I got pretty fed up with looking for words to replace said because they weren’t sorted in a way I could easily use/find them for the right time. So I did some myself.
Everyone goes on about how algorithmically-targeted ads are so creepily precise that they know everything about you, but I still can’t convince my Google ads that I’m not pregnant, I don’t own a horse, and my purchase of a home thermostat was a one-time thing and not the start of a comprehensive thermostat collection.
Quoting vines in Rome to see who responds. So far we have:
In the Colosseum, a tour guide was talking about who sat where and when they mentioned that the emperor and some other guy sat in one place, I said “And they were roommates!” And one of the girls on the tour said “oh my god! Zey ver voomates!” In a thick German accent before glaring at me.
And an alcove in the Vatican Museum with nothing in it and I quietly said “this bitch empty” and a British girl yelled “YEET” before realising her mistake and telling me to go fuck myself.
Tumblr, this isn’t healthy. At best it leads to confusion about boundaries; at worst it leads to abuse.
“I like being by myself and am comfortable in my own company. If you want to spend time with me, spending time with you has to feel better than being by myself. I won’t spend time with you if it makes me feel worse than being by myself.”
What is unhealthy about this? How could it ‘lead to confusion about boundaries/ abuse’? I find it very healthy, and in fact, it’s setting excellent boundaries: “If being with you makes me feel worse than not being with you, then I choose feeling better and not being with you.”
Here’s a funny thing. This isn’t the first person I’ve seen reacting negatively to a post where someone points out that there’s nothing wrong with being alone / actively choosing to be alone / not chasing relationships just because ‘you gotta’ or ‘everyone else is having one.’ I can’t find the other post right now, but it was advising people to become more comfortable with doing things by themselves, when not in a relationship (going to the restaurant, to the theater, etc). And in comes some twit, with ‘hurr durr, an asocial serial-killer wrote this.’
[inert GIF of someone flipping the bird here]
I’ve noticed that a hell of a lot of people feel actively threatened by the existence of highly introverted people, who don’t have problems with being alone and who might actually prefer that state of being. Even when all we’re doing is existing and minding our own lives, with little to no fuss.
I don’t know how to put this more clearly than the fact that there’s absolutely nothing healthy about someone going against their own nature, just because ‘society says so-and-so.’ And this can range from getting involved in a relationship one isn’t actually interested in, just because people are pressuring one for being ‘lonely’, all the way to having unwanted children, just because ‘everyone else is doing it’, instead of any genuine desire to be a parent.
I feel like this is an extension of this odd, highly entitled take on relationships a good portion of tumblr seems to have where they expect their friends/family/partners to be on-call for them 24/7 and the very idea of those people being unable to do that (because like…they have lives of their own) is considered abusive.
The idea that the people in your life are not obligated to jump when you say jump and drop everything when you say so whenever you say so rustles the hell out of a lot of people on tumblr’s jimmies. There’s this weird possessiveness that people on here show towards the people in their lives and this expectation that those people should make them their main priority above their own needs and other obligations that’s wildly unhealthy. I can easily see people who are mad at being told “I have other things going on in my life and can’t always prioritize your needs/wants over everything else” being even madder at “I expect you to bring something positive to my life/this relationship that is more fulfilling than what I can get on my own and if you can’t then I’m happy to be alone”.
QueerGalaxies 