The strangest part of this was how conservatives used to be the ones pushing for wearing masks as alternatives to vaccinations, because the mindless fear of needles goes waaay back. See, chances are I’m older than you, so I’ve seen these cycles repeat themselves over and over. You’ve only seen it once or twice tops.

What happens is that a politician will dangle a new fear over you, and you will attach to that fear because that’s how our brains work. I am talking universally, not specific to one party or ideology, this is how we ALL work, and leftists are equally guilty of grifting their base the same way.

But you HAVE to understand where this came from, why you’re fighting with people about this, where this came from.

Never mind that people have been wearing face covering for millenia to reduce spreading disease, we have paintings and etching of lepers and plague victims going back thousands of years wearing something to prevent accidental spreading of saliva or body fluids. This isn’t a complicated idea, and a lot of people wear face coverings anyway to prevent illness or for safety around immunocompromised people. This isn’t new, this isn’t something that was planned or contrived, the ONLY reason you’re having arguments with people about face masks of all things is because someone out there knows how to connect your brain to a story to explain how it feels. To make you expend your energy on this, not making our world better or focusing on your elected representatives and what they’re signing into law, and I bet it works great. I bet you don’t get involved in your local politics. Nobody does, nobody spends as much energy on their actual neighborhoods as they do arguing online about props.

See, like with a lot of other things, a lot of us were unsure and worried about the future, so a lot of people trying to get power used masks as their props to fixate that insecurity on. I am not even going to talk about their effectiveness or not, it’s like wearing a hat in the sun, sure it won’t save you from sunburns but it’s just a thing we do to try our best to protect what we can, it’s not a big deal.

Your brain is not a tool of logic and reason, that’s an illusion. It’s a tool to tell you a story to explain how you feel. And it LOVES when someone provides a story for it. Because your brain wants a story that makes sense, not one that’s accurate. There is a difference. A lot of things can make sense and not be true.

It should be a giant, glaring alarm that someone is fucking with your brain when you start feeling contentious about what other people wear on their faces. That HAS to trigger something deep inside that makes you wonder why you’re so emotionally connected to this “debate.”

You got chains around you and they’re going to keep attaching chains until you realize how deeply you’re playing in the WWE theater of political rhetoric. Let this one go, just walk away, it’s objectively a nonsense campaign designed to distracted you.

The outraged reply you’re already pounding out in your head is part of that distraction. You are giving your soul away to others to use as they will. Doesn’t that bother you?

You mean you don’t have to like Kamala? I’m voting Kamala.

Not fond of her, but she’ll do better than Trump by leagues and miles and make history while not rocking the boat or affecting any meaningful change. Libs will love her, she’ll be a democrat party darling. I bet she gets a second term.

I will cast my vote between tears but nobody ever promised preserving democracy will always make you feel good.

In fact, I am close to launching into a really hard condemnation of every last one of you lazy-ass motherfuckers who expect everything to always play out like a 2-dimensional anime plot where you’re the good guy so you’re supposed to always feel good, and any struggles are easily overcome, and if it doesn’t play out like that, then you go full doomer-mode and grab your soapbox to preach how pointless life is just because you’re lonely but too scared to talk to a girl. Go back to your discord safe-spaces and let adults out here make the hard choices.

To everyone else reading down here, lot of people also don’t really get this same idea with visual impairment and other handicaps.

There are a lot of people who are legally blind, but that just means they can’t make out things at certain distances, and these are why we need things like high-visibility curbs and street markers and large-type text options and other accessibility features that able-bodied people in a wide field of industries often forget about and just assume either people are blind and won’t be using their products, or will have perfect vision. When really there are far more people who are considered deaf or blind who can still enjoy many of the same things as someone with fully faculties and just need a little extra help.

I am only typing this out because we seem to entering a strange time in the developed world where more and more people are withdrawing from the social contract and not extending compassion towards others, particularly those with special needs.

When I was little I thought the future would be a bright and remarkable place where people took care of each other, because those were the messages you see on PBS shows like Mr Rogers and Sesame Street. Turns out, a LOT of people didn’t watch those shows.

Oh good, another doctor who thinks her own book, website, blog and youtube channel are an adequate substitute for professional, personalized care and diagnosis.

“It’s really hard to get a diagnosis, so why even bother trying? Just like the video and hit the bell for notifications!”

This post is literally about how hard it is to get a formal diagnosis. Nobody said they don’t want to do it.

This post is about a doctor who makes money from her personal brand, website, books and speaking tours, telling people that getting a formal diagnosis is so hard that why should you bother. And now that you’re emotionally validated, why not visit her blog, store or youtube channel and subscribe?

I genuinely don’t know if her material is good or not, I tend to lean towards it being pabulum and watered-down schlock like literally any speaking-tour psychologist without even reading it. But lets not make any mistake about what’s being peddled here and why.

I don’t really appreciate discouraging people from getting professional care and diagnosis just because you have convinced yourself that your impersonal motivational messages are as good as personalized and in-depth care that a professional can offer.

Should have took a lot more.

I mean it’s a niche thing, people who are really into piercings really like them, and those who aren’t into them tend to really really not like them, whereas some other fashion accessories are generally more universally acceptable even if not necessarily loved.

This isn’t an argument about abortion or gender affirming care you nut, this is about fashion. It’s not about “women’s bodies.”

Plenty of women express “disappointment” with the fashion choices men make and it’s fine. What’s the difference?

edit: my biggest disappointment here is people who can’t separate themselves from a stranger’s opinion and have to fight about someone’s preference whom they will never see, meet or talk to. Like, it just sparks this massive insecurity in people because it reminds people that someone might reject them for their choices so the response tends to be lashing out and being unhinged. And you see this on every end of every ideological spectrum, it’s a very human thing that we need to get better about. You all need to learn to SIT with the fact that not everyone will like you, your fashion, your taste, etc. Social media and discord has made you all get way too adapted to a world where you can choose to surround yourselves with only people who accept you blindly, so that you’re losing touch with how to feel about and cope with those who don’t immediately validate everything about you.

I quizzed you why you thought a normal, common expression of aesthetic taste became a sexual entitlement issue to you immediately, it was weird, it remains weird, you are weird, every comment makes you seem weirder about it, and I don’t think this is a healthy place for you to be engaging and tripling down on. I’m blocking you for your good as much as mine.

I’ve re-read your comment dozens of times trying to understand why this concept is lost on you, that it’s FINE to be disappointed with someone’s fashion choices, be it someone you know personally, or a generalized view of trends. It’s OKAY. It doesn’t MEAN anything other than, some people like things and other people do not. I too feel a sense of disappointment when people with otherwise pretty features accessorize it in ways that distract or detract from my preference. AND THAT’S ALSO OKAY.

You know what else? You’re ALSO allowed to be disappointed with how some people dress, talk, act or just about ANYTHING else that you like or don’t like. This is called being an adult human with values, taste and self-esteem.

Whatever cartoonish picture jumped into your head of some “alpha male” casting judgement on women he wants to sleep with, which I think you’re picturing here, that shit is coming from a place of insecurity or pain inside YOU, this is not an objectifying or entitled attitude to express or hold. Disappointment with someone’s choices is a normal and healthy thing that men and women feel and express all the time and sure it can become toxic in extreme circumstances, it’s nowhere NEAR that to just express not liking a thing.

What is your point? Did a billboard with the word “disappointment” fall on your great uncle and kill him?

Okay setting aside your clearly toxic and unkind attitude that is betraying what this is really about, some personal issue that is making you seeth, why is the word “disappointment” triggering YOU so hard?

I would be disappointed if my date comes home with me and takes off their shirt and they have a tattoo of Sonic the Hedgehog on their chest. Because I don’t want to look at Sonic when we’re together, does that make a lick of fucking sense? Do you understand that people have consensual relationships and preferences for their partners?

What does random women he has nothing to do with having piercings have to do with him?

Are you not a native English speaker? Do you understand that people can give opinions and critique of things they don’t like without it meaning an expectation that someone is going to DO something for them? You immediately made some random, innocuous comment about someone’s aesthetic tastes into an issue about entitlement and I assume implications about sex? Don’t you get how fucking weird that is? It betrays something on YOUR mind specifically that nobody here is talking about.

Do you think people shouldn’t have fashion preferences? Do you think humans can’t or should not have feelings about things? Every comment you make here just makes it weirder.

No you went on a rant about if op is “entitled” to those women. That’s just a fucking weird take from someone talking about disappointment in a fashion choice that people choose. Don’t reframe your weird comment.

I’m not really sure who likes them other than the people who get them and other people who like those specific piercings for whatever reasons.

It’s wild how insanely defensive people get about their piercings and body modifications though, just read through this post or any post like it on reddit.

Like, chill out you freaks. If someone doesn’t like your fashion choice, unhinged rants and attacks aren’t going to make someone magically start loving metal accessories stuck in your soft parts.

Bro is expressing distaste in a fashion accessory, why you so bitter and taking it so hard? You ok?

If I die and find out the universe really works this way, I will renounce all of existence and opt out. I rather an eternity not existing over living in a stupid children’s book universe of weird arbitrary rules about who gets to do what and go where through these systems of hierarchy.

And here I am over here, an agnostic absurdist, just laughing at the silly monkeys.

Could we start discussing credible strategies to reverse this situation, or at least improve that number somehow?

I say this constantly, and everyone nods along happily when I say it, but almost nobody does it. What is it? It’s getting involved in your local politics.

The federal government, the US congress and senate and all the executive branch… they’re all supported and propped up by powerful institutions within the states that got powerful because nobody paid it any attention and still don’t. People get elected to represent us who run without opposition and then we wonder why nothing seems to change.

If you get involved with knowing who in your neighborhood, your school district, your city, your county and your state represent you, and then challenging that representation in any way you can, from actually running all the way to just getting on those horrible neighborhood forums and holding yard-sales to get to know your neighbors.

GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS. Jesus, this country is terrible about this one huge thing that could change everything, which is reforming communities. We scream and cry how bad the world is and make ZERO effort to make it better by forming support systems within neighborhoods. I mean fuck, most suburban neighborhoods have nothing else to do, might as well have some bake sales and yard sales and jogging groups and other things to help get to know each other, right? Or has all our cynicism completely overshadowed any possible chance of ever forming friendly communities in the US?