can you PLEASE put your age in your about/sidebar and make sure it’s accessible on mobile. imo if you’re an adult esp 20+ it’s a little weird that you wouldn’t have your age readily available on your blog. if you’re reading this now and you don’t have your age listed, please rectify that. i feel like teenagers get lured into talking to adults in fandom/lgbt spaces that they may not have intentionally sought out because they think they’re talking to other teenagers, and this can lead to a lot of other – much more insidious –problems
Can you guys step out of the tumblr “everyone over 20 is inherently predatory and creepy towards children” bubble for once and consider that encouraging people to give up their personal information for the imagined safety of the community is like…not safe?
this advice doesn’t even make sense for multiple reasons; if someone is intent on preying upon minors, all they have to do is follow your advice and lie about their age, being over 20 doesn’t mean you can’t be preyed on yourself, you should never be coerced into giving up your privacy on social media (seriously, did a fed write this?), and promoting the idea that turning 20 means your interactions with younger people should be viewed with suspicion is absolutely harmful,like OP do you have any common sense? At all?
“ignore your own privacy boundaries and discomfort and if you don’t idk 🤔sounds a lil sus 2 me, pedophile” will you guys stop larping as conservative politicians for one second please
think-of-the-children fearmongering is not the same thing as actually protecting minors
You’re talking about – much more insidious – problems while telling people if you don’t do what I tell you, you might be a threat to the safety of our community, like okay Dubya!
Also there’s a big fucking problem with kids oversharing information about this website to begin with, and pushing the mindset that if you don’t have your age- which is in fact a piece of personal information- readily available on your blog you’re a bad person is bad, no matter whether you’re an adult or not.
YOU DO NOT OWE STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF.
REPEAT: NO ONE OWES ANY STRANGER ANY PERSONAL INFO WHATSOEVER.
This goes for adults and minors both – and honestly, I don’t think minors should advertise the fact that they are. It’s not like that’s going to drive predators away–very much the opposite.
There is nothing “shady” about having personal boundaries and choosing to keep personal information private – and when in doubt, it’s always safest to err on the side of privacy. For everyone. What creeps me out is people demanding to know things that are none of their business. Age is the most innocuous probably but I’ve also seen people on here demanding to know complete strangers’ disabilities, traumas, survivor status, etc, just for the purpose of winning a fucking internet argument. THOSE are the truly skeevy people.
real writing tip sometimes you write your best stuff when you don’t even try or don’t even think about ever publishing it or doing anything with it you go: imma write this for me and next thing you know you’ve written 60K and you have an entire world and plot and you wonder why you didn’t indulge yeARS AGO
I have a very vivid memory of sitting in a first grade classroom (first grade was my first actual classroom because my mom homeschooled me for kindergarten) thinking “I am literally going to die, I can’t live one more minute without reading a story, but I’ve already gotten my book confiscated for peeking at it during class and I have no backup book and I’m going to die” and then thinking in a burst of divine inspiration “WHAT IF I TELL MYSELF A STORY INSIDE MY HEAD. THEY CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME. PHYSICALLY THEY CANNOT.”
It’s so strange how many young people on this website there are who would probably consider themselves to be progressive/liberal but who are constantly touting very conservative, reactionary, and reductive rhetoric, who balk when they’re called out on it and react violently when anyone disagrees with it.
There are so many young people who are pro-censorship to a frightening degree, happy to shame people for not meeting their impossible and subjective standards of morality, who seem to be almost incapable of thinking critically rather than in black and white, emotionally rather than factually based terms, who consider thought-crimes worse than actual actions that people take against others, and who—quite frankly—seem like they’d be absolutely thrilled to live in an Orwellian dystopia because they’re under the ironic belief that if everyone around them is corralled and controlled and forced to live lives based on what they think is pure and wholesome and good then the world will be a perfect place.
There’s such a lack of critical thinking, unwillingness to see nuance in any argument, and just a lack of the basic human understanding that people are different from one another and that one individual experience is not the end all/be all of all experiences on this site that it’s just honestly disturbing and, in many cases, basically cult-like.
And I get that this is a positivity blog and this post might not ‘fit’ here but positivity isn’t just “uwu you’re valid” text set against a pastel pink background, it’s also encouraging people to think and to act and to live in a way that is understanding of other people, to be an open-minded observer to the world and to think critically and be willing to listen and to learn, and there are many, many people on tumblr who not only do not want to do that but who happily embrace their ignorance, their hate, and their refusal to even consider that they could ever be wrong about anything even when the facts are shoved directly under their nose and…that is seriously not a good way to live as an individual and it’s an absolutely harmful impediment to any kind of community or society that people may try to build.
If you want to do something positive in your life and the lives of others and you take any piece of advice from this blog then take this: listen more and talk less, think before you react, try to understand other people and where they’re coming from even in cases where you feel like you’d rather bash your head against the wall than put yourself in their shoes, and try your absolute hardest to unlearn your black and white/all good or all evil thinking (or at least learn how to recognize it and think past it) because I promise you that it’s going to be complete poison to every single aspect of your life if you don’t.
And more than anything don’t be so utterly obsessed with yourself and your opinions and your own certainty that you’re right that you’re unable to ever listen to anyone else or even consider that you might be wrong. Everyone is wrong about something, is ignorant about someone, is an asshole at some time of the day, and you’ve absolutely fucked up the second you think you’re an exception to that.
Ardwynna's Place 