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frequently asked questions about the election no one has actually asked me, yet
(This post first appeared on Medium.)
Is it okay to cry?
Yes.
Really? I’m not being too emotional?
No, really. Go ahead and cry. This is a fucked-up thing, and it would be weirder if you weren’t upset.
continue reading →be neville longbottom
Donald Trump is President-elect of the United States of America.
This was a shock, but it was also not a surprise. It is always a mistake to underestimate the depth of bigotry.
I have spent most of the day staring off into nothing. I have not gone more than half an hour without tearing up or outright crying. I am already sick and tired of reading postmortems but I cannot stop clicking them like a hamster on speed, looking for something that could have saved you, could have saved us. I am angry at everybody. I am angry at everything. I want to tear shit up and burn things down. I want to disappear.
continue reading →ashley madison: It’s not really about infidelity.
(This post was first published on Medium.com)
About a week ago, I posted the following tweet:
I have such complicated thoughts about the Ashley Madison hack, much of which comes down to “schadenfreude is ugly and unworthy of us”.
August 18, 2015 at 08:04PM (since deleted)
In the week since a lot of new information has come to light. There has been a second, larger dump with source code and the CEO’s email. We know about “family values” activist Josh Duggar’s account on the site (for which he seems to be more apologetic than, you know, molesting his sisters). We know about women and members of the LGBTQ population living in repressive regimes whose lives have been put at serious risk because of the leak. We know there are already mercenary “security experts” that are using the public’s fear to harvest email addresses for scams. We are starting to see real-world fall-out, including at least two possible suicides that have been linked to this.
In other words, things have gotten a lot more complicated.
This issue is about much more than infidelity. It’s about our vicious delight in negativity, the inevitable failure of computer security and computer literacy, the collateral damage of schadenfreude, the normalization of vigilante justice, and a collective desire for black-and-white judgments.
This is going to get long. Bear with me.
continue reading →talking is not enough
Bell Let’s Talk always makes me super uncomfortable for reasons I can never quite articulate. Part of it is because I dislike a company advertising for itself on the backs of advocacy for mental health awareness. I get that this campaign is more effective at raising awareness across the country than Bell just silently throwing a whole gob of money at CAMH, but the ads don’t have to be so damn branded. (Note: I have similar issues with the Dove Campaign co-opting feminism. You didn’t start the conversation, you’re just benefiting from it.)
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