Hey, Do Y’all Remember How Tencent Said They Were Developing FaceID AI To Identify People In Riots,

i don't think we talk enough about how childhood bullying really just. fucks up your ability to make friends long-term.

I'm not talking about self-image or even like attachment styles, although peer emotional abuse affects that too. I'm talking about how it legitimately stunts your understanding of how positive platonic relationships even work.

Like, a few years back (pre pandemic) a classmate point-blank told me, "hey, you're pretty cool, do you wanna come out for drinks and trivia with us Thursday night?" and my first internal reaction wasn't "oh cool, a friend!" or even "I'm not really interested" but: "where is the trap?" My kneejerk response to an earnest overture of friendship from this guy was trying to figure out how he was trying to back me into a corner, trick me into something, or make fun of me. We were in goddamm GRADUATE SCHOOL.

Of course I did end up going to drinks and it was a lovely time, but sometimes I think about the sheer number of potential friendships I've missed out on because I read their intentions as potentially hostile, *even when their intent is clearly not hostile*. Getting asked out for drinks is SUPER NORMAL. Being invited to parties is normal. Meeting for coffee is normal. in fact it's a primary way of forging adult friendships. But i am immediately wary of it, because the years in which I was developing most of my crucial social skills were spent dodging cruel pranks, getting invited to fake parties or uninvited from real ones, getting asked out "as a joke", being given compliments that were actually somehow insults, and so forth.

I don't have problems making friends-- I talk to people for a living, I am overall extremely charismatic and get invited out a lot, but I struggle to forge new connections because my trained response is to be immediately suspicious of people who appear friendly, welcoming and well-intentioned -- even fifteen years later. This is why I don't get the "you should have been bullied more" crowd. Like somehow bullying makes you more "normal". It definitely doesn't, even if "normal" was a real thing. I am definitely a more antisocial weirdo as a result of prolonged peer-to-peer emotional abuse than I would have been otherwise.

I hope all private jets blow up tomorrow

[id: a light blue userbox with a blue border and blue text that reads “ this user is always tired.” on the left is an image of a sleepy bear. /end id]

people who say "i'm a little ocd 🤪" because they straighten their pens are the same ones who demonize people who have violent or sexual intrusive thoughts and think its weird or stupid if you have to flip a switch 7 times before you sit down

A small PSA to all those new to dealing with the porn bots that Tumblr now has a fresh wave of – I understand that when you go to report them, you want to report them as "[containing] sexually explicit material", but don't do that. Report them as spam instead.

These are spam bots flooding tags and the website in general with spam links. They often do not have anything sexually explicit on their blog (although they often have implicit material). Plus, these two reports get very different results. Reporting explicit material gets the bot slapped behind an 18+ wall, so minors can't check if they're a bot or not. Reporting spam gets the bot taken down.

Remember, folks: when dealing with a bot, report spam, not smut!

if you kiss a robot with a screen face you get to feel the screen static on your lips and that’s them kissing u back

The asexual struggle to reconcile "look, I don't care if it's genuinely resonant, describing nonhuman characters like robots as asexual representation is so openly playing into the misconception that a lack of sexual attraction somehow makes us emotionally deficient and therefore inhuman that I cannot be bothered to view this character through that specific lens" and "yo holy shit is that a fucKING ROBOT LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO"

“God just let people have fun it’s not that deep” NO it is that deep actually stop fucking using ais to make “art”!!!!! If you want a cool portrait of yourself fucking commission an artist to do it!!! Sorry if you don’t understand what a slap in the face it is to train and practice for years and years only to have people plug their selfies into the computer and get a portrait made of stolen art!!!!! I cannot believe this is even discourse!!! I have lost so much respect for people I’m going to SCREAM

The struggle is real