#what tags do ppl use here?? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

themoonking · 11 months

Text

when people bring up the racism, homophobia, transphobia, romanticization of domestic abuse / rape / pedophilia / incest, literal actual written porn of literal actual real life flesh and blood children, et cetera et cetera on archive of our own, one of the ao3 stannies’ main defenses is “you can just filter out the tags if you don’t want to see that!” when that defense has no fucking legs to stand on.

ao3 is not an archive, it is barely even a website: a rant <3 (very long)

ignoring the fact that it’s a problem that all of that is permitted on the site in the first place (i guess child porn and racism are fine, and the people who allow it on their platform are fine, as long as i, personally, do not see it), that defense literally means nothing. it’s assuming that every little thing on ao3 is tagged properly and it absolutely is not, and if you think it is you are dumber than rocks. i mean for fuck’s sake, just touching on archive warnings and not tags, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is literally a valid option for fic authors to use when it should fucking not be.

if someone is a freak who thinks that pedo shit is hot, they might not tag it as “rape” (archive warnings OR tags). i’ve literally seen underage father/son rape porn with no trigger warning tags but “child abuse if you squint”. IF YOU SQUINT. if someone thinks that domestic abuse is actually cool and sexy when attractive people do it, they might not tag it as “abuse”. if someone is a freak who likes incest, but bends over backwards to justify it by only shipping adopted family members, then they tell themselves that they don’t view it as incest, and might not tag it as “incest”. if someone is a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, et cetera and they wrote bigotry into their fic (or else wrote a deliberate troll fic to trigger people on purpose), do you really think they’re going to tag it as racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera? and some people get kicks out of writing purposefully triggering content and either leaving it untagged or mistagging it so that people will read it unsuspectingly.

even for just general content tags, it’s a mess. people just forget to tag things all the time. people deliberately won’t tag the endgame ship of their fic because “it’s a spoiler heehee”. people use the romantic or sexual “x / y” tag instead of the platonic or otherwise “x & y” tag, sometimes by mistake sometimes on purpose. it’s a joked about issue how people will tag characters or ships that appear in their fic for two sentences.

there’s no standardization of tags, which is a pretty obvious problem. what first comes to mind is the “dead dove: do not eat” tag which should just not be a tag at all because it just has no meaning. depending on the individual fic writer using it, it could mean anything from “literally the most sickening and depraved thing you’ve ever read in your life” to “horror w/ gore”. but it applies to other vague tags too - different fic writers will have different ideas of what the tag means.

in addition to that, what is and isn’t made a filterable tag, what tags are made synonymous, et cetera, is entirely up to the whims of the site staff. as an example, if you’re trying to look for fanfiction of a singular animated disney movie, the infinite crossovers with other disney movies will not actually be counted as crossovers (which they are) because they’re classified as the “disney theatrical animated universe” (which isn’t a fucking thing), so you can’t filter them out the “exclude crossovers” way. if you try to filter out the fandom tag “disney theatrical animated universe”, it’ll show up with zero fics because that tag is synonymous with every disney animated film (regardless of if the fic author actually used the tag “disney theatrical animated universe” or not), thus also filtering out the one you actually wanted to find.

and do not get me fucking started on the “all media types tags”, which also just shouldn’t be a thing because it makes it fucking impossible to find the specific fics you’re looking for. some people use it in place of tagging a specific canon / adaptation when their fic very clearly draws from one specific canon / adaptation, and you can’t filter it out because it’s synonymous with every fandom tag under its umbrella.

as an example of the issues of both the “all media types” tag and mistagging in general: as a fan of the witcher books, it used to be a fucking ordeal to find fanfiction specifically for the books (post netflix show release). some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag their fics with the book fandom tag in addition to (or even in place of!!) the show fandom tag when their fics were unquestionably show-specific, meaning i could not simply search only in the book fandom tag. i could not simply filter out the show tag, because some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag as fucking “all media types”, when their fics were unquestionably show-specific. and alas, i could not filter out “all media types” and the show tag, so that i see only those fics which have been deliberately and exclusively tagged as the book, not only because as mentioned some show fans would tag their show fics with only the book tag, but also because the fucking all media types tag filters out the book tag as well, leaving me with zero fucking fics REGARDLESS of if the author actually used the “all media types” tag. now, thankfully, i’ve thankfully seen this issue in this specific fandom lessen, but it still occurs in other fandoms and i guarantee that it didn’t lessen in the witcher fandom because of any fixing of the site on the part of ao3 staff.

another common defense of ao3 freaks is that it’s an “archive”, and therefore can’t get rid of anything anyone posts, and disregarding the fact that that is not how archives fucking work, they don’t just allow anything and also ao3 DOES get rid of fics... when they say that they don’t like proshippers, apparently, archives have... you know... archivists. they have someone or a team of someones making sure that everything in the archive is *properly fucking categorized*. they have someone or multiple someones making sure that everything they recieve (1) belongs there and (2) is properly labeled and organized. same for libraries. meaning that if ao3 really were an archive and not a sub par fanfiction website, they’d have something like that in place. something as simple as a report button for fics with a review team that will see if something’s been mis- or untagged. they’d have some kind of standardization of tags (especially the warning / trigger tags) and have proper tagging enforced in some way. and then they could also do something like stop being spineless racists, queerphobes, and pedos have the barest minimum of content guidelines saying that you can’t post fucking hate speech.

if something is mistagged or untagged, the most you can do is leave a comment politely asking that the author fix the issue, and then hope and pray that they do that. and if that person thinks [insert form of abuse] is hot, or if they’re just straight up a bigot that wrote bigotry into their fics to be bigoted, or they’re a troll that gets kick out of deliberately traumatizing people by tricking them into reading their mis/untagged fics, they might not! AND if you see a major tagging issue on an orphaned work, or a work that has an inactive author / hasn’t been updated in forever, good fucking luck getting even a negative response.

you can’t permanently block tags (i mean even tumblr.hell has that), meaning that if you would like to search for fic without coming across something troubling, triggering, or just something you don’t like, you have to either (1) do a work around by having a bookmarked link for every fandom you’re in or every character you like with all of your tags already blocked, (2) download browser extensions that do the work for ao3 because they can’t be bothered themselves, or (3) input every individual tag every time you search ao3 and don’t forget that all of those options only fucking work at all when everything is tagged properly, and we’ve already established its not. you also can’t actually block people (you can only prevent them from commenting) meaning that if there’s a specific person you’d like to stay away from your fics or a specific fic author that you don’t like and would like to stop seeing their fics clogging up the tag, you’re out of luck (though for the latter you could insert “-[username]” into the “search within results” box, but then uh oh we’re right back around to having to input that every time or have a bookmark)

their archive warning system is shit. first of all it’s functionally useless because, as mentioned, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is an option. what’s the fucking point of special required archive warnings if you’re going to allow people to opt out anyway. second of all, aside from “chose not to use warnings” and “no warnings apply”, the only warnings are “major character death”, “graphic depictions of violence”, “rape/non-con”, and “underage”. disregarding the fact that they shouldn’t be allowing porn of underage characters in the first place (but i’m talking to a brick wall on that issue) and that “non-con” (and “dub-con”) as terminology needs to die, it’s just fucking rape lets not use weasel words... this is a paltry list of possible warnings. there’s no official warnings for depictions of: domestic abuse, animal abuse, depictions of racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera, suicide, self harm, et cetera et cetera. and we return to the issue of standardization of tags. in your required archive warnings at very least, there should be a standardization of what these mean, but ao3′s own faq is just like “ehh... you decide. we’ll leave it up to you”. what qualifies as graphic depictions of violence? two people may write the same level of violence, but qualify “graphic” differently, and make different decisions regarding their warnings. and we also return to the issue of: if a freak doesn’t see something that is clearly rape as rape, they might not tag it as such.

this website gets a disgustingly large amount of money every year that it doesn’t fucking do anything with. it’s been over a decade and they’re still in fucking beta. features that would actually be useful, like an actual block system, don’t exist. they technically have a report system for abuse and harassment and such, but apparently what they qualify as abuse and harassment is fickle. ao3 defenders seem to be very proud of the legal work they do for fandom / fanfic authors, but they set aside a very small amount of the money they get every year for legal advocacy, and they actually use even less of that, because it’s not the early 2000s “anne rice hates fanfiction” era anymore - you aren’t going to get fucking sued for writing fanfiction in the first place. based on their own self-reported yearly cost of upkeep, they literally already have enough money to run the site as they are now for the next twenty years.

once again: ao3 is not an archive. it is not a library. it is barely a even a website.

#specifically a website run by freaks #who care more about ppl's 'fannish experience' than they do ppl of color abuse survivors and the real children ppl write p!rn of #anyway here's the rant i promised in the coming days since that one post #also i know people will come at me and say that dddne DOES have a meaning its a signal that the reader knows what theyre getting into #so cant be upset if it upsets them #or something along those lines #but (1) we've already well established that the reader very likely doesn't know what they're getting into #because a lot of the shit on ao3 is untagged or mistagged #and a lot of stuff with the dddne tag specifically isnt properly tagged because authors use dddne as a catch all #and just put that down instead of actually properly tagging their work #and as mentioned the authors that use it that way use it for literally anything that might make something uncomfortable #from the sickest shit there is to a little bit of gore #and you can say that those authors (who use it without also tagging what exactly they're talking about) are using the tag incorrectly #but oopsie! that then circles back around to (2) if someone is using a tag incorrectly there's no way to deal with that #other than a comment and a prayer #i speak #anti ao3 #anti archive of our own #fandom nonsense #my monologues

110 notes · View notes

frostbite-the-bat · 29 days

Text

talked w/ a friend about this and wanted to post something similar yesterday after a convo i saw also

about people criticizing ttcc / ttcc fans for just... being cog fans? being cog centric? usually coming from people who only like the toons.

and everyone likes what they like! it's okay! but saying that people who like the cogs are horrible and support the bad things they do, is just blatantly wrong. i thought we knew that enjoying villainous and morally Bad / grey characters is... okay? it doesn't mean you support what they do. it's interesting to explore these topics.

i've seen many people just... paint anyone who likes the cogs as horrible because they're "apologists of x and y" and... i dunno. rubs me the wrong way! you do have a point and recognize the cogs do bad things, but liking them as characters means nothing about who you are as a person.

and this is not to say that people who are in toontown for the toons are bad. hell! they are right this IS toontown. i may be on the cog liker side but i like the toons! maybe ocs more than the npcs - mostly because i like my friends and the sheer creativity the toons can bring out!!

SO what i wanna say... i dunno. let's not point fingers...? let's have fun in a goofy cartoon game together??? also complaining about people liking VILLAIN ROBOTS on TUMBLR is kind of funny to me. do you realize where you are. but then again a lot of this i see on discord and in-game as well since i avoid things on tumblr... i am a sensitive little fella i avoid misty fight bc of One Really mean "Critic" guy i saw there and i have been shivering in my bootsies since. so you get me

but like yes ttcc is more cog centric but... that's okay? things could be written better and i still wanna speak on it, and i do thing the toons deserve attention and better writing... but the fact it focuses on the cogs isn't... bad? if you don't like how con centric it is you can go play ttr...? god forbid people have fun and explore the villain's side of things...? i'm not saying either toontown server is better or worse than the other... and everyone can like their own things!!

but like... people will just like the cogs and that's okay and it doesn't make you bad. let's all be friends okay? both sides may be going at each other's necks in-game and the cogs in fact do horrible things - but it's what makes them fun, and it gives the toons things to do in the game!! but we don't gotta !!!!!!!! i may be really sarcastic and sometimes mean in private but like that's me just privately sassing, deep down i think people should just... y'know..? enjoy things.

so yea that's the guzma / cathal thought of today. toon people cog people both people are all awesome as fuck and you keep doing what you're doing i love you toontown isn't toontown without you

#anyways omg god forbid ppl are cog kissers on the robot kissing website /silly #but like!! tt/r may not be for everyone and tt/cc may not be for everyone and THATS OK!! ur not gonna like everything!!#like i accepted tt/r isnt for me but its mostly bc they dont show cog health specifically and i struggle with these things but !! i #heard they are updating that so i might be able to play without getting bored / frustrated again ^^ i havent played properly in yeaaaars #i will still prefer clash bc fixation and?? i LIKE ROBOBTS....!#but tewtow is tewtow its all swag. the least toony thing u can do is bully someone for Liking Robobt. be niceys #like ya i admit im not perfect i also dont like people andhave so much one sided beef and i am sensitive to so many things and i complain #in private but at the end of the day its to make myself feel better and i KNOW to not engage and look away and work on feeling better #bc this stuff does Heehoo upset me bc Mental Health Probulem. but i know everyone should and can do their own thing and have fun #i may complain about (redacted ship) all the time and i dont get it at all but...? bro... just have fun... be free. im not here to stop you #im just not gonna interact as i should. good for both of us! joyous world! happy that ur happy!!!!#why complain abt ppl just Enjoying Cogs like that though................................................ do you not like fun #this is not at anyone specific #my friend did show me tags of a post anonymously #and i vague a person whos name i dont know ingame like A YEAR AGO #and a convo what happened in a server a while back. but its not anyone specific i just wanted to like. speak my thoughts #lets be frense... and if not thats okay lets not argue either then we all stay in our lanes

15 notes · View notes

welcometogrouchland · 4 days

Text

Since I just got ghosted abt the art job I applied for and I still wanna make some dough this summer

#ramblings of a lunatic #uhhh what tags do I use to reach ppl here...#dc comics #<- if you've never seen my stuff (fair) check out my blog and see for yourself if you'd be interested #I'm. upset abt getting ghosted for that job but hey it's only been a few days we'll see #anyway i have yet to iron out fine details (such as prices n whatnot) and i also. think I'd defs need to get into a groove w/ some practice #but trust i think I could pull this off #idk how many slots I'd have open...#again we'll see #anyhoo. yeah some feedback would be appreciated but no pressure

15 notes · View notes

lovelyrotter · 7 days

Text

can we all remember to just say 'oh no thank you, i dont like that kind of food' but apply that logic and rules to shipping and letting other people ship again

#my t #dirkhal #yes im tagging this because thats what this is about #i see the start of another stupid fucking morality-based ship war in this tag and im not here for it #dirkhal is historically considered stridercest #using stridercest as an umbrella term #it doesnt mean the -cest part has to mean incest if you dont want it to. it can absolutely mean selfcest #davedavesprite is also concidered stridercest but its much more in line with dirkhal in that its selfcest. see the logic?#but like #can yall be fucking nice to your neighbours weve been here for a long time and havent been hurting anyone #if you can come to terms with the thought of dirkhal with hal/AR CANONICALLY being a brain clone of a 13y/o dirk #when we have no actual solid evidence to prove that he ages like dirk does in his physical body #then you can learn to share a fucking tag. because nothing in stridercest mirrors actual irl criminal or harmful activity #because its playing with dolls. we're all playing with our barbies and ponies here #and the problem with all of us trying to play w/ our barbies and ponies is that some very scared people see other ppl enjoying making ponie #kiss and they start screaming and trying to take all of our toys away when they dont actually have a monopoly on any of these toys. we shar #we share. that is what we do in fandom. theres an infinite amount of ways to interpret dirkhal #if you dont apply this logic to fans who enjoy things like game of thrones then dont do it here #take a step back and breath. we're all being normal. youre being a bad guest. please learn to share again. youre not being hurt #having a reaction to art is not actually Being Hurt

11 notes · View notes

sundewa · 2 years

Text

wings

minecraft/lore stuff :0

#avian has become a general term #AW MAN accidentally didnt queue this & posted it way too early so i panicked and now i have to retype the tags #headcanon.png #minecraft worldbuilding #mcyt #false symmetry #joey graceffa #grian #goodtimeswithscar #stress and joe are there too but u cant see their faces so it doesnt count #minecraft #i dont remember what tags i had on this originally . help #sundewart #OH YEAH. the bit abt is bc iirc avian is just a term relating to birds but here its All Winged Individual #it was originally just ppl with feathered wings but ppl started using the term more broadly so . it became a more broad term lol #i like when words do that :) they morph and change and they might not mean exactly what they used to #digital art

242 notes · View notes

emdotcom · 3 months

Text

Idk why the fucken... Divide between "it was alternate universes" & "Paul is just trans" ideas for Petscop has to be torn into a cavern. Paul being trans DOES make sense, but requires you to ignore huge details that immediately make it not work. The alternate universes DO kind of make sense, but require you to extrapolate out a lot of info purposefully left unshown.

It's hard to describe what i want to say, here -- i do think Paul being trans makes sense, 'splains why he & Care "look eeriely similar," you could argue he's just thoroughly blocked out that part of his life enough to have forgotten Care entirely, etc. I like it, & i keep it as i also say "Yeah, it's that & the universes theory." It's not two switches that demand you can only flip on one of them -- you can have both. You can have neither. Do whatever

#em.txt #petscop #i think my big thing is just that. I don't think it was intended #& it is not my job as a queer person to sweep up crumbs from under the rug for proof that is not there #if a creator wished to create a trans character i would enjoy if they would say as such. but mr. petscop has not said as such #& while i love the theory. if i see one more mfer say 'this is OBVIOUSLY canon & if u say otherwise ur LYING'#or 'omg ppl gotta make up crazy theories before they believe a queer story is queer 🙄' i will bite you.#i understand you are used to no queer rep so you take these scraps of dust as truth.#but do not mock people that don't agree with the plate of nothing you're serving.#discourse #yeah i think I'm being petty enough to deserve this tag. i am sorry for being mean #paul transgender is inherently based but u r stretching as much as me #I don't think the universe theory is canon or intended. I don't think there is an answer to petscop #i think it just exists & doesn't matter what it was abf #the plot of it is chasing windmills & ending up nowhere forever & ever to waste your time & be miserable #why do we want a conclusive answer from that? the explanation of petscop is this:#idk wtf was going on here. but i sure am glad Paul got tf outta there

16 notes · View notes

theonekierce · 3 months

Text

yall heard abt these raffles books?

#raffles #raffles fanart #hey what tag do ppl use for them btw lmao?#stylistically the boys do not match here bc raffles is from photo refs and bunny isnt #if u recognise the actor iv been using...#but im just messin w designs and expressions here

41 notes · View notes

soldier-poet-king · 8 months

Text

People seem to have taken my 'medieval piety/child faith/stay in ur lane' vibe as an endorsement of the Benedict option and let me stay. Absolutely the fuck not.

I don't actually think monasticism is bad! It is extremely sanctifying for some!!! But the Benedict option as a dogwhistle for retreat from the world into insular communities and radtrad attitudes?? Hate that shit. I am in and, for now, of the world! I live here! Creation is good! No Gnosticism or Manichaenism here!! There is good to do here and now! Not just in some nebulous far off future!

It's ecumenical! It's universal! It's ignoring church politics, not because I'm horrified by the liberalism or w/e (actually be MORE extreme justice&praxis oriented thanks), but because they're exhausting and I'll never be able to change them and while everyone sits and argues about whether or not we ought to be radical, and to what extent, I'm going to go roll up my sleeves and try to BE radical. Dorothy Day 'everyone wants a revolution but no one wants to do the dishes' mentality.

#faith tag #anyway like no shade to ppl who are like use benedict #but my tongue in cheek patron saint of staying in ur lane #that is Absolutely not what i meant #gotta ignore church politics. get involved in local politics #cant fix the worlds problems but i can fix my neighbour's. yknow?#its the here and now #i really respect the Quakers for being so committed to that mentality tbh #i ought to read more of their fundamental texts tbh #once again i stress. i litcherally only care about the apostles early christians. the medieval mystics. and the 20th century radicals #everyone else it's like. ok. well ur just some guy. i wish you goodness and holiness but also #im literally just doing my own thing

17 notes · View notes

jacksprostate · 4 hours

Text

Treatise on why No, the doctor just giving the narrator of Fight Club (full name) his requested sleep medication or sending him to therapy would not have Fixed Him

Firstly, saying giving him the insomnia meds would’ve fixed him ignores the reason he has insomnia in the first place. He is so deeply upset by his place in society that he literally cannot sleep. Drugging him to sleep would not change that. That, of course, is the easy, quick response.

But with regard to therapy? The biggest flaw is that it ignores a central tenet of the book. Part of what tortures the narrator and drives him to invent Tyler is that his feelings about this collective, systemic issue are constantly reduced to a Just Him thing. His seatmates ask what his company is. He’s the only one upset at the office. He gets weird looks if he says the truth of what he does. People will do anything in their power to pretend he is the issue, as an individual, because it is far scarier to consider the full implications of the systemic issues implied by what he is saying. Everyone treats it as if the issue is him, so he goes insane. He does anything to get someone to say, holy shit, that’s fucked up, what you’re a part of is wrong. In an attempt to feel any sort of vague sympathy and catharsis, he goes to support groups to pretend to be dying, because then at least people don’t habitually blame him for his anguish.

Saying therapy would fix him ignores that his problems are not individual. They are collective. It’s the reason the entire story resonates with people! Something deeply, unignorably wrong with society, where people would rather blame you for bringing it up than try and address it, because it feels impossible. I don’t blame people for this, really, because it IS scary. It’s terrifying to sit and feel like you’ve realized there’s something deeply, deeply wrong, but if you say something, people will get mad at you since it’s so baked into everything around you. Or, even if they agree, it’s easier to deal with the dissonance by pretending it’s individual.

And it’s not like that’s not the purpose therapy and medications largely serve, anyway. Getting into dangerous territory for this website, but ultimately, the reason the narrator was seeking medication was because it’s a bandaid. A very numbing bandaid. For these very large, dissonance causing problems, therapy does very little. Medications do what they always have, and distract you with numbness or side effects. It’s a false solution. He is seeking an individualized false solution because he has been browbeaten with the idea that this is an issue with him alone, when it's plainly clear it's not.

Don't get me wrong. Obviously he has something wrong with him. But it's a product of his situation. It is a fictional exaggeration of a very real occurrence of mental illness provoked by deep unconscionable dissonance and anguish. There is a clear correlation between what happens and his mental state and his job and how isolated he is.

The thing is, even if he were chemically numbed, I do think he would’ve lost it regardless. Many people on meds find they don’t fix things. For reasons I’ll get into, but in this case because even if numbed or distracted, once you’ve learned about deep, far reaching corruption in society, it’s very hard to forget. Especially if, in his case, you literally serve as the acting hand of this particular variety. He’s crawling up the walls.

So why do people say this? Well, it's funny I guess. Maybe the first time or whatever. But also, often, they believe it, to a degree. Maybe they've just been told how effective therapy and meds are for mental illness, they believe wholeheartedly in The Disease Model of Mental Illness, maybe they themselves have engaged with either and have considered it successful. Maybe they or someone they know has been 'saved' by such treatments.

But in all honesty.... What therapy can help with is mentality, it's how you approach problems. For issues on a smaller scale, not meaning they are easier to deal with my any degree, but ones that are not raw and direct from deep awareness of corruption; these are things that can be worked through if you get lucky and get an actually good therapist who helps build up your resiliency. But when your issue is concrete, something large and inescapable? It's useless. At best it can help you develop coping mechanisms, but there is a limit for that. There is a point where that fails. To develop the ability to handle something like this requires intense development of a comfort with ambiguity and dissonance and being isolated and a firm positioning of your purpose and values and and belief in wonder and all the other shit I ramble about. The things that the narrator lacks, which lead him to taking an ineffectual death knell anarchist self-destruction path. Therapy, where the narrator is, full of the knowledge of braces melted to seats and all the people that have to allow this to happen? It fails.

And meds â€” meds are a fucking scam. We know the working mechanism of basically none of them, the serotonin receptor model was made up and paid its way into prominence. We have very little evidence they're any better than placebo, and they come with genuinely horrific side effects. Maybe you got lucky. I did, on some meds. On others? I don't remember 2018. The pharmaceutical industry is also known for rampant medical ghostwriting, and for creating 'off-label' uses for drugs that have gained too many protests in their original use, then creating a cult of use to then have 'grassroots' campaigns for it to be made a label use (ie, legitimize their ghostwritten articles with guided anecdotes).

The DSM itself is basically a marketing segregation plot. It's an attempt to legitimize the disease model by isolating subgroups of symptoms to propose individualized treatments for subgroups that are not necessarily all that separate. But if the groups exist, you can prescribe more and different medications, no? Not to mention, if you use the disease model, you can propose that these diseases are permanent, or permanent until treated, considered more and more severe to offset and justify the horrific side effects of the medications. Do you know why male birth control doesn't really exist? Same reason. They can justify all the horrible side effects for women, because the other option is pregnancy. For men, it's nothing.

And they're not bothering to invent new drugs without side effects. When they invent new drugs it's just because the last one got too bad of a name, or they can enter a new market. Modern drugs don't work any better than gen1 drugs. They still have horrific side effects. At best, the industry will shit out studies saying the old one was flawed (truth) so they can say this new gen will be better (lie). They're doing it with ssris right now.

Fundamentally, the single proposed benefit of any of these drugs is that they numb you. To whatever is torturing you. It's harder to be depressed if you can't feel it, or if you just can't muster the same outrage. Of course, there is people who find that numbness to be helpful, or worth it. But often, it's stasis. For the people who have problems that can be worked on, it serves as a stopgap to not actually work on said problems. The natural outcome of the disease model is stagnation for those whose need is to develop skills and resiliency. It keeps them medicalized and dependent on the idea that they're diseased and incapable. Profitable. Stuck in the womb.

I’ve been there. It’s easier, to wallow, and resist growth because it’s difficult and painful and unfair and cruel and you can think of five billion reasons to justify your languishing. But don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re just permanently damaged, no matter how nicely they word it, no identity or novel pathologization, no matter how many benefits they promise, especially if they swear up and down some lovely expensive medications with little solid backing and plentiful off-label usage and side effects that’ll kill you. Some days it feels like they want us all stuck in pods, agoraphobic and addicted to the ads they feed us to isolate the markets for the drugs they’ve trained us to beg them to pump us with. Polarization making it as easy as flashing blue light for go, red like for stop, or vice versa. I worry about the kids, for fucks sake. That’s a bit dark and intense, and I apologize. But I want you (generic) to understand, there is a profit motive. Behind everything. And they do not mean well. They do not care about your mental health or your rights or your personhood or your growth. They care about how they can profit off of you.

For those struggling with immovable, society problems, like the narrator grappling with how his job fits into and is accepted by society while his rejection and horror in the face of it does not, it can work about as well as any other drug addiction. Your mileage may vary. From what I've seen, recovering from being on prozac for a long time can be worse than alcohol. They put kids on this shit. They keep campaigning for more. Off label, again. A pharmaceutical company’s favorite thing to do has to be to spread rumors of someone who knows someone who said an off label use of this drug helps with this little understood condition. Or, in the case of mental illness, questionably defined condition. And like, damn, I know I'm posting on the 'medicalization is my identity' website so no one will like all this and has probably stopped reading by now, but yall should be exposed to at least one person who doubts this stuff. Doesn't just trust it. Because I mean, that's the thing right?

It's so big. What would it mean, for this all to be true? Yeah, everyone says pharmaceutical companies are evil and predatory and ghostwriting, but to think about what that really entails. Coming back to the book, everyone knows the car lobby is huge and puts dangerous vehicles through that kill people. What does it mean if the car companies all hire people to calculate the cost of a recall and the cost of lawsuits? No one wants to think about the scale that means for people allowing it or the systems that have to be geared towards money, not safety like they say. Hell, even Chuck misses the beat and has the narrator threaten his boss with the Department of Transportation. And shit, man, if every company is doing this, you think Transportation doesn't know? That they give a fuck? You're better off mailing all the evidence to the news outlets and hoping they only character assassinate you a little bit as they release the news in a way that says it's all the fault of little workers like you, not the whole system. Something something, David McBride, any whistleblower you feel like, etc.

So I don't blame you, if your reaction is "but but but, that can't be right, people wouldn't do it, they wouldn't allow it" or just an overwhelming feeling of dread that pushes you to deny all of this and avoid thinking about it. Just know, that's in the book. That's all the seatmates on the flights. That's all his fellow officemates. It's easier to pretend, I know.

But think about, how the response fits in with the themes of the book. The story, as a movie too. What drives the narrator’s mental breakdown? How would you handle being in his position? How would you handle being his seatmate? It’s easy to say you’d listen. But have you? Have you had any soul wrenching betrayals of how you thought society worked? How about a betrayal by the thing that promised to be the fix of the first? Can you honestly say you wouldn’t follow that gut instinct, saying follow what everyone says, that person must just be crazy, evil, rude, cruel, whatever it is that means you can set what they said aside?

For a lot of people, they can do that, I guess. Set it aside. Reaching that aforementioned state of managing to cope with the dissonance and ambiguity and despair is very hard. The narrator made the Big Realization, but he couldn’t cope. He self-destructed. Even when people don’t make the big realization consciously, they’re already self-destructing. It’s hard to escape it when it feels easier than continuing anyway. When it feels like the only option,

Would therapy fix the narrator of Fight Club? Would meds fix the narrator of Fight Club? No. He knows too much. All meds will do, by the time he’s in the psych ward, is spiritually neuter him. A silly phrase, but really. Take the wind out of his sails.

Is he fixed if he doesn’t try to blow up town? If he just shuts up and settles in and stops costing money? If he still can’t cope with the things he’s unearthed? Do you see how this is a commentary in a commentary in a commentary?

Fight Club is an absolutely fascinating story because of this. The fact that it addresses the fallout of knowing. The isolation. The hopelessness. The spiral that results from a lack of hope. This is, I think, what resonates most with people, even if not consciously. Going insane because you’ve discovered something you wish you could unknow. It’s a classic horror story. Should our society be lovecraftian evil? I don’t think so.

Do I think changing it will be easy? No. Lord knows a lot exists to push people who make these sorts of Realizations towards feelings of individuality and individualized solutions and denial and other distractions and coping methods. And to prevent people who make One realization from expanding on it and considering further ramifications. Fight Club itself gets into this; the isolation of men being a strict part of the role society shapes for their sex leaves them very vulnerable to death fetishes, in a sense, and generally towards self destructive violence. It helps funnel them away from substantial change and towards ineffectual change. Many things, misogyny, racism, serve to keep people isolated from one another, individualized, angry, and impossible to work with. Market segregation; god knows even appealing on those fronts has become such a classic ploy that companies do it now, the US military frames its plundering that way, etc.

I’ve wandered a bit but ultimately, my point is this: Fight Club is a love letter to the horrors of critical thinking, and the importance of not falling into the trap of self destruction and hopelessness in the face of it. The latter is why Tyler was an anarchoterrorist instead of anything useful. The latter is why it was a death cult. It’s important to work through the horrors of critical thinking so you can do it, and stand on the other side ready to believe in each other. It’s worth it.

#fight club #my writing #uh. sorta #If you disagree with me it's fine btw. That's a given for me but I realize that's not usual for this website #my big desire is always to provoke thought and get people to think about why they think things #not necessarily to get them to agree with me. though obviously like any person i enjoy that #it was nice to type this out #also #aside from the prozac withdrawals mention and my own experience w memory loss (hilariously not even the most major of my beefs with the #medical industry! or even just the mental health industry! but its an easy nonoffensive one so #anyway i kept it nonspecific because if you go specific it becomes easier for people to just go 'oh well its That that's the problem and i #dont need to reflect at all on my drug/condition/issue/etc'#which ppl will anyway ofc. but yk #maybe theyll find it easier to ignore without the horrific specific examples but i want to leave it broad because 1. doing research and #going past the first thing you find and confirmation bias stuff is good 4 u #second. it's better imo to leave it more open for people to try and apply it broadly #whew ANYWAY #a bonafide Rant #i shouldve put #anti psychiatry #in the first few tags. i havent really looked on tumblr to see what the community 4 that is like on here because it feels like an oxymoron #on this website #but im sure it probably exists even if its used for smth else #(please change)

5 notes · View notes