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spidermaninlove · 2 years

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I’m actually not on board with Tom playing Feyd in Dune 2 opposite Timothée’s Paul. It would be...a total media and fandom chaos. One of them can’t even be praised or shat on now (on twitter, at least) without the other being brought into the equation. They’re constantly being pitted against each other by their hardcore fans and some TimDaya shippers (who are really, really weird because why tf do you insist shipping someone who’s already in a relationship with another person, like?—but that’s another story). Anyway, I digress. My point is there are so many people who want to create non-existent beef between Tom and Timmy like they’re not actually friends in real life. Lmao.

There’s also the issue of him being not taken seriously (and hated on, actually) by some critics and filmbros because his name is always attached to big studio blockbusters. I fear Tom joining such a big franchise like Dune would just feed their hatred of him even more, like they’d probably accuse him of riding on the coattails of Dune: Part 1’s success or something.

Lastly, now that his and Z’s relationship is out in the open, I feel like they won’t be working together like this anymore (aside from going back as PeterMJ for Spider-man in the future) to avoid getting more unnecessary scrutiny on their highly-publicized romance. Remember that even if they’re out, they still want to be as private as possible. Also, both of them are actors and creatives who are very serious with their craft, and I don’t imagine they’d want to keep the relationship eclipse everything they do as individuals. (Hence, why Tom’s team specifically requested the press in Spain to not ask anything about Z).

So...yeah. People can still dream of this happening. I’m personally just not thrilled at the idea very much because I’m scared what it might do for Tom and Z. But if it does happen...well, then we’ll be seeing film and stan twitter collectively lose their shit.

Didn't Timmy say Tom recommended him for the role in Dune? I can't remember the specific interview but it was one with just Timmy and Z during Dune press. So there's no animosity between these two.

Shading/hating Tom is nothing new on social media. Especially Twitter. It's a cesspool of comparing Tom to Tobey, Andrew, Timmy, Hunter, Nathan Fillion, and the like. It's always someone.

Personally, I'd rather see Tom in something I enjoy watching. No offense, Timmy. That's just me. I watched Don't Look Up with the fam on Christmas, and when it ended, we all said what a waste of our time. It's a parody of the Trump administration, and the ending is even more far fetched than any Marvel movie I've ever seen. Admittedly, I'm not an expert on film, and tbh, I don't want to be. I'd rather watch NWH a million times than watch Don't Look Up one more time. And no, I'm not a fan of Trump. It was just a really bad movie, imo. If you don't know, Timmy was in that movie. I've seen him in one other movie -- Lady Bird -- and neither movie was my cup of tea.

If you haven't already guessed, I haven’t yet watched Dune. I plan on watching Dune 2, but I need this time to get over Denis and Timmy's pretentious comments about superhero/Marvel movies.

Should Tom join the Dune cast -- I, personally, don't think he will -- they would be blessed, imo. He loves Dave Bautista and they would make a great, albeit David and Goliath-like, team. Tom could probably even teach Dune’s stunt team a thing or two about stunts.

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catrasredemption-moved · 2 years

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could you write some reassurance please? i feel so hurt about how now everyone is turning away from my comfort show and calling it "shit rep" all over twitter...

Twitter is a cesspool of humanity full of incredibly bad takes from a very loud minority. She-Ra is not bad rep. Is it perfect? No, but literally name one show that is (you can't, there isn't, your fave is not unproblematic).

Idk why the twitter haters got their undies in a twist all of a sudden, but block 'em. Curate your feed. There is still so much love for She-Ra all over Twitter. I can recommend a few good people if you don't mind some Arcane content mixed in. Unfollow people if you have to - and yes that includes me, I know I engage in this discourse and not everyone wants to see that, and that's okay. I like to be an asshole sometimes but I don't want to hurt other people.

Catradora is canon, their love saved the universe, they are soft lesbians with admittedly a lot to work through, but they've been together for most of their lives in one way or another and they're going to be okay <3

And we're all going to be okay because at the end of the day we're allowed to like what they want and bad faith takes on Twitter are just some bitter people whose opinions don't matter because at the end of the day, She-Ra still wins

#Sam Answers #send anons

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protectwoc · 4 years

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why all reylos are racist

y’all can go ahead and cancel me now because some of you are not going to like what i have to say and i am completely okay with that.

this recent gq interview with john boyega has incensed me. hearing all the things he went through, from disney and from “fans” and with no support from anyone… i’m livid. sometimes when i think about it for too long i start shaking, i’m so furious. and the response from the reylo fandom has infuriated me to a degree i honestly didn’t know was possible.

some of you may have seen my recent tumblr rampage. it’s reylo bullying hours here on my blog, and i’m not sorry either. one person threatened to post screenshots of my comments, which like… okay? i know what the fuck i said, it wasn’t that long ago. in fact i was going to include the screenshots in this post right here, but they blocked me before i had the chance. sorry. i’m sure somebody has them. anyway…

over the past two days in the star wars fandom we have seen something unprecedented: an outpouring of support for john boyega. both reylos and anti-reylos have joined forces to voice support for john in the wake of the gq interview (and the blm protests, let’s be real, some of y’all would not have given half a fuck if it wasn’t suddenly cool to be antiracist). and this showing of unity is one of the most rage-inducing things i’ve ever seen in a fandom (which is saying something; i have seen some shit).

reylo fandom, full offense intended, but where the fuck do you get off? you’re supporting john now? where was this support when tfa came out and you couldn’t stand the thought of him next to your white-girl-self-insert? where was it when tlj came out and your boy ryan completely sidelined him? where was it earlier this fucking year when y’all twisted a harmless joke (like yall haven’t spent years writing reylo-throne-room-sex-meta BULLSHIT) and ignored the vile racist shit coming from your own fav’s mouth? but you’re supporting him now? now that being antiracist is trendy? fuck outta here with that bullshit.

your fandom is the reason for the vast majority of the absolutely subhuman treatment john has endured over the last few years. your fandom influenced ryan (yes i know what his name is) to write tlj the way he did, you have behaved indefensibly here on tumblr.hell writing and drawing and fantasizing about all sorts of racist bullshit, and y’all have STAYED in his twitter mentions spewing hatred seven ways to sunday. but NOW, without a shred of self-reflection, you’re supporting him? now his experiences are valid?

the way that your fandom refuses to take accountability for its actions makes me see red. y’all stay on some “not all reylos” nonsense and i am SICK OF IT. i’m only gonna say this once, and i want you to hear me: you cannot be a reylo and be “antiracist”. you cannot participate in a fandom that has behaved the way yours has and say “blm, uwu acab.” you can’t. like do you think black people are dumb? that we can’t see right through you? we can.

“but rae,” i hear you whining. “you’re gonna say just because i like two characters together i’m a racist?” and of course not. that would be ludicrous. i think just because you knowingly engage and participate in a fandom that has racism encoded in its dna, you’re a racist. i think because y’all are in bed with racist harassers, racist trolls, and racist content creators, you’re a racist. that’s what the fuck i think. y’all lost the right to “it’s just a ship” me the instant you dragged john boyega into this.

here’s an example: i watched tfa about three days after it came out. i watched the first half, saw the obvious relationship set up between finn and rey, and thought, “aw, cute.” then i watched kylo and rey fight, watch him offer to teach her, and thought, “... interesting.”

when i got home i checked tumblr for finnrey content, saw the outpouring of love from black fans, all the cute fanart and fics blooming, and smiled. then, slowly, guiltily, i searched “reylo.”

BOOM. racism. the things i saw in the tag that night are tattooed on my brain. reylos rejoicing about the obvious rey/kyle pairing because “sw would never put her with that monkey finn”. calling him an “oaf”, “useless”, “bumbling”, “stupid”. reylos joking about how “when they talked about the Dark side, [they] didn’t think they meant that kind of dark.” “woke” reylos pretending to ship stormpilot in an obvious ploy to get finn away from kylo. and in between all of that, cute ship art. fun fics. talented gif makers. and nobody saying shit about the reprehensible behavior going on in their tag.

reylo is built on a foundation of racism. from that first week, racism has been woven into the fabric of your fandom, and it’s been going unchecked. and i don’t mean calling out other reylos. that’s not enough. i mean taking actual steps. y’all have been sitting in a cesspool of racism for five years, and its time for you to get the fuck out or shut the fuck up about being an “ally”. y’all need to leave this fandom.

don’t agree? here’s another story. in 2017, when i still watched supergirl (before i grew taste) i shipped karamel. for those of you who don’t know, karamel is the ship of kara zor-el (supergirl) and mon-el, her second love interest. when supergirl was moved to the cw for its second season, the decision was made to abruptly end her romance with jimmy olsen, played by mecahd brooks (a black man) and replace him with mon-el, played by chris wood, a white man, who was revealed to be, among other things, an alien slaveowner, as well as a playboy and all-around terrible person. and i shipped them. look, i’m not defending myself, but i never really bought the chemistry between jimmy and kara. even though mon-el’s introduction and the way that they carelessly disregarded kara’s feelings for jimmy made me uncomfortable, i thought the way melissa played her attraction to chris wood was more believable (and again, i’m not defending myself, but they are now married so it’s not like i was wrong). so i shipped them. simple as that, right?

well, no. not really. because the inherent racism in the way the writers wrote out her admittedly sweet romance with a black man in favor of a white slaveowner jerk kept bothering me. and finally i decided that it made me too uncomfortable to participate in. i never really reblogged any karamel fandom stuff, but i completely divorced myself from the fandom. i stopped reading karamel fic, and i switched to reblogging exclusively jimmy/kara content until the fandom died out/i stopped watching. i made a choice that real life racism is more important to me than a fucking fandom or a ship, and then i acted accordingly. simple as that.

and i’m not saying you have to stop liking the reylo dynamic. i still like the chemistry between kara and mon-el. i’ve shipped problematic ships before (bamon comes to mind) and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (to a point). but there’s a difference between liking a ship dynamic and engaging and contributing to a fan culture of racism. you have to stop participating in the fandom. y’all are in bed with people indistinguishable from confederate-flag-waving-all-lives-matter-touting racists and you don’t feel the need to get out of that environment? there comes a certain point where you have to decide if fandom bullshit is more important to you than fighting racism, and unfortunately, reylos have chosen wrong. that, ladies and gentlemen, is why all reylos are racist, regardless of what they say. roll credits.

except i have more to say, so i’m gonna say it. first of all, i’m not trying to hold myself up as some kind of paragon of virtue. i’m not holier-than-thou because all my ships are “woke” or whatever. chemistry is subjective, and we’re all going to be attracted to different ship dynamics, and there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. what matters is the execution. i finally had to say one day, “you know, this ship and the racist baggage it carries is actually less important to me than battling systemic racism on every level, including the fandom level”. y’all thought being antiracist was gonna be easy? that you wouldn’t have to make some actual changes, to make some actual sacrifices? sorry not sorry to disappoint. and if i, a normal-ass person with flaws and problematic thinking that i’m still dealing with and the whole ine yards, can make that decision, then other people should be required to as well.

(what really irks me is that the karamel fandom wasn’t even really that bad! i definitely could have gotten away with being a karamel stan in 2017. thankfully the supercat and supercorp shippers were doing the lord’s work and bullying them into submission (don’t think i’m letting y’all off the hook either, y’all have got some racism to deal with as well but that’s an essay for another day) but like most of the racism happened at the writing level; the fandom itself wasn’t engaging in racist clownery on the regular. but like the reylos are. y’all see racist bullshit coming from your neighbor, fav fic writer, artist, gif maker, whatever, and don’t say shit? don’t feel the need to distance yourself from them? gtfoh.)

i made this argument earlier when i was on my rampage (which i’m still on btw so don’t clown in my inbox, you will get your shit rocked) but i’m going to make it again because i feel like its important to note. when i pointed out that existing in the reylo fandom while you are aware of its racism makes you complicit in that racism, a white reylo told me earlier that (paraphrasing, my memory’s not as good as it used to be and i did mention that they’d blocked me) “you don’t solve a problem like systemic racism by ignoring it. leaving the fandom would be allowing it to happen.” when i pointed out that that’s police officer rhetoric almost verbatim, she (a white reylo) admonished me (a black woman) not to compare police brutality to a “ship war.” lmao.

look, clearly y’all need a refresher on what “systemic” means. it means, quite simply, that there are systems, large and small, allow for racism to exist, and it also means that allowing for racism to exist on the small scale means expecting it on a large one. like you think police officers spring fully formed from the head with racist ideals already ingrained? no! they learn it and learn to justify it with “well just because my friend made a racist joke doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because i laughed at my friend’s using a racist term in my video game doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because my friend is a racist doesn’t mean i’m a racist” and then we have people watching their coworkers kneel on a man’s back for 8 minutes with no remorse. i’m not gonna solve police brutality by fighting reylos on tumblr, but fandom racism is real racism with consequences on our world, and i don’t tolerate ANY type of racism. and the fact that you are so willing to not just tolerate it but justify it should say something to you.

and not all reylos are like this. similar to cops, good reylos don’t last. i have seen people grow so disgusted by the racism in the reylo fandom that they publicly turned their backs on it, and those reylos i respect. you’ve heard of “the only good cop is an ex-cop” well get ready for “the only good reylo is an ex-reylo”.

(and also like far be it from me to justify a cop but one could at least say they have their livelihoods to think about (not like they couldn’t just pick a nonmurderous profession but i digress) but you reylos can’t even choose between taking a stance against the hateful and unjustified bullying of a man who had the audacity to… get a job (?)... over a ship? come on now.)

the point of all this is, for all their posturing about “being antiracist” and “fuck 12” and “support john boyega”, reylos have decided that a relationship between two fictional people is more important than all the black and brown people who are hurt by that decision and the consequences of that decision. and before y’all pull some “b-but there are POC reylos!” (stop fucking using poc as an adjective, its a noun, it stands for person of color, please use it as such) internalized racism is a thing. busting out your token “reylo of color” (see how easy that was?) is not going to change my mind. all reylos are complicit in the racism of their peers, and being complicit makes you culpable. full stop.

and that is why the public support of john boyega from the reylo fandom has me seeing red. renounce your fandom or keep that man’s name out of your mouth. anyway, this was long and ranty and entirely stream-of-consciousness and i’m refusing to edit it so it’s probably completely incomprehensible to anyone besides me but if you made it this far thanks for reading ig. all reylos are racist, blm, fuck 12, acab, stan john boyega, don’t clown in my inbox unless you’re coming to bully me for being a karamel shipper, which i deserve (or do, i couldn’t give less of a fuck). good night.

#john boyega #anti reylo #raetalks

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piracytheorist · 3 years

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tumblr may be a semi functioning website in regards to blocking people both on the app and desktop but at least its not youtube

Can you block people on youtube? Admittedly, though, the only time I got into an argument with someone on youtube comments he was a supporter of a military coup d'état that happened in Greece fifty years ago so, you know. If twitter is a cesspool of bigots, youtube is a hell of far-rightists who think they own the place. Tumblr may be a hellsite but it's OUR hellsite.

#nette speaks #anonymous #ask and ye shall receive

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angeltriestoblog · 4 years

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The state of the world has once again taken a turn for the worse, and like all other similar instances, I turn to the comfort of the written word. With that being said, I wanted to put it out there that I have no intention of speaking over the narratives of those who need to be heard the most during this time. (I guess it pays that I don’t really have much of an audience here.) It’s just that I’ve always said that writing helps me compartmentalize my feelings and figure out my next course of action, and I guess this time is no different. I need to get my thoughts down somewhere I can see them instead of having them flit around aimlessly in the deep recesses of my brain.

—

These past few days, I have been made more and more aware of my smallness. Following the (first degree) murder of George Floyd, I’ve had access to all the information surrounding his death: who did it, how they did it and why, the implications of the act, and the several ways black people of color and their allies are standing in solidarity to counteract this brutal display of injustice. I’ve come across several petitions that hope to hold certain individuals accountable or raise issues to the national level, funding sites that aim to provide financial assistance to those most in need, and resources with the intent to educate that demand to be circulated on a wide scale. While these have technically showed me how I’m not entirely powerless, that I do in fact have the ability to enact some sort of change, it’s still difficult to stomach that the change I am capable of making is not as substantial as I want it to be.

I understand that what I’m feeling is a hassle, at worst—nothing compared to those on the streets, to the black people of color who have to fight for rights that are supposedly inherent to all human beings, who demand justice for all those who have fallen because of police brutality only to have these cries fall on deaf ears. I do not have to face various forms of oppression and microaggressions not just when this topic is trending, but throughout the course of my entire life. I do not carry this lingering fear that every step I take outside of my front door could be my last. What happens to their community is absolutely sickening but the thing is, we haven’t even seen all of it. Keeping tabs on social media, checking up with actual victims of structural racism often deludes us into thinking we know exactly what’s going on and how hard it must be, but access to all of this information doesn’t erase the fact that I am watching everything from afar.

So instead of sulking so much that my reaction could be misconstrued as an attempt to make the conversation about me, I tried to channel all this frustration in a more productive manner. I’ve reduced my Twitter time because my timeline has magically morphed into a raging cesspool spewing hatred and anger and is thus getting in the way of my journey towards being an effective ally and concerned citizen. I’m definitely not saying this because the people I follow only ever tweet about the resurfacing of the #BlackLivesMatter movement—hopefully, at this point of the post, I’ve already made it clear that I am far from apolitical. It’s just that my following can easily be classified into two groups: those who wear their ignorance on their sleeve and actively resist any form of education, and those who are so ruthlessly divisive that they scare away anyone who wishes to be educated. The world is already unforgiving enough as it is and I refuse to take part in that kind of culture. I have been trying to ease my way back in though by looking at tweets almost exclusively in the likes of some of my most politically aware friends (hi Pat, Ryen, and Alyanna—I hope you never have to see this) and checking the trends sporadically for any live updates.

Not only have I realized just how many hours in a day going on that stupid bird app actually eats up, but I’ve also had a lot of time to educate myself and reflect on my previous actions. I figured that if I’m so upset about how my impact on a global scale is terribly lacking, I can always start on a more personal level, which is probably just as revolutionary. I’ve watched movies, gone through articles, and even started on this book called White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which debunks why exactly it’s so hard to talk about racism with white people. In this process, I’ve learned that everything I knew about the concept was surprisingly shallow and surface-level. Having first claimed my badge of wokeness when I was 15 (and engaged in some pretty performative activism at the time, if I do say so myself), I was shocked to find out that everything I collected from viral hot takes and recommended YouTube videos that claim to be an extensive guide to fundamental social movements possessed an unforgivable degree of inaccuracy.

For instance, all this time, I was under the impression that I could only be a racist if I called someone ugly because of their dark skin or curly hair, or said the n-word whenever I sang along to Caroline by Amine. As long as I didn’t do those things, or any other form of discrimination towards a marginalized group, I was in the clear and had nothing to worry about—I could get a star on the Good Noodle board. In reality, to quote Scott Woods, racism is “a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not”. It is not something we actively choose to participate in, but something that we are born into—literally who would have thought!

Because racism has been demonized by everyone with working mental faculties (as it should be), it’s hard to own up to the fact that at some point, we have subconsciously picked up racist behaviors or exhibited racist tendencies at some point in our lives. Every time someone tries to point out where we went wrong in the hopes of giving constructive criticism, we have our defenses up, a list of receipts of all the times we tweeted the #BLM hashtag prepared to show that we are, in fact, not the villain that we were made out to be. This is a counterproductive exercise that helps nobody. If we truly want to step up and show our support for the movement and those working to make it happen, we must first be open to the possibility that we have done wrong and we have so much more to learn.

As a kid, my beauty standards were very Eurocentric, like most Filipinos: according to a study conducted by me based on years of personal observations and experience, we are the country most obsessed with whitening soap and hair rebonding treatments. I called my friends the n-word as a term of endearment and previously used AAVE (African American Vernacular English) in my tweets to give them a little bit of personality. I chose not to watch chick flicks that revolved around interracial couples because I felt that the difference in their skin color got in the way of their chemistry. One time, when my mom and I were walking to WalMart during a vacation to the States, we came across a stocky black man and my initial reaction was to hold my purse closer to my body. I remain deeply ashamed of these beliefs I held, which were admittedly born out of ignorance, and I acknowledge my responsibility to continue to eradicate any traces of these I may still have.

I am also doing my best to extend the same compassion I have for black people of color during these trying times towards my own countrymen. We’ve struggled enough during this pandemic thanks to the sorry state of our healthcare system, and now the government seems hell-bent on speeding up the passage of the anti-terrorism bill. This threatens to impede our freedom of speech and help government officials get away with incompetence and even abuse of authority. If anyone gets a hold of this blog post and chooses to interpret this paragraph as an open threat to the President, this could be the last time you could ever hear from me, and this frightens me beyond words.

I know this isn’t a new contribution to the discussion but here are some links to helpful masterposts containing a variety of resources should you wish to donate, learn, or sign. This goes for both issues in our motherland and what is supposedly the land of the free. Let’s stay vigilant, let’s stay compassionate. Wishing you all the love and light the world still has left to offer.

#personal #quarantingz #angeltriestoblog #angel tries to make sense of the world #???#I DIDN'T EDIT OK I JUST RANTED ON A PAGE AND HIT POST

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thewickedkat · 5 years

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it's 4 december (as i haven't slept yet, punk kid rules apply), i am now 39 years old, and i am officially Too Old for This Shit.

i didn't get on tumblr until last year, and last year at this time i was extolling the virtues of the individuals i had met because of this site. those points still stand, as i only have literally a handful of followers and i know 98% of them personally. they are bright, shining beacons of technicolour light, fragmented into a million hues, and i am horribly frightened that they are going to flee this draconian crackdown of Tumblr, the guillotine cloaked in FOR THE CHILDREN when in reality it's nothing more than puritanical Bullshit (even though the staff will gleefully let neo-nazi propaganda and fuckwittery and goddam transphobes slip by), and admittedly i am not tech-savvy enough to follow them to other sites that i might not be able to grok very well. and if those other sites aren't easily understood by someone like me (the shittiest member of the Nintendo Generation), then i am *terrified* that i will lose these friends i have made.

people who have literally. Saved my Life.

this, @staff . this is what people like me might be losing besides the art, the content, the female-presenting nipples. all jokes aside, i might be losing my Found Family. this is what you have done. you will allow death threats, you will allow bullying, you will allow the proliferation of hatred and fervent wishes of genocide, but you will not allow content that is self-policing and conscientious of its own explicit nature and gravity.

oh, i know, i can see it coming: the crackdown, then the easing of standards, the modifying of algorithms, the 'oh, we were too harsh, we're haemorrhaging ad revenue, please like us again, please let us back in the app store,' but i am Terrified it will be too little too late, and that all my Family will have gone where i am Too Stupid to follow. twitter terrifies me, pillowfort i can sadly not afford because as i understand it at the moment they are overwhelmed (because of the impending exodus from Tumblr) and need dosh for subscriptions (which i do not begrudge them at all; i donate to Ao3 after all), and Facebook? Facebook is a fucking cesspool of others' baby pics and wastrel bullshit that is somehow *worse* than Tumblr when it comes to fake news and anti-LGBTQ+ content.

for all the hope and happiness that i personally have found here, Tumblr has also long been a place of fear for many, many people, and now i count myself among them. i am afraid, @staff . congratulations.

Worst. Birthday. Present. Ever.

#blather #long post #critical #cw neo nazi mention #cw transphobia mention #i am afraid #i hope youre all proud of yourselves staff #i will be alone again amd i dont want that #shittiest birthday ever

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lgbooknotes-blog · 7 years

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Only Two Minutes of Hate? Sounds.... Brief.

1984. George Orwell. Penguin.

Pairs well with the doom of our times.

It’s been a long time since I read 1984. I picked up again today, and my first thought was that two minutes seems enviably concise compared to the 24 hour vitriol of the unchecked rage virus that’s Twitter on a bad day/most days depending on your gender, race and religion.

We didn’t have Twitter back when I first read 1984. Y’know, in the ‘good old days’ - the days without ease of self expression. Clinton was President. Britain had only just discovered putting basil in tomato sauce. Over here, the Tories were vanquished and scattered, having fled to the safety of leather bound armchairs and lucrative book deals before they turned to dust. Though the shine was slowly coming off Labour we still believed in their D:Ream.

Britain was pro-European, well, ahem, as pro-European as we ever were, which admittedly is more an ambivalent nod than a full on smoochy continental embrace. Yes’ we’d oppted out of the Schengen Agreement, but we’d won the bloody song contest a few years before! Britain and Europe were mostly on good terms Everything in the UK was ... rational. If we disagreed it was about tuition fees and NHS reform. Nelson Mandela stood up and applauded Britain’s commitment to internationalism at the Labour party conference, offering a prescient warning that “international solidarity”,the foundation of globalism, could be so easily lost to greed and shortsightedness. The majority of people didn’t give Brussels much thought, not unless it came to laws about taking the wonk out of bananas. Turns out that the whole bendy hooha was made up. Fake news! Even then - and even then most mainstream media was loathe to fact check it.

An over simplification? Sure, but from my position of educated, white privilege, humanity at its worst was corporations exploiting workers, global development being stifled at the behest of the IMF. The attempted genocide in Kosovo required an intervention - one that was far from timely - but nonetheless it seemed at effective first glance: we hadn’t repeated the mistakes of Rwanda. The West wasn’t perfect, by any means, but Europe and Britain were by and large positive and progressive, multicultural communities full of opportunity - equal opportunity - for all. If people were angry, it was a reasonable anger at logical problems rather than knee jerk reactions to feeling threatened by someone’s religion, and that anger suffocated without oxygen of notoriety and the inane rictuses and slaw jawed yammering of capering demagogues.

Skip ahead a bit. It’s the spring of 2014, I’ve just left the cinema: The Winter Soldier. We have the MCU now, which is good, and craft beer, which is inexplicably fruit flavoured, and there’s a growing troll menace clustered around the comment sections and gaming subcultures. I enjoyed it - The Winter Solider. Not the clarion calls of army of egg faced trolls. I enjoyed Winter Soldier a lot in fact, except for the mind boggling fact that seemingly almost everyone was a covert Nazi! Why would anyone ever think that Nazism is a good idea? When did everyone become a secret Nazi?!

Skip ahead again, two years and a bit later. The Brexit vote is in. US electioneering is in full swing. Seemingly everyone is a Nazi, and what started with Gamergate has only gotten worse. Hatred. Fear. Nationalism. Brexit. Muslim Ban. Bang, bang, bang: shock and awe of rights not being respected: engagement tossed out in favour of incompetent rantings of autocrats and the mendacious, unmandated, remaking of national sovereignty that requires tolerance as a blood sacrifice.

Look out! The immigrants are taking our jobs! Ha! They should be so lucky, what with the lack of industry and rise of the machines. No jobs here. Child refugees? No thanks, we’ve misplaced our compassion and sense of duty. Be afraid of radical Islam! Beware the clash of civilisations! While the tabloid presses froth against political elites that they believe to be too out of touch to deal with the problems of the working man. Working man, mind you, because those bloody women should get back in the kitchen where they belong. I can’t believe I’m about to quote John Major, but, buckle up because he’s right - “Shouting down [the Remain voters] legitimate comment is against all our traditions of tolerance. It does nothing to inform and everything to demean – and it is time it stopped.” The hate and division we’re facing isn’t neatly fitted into two minutes, or even a hate week, but its incessant effects are just as pernicious.

George Orwell is a writer that changed my world. First with Animal Farm, then years later with 1984. His control, his succinct understanding and ability to communicate the self serving heartlessness that humanity is capable of in the name of security makes for essential reading. I suspect that 1984 is going to be an even harder read this time around. I hope this current era of life in a Black Mirror episode is the last hurrah of a doomed breed - one final rally of the backward looking self-entitlement of small minds. The overflowing cesspool of loathing that has spilled outwards and attempted contaminate all in its immediate path, but it is opposed, and it will be reversed: history is not doomed to be repeated. Even so, a daily two minute hate sounds blissfully short, and Room 101 looms so large.

We’ll be discussing 1984 over at Literally Geeky over on Goodreads, and live at the end of the month. Follow us @LiterallyGeeky.

#1984 WeAreAllCharlieBrookerNow #LiterallyGeeky

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