madfishmonger

[madfishmonger]

[madfishmonger]

What Have I made

Context

[madfishmonger]

Look I know I blog a lot about supernatural shit, but I actually love the regularnatural shit even more.

Sometimes consorting with spirits means getting bitched at by a hummingbird who thinks you should refill its feeder. Sometimes it's leaving a bowl of water on the back steps for the ants, so they don't have to invade your bathroom when the weather's dry.

[madfishmonger]

““You keep these kids ignorant and then suddenly they’re in a situation that they don’t even have the words for and they have no idea what to do,” she says. “They’re not taught how to ask for consent, how to give consent, how to revoke consent and stop mid-way through. They don’t know to use protection or to demand it if it’s absent, they don’t know this will spread STIs and pregnancy. They don’t know it’s not supposed to hurt. Can you believe that? So, so, so many people think that sex is supposed to hurt the partner with a vagina when they have sex for the first time. They think that’s just the way it is, that’s just how it goes. *That* is obscene to me. Enforced ignorance that inevitably results in physical and emotional damage, *that’s* obscenity.””

— Rich Goldstein asked me what I consider to be obscene in his article on my work, ‘Oh Joy Sex Toy’: The Internet’s Most Radical Sex-Fueled Comic Strip (via erikamoen)

#learn you a thing

[madfishmonger]

What's the punishment for breaking the laws of physics?

10-15 years in prism.

[madfishmonger]

There exist another dimension called The Empty World. It's very much like ours, in fact it seems to have been identical up until a few weeks ago, but it always seems that way. If you go there today, it was identical in late february, and if you go there this october, it'll have been identical until september.

It's empty, as you might guess. There's no humans, and no animals bigger than a cockroach. The sky is grey, and it slowly rains ash. It's colder than our world by a bit, enough to require a jacket even in summer. The streets are empty, the cars parked neatly in their garages or in lots, but they're all empty and abandoned, their doors locked like they expect their owners to return any minute now.

The newspapers left on stands don't mention any oncoming disaster. We have no idea what the TV or internet would have said: the power is out. The power is very, very out. Not just the grid, but batteries are drained. The cars won't start, the emergency lights are out, and anything with solar panels seems to be getting less energy than you'd expect, even with the perpetually overcast sky.

It's a very silent world, like the calm after a snowstorm. Sounds don't seem to echo as much as they should, nor does sound seem to travel as far. The radio spectrum is empty except for static, there's no one transmitting on any frequency.

There's fewer fires than you'd expect. Even places you'd expect to soon catch fire without human intervention are still standing, undamaged. Campfires can be lit but with difficulty: something is keeping them from burning as they should. Even if you pour kerosene on a campfire it'll barely grow, it's like something sucked the energy out of everything.

All the locked buildings are still locked. Alarms don't sound if you break in (understandable, given the power situation), and of course no one comes to investigate. So The Empty World is your oyster: you can break in wherever you want (provided you can physically do it: some doors are pretty hard to pry open even with tools), take whatever you want, and bring it back here.

Everything resets when you leave. You always enter The Empty World like it's your first time there, like this just happened and you're late to the party... but the party keeps getting rescheduled. You can even take something multiple times if you want.

When you enter The Empty World you get there at the same relative position as you are on this world. If you're in New York, you show up in the empty New York. If you're in Topeka, you show up in empty Topeka. So you have to travel around this world to get to where you want, and you can't just appear in the middle of a bank vault... unless you break into the vault from this world. (So it's great if you work at a bank and want to steal from your employer without repercussions, but not so useful otherwise).

You don't just have to take things, you know. You can take computers and files and books and diaries. You will have to deal with recharging laptops and breaking through any security when you get back, but it's doable.

So, imagine you've just gotten access to The Empty World. What are you going to do with it? What will you take, and where will you go?

[madfishmonger]

honestly really sexy of tumblr to keep follower numbers private. how many people are following me? you'll never know unless I tell you. maybe it's a million, or a thousand, or five, or maybe it's just you. maybe you're the only one here, all by yourself, unable to see if there's anyone standing next to you.

and you'd never know, because status here is based on opinion and not numbers; how popular you think someone is is a vibes-only calculation, and besides the chronological algorithms-optional feed, it's genuinely the best thing tumblr's ever done.

#i only have like maybe 10-15 people who regularly interact with me #but way more followers than that

[madfishmonger]

Aaaaand one more cos I'm having fun with the emojis

#i think you'll like a hot lesbian ghost

[madfishmonger]

[sic] is my favorite editorial notation because of its inherent bitchiness.

[madfishmonger]

(Thanks Rachel!)

#learn you a thing

[madfishmonger]

#buddy of mine is romani #met him in the late 90s and he told me this then #why are we still using this word

[madfishmonger]

Me when I remember something I said ages ago that was wrong or my values no longer align with

#take care of yourself #art

[madfishmonger]

Hello friends, there's a dogwhistle I've seen used a couple times on tumblr that I want to discuss.

Fellow neurodivergents especially, please listen-- towards the end of this post I describe how some in our community have been using it without knowing what it means.

A fairly common antisemitic dogwhistle used amongst alt-right circles on the internet is being a "noticer," "noticing patterns," "pattern noticer," etc. I've seen this from a couple Tumblr blogs I follow reblogging memes and such that use this term but don't provide any context about what sorts of "things" they may be noticing.

Here's the meme that I saw a blog I'm following reblog last night.

Seems pretty harmless, right? It's a meme with a cute cat.

In alt-right circles, what they are referring to "noticing" is the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world/"noticing" evidence of an imagined globalist (read: Jewish) world order/etc. If you see a meme that uses terms like "noticing patterns" that doesn't elaborate what those supposed patterns are-- just leaves you to fill in the blank yourself-- take a look at the types of things OP might be posting. The alt-right has an idea that it's forbidden to talk about who might be behind the "conspiracies" they talk about (again, the target is frequently Jewish people) so lack of context is often a red flag.

I sent the blog who reblogged this an ask informing them that the meme was a dogwhistle. If you see someone reblog something like this, check what they've been posting. If this seems like an isolated incident, the person probably reblogged it not knowing what the term actually meant. That's why dogwhistles are so effective-- to the average person they look harmless if you don't know what to watch out for!

Let's take a look at how alt-righters use this term.

Here's an alt-right definition of it from Urban Dictionary.

Oh boy, this one gets a bigotry bingo for all the dogwhistles used here. If I miss any, feel free to comment. Here are the ones I found:

-Noseticing: Noticing plus nose, based on the stereotype for Jewish people to have large noses.

-"those who cannot be named"/skirting around saying Jew: again the idea that it's forbidden to talk about who they think is behind their conspiracy theories.

-"world events and agendas": idea that Jewish people have a Globalist agenda etc etc

-Degeneracy: Nazi term to describe the behaviors/people they find undesirable.

-Early life: refers to the section in a person's Wikipedia page. If a person was brought up Jewish, it'll usually say so there.

-Oy vey: a Jewish exclamation of exasperation that Nazis have unfortunately co-opted when talking about Jewish people.

Here's probably the most obviously antisemitic meme I found.

The title and first bullet point include the "noticer" term. This meme also talks about a "group" who controls wealth. Who might the poster be referring to here?

Here's a Twitter account with many similar alt-right terms. Explicitly identifies as a Nazi and ethno-nationalist, etc etc.

A couple other pages. I clicked on them to see if I could find any more examples but the first seemed pretty blank and the second... Well, I don't have a twitter so I couldn't view.

Let's unpack these a little. The first one has "13 outta 52," a statistic used among white supremacists to depict Black people (especially African-Americans) as "savage": 13 referring to the percentage of America that is Black and 52 referring to the alleged percentage of murders in the U.S. that are committed by Black people. "109 countries" refers to the idea that Jewish people have been expelled from 109 countries during history. (Which isn't entirely true. Some "countries" in this count are actually cities, regions, etc.) Some white supremacists may use the number 110 instead to suggest that it should happen again.

The second one has a blurb alleging a global sterilization effort and concerns of fertility. This is likely in connection to pro-natalism for white people. If Nazis want a so-called "Aryan nation," they're going to want white people to populate it, and so they encourage white people to have babies for their cause. Nazi Germany employed this tactic as well, even awarding "Aryan" German women who had four or more children for their contributions to the Nazi cause.

The reason why I'm emphasizing that context matters is that some neurodivergent people have seen this and co-opted it into neurodivergent circles. As a person who is Jewish and autistic, this is pretty alarming to me. I'll show a couple examples from Tumblr:

And

I've left out the URLs of the OPs because I want to give the benefit of the doubt-- they both explicitly refer to being a "pattern noticer" in terms of neurodivergence. And it's easy to see why introducing this term to ND folks would be an easy way to get a dogwhistle passed off as harmless! Since autistic people often have analytical minds, we often make connections that others might not be able to see. But unfortunately, using terms like this only makes it much easier for antisemites to fly under the radar.

Stay safe and let's keep Tumblr free of this shit.

#learn you a thing

[madfishmonger]

more fucking petitions because this clown car country cannot stop with the bigotry for 30 seconds

uk people it takes 5 seconds and you checking your email to verify

everyone else: rebloge please

#signal boost

[madfishmonger]

This is the second time in my voting history that I’ve participated in flipping a red seat in Alabama for Democrats (the previous time being my beloved Doug Jones) so it’s always funny to see people turn around and say voting doesn’t matter when I’ve seen it twice in the past ten years flip seats in what is supposed to be safe Republican country. Republicans are digging their own grave with their radicalization and it is making them lose (and with your help we can make them lose harder). Vote.

[madfishmonger]

High quality plot twist

[madfishmonger]

The anon button is not for hate. The anon button is for horny and embarrassed about it.