inker: Tomm Coker; Colorist: Dean White; Letterer: Joe Caramagna

#Marvel #Marvel comics #Marvel 616 #Moon Knight vol. 5 #Moon Knight 2006 #Moon Knight comics #Moon Knight #Marc Spector #and oh yeah this is the issue where they reveal Marc has been carving crescents into criminals’ foreheads #I guess this is as good a post as any to discuss this so: ramblings ahead!#What is the source of Marc’s violent behavior?#I have seen many people for VERY good reason be uncomfortable with the character of Moon Knight #because of two traits that are comparatively consistent about him: A) he exhibits behavior that could align with DID and #B) he is one of Marvel’s more morally “grey area” heroes #because the latter was established more firmly before the former you can have some writers #like how I feel Mr. Huston comes dangerously close to doing in this run at points #come to the conclusion of “oh what if Marc is violent /because/ he is ‘mentally unstable’”#which is an INCREDIBLY unfortunate and damaging stereotype about specifically DID and mental illness besides #(I don’t think I even need to tell you guys the statistics about perpetration vs victimization)#Anyway I personally like the most recent approach: that Marc is a man of contradictions #up to and including that he is a man who has found himself skilled at violence and he just happens to have DID #there is no need for one to have necessarily sprung fully-formed Athena-like from the other #but yeah don’t mind my blathering in the tags 😅

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rainingmbappe · 1 month

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It boggles my mind how much wisdom you can gain from reading, yet people don't take advantage of it. It's the free gift to humanity, and yet we chose the ones that take more than they give. It's wild.

#i wish i could shake humanity to drop social media and turn back to books and papers for knowledge #ive realized recently that ive fallen a victim to the fallacy of thinking that instagram or yt is giving me a lot of knowledge and thats my-#-incentive to stay #but thats bullshit and if i continue lying to myself then ive lost it #and i know im not the only one and i also know that im not the worst case scenario of this #my teacher was talking about how one of his students gave up playing video games cause he was becoming dumb and dull #and he literally said “the damage has already been done because its not like his brains are going to come running to him now”#i was sitting there thinking if its too late for me #i know it might not be that deep and maybe it isnt #but its not about it being “deep” its simply the very real consequences that ill have to deal with if i dont rectify my life now #in terms of academicc and eveything else #i miss reading those massive hardcover encyclopedias and gaining my knowledge from that #i miss reading obscure charles darwin writings that i dig so hard for and then not understand a word of it #i miss the active choice and selection of what i was learning rathee than the mindless feeding of throw away facts to my brain #im gonna go pick up a book or two now bye hahahaha #txt

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animutate · 10 months

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thry should kill whoever invented that one christian netflix thing im not kidding.

#hai. i watched a fucking youtube video that showed a clip from one of the movies on there without warning #where they were reenacting *********. i can barely handle seeing photos of them or pictures of that day or the fucking date it happened #let alone an actor dressed up as one of them pretending to kill someone dressed up as a real victim. im still. trying to calm down #sorry everyone. ive talking about the thing that happened before but ive realized recently he was a copycat killer. but he copied things th #-t didnt happen. apparently he asked people if they believed in god or something before him killed them like. what ppl thought happened tha #day. which it didnt. i dont want to think about it i couldve been one of the victims if he decided to walk over to my school.#its like the topic follows me im being forced to think about it every moment of my life its awful im so paranoid its going to happen again #ill be ok though. im going to be fucking fine.

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inkskinned · 10 months

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you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

#writeblr #warm up #my dad was actively doing bad shit to us and we STILL were told we were lucky . and to a point i do think im lucky #i just think also there's somethin to be said about like. how about we stop using comparison to dismiss ppls individual struggles #yes there are people who have no perspective. for the reference tho having perspective actually made me really unwilling to get help #for what was a serious and debilitating mental health issue. bc i thought i didnt DESERVE IT #and i would rather have 600 ppl who aren't THAT bad get help and get heard and get seen #than make any 1 kid. do the math that i did: look at the world that is dying and the people who are hurting and say #''oh. okay. others have it worse. they are probably better people than i am. i am being unreasonable. i cannot ask for help #i am not good. i am taking too much space. i am not worth saving.''#bc our WHOLE lives we are taught a scarcity mindset - that you can 'steal' from someone. so that instead of changing a system that doesn't #actually offer fair support to everyone #we put the impetus on the individual to just... demand less.#and here's something - there are probably ppl who think i DIDNT deserve to get help #bc i DID have it better than other people #and something about that is ... so sickening. bc i think all of us in some way at some point WILL need help.#we were supposed to make communities. we were supposed to offer our hands. we were supposed to raise the barn #instead we said: it could be worse. now handle it yourself

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porcelain-dollbones · 18 days

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i don't know if this is being talked about outside of australia, but recently there was a mass stabbing event in my city. six people are dead and eight more badly injured.

the media coverage and public conversation around the stabbing has been really awful. it started with frenzied theorising- without any evidence- that the perpetrator was a muslim extremist, a palestinian hamas agent, including spreading false information about the victims to create a narrative of islamic violence. when it resulted that the perpetrator was a white man from queensland, the coverage instantly shifted- instead of a terror attack, it was now a lone wolf, a non-ideological result of an individual's mental health issues. this is typical of the framing when it comes to perpetrators: a white person is an individual, a brown person is a faceless member of an ideology. but, crucially, the attack was not non-ideological. the perpetrator specifically targeted women, specifically avoiding men except where they were preventing him from getting to women. six out of seven of the deceased victims were women, and in interviews with the perpetrators parents, they talked about his anger at not having a girlfriend. misogyny is ideological, and men are trained to harbour deep resentment towards women that regularly manifests in violence. this event was a targeted act of femicide. while it is unclear if the perpetrator was involved in any specific right-wing groups, that the attack was driven by hatred of women is not in doubt.

the new narrative is one of demonising mental illness, because the perpetrator was diagnosed with schizophrenia and there is no avenue to blame his race. there are now open calls in the media for stricter use of sectioning and more oppressive tracking, forced medication and indefinite institutionalisation of the mentally ill. it is the mentally ill who will suffer from this narrative, while the fostering of violent misogyny goes unchecked. this country never stops letting us down

#feminism #mh stuff

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aintmyjewelry · 2 years

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pretty excited for the Dahmer limited series coming out tomorrow. from the looks of it its gonna highlight how useless and stupid the milwaukee police department was!

#ill never forget when #one of the officers who took one of dahmer's victims #BACK TO DAHMER retired with like honor #just recently in like 2017 i think #one of the officers directly responsible for the death of a young boy #was applauded and praised when he retired!

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idolomantises · 2 months

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One thing about ATLA I really do appreciate compared to other, more recent cartoons that try to tackle the concept of genocide and war is that the show spends a lot of time focusing on the communities that are the most victimized by it. The war is never a backdrop for these characters or played off as a joke, its a constant presence.

I remember my biggest frustration when watching SPOP was Adora very rarely actually engages with the people she's supposed to protect. at times the war feels more like an inconvenience to her than a genuine threat, because the victims of war are never given focus, just the soldiers and the royals.

it doesnt really surprise me that a lot of ATLA fans have a hard time grasping discussions around characters like iroh, zuko and azula because the show goes out of its way to show the impact of their actions. I've criticized azula fans for refusing to understand why she never got a redemption, but i notice a lot of zuko fans act like he was only doing terrible things to appease his father and not also because he genuinely believed the fire nation were in the right and has literally burned villages (hell zuko says it OUTRIGHT and fans still blame everything he does on his dad).

I don't know. its interesting. its like people really arent well equipped to handle the topic of war when it isnt used as a metaphor for child trauma and mental illness.

#txt #SU also had this issue but it was a bit less egregious compared to spop since it was ongoing for the latter show

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thatswhywelovegermany · 1 month

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Aufhocker

An Aufhocker (top sitter), also called Huckup, is a pressure spirit and shapeshifter in German folklore. It is a kind of goblin, who jumps onto the shoulders or backs of hikers who are still out at night, becoming heavier with each step.

The hiker is paralyzed, suffers from feelings of oppression and anxiety and is unable to turn around. The Aufhocker remains sitting on the hiker until he is released by the approaching light, a prayer or the ringing of a bell.

The nightmarish experience often takes place in three phases. The hiker is first approached or accompanied by a sinister being, then the demonic companion grows to supernatural size and finally jumps onto the back of the victim. The Hackestüpp from Düren is one such Aufhocker, who initially accompanies the victims as a playful little dog, then jumps onto their backs, cannot be shaken off and becomes heavier with each step.

Typical haunted places such as streams, bridges, lakes, forests, ditches, crossroads, ravines, churchyards and sites where murders or executions happened are the usual places for an encounter with an Aufhocker, which can result in physical and mental illness and sometimes even death for the hiker. The Bahkauv ("stream calf") of Aachen is an Aufhocker who is said to frighten drunken men at night and ask them to carry him on their shoulders.

Sometimes an Aufhocker first appears as pitiful old women; but they can also take on animal forms such as a bear, a calf (as in the Bahkauv), a werewolf (as in the Stüpp of the Western Rhineland) or a dog (as in the Sürthgens Mossel of the Hürtgenwald forest). Elemental beings such as mermen or will-o'-the-wisps also act as Aufhockers. What is important is not the shape of the Aufhocker, but the oppressiveness of the situation. Aufhockers are not limited to German folklore. An Aufhocker in the shape of an old man is also mentioned in the oriental fairy tale collection One Thousand and One Nights, in which he meets "Sinbad the Sailor" on a deserted island.

The figure of the Aufhocker has its origins in the fear of the revenant, the undead. The oldest reports of Aufhockers clearly speak of "haunting corpses" and not of goblins or ghosts. Unlike Nachzehrers, who did not have to leave their grave if they wanted to harm the living, other undead, like vampires, rose from the grave and stole people's vital force. This could happen in a tangible way by sucking out blood, but also in a more abstract form. As recent research has shown, this also applies to vampires, who are said in the oldest reports to have a damaging effect through "strangling" and "emaciating", but not through bloodsucking. In the western Rhineland, the Aufhocker merges with the werewolf to form the Stüpp, a dangerous monster that unexpectedly jumps on people's shoulders and forces the victims to carry him around, causing trepidations, anxiety, feelings of oppression and panic attacks until they die of exhaustion.

#german mythical creatures #german folklore #aufhocker

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'

Tonight (May 11) at 7PM, I’m in CALGARY for Wordfest, with my novel Red Team Blues; I’ll be hosted by Peter Hemminger at the Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor.

Home ownership is the American dream: not only do you get a place to live, free from the high-handed dictates of a landlord, but you also get an asset that appreciates, building intergenerational wealth while you sleep — literally.

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/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

Of course, you can’t have it both ways. If your house is an asset you use to cover falling wages, rising health care costs, spiraling college tuition and paper-thin support for eldercare, then it can’t be a place you live. It’s gonna be an asset you sell — or at the very least, borrow so heavily against that you are in constant risk of losing it.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the American dream: when America turned its back on organized labor as an engine for creating prosperity and embraced property speculation, it set itself on the road to serfdom — a world where the roof over your head is also your piggy bank, destined to be smashed open to cover the rising costs that an organized labor movement would have fought:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Today, we’re hit the end of the road for the post-war (unevenly, racially segregated) shared prosperity that made it seem, briefly, that everyone could get rich by owning a house, living in it, then selling it to everybody else. Now that the game is ending, the winners are cashing in their chips:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

The big con of home ownership is proceeding smartly on schedulee. First, you let the mark win a little, so they go all in on the scam. Then you take it all back. Obama’s tolerance of bank sleze after the Great Financial Crisis kicked off the modern era of corporations and grifters stealing Americans’ out from under them, forging deeds in robosigning mills:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-breaks-down-93-bln-robo-signing-settlement-2013-02-28

The thefts never stopped. Today on Propublica, by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon bring a horrifying, brilliantly reported account of the rampant, bottomless scams of Homevestors, AKA We Buy Ugly Houses, AKA “the #1 homebuyer in the USA”:

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses

Homevestors — an army of the hedge fund Bayview Asset Management — claims a public mission: to bail out homeowners sitting on unsellable houses with all-cash deals. The company’s franchisees — 1,150 of them in 48 states — then sprinkle pixie dust and secret sauce on these “ugly houses” and sell them at a profit.

But Propublica’s investigation — which relied on whistleblowers, company veterans, court records and interviews with victims — tells a very different story. The Homevestor they discovered is a predator that steals houses out from under elderly people, disabled people, people struggling with mental illness and other vulnerable people. It’s a company whose agents have a powerful, well-polished playbook that stops family members from halting the transfers the company’s high-pressure salespeople set in motion.

Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfers that same their homes sold out from under them for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who’ve broken a hip: “a 60-day countdown to death — and, possibly, a deal.” The company’s mobile ads are geofenced to target people near hospitals and rehab hospitals, in hopes of finding desperate sellers who need to liquidate homes so that Medicaid will cover their medical expenses.

The sales pitches are relentless. One of Homevestor’s targets was a Texas woman whose father had recently been murdered. As she grieved, they blanketed her in pitches to sell her father’s house until “checking her mail became a traumatic experience.”

Real-estate brokers are bound by strict regulations, but not house flippers like Homevestors. Likewise, salespeople who pitch other high-ticket items, from securities to plane tickets — are required to offer buyers a cooling-off period during which they can reconsider their purchases. By contrast, Homevestors’ franchisees are well-versed in “muddying the title” to houses after the contract is signed, filing paperwork that makes it all but impossible for sellers to withdraw from the sale.

This produces a litany of ghastly horror-stories: homeowners who end up living in their trucks after they were pressured into a lowball sales; sellers who end up dying in hospital beds haunted by the trick that cost them their homes. One woman who struggled with hoarding was tricked into selling her house by false claims that the city would evict her because of her hoarding. A widow was tricked into signing away the deed to her late husband’s house by the lie that she could do so despite not being on the deed. One seller was tricked into signing a document he believed to be a home equity loan application, only to discover he had sold his house at a huge discount on its market value. An Arizona woman was tricked into selling her dead mother’s house through the lie that the house would have to be torn down and the lot redeveloped; the Homevestor franchisee then flipped the house for 5,500% of the sale-price.

The company vigorously denies these claims. They say that most people who do business with Homevestors are happy with the outcome; in support of this claim, they cite internal surveys of their own customers that produce a 96% approval rating.

When confronted with the specifics, the company blamed rogue franchisees. But Propublica obtained training materials and other internal documents that show that the problem is widespread and endemic to Homevestors’ business. Propublica discovered that at least eight franchisees who engaged in conduct the company said it “didn’t tolerate” had been awarded prizes by the company for their business acumen.

Franchisees are on the hook for massive recurring fees and face constant pressure from corporate auditors to close sales. To make those sales, franchisees turn to Homevana’s training materials, which are rife with predatory tactics. One document counsels franchisees that “pain is always a form of motivation.” What kind of pain? Lost jobs, looming foreclosure or a child in need of surgery.

A former franchisee explained how this is put into practice in the field: he encountered a seller who needed to sell quickly so he could join his dying mother who had just entered a hospice 1,400 miles away. The seller didn’t want to sell the house; they wanted to “get to Colorado to see their dying mother.”

These same training materials warn franchisees that they must not deal with sellers who are “subject to a guardianship or has a mental capacity that is diminished to the point that the person does not understand the value of the property,” but Propublica’s investigation discovered “a pattern of disregard” for this rule. For example, there was the 2020 incident in which a 78-year-old Atlanta man sold his house to a Homevestors franchisee for half its sale price. The seller was later shown to be “unable to write a sentence or name the year, season, date or month.”

The company tried to pin the blame for all this on bad eggs among its franchisees. But Propublica found that some of the company’s most egregious offenders were celebrated and tolerated before and after they were convicted of felonies related to their conduct on behalf of the company. For example, Hi-Land Properties is a five-time winner of Homevestors’ National Franchise of the Year prize. The owner was praised by the CEO as “loyal, hardworking franchisee who has well represented our national brand, best practices and values.”

This same franchisee had “filed two dozen breach of contract lawsuits since 2016 and clouded titles on more than 300 properties by recording notices of a sales contract.” Hi-Land “sued an elderly man so incapacitated by illness he couldn’t leave his house.”

Another franchisee, Patriot Holdings, uses the courts aggressively to stop families of vulnerable people from canceling deals their relatives signed. Patriot Holdings’ co-owner, Cory Evans, eventually pleaded guilty to to two felonies, attempted grand theft of real property. He had to drop his lawsuits against buyers, and make restitution.

According to Homevestors’ internal policies, Patriot’s franchise should have been canceled. But Homevestors allowed Patriot to stay in business after Cory Evans took his name off the business, leaving his brothers and other partners to run it. Nominally, Cory Evans was out of the picture, but well after that date, internal Homevestors included Evans in an award it gave to Patriot, commemorating its sales (Homevestors claims this was an error).

Propublica’s reporters sought comment from Homevestors and its franchisees about this story. The company hired “a former FBI spokesperson who specializes in ‘crisis and special situations’ and ‘reputation management’ and funnelled future questions through him.”

Internally, company leadership scrambled to control the news. The company convened a webinar in April with all 1,150 franchisees to lay out its strategy. Company CEO David Hicks explained the company’s plan to “bury” the Propublica article with “‘strategic ad buys on social and web pages’ and ‘SEO content to minimize visibility.’”

https://www.propublica.org/article/homevestors-aims-to-bury-propublica-reporting

Franchisees were warned not to click links to the story because they “might improve its internet search ranking.”

Even as the company sought to “bury” the story and stonewalled Propublica, they cleaned house, instituting new procedures and taking action against franchisees identified in Propublica’s article. “Clouding titles” is now prohibited. Suing sellers for breach of contract is “discouraged.” Deals with seniors “should always involve family, attorneys or other guardians.”

During the webinar, franchisees “pushed back on the changes, claiming they could hurt business.”

If you’ve had experience with hard-sell house-flippers, Propublica wants to know: “If you’ve had experience with a company or buyer promising fast cash for homes, our reporting team wants to hear about it.”

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[Image ID: A Depression-era photo of a dour widow standing in front of a dilapidated cabin. Next to her is Ug, the caveman mascot for Homevestors, smiling and pointing at her. Behind her is a 'We buy ugly houses' sign.

Image: Homevestors https://www.homevestors.com/

Fair use: https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property

#pluralistic #the rents too damned high #house flipping #llc brain #scams #elder abuse #ripoffs #weaponized shelter #predators #homevestors #we buy ugly houses #ugly houses #real estate #propublica

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