#you are legally obligated to have a song where you acknowledge that the concept of high school is bonkers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

drivingsideways · 4 years

Text

Alright, ok, oh wow, HOOOO BOYYYY.

Episode 64!!!

Summary: AN ENTIRE TRASHFIRE.

How do I start? Every time I think show has hit rock bottom, they just smash through the floor and keep going.

-I don’t know who can argue that the Emperor is acting ethically. WHO. There are two possible explanations to the positions the Emperor and Empress have taken re: Huirou

(a) The entire scandal would rock the court, and given that the Emperor is still steadfastly refusing to publicly name an heir (though privately his mind is made up), the political fall out would be immense, and supremely inconvenient to the Emperor

This is the guy who despite knowing he’s fucking dying won’t settle the succession issue because he still thinks his weak-ass body will produce an imperial son. In the conversation he has with Fu Bi, he points out that if he does appoint someone from the Imperial Clan but later has his own son, things would be worse.

[Or, you know, you could stop taking young and fertile women into your bed? THE HORROR OF THAT CONCEPT, OH NO, IMPOSSIBLE. WHAT IS CONTRACEPTION. WHAT IS ABSTINENCE. (don’t @ me techniques of contraception are historical, ffs)]

Basically, the desire to have a hypothetical biological heir to succeed him trumps his moral obligation to protect his real, live daughter. And somehow this is presented as a “non choice” in the drama that we’re supposed to agree with, or rather that it is still a “reasonable” and “justified” choice. No, it fucking isn’t. It’s one thing to keep hoping for an heir when you are 30 and healthy, it’s another when you are 50+ and dying.

If Renzong had just made the choice to announce his heir, even with some remonstrances and whatever shit, he would have absolutely gotten away with getting Huirou out of the marriage, because he’d have given the majority of the court what they really wanted, and Sima Guang would have screamed for a bit and then had to shut up.

(b) They could have left it at the above - i.e. it’s a political decision rather than a personal one and he would personally rather have annulled the marriage- and I might have still have rolled my eyes and just moved on; HOWEVER.

The drama makes it explicitly clear that HE DOESN’T THINK SHE’S BEEN WRONGED. EXPLICIT AS IN THESE ARE THE WORDS COMING OUT OF HIS FUCKING MOUTH TO HE’ER WHO’S COME TO BEG HIM TO SEND LI WEI AWAY SO THAT HUIROU WON’T HAVE TO GO BACK.

It’s a request that apparently offends HIS sense of justice!!!! His refusal to punish Li Wei is not just about political considerations, but because:

(HE’ER’s FACE!!!)

OH REALLY.

SO MUCH WOW. MUCH AMAZE.

MY ETHICAL AND INFALLIBLE RENZONG WHO’S BEEN PUT TO SO MUCH TROUBLE BY A ‘STUBBORN’ DAUGHTER.

Like, I honestly think the show could have left this entire thing as “political compulsions” and made it about his clash with his court. But no, they have him explicitly acknowledge that he doesn’t think Huirou should have any autonomy over her body, i.e. she is the property of the Li clan to do as they will, and we, as the audience are still supposed to sympathize with him, rather than Huirou? Still see him, with his victim-blaming, shaming rhetoric aimed at his own flesh and blood as ETHICAL AND JUST??????

WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCK.

And now, also, because I still have MAJOR ISSUES WITH IT, let’s circle around to Fucklord and Danshu.

In one of the early episodes, he tells Maoze that he doesn’t want to “force” his legal wife to be with him i.e. he won’t force a consummation. I bet a lot of us went (oh!!! what a good dude!!! How sweet!!!(though god, like, what standards we have, huh???)

And then, 15 years later in the show’s time frame, that consummation happens when he gets into an argument with Danshu, and then, in a rage, uses his physical power to overpower her resistance. (Let’s not even get into how he’s the fucking Emperor, she has to obey, even if there had been no physical violence!)

Now you tell me: which is the real Renzong- the one in the first episode or the one the second?

Was the first refusal on principle of “i don’t want to violate my wife’s consent because that would be a violation of personhood” or was it, in hindsight, “I want her to crawl to me, I will not be the one to beg her forgiveness for the insult i offered her on our wedding night”.

Because, you see, at some point in those 15 years, he ran out of “patience” and then acted on (what we guessed before and now explicitly stated in episode 64) his actual belief: a wife has no entitlement to her own body, she is the property of her husband.

So, now, those still arguing about how the incident with Danshu was rape or not- not to him, certainly.

“Oh but Danshu didn’t think of it as rape either!”

Yes, the show does a huge song and dance about it too, to make it clear to US that Danshu doesn’t see it as rape. (just in case we had any doubts, huh, show? because you knew what you were trying to cover up right, you knew that some people would see that scene and go wait, what???) I’ll come to Danshu’s attitude a bit later.

But to us, as the audience? Where should it fall, now that you know without any ambiguity his attitude re: bodily autonomy of women within the institution of marriage?

And finally, let me touch on Danshu vs Huirou in the show, two women who are explicitly unhappy in their marriages, though for different reasons.

- Danshu’s marriage starts out unhappy because she’s in love with a man who gives no fucks about her.

- In contrast/parallel, Huirou’s marriage is unhappy because she gives no fucks about him, and is actively repulsed by him.

Danshu’s crisis is resolved over a period of nearly two decades and achieved by her entirely subjugating her self to him, including not characterizing his violation of her body as rape. This isn’t even all that strange- if you view it in the context of the whittling down of her self worth by sustained emotional abuse to the point that she cannot even think herself worthy of the very basic respect. Do you know how many women stay in abusive marriages because they end up believing “he abuses me because he loves me”? or a variation “it’s not abuse, it’s love, it’s for my own good”. do you know how many women still continue to love their abusers? do you know how many abusers constantly insist that they love their victims, that their actions are actually out of love too? A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.

At this point, Danshu’s entire being seems focused only on what can make Renzong happy, what will bring him most comfort, what will make his life easier- and every other relationship, including now, her’s with He’er and Huirou suffers for it.

I could have even accepted this fate for Danshu’s character- because yes, some women don’t escape their tragedies- if the writer had shown the SLIGHTEST FUCKING AWARENESS THAT THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE SHOWING.

But NO, in the most EPIC gaslighting I’ve see in a while, they have continued to insist that Danshu and Renzong are a “romance.”

Now coming to Huirou- in contrast with what has happened with Danshu, Huirou is still at the point that she’s ABSOLUTELY CONTESTING every attempt to have done to her what was done to Danshu. She sees clearly how her life will be, how her entire being will be destroyed, if she continues to stay in that marriage and she’s fighting for her own life tooth and nail with the only weapon in her arsenal- at this point - self harm and the threat of suicide. Luckily for her, she does have some support in He’er, Huaiji and even the head eunuch in her household, and Superintendent Ren. (Everyone except the Empress, who by rights, should have been on her side, and would have been, if the writers had chosen to take her down a different path early on)

Unfortunately for her, it’s clear where the writers sympathies lie: if they think that what happened with Danshu is the “happy ending”, then how can Huirou have any other ending either? Oh, they might show her sad for a bit to leave Huaiji, but i can bet you anything, that the ending will be framed in such a way that it shows that her final choice to go back to the marriage as the “morally right” one/. If they didn’t it would be inconsistent with the internal logic/moral philosophy of this story.

I’ve said before- I can accept tragedies. I can accept tragedies that happen to women, even.

What I can’t accept is when you don’t call it what it is.

Or the kind of writing that equates Renzong’s tragedies- which are largely products of chance (the death of his kids) or his position in life (an emperor who must sacrifice some personal desires in service of his duties) to the tragedies of the women that are inflicted on them not by chance or circumstance but by the actions of those with more power than them. The writing in the show never, ever, acknowledges the specificity of the harms, and spends a considerable amount of time exonerating its perpetrators (see latest eg Li Wei), and wow, what more can I say except one last -FUCK. YOU.

#serenade of peaceful joy #JFC i haven't had a show aggravate me this much in AGES

12 notes · View notes

prongsmydeer · 4 years

Text

Ayesha Liveblogs Tiger King

“I think it would be fair to say that Carole is the Mother Teresa of cats” now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear

“I’d never been a person who had friends” statements like this always perplex me because surely there had to be ONE other person in however long you quantify childhood that you identified with. Like not one whole ass person? You’re not the only person who loves cats Carole

The juxtaposition between Carole Baskin’s “Animal Print for Animal Rights” and Joe Exotic’s “Tiger King underwear is our bestseller” is poetic cinema

Okay this isn’t a reflection of my opinions on this man but I Saw a Tiger is a good country ballad there I said it

“When I first met Joe, I was like a month out of high school” well that’s not good

[Joe Exotic voice] Some people have tigers to cope

Doc Antle has only been on screen for 30 seconds and already he has made himself memorable by directing the film crew

Is Bhagavan Antle Indian in some way or did he just have a really intense Eat Pray Love journey with his guru

Also is he really a doctor orrrrrrrrr

“I am out there in the forefront so known of being this guy that is in love with big cats and has them love him back” please don’t tell me this guy does anything weird to his animals

“People only care about saving what affects them”

“You can’t put a price on holding a baby tiger” but you did and apparently it’s $625

The fact that multiple tigers have had albinism is probably a sign of major inbreeding practices at these zoos

You know, even if I ate meat*, there is no way I would be able to handle any kind of early prep stage of it bc seeing these cow carcasses is A Lot

*If u r reading this I don’t care if u eat meat leave me alone

“Animals just wasn’t enough, okay? So then I started adding magic” well that took an unexpected turn

I don’t know if it’s for real fair to criticize every person who has brought a big cat out in a public venue/talk show because I know at least like Dave Sal/moni is always going “THESE ANIMALS MAKE TERRIBLE PETS”

As a sidenote from what I understand this Saff person keeps being deadnamed/misgendered throughout this documentary and I do not appreciate it

“I grew up a professional cowboy in a family of professional cowboys” every sentence on this show is a journey

WHO is letting their ONE-YEAR-OLD lay on top of a tiger cub I know you’re at a zoo but BRUH

“It’s going to be a small Waco” to say this ON THE NEWS

This 2 minute stretch of episode is all the PSA anyone ever needs to never own a gun

Well I think we can all agree that PETA is a fucking mess

God this is like battle of the people who are terrible at doing anything good for animals

“What do you carry that gun for?” “People” AHHHHHHHHHHH?!?!!!!?!?

“I sleep with an AK-47 under my mattress, loaded, ready to roll” WILL SOMEONE HELP THE U.S. OF A

I was warned about this show and yet I was still not prepared for the level of UNHINGED it would be

How in the FUCK does a place like this not have an on-site medic

“Why don’t you come back on another day” he said, after telling the public an employee had his arm taken off

“I am never gonna financially recover from this” SURE JOE THIS IS ABOUT YOU

To go back to work a WEEK after getting your arm amputated... BRUH

“Any law that you think’s unfair or unjustice, it is your obligation, it is your responsibility to stand up against that bullshit law” well Thomas Jefferson was a slaveowner so clearly the injustice thing was relative for him

Traditionally don’t drug addictions fuel people choosing extreme paths with their life rather than the other way around?

JKHGKJHGKJH this whole exchange:

Interviewer: What kind of doctor is he?

Maria: Mystical science.

Interviewer: Mystical science?

Maria, nodding: Yeah.

“How many wives does Doc Antle have?” I didn’t expect this but somehow it tracks

I’m gonna bet none of these people with subcontinental names have a single bit of South Asian heritage like okay “Moksha” and “Rajnee” did Bhagavan name you

On a more serious note: It’s really fucked up that these men keep meeting literal teenagers, making them their employees, and then also get into relationships with them. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough THIS IS NOT GOOD OR HEALTHY

It’s pretty weird that Doc Antle keeps emphasizing so frequently that one of his partners is Italian

“I’m gonna go be a yoga animal trainer” ah, white people bullshit

“Goodbye. Don’t fall in love with your boss.” Good advice, Dad

I was not expecting all this subcontinental imagery to get under my skin this badly but what’s your problem dude can’t u be normal for like a second

“You’re this garbage person, but if you listen to me, I’ll make you great” again this tracks but gross

Again, on a more serious note: if a partner ever talks to you this way please call a domestic abuse hotline

Not that India is at all in a good place right now but I personally ban Doc Antle from ever entering India. Banned. Forever. I will not be accepting constructive criticism at this time

“I didn’t really know any better” is a really good way of summarizing what all of these younger partners have been through

Wow Carole is really explaining this abuse issue succinctly

Antle’s indignation at being implied to be a cult leader despite the fact he is most definitely a cult leader

Joe’s story in his documentary is constantly “is this going to be a humanizing moment PSYCH it’s still terrible”

HOW IS THIS LEGAL PAY YOUR WORKERS A LIVING WAGE

Why is this husband-killing thing JUST A FOOTNOTE AT THE END OF THIS EPISODE OH MY GOD

We have deviated so far from the tiger thing oh my god

Why is the only man in this documentary who is faithful to his spouse the man that smuggled drugs inside of snakes

Every time I learn a new thing about a person in this documentary I have to reorient myself

This whole episode has been about this murder and I’m concerned that its title, “The Secret,” hasn’t even been revealed yet

GOD I take back what I said about I Saw Tiger, the concept of this song/music video for Here Kitty Kitty is so disturbing that this man deserves no credit whatsoever as a musician

CAROLE WHY ARE YOU GIGGLING ABOUT THE MEAT GRINDER IT’S NOT FUNNY

Well I don’t have much to say about this episode other than yikes

I guess if you’re really out to spite someone stealing their brand and posting exactly the opposite of everything they stand for is an effective if weird and petty way to do it

Do you think the whole throne footage moment was a “Frankenstein realizing what he has wrought” kind of thing for Kirkham

This is really like watching a sports game of two teams you can’t stand except the sport is murder and other miscellaneous crime

If we’re all being real with ourselves the documentary filmmakers themselves MUST have had some issues going on to be able to walk into this situation and not do anything about it

This series really seems to present a compelling case for why every major figure in this documentary has potentially committed at least one terrible crime

Ah there’s the judgment from the woman in Florida I guess it’s two crimes with one stone

God these poor animals they do not deserve anything happening to them

While obviously people are enticed by the prospect of someone they’re into having an animal JUST GET AN ALREADY DOMESTICATED ANIMAL LIKE DOMESTICATED CATS AND DOGS EXIST OH MY GOD DO NOT USE EXOTIC PETS AS DATE BAIT

It has been so long since we heard about Travis ngl I already forgot about him

Why is every single person in this show SO OFF THE WALLS I mean I know why but also WHY

This documentary is also a treatise in the flaws of the U.S. prison system and how it sets up people up to fail or re-offend upon release

Take a shot every time a middle-aged man in this show mentions that he casually bought himself a big cat as a teen

“Joe was the entertainment director.... by title” I don’t think this was meant to be a burn but what a burn

I am almost certain I WATCHED that Last Week Tonight episode during that election and if u told me that 4-5 years later I would be rewatching that clip in a documentary about this man’s journey to being convicted for murder then I cannot say I wouldn’t be surprised but I would probably believe it

Also I have to wonder what John Oliver thinks about being part of this

[“Beyonce?” voice] Shaun Majumder?

Sidenote: Until this exact moment I thought of Shaun Majumder as Ben Mulroney even though Brian Mulroney is white as hell I guess I have faceblindness but only for Canadian talkshow personalities

I have been aware of this before now but the fact you can buy a GUN at a Walmart what in the FUCK is U.S.A. doing

Man does this campaign manager really want to take ownership of anything Joe Exotic has ever done

Ngl I was wondering why someone who had at one point clearly had a lot of money seemed to have such poor dental care access but meth certainly does explain it

I mean people can be attracted to both men and women (hello) but since Joe was fuelling their drug addictions since they were teenagers attraction is at best a null factor and at worst an added layer of terrible to this whole mess

It’s hard to even respond to this in a meaningful way because this is so fucked up. Don’t own guns.

“That was a big fucking mistake,” he said, right after someone explained that he was driving large groups of people in an enclosed space in a busy city with wild animals that could maim or kill them

Padlock penls piercing really does not seem like a first date bombshell

“We went to dinner and he never went home” well if that doesn’t set you with a sense of foreboding

TWO MONTHS AFTER WHAT IN THE HELL OH MY GOD also I hope Dillon is okay

“It wasn’t about the animals anymore” you THINK

“It was sort of funny when they started but it’s gotten really dark” how meta

Of all the reasons Joe could’ve abandoned his zoo, I really didn’t think embezzlement would be what pushed him

“He won’t tell anyone where he’s at, not even me,” said Dial, with no acknowledgement of the fact that Joe is also theoretically still married and would maybe tell his husband???

Oh Dillon spotted??? Yikes get out dude

Take a shot every time a white person who really doesn’t understand where the word “karma” comes from starts talking about karma as if it is the Law of Revenge

The fact this man brings a film crew out with him while he’s on the run evading a federal investigation..... incomprehensible

“Joe just wanted to put it in somebody’s name and continue to be the tiger queen, I mean king,” really REALLY of all the reasons to object to Joe you’re going to choose homophobia wow

Is this about an attempt to have someone murdered or does something happen to Baskin it is very unclear

This documentary has an interesting format of switching focus from crime to crime to crime

“I’ve never been as proud of being married to anyone as I am being married to you” It’s weird to compliment your husband by comparing him to all your other husbands

How is the lesson for Jeff Lowe in this “let’s build another zoo” surely at that point it’s better to just cut your losses

[Garretson voice]: You should pay me for being a bro, dude

“I’m a libertarian, so technically, fuck the Feds,” I’ve never heard an intonation that better suits a conservative millennial

I mean I don’t think it was advisable but honestly why are people surprised Joe took the stand isn’t delusions of grandeur kind of his thing

Sometimes it’s just that they’ve added in other moments to break up the awful immoral crimes with just run of the mill douchebaggery like the nanny/gym thing huh

I guess the silver lining in this is that potentially these big cat zoos will shut down but like where do these animals who have been raised in captivity go??? I don’t trust anyone in this documentary to not exploit them in some way ugh

“Not a single animal benefited from this war,” correct, Saff

“I was wrapped up in having a zoo,” not really an excuse but ok

#tw: literally everything #ayesha says things #ayesha liveblogs tiger king #long post #u ever quarantine so hard u watch an entire docuseries in a night #no but seriously it would be hard to warn for everything but proceed with caution #liveblogging

16 notes · View notes

componentplanet · 4 years

Text

Welcome to Late Stage Capitalism, Where One Company Buys Another and Your Stuff Stops Working

Once upon a time, there was a company named Wyze that made cheap security cameras and other various IoT products. As of today, Wyze cameras won’t detect people anymore. People detection, to be clear, is a major feature of Wyze cameras. The Wyze Cam is advertised as offering “custom zone detection and sensitivity settings,” and you automatically get a clip of what the camera captures while the full recording is saved in the cloud.

Yesterday, Apple bought the AI company Xnor.ai. In and of itself, that’s not particularly interesting, except for the impact it had on Wyze users. But firmware is now rolling out to Wyze devices that removes their ability to detect people. To be fair to Wyze, the company did warn users that the removal was happening back in November, via forum post and email, though some people will still be unpleasantly surprised.

Wyze has promised that the removal is temporary and that they will roll out a replacement this year. The company claims to have assembled its own AI engineering group, and promises that the functionality will remain free, even if it moves to cloud processing rather than using AI. It may even be possible to avoid losing the capability by refusing to update your firmware (some Wyze users speculated about this in the original comment thread). The company needs to deliver on what it’s promising, but it seems to be making the right moves.

But nothing Wyze is doing — nothing Wyze can do — changes the intrinsic absurdity of the situation. Users who purchased a camera for the purpose of person detection will no longer have access to this capability because Apple bought an AI company. It will be gone for the indefinite future. If you update your firmware (voluntarily or no), you may lose the very reason you bought the product in the first place.

An Extremely Abbreviated History of Property

The idea that all people have intrinsic property rights is pretty new compared with the scope of human history. You can date the beginnings of the idea to the Renaissance, but the debate really kicks off in 17th century England. No less a figure than Thomas Hobbes argued in Leviathan that ordinary men had no right to withhold property from their sovereign and that a ruler could seize the belongings of anyone he ruled over without consent. Property ownership in ancient societies was often restricted to particular classes or groups. Jews, for example, were often forbidden from owning property, as were African-Americans prior to the Civil War. Women were still considered the legal property of their husbands in both England and the United States until the mid-to-late 19th century.

My still-living grandmother has told me about how she was unable to get a credit card without a male co-signer before the 1970s. Clearly, we’re still ironing out the bugs, even as both the concept of ownership and the idea that products and services should prioritize human beings over corporations have both come under attack.

The “concept of ownership” argument is one you’ve probably heard a thousand times before. In brief: The rise of digital products and services, combined with an always-available internet has made it much easier for companies to create subscription models that deliver access to content on-demand but never actually allow you to own anything. It’s a complex topic that touches on everything from consumer freedom of choice to whether subscription models provide better economic value than purchasing physical products, which itself depends on how the product is used. It’s a discussion worth having, but it’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Modern IP Agreements, Contracts Aren’t Written for Humans

The disagreements between cable companies and content providers are a perfect example of how good customer outcomes are increasingly ignored. When the two sides fight, customers lose access to the shows in question, but are still generally expected to pay full price for a product they literally aren’t receiving. Last year, DirecTV and Comcast were both caught charging customers a Regional Sports Network fee despite not carrying content from a major RSN, Altitude Sports. Both companies had dropped Altitude two months earlier. Comcast had at least been offering refunds. DirecTV just kept on charging people. Can you break your contract with your cable company when you discover you’ve been charged for a product that was not provided? Generally speaking, no. ISPs, however, are allowed to charge you for an entire month’s service, even if you cancel halfway through the month. In other contexts, charging someone for services you then knowingly don’t provide is called fraud.

The smart home market is another area where this issue runs rampant. A number of companies have launched with hardware that’s fully capable of interoperation with other systems, only to deliberately junk their own equipment as part of going out of business. Planned obsolescence is itself obsolete, replaced by programmed obsolescence. Spectrum is the latest company to win this badge of honor for refusing to allow its Zigbee security cameras to communicate with Zigbee devices made by other companies. If anything keeps the smart home concept from taking off, it’ll be the way the industry is repeatedly burning its own early adopters.

One of the hallmarks of programmed obsolescence is that when it happens, humans often have no recourse. When Rockstar lost its license to the music in GTA IV, the company summarily yanked the affected songs right out of the game. There was no option to purchase them for your own personal use, even if you wanted to. Apparently, it wasn’t worth it to Rockstar to renegotiate the rights or the company was unable to do so. Neither explanation does anything for the people who bought the game and want the soundtrack it shipped with.

Imagine, for a moment, if this standard applied to movies. What if Hollywood studios or streaming services were required to pay royalties for every song in a movie for a given period? What would happen when those agreements inevitably expired? If that sounds crazy, I’d like to remind you that Hollywood literally patched an in-theater movie for the first time in history last December. Anybody want to hear the replacement tracks for Star Wars when the license with John Williams expires because Disney and his estate can’t come to an agreement circa 2050?

Similarly, did any human on Earth choose to continue doing business with Equifax after their 2017 data breach? Were we allowed to have a voice in whether this company was allowed to continue to exist? That’s not an unreasonable request given that we’re forced to do business with it.

What’s striking about many of these outcomes is how there’s no one to actually blame. Apple bought Xnor.ai, so Apple is well within its rights to terminate previous license agreements. Wyze can’t expect to continue to benefit from technology it hasn’t licensed. And finally: End users shouldn’t expect to retain permanent access to a technology Wyze provides, even if Wyze didn’t explicitly communicate to said users that they were only renting a feature they thought they were purchasing. If you accept the precepts, the conclusion is inevitable: Regular users get screwed to one degree or another and nobody cares.

We didn’t used to accept these precepts. Again, I’m not trying to bash Wyze here — the company is reacting to the facts as they exist on the ground today, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this specific situation is relatively small potatoes. The problem is, it’s not just one event or company. It’s everywhere.

If Intel or AMD were founded today, they’d be named Chiply. You’d sign up for a service that shipped you a CPU of your choice with a corresponding monthly fee and a hardwired 30-day validation requirement. Need to save money? No problem! Just agree to run a performance analyzer and to share your personal web traffic 24/7 so Chiply can gather useful data to improve future products. You can’t see what data the profiler collects and you aren’t allowed to know what Chiply does with it, and you’re certainly not going to get any information about which “trusted partners” Chiply sells it to shares it with, and you wouldn’t ever be told that those trusted partners are under no obligation to protect your data, and Chiply would never voluntarily admit that it actually ran the profiling application on everyone’s computer, whether you paid a monthly fee or not.

But hey. Free CPU.

Now Read:

Security Camera Maker Wyze Admits to 23-Day Data Breach

Ransomware Groups Now Threatening to Release Stolen Data If Businesses Don’t Pay

Hackers Openly Peddle Tools to Hack Ring Cameras

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/computing/304897-late-stage-capitalism-one-company-buys-another-and-your-stuff-stops-working from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/01/welcome-to-late-stage-capitalism-where.html

#Welcome to Late Stage Capitalism #Where One Company Buys Another and Your Stuff Stops Working

0 notes

zenruption · 7 years

Text

The Burden of Dealing with a Mentally Ill Family Member

Add to Flipboard Magazine.

By Brian McKay

An issue that is rarely discussed is dealing with a mentally ill family member. By that, I mean a family member that claims to be normal and goes undiagnosed out of refusal to admit weakness. Plenty of us suffer from some kind of mental illness, whether it be depression, bi-polar disorder, etc. It is the person that will never own their illness that will become the most destructive and delusional. The concept that someone can question their take on reality and stay saner than those that won’t, is always correct.

The worst of these people to deal with is a family member. We can walk away from others with minimal effort and little stigma, but in US society we create an obligation that is called “family”. The stigma of not dealing with the issue scares many. No one wants to be regarded as an unempathetic ass. Most of us will assume the burden until it destroys us or we just can’t anymore.

I am convinced that the worst someone can deal with is a parent that is mentally ill and toxic. They are the hardest to absolve ourselves of obligation. It was really reaffirmed once when in a group therapy session, a participant started singing her own lyrics to a song. She had named it “Fifty Ways to Kill Your Mother’. When you’re listening to that and couldn’t agree more, that’s when it’s apparent how destructive it is.

Frequent wishes for someone’s death can make you feel like a horrible person, until they don’t. It was several years ago when I knew that if there were one day were a toxic person could be legally killed, I knew exactly who to nominate. That you no longer see redeeming social value in a person, makes that lamentation much easier to digest. Believe it or not it is normal to have such feelings.

My burden is a mother who is the worst person I have ever known. She blew every dime she ever had and left me with the obligation of her care. Having to live with such a person to save her home was probably the greatest mistake I have ever made in life.

Anyone dealing with the same will know the behaviors. She never does anything wrong. Everyone else is abusive or severely disturbed. A horrible statement made to another has an excuse. Those who walk away from her have done so because they are terrible and wrong. Others are hated and blamed constantly. Every day is different and should involve total forgiveness of whatever horrible thing was said the day before.

Denial is the tool of survival. When you tell such a person you heard them talking to herself in weird child’s voice or making crazy movements, you are accused of trying to make her look crazy. It’s your fault. If your child rejects her grandma, it is because of you polluting your kid’s mind. You are the insane one.

You will probably be accused of stealing from your parent or mentally ill family member at some point. He might espouse conspiracy theories just to feel special for knowing something others don’t. There will be insane voicemails and cries of scheming against her. You’re just making up the hoarding accusation to hurt her or him when you open a closet and junk falls out on your head. No advice will ever be taken.

Many of you can relate. You’ve been there. Your relationships are negatively impacted if they can exist at all. You are thrown into periods of stress or depression when yet another crazy thing happens. Deep inside you want to run away but feel that societal obligation or even a need to protect the rest of the world from it.

No one else who interacts with this person on a limited basis will ever try help or save you. No one wants to acknowledge it. Other family members will mostly never speak of it and certainly not implore your mentally ill family member to seek treatment. You’re on your own.

Well here are a few coping mechanisms that might help. It will never go away, but we can try to keep ourselves sane in the process.

Counseling

Sure no one else knows what to say, but your counselor will listen and advise you. Being able to get it off your chest is a relief with every session. If you have mental health coverage as part of your insurance plan, please schedule this immediately.

Group Counseling

Nothing helps us more than being with others going through the same trials. Knowing you don’t struggle in a vacuum, is amazingly reassuring. Maybe your group will have someone singing “50 Ways to Kill Your Mother”.

Better still, a support group exists for those dealing with mental illness in their families. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) sponsors family support groups. The meetings are free and held weekly in most cities. You will truly learn that you are not alone, some humor will result in those shared experiences, coping mechanisms will be shared and you will find strength.

Here is their site to find a program: https://www.nami.org/Find-Support/NAMI-Programs/Nami-Family-Support-Group

If you need an example of strength in sharing, I hope this article is proof that it can help. That is the goal after all.

Stop Talking to the Mentally Ill Family Member About It

Sometimes beauty exists in resigning yourself to avoid the futility. In other words, giving up here is healthy. This individual has ignored every designation other than “normal” (whatever that means) for years. It won’t change. Don’t argue about it. The only one that will be impacted is you. There is nothing more that can be done unless your family member is a danger to himself.

In fact, avoiding conversation outright is going to make a huge difference. Don’t respond even though they want you too. It is a tool to get attention in creating conflict.

Use the Internet

While the Internet is often a pit of junk and conspiracy theories, this is one great use for it. Groups like the American Psychological Association have websites that talk about coping mechanisms and appropriate ways to deal with mental illness.

Know It Isn’t You

It’s reassuring to tell yourself that you didn’t sign a contract to sacrifice your life when you were brought into this world. Know that you are a compassionate individual and have immense strength that others might never have. Be proud of who you are. I am proud of you.

Set Boundaries

Don’t answer every call or respond to every text. Define when this family member is allowed into your personal life, if ever. Be quick to shut down contentious topics.

Setting up boundaries stops you from being an enabler. You are saying that your life has more worth and that you deal with this out of compassion and not need.

The most critical thing to happiness in life is having reaffirming and caring personal relationships. You matter first and your relationships should never be impacted. If your family member is the type to destroy those relationships, do not let them in to begin with or ever.

Find Beauty

Life is full of it. One person is not the definition of our existence. Get out there and experience the happiness of the world around you. Misery can spill over and be as infectious as the flu. That demon flu isn’t out at the local festival. Go there.

Don’t Be Afraid to Walk Away

Certainly, most don’t want to hear this, but it might be necessary. You cannot sacrifice your life for someone that would constantly destroy it and never seek help. There is a point where wiping yourself of all obligation is ok. Regardless of what others might say, if your life is being so impacted that you can’t minimize the damage, go. You have my respect for all you have been through and you deserve your life back. Know that in the US, family is certainly overrated.

If it empowers anyone, I have done all of these things for years. Ok, decades of decline actually. They do help.

If you need to walk away though, I hope you feel better about it when I say it is my time to do so as well.

medianet_width = "728"; medianet_height = "90"; medianet_crid = "728762653"; medianet_versionId = "111299"; (function() { var isSSL = 'https:' == document.location.protocol; var mnSrc = (isSSL ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//contextual.media.net/nmedianet.js?cid=8CUTI81HQ' + (isSSL ? '&https=1' : ''); document.write('<scr' + 'ipt type="text/javascript" id="mNSC" src="' + mnSrc + '">' + 'ipt>'); })();

#counseling #mental illness

0 notes