[ID: Baby bunny tucked into a pet bed under a blankie, with text "it has gotten better before. and it will again." /end ID]
when he starts talking about how much he hates unions but you’re from Appalachia
More fat characters who are complex heroes, serious love interests, funny without mentioning their weight, brooding anti-heroes, compelling antagonists, random bystanders without comments toward their looks
There's a handful of notes on this going "well fuck you, do you know how hard it is to BE the speaker and not have anyone greet you?" and uh, yes, yes I do, because I did those stupid ass soft skills/resilience/insert other assorted nonsense workshops for schools for a living for a while, and I still agree with this.
The key to being an effective speaker is the ability to understand your audience. You need to understand people in order to build a rapport with them. And you need to build a rapport with them in order to effectively guide them from where they are, to where you need them to be.
So. Here is the situation from the perspective of the audience: this random person, whom they have never met before and do not care about, is being paid by employers/school powers that be to come speak on a thing. In other words, the speaker is the one benefitting from being there. Meanwhile, the audience has likely been ordered to be there, for no immediate, tangible benefit in return. It is early in the morning, they are sleep-deprived and under-caffeinated, they have a shit ton of stuff on their to-do list, they are unconvinced whatever the speaker is going to say is going to be of any use or relevance whatsoever, and so they see this talk as a waste of time that they could instead be spending on sleep or at least finishing off things that are actually necessary for work/school. And now this rando, whom I repeat, is supposed to be the service provider, whose presence is already a pain, is asking for even more effort on the audience's part by asking them to smile and be chipper. All before saying a single other word that might convince said audience that they are going to get any benefit whatsoever out of being there. Fuck that.
You gotta understand, you are not some rock star that people are already invested in and actively want to see. Those get to do the "scream! I can't hear you! LOUDER!" thing. The fact of the matter is, you are probably someone your audience has no interest in seeing, and until you give them a reason for wanting to be there, you cannot ask them for even more emotional effort. That's not going to endear them to you.
I am by no means a particularly great speaker, but I can tell you now that I have gotten far more immediate rapport and engagement by simply going "hello hello, morning, how is everyone?" and then when I get the predictably unenthusiastic mass groaning and grumbling, and unenergetic "morning"s back in return, replying "heh, big mood. It's final project season innit; how sleep deprived are y'all? --yeouch, intense, well I'll try my best to keep this as painless as I possibly can; I'm here today to talk about--" etc etc. Simple, sympathetic, and while it's not the most energetic and enthusiastic thing in the world, it puts me on "their" side and opens a connection that I can build on for the rest of the talk, instead of instantly making my audience feel 10x more tired and hostile.
If you are not a speaker being paid to be there, but are instead someone giving a presentation for an assignment or presenting a paper or whatever, then I've found that being sincere and a little self-deprecating, possibly just a tiny bit vulnerable works pretty well: "Oh god, so full disclosure, I don't speak very often and I'm sweating bullets right now, and also I tend to babble like a bullet train when I'm nervous so if at any point you cannot understand me please ask me to slow down, but I have a thing I need to present, and I think it's pretty cool, and hopefully you do too." Your audience has probably been in your shoes before, and are now inclined to be nice to you out of sympathy.
In both cases, it's about understanding your listeners and where you stand in relation to them and using that to build that initial connection. You cannot demand connection; it never fucking works.
Fantastic feature guys!
Fix this by turning "show upload progress" off in Account Settings 👍
Gotta love the tumblr time honored tradition of telling each other how to turn off fucking annoying updates 🤝🏽✨
Declutter Tumblr
The new layout it a whole mess. Thankfully Xkit can already help with a bunch of this! I'm sure it'll give more options soon.
Vanilla Tumblr:
(I have marked in red what can be removed. The tabs can be set not to stick, so you will really only see them at the top of your dash. Empty box on the left for hidden notifications and shop sparkle, i just didn't have any. I'm EU so no Live for me).
Xkit Rewritten Tumblr:
The settings I use:
I graduated high school in 99.
There was a student at our school named Wayne.
Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.
Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.
The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.
Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help.
He went to guidance counselors for help.
He went to the principals for help.
He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.
Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.
So... no.
No one in my school talked about being trans.
Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.
graduated the same year
being called gay was considered a huge insult. it could ruin you if you let yourself care about it. the only place that sort of shit was even passingly okay was the drama group (of which I was a part). I was extremely lucky in that in my junior high and high school years we basically looped all the weird kid groups together (band, drama, anime nerds, etc) into one big group so we were harder to pick on
people still tried. I distinctly remember the time a friend came to me and with tones of great sadness told me everyone at school thought I was a lesbian as if it was some great sin or social disaster
if somebody tried to call themselves trans back then (not that we knew the word except as “transsexual” from RHPS, and only a handful of us had even seen that) it would’ve been so much worse
so of course you didn’t know anybody who said that. they would have been eviscerated and everyone knew it
There was one (1) trans girl in my high school (early 2000s). And while some people were kind, some of the things that were said and the way people talked…
Look. There’s a reason that I didn’t even CONSIDER that I could be anything but straight until college.
It's not that people weren't saying it, it's that the OP (screenshot) wasn't listening. We were speaking in suicide notes and desperate depression, in confusion and fear and frustration.
But we -- I was in high school in 2000 -- were no less trans then.
also before it starts to happen: if i see a single person calling july "gay wrath month" or saying "we deserve a second one" it is ON SIGHT. that is DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH. abled queers i will run you over with my wheelchair if you so much as reblog one of those comments.
hello! reblog this version instead!
Hello! Disabled person here. Did you know those of us declared legally disabled and collect SSI and benefits are barred from getting married? Yep! I'm also queer so this isn't hate at all, it's a call to action: if you love marriage equality, come help us fight for ours.
Unrestrained summer fun
excellent work 🤷
[Image description: a series of posters put up at bus stops in London. Each poster is done in the same format that the Barbie movie used for its posters: a closeup on the subject’s face, a description starting with “This Barbie is…” or “This Ken is…”, the word Barbie in big fancy letters, and pink sparkles everywhere. The posters have the same high-quality, professional appearance as the official Barbie marketing campaign. However, these posters are a protest campaign calling out British politicians.
There are six posters here, shared by lgsmigrants on Twitter. Each one has a picture of the politician in question crowned by a “This Barbie is…” phrase, a longer callout on the bottom, and the hashtag #ThisBarbieIsAC*nt (“This Barbie is a C*nt”: every instance of the word “c*nt” is censored in the original posters, but “fuck” is fully spelled out.)
The posters read as follows:
1. This Barbie is not claimed by her ancestors! Suella Braverman told reporters it is her “obsession” and “dream” to deport the most vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers to their death. Fuck her.
2. This Ken is a white supremacist! Jacob Rees-Mogg enjoys cosplaying as a 1930s era aristocrat, boasting of his pride for Britain’s colonial past, defending concentration camps and shouting racial slurs in the Commons. And so much more…
3. This Ken is a massive C*NT! Rishi Sunak has presided over the most forceful pushback of the human rights of migrants and asylum seekers in modern British history.
4. This Ken is a simp for imperialism! Robert Jenrick thinks that “migration threatens to cannibalise the compassion of the British public”, while simultaneously painting over kids’ murals in detention centers. U OK hun?
5. This Ken is a class traitor! Lee Anderson is a class traitor. From a working class background, Lee is now fanning the flames of fascism for an ego boost.
6. This Barbie is gagging to deport your grandma! Priti Patel orchestrated the Rwanda scheme despite admitting that her own parents might not have been allowed into UK under her immigration laws.
End ID./]
