We’re not millennials, but most of us aren’t kids anymore.
We actually weren’t born with smartphones in hand – we spent our early childhood bit similarily to millennial. You are thinking about the kids born from 2006-ish that have been exposed to tablets, smartphones and Internet daily. (for example, I grew up rarely watching cartoons and my mother sometimes allowed me to play online for half an hour. That was it.)
So yes, we had the Internet and we love it now, but it wasn’t that essential in our lives up until the late years of primary school & middle-school.
We are savvy in tech & internet stuff and we adjust to new things immediately. It was a huge part of our teenage years and it is VERY important in our lives and we don’t think that the internet is a waste of time and danger because we understand it. We remember how to live without it.
We don’t see social media, technology and the Internet as socially crippling in general because we know that properly used, they are good. We don’t see spending time together with phones in our hand as any different as sitting in together with a newspaper, book or crossword. Meeting and spending time on the smartphone together(plus discussing over it) don’t have to be any less bonding than discussing a book or a movie in our opinion.
We know what a video cassette is. And CD. Same with flip-phones. Pendrives. Non-virtual DVD-rental. Desktop computers.
We used it, actually. Those items were part of our childhood.
We know that we’re ‘privileged’ in terms of medicine standard of life and technology, but we feel pressured.
We’re-entering adulthood in times when the whole world, whether in terms of politics, technology or work market, is changing as rapidly as it had never been changing before.
We feel like we had to change the world. We are expected to be responsible adults, focused on the future and aiming high while in high-school. We feel that we have to be better and better and normal teenage goofing around isn’t an option for us. We are being told that wanting to survive and wanting to have a simple, average life isn’t enough when sometimes, it is.
We feel that we have to change the whole wide world when in reality changing just our life and our close environment would be enough, but society didn’t really tell us that.
We are treated like adults and kids at the same time, not as teenagers we are (and yes, in my mind people in their early 20s should be allowed to be treated like teenagers).
We don’t hate older or younger generations.
Our coping system is usually sarcasm, cynicism, memes and Tumblr.
That doesn’t mean we all wanna die. That doesn’t mean we don’t have ideals. That doesn’t mean we’re pessimists.
We are realists. We know that hope is important but sometimes our dark humour is the only thing that keeps us going.
We are aware of our mental health and our mental illnesses and we want the older generations – actually, all generations, not to treat this matter as a taboo.
As the Silent Generation and Gen X, we suffer from a new version of Weltschmerz (source here).
(of course, those are general characteristics and they don’t apply to all of us or at least not all of them -in case that is not obvious for some people)
quick protip: if someone is crying or freaking out over something minor, eg wifi not connecting, can’t find their hat, people talking too loud, do NOT tell them how small or petty the problem is to make it better. they know. they would probably love to calm down. you are doing the furthest possible thing from helping. people don’t have to earn expressions of feelings.
I’m just gonna put it out there that if someone’s freaking about something small, they’re really freaking out about something big that they’re trying to deal with, or something long term that’s been building up, and that little thing is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I don’t know, try and give people the benefit of the doubt. Don’t be the next straw on their broken back.
Needed this today.
People don’t actually go from 0 to 60. If you think they did, you have failed to notice how long they’ve been at 59.
People don’t actually go from 0 to 60. If you think they did, you have failed to notice how long they’ve been at 59.
I get stressed out really often, and the only outlet that helps is crying. The only times I do end up crying tho is at the smallest things that set me off (confrontation, being rejected, I lose a pencil, etc)
And yeah, ofc, I know it’s a dumb thing to cry about but plz don’t point out or joke about how I’m overreacting and/or being a crybaby. That actually just kinda sets me off even more.
Relationships get so bananas when you start deciphering the other person’s love language.
Like I thought I was just acquaintances with this person because they never told me details about themselves and we just talked movies and writing . But then they made time to have coffee with me and they showed up out of breath because they ran. Like. RAN to be on time for coffee with me?
And I was like “i don’t mind waiting” cause I never want to run
But they said they wanted every minute they could get because I’m so busy usually
Which is when it clicked that I didn’t get how much they considered me a friend because I just straight away didn’t see MY signs of affection in them and went “cool! Casual buds it is.” But now that I’m seeing their signs of affection, I feel a little silly for dismissing them like that even though I felt like we could be best bros.
Anyway, some people show affection through time or intensity or commitment and not vocally. I really have to remember that!
Fyi- just in case you didn’t know.
TOUCH got a bro that likes to give high fives? Back slaps? Are they a hugger? Do they not blink an eye at cuddles?
QUALITY TIME this bro will (as op stated) sprint to spend every minute possible with you. Every second that you guys are together is a declaration of affection.
WORDS does your bro tell you how amazing and great and fantastic and wonderful you are all the time? Guess what…?
GIFTS do they buy you coffee? Snacks, energy drinks, spot you at the restaurant? Did that one key chain removed you of them? Ding ding!
ACTS are they always doing things for you? Ie: Nah bro, I got this, I can do that, need me to get anything for you, I can help with…?
PRO TIP – The way people show love is often how they receive love as well.
I reblogged this recently but it got better and ive been thinking and learning a lot abt love languages so
some things that horror movie culture has taught you are scary…. are just ableist
….clarify?
okay sure. psychosis? scarier to have than to know someone who has it. DID? im more a threat to myself than people around me. wheelchairs and psych meds? are tools that help people live more functional and flexible lives and are not judgments of the persons character and for sure are not scary things. and for real, intellectually disabled people are not threats, but movies love to make them villains because they act different and understand the world differently. and people with notable physical differences? people who’s bodies look different? people with scars, growths, amputations, etc? are literally just people. and seeing themselves painted like monsters on the big screen is absolutely sickening and damaging to how society will see them.
its not only bad writing but its extremely harmful to people who actually live with conditions that are misrepresented in media. when i found out i had DID, my mom freaked out because her only point of reference was Sybil. when i was younger and first went on psych meds, i thought it meant i was set on a track to be a bad person, because in so many movies and video games you find out the bad guy has medication in his bed side table for some sort of psych disorder. the worst thing a hallucination has ever made me do was wake my mom up at 3 AM to check my bathroom to see if the bugs i saw everywhere were real and the worst thing an “episode” of any sort has made me do is hurt myself. my ptsd doesnt make me kill people, my alters dont kidnap people, my autism doesnt make me so morally unaware that ill murder senselessly, my ocd doesnt make me hurt people etc etc etc
literally the only “horror” is the ableism. and the only way you can write good horror about disability and mental illness is if the focus is on how society and the medical field treat us rather than focusing on how we are apparently so scary, threatening, and bad.
How to hack any hospital computer (L337 version for advanced security systems)
-Use the password taped to the back of the monitor
As a computer guy: This is what happens when you have too much security. It reaches a tipping point and then suddenly you have none.
Security at the cost of convenience comes at the cost of security.
This is true of so many things in healthcare. Example: our software is designed to automatically alert the doctor if a patient’s vital signs are critically out of range. If someone has a blood pressure of 200/130, the doc gets a pop-up box that they have to acknowledge before doing anything else. It makes sense, in our setting.
But then some mega-genius upstairs realized something: the system was only alerting for critical vital signs, but not for all vital signs that could possibly be bad. Like, yeah, 200/130 is potentially life-threatening, but 130/90 is above ideal and can have negative effects on health. Should the doctors be allowed to just ignore something that could negatively affect a patient’s health? Heavens no!
So now the system generates a pop-up for any vital signs that are even slightly abnormal. A pressure of 120/80 (once considered textbook normal, now considered slightly high) will create the pop-up. We have increased our vigilance!
Well, no, what we’ve actually done is train doctors to click through a constant bombardment of pop-ups without looking. We’ve destroyed their vigilance and made it much easier for them to accidentally skim past life-threatening vital signs.
But you can’t tell that to management, because you’d have to confess that you are a flawed human with limited attention resources. They’d tell you “well, all the other doctors take every abnormal vital sign seriously, it sounds like you’re being negligent.” And if you’re smart, you back down before you start telling the big boss all about your habit of ignoring critical safety alerts.
The end result is exactly the same as if we had no alerts at all, except with more annoying clicking.
that I used the words “ego-syntonic” and “ego-dystonic” when talking to a psychiatrist was used as evidence by that psychiatrist that I was obviously faking, additionally, the fact that I have read and memorized various portions of the dsm was presented as evidence by a psychologist that I was obviously faking
this is an attitude I have commonly encountered amongst mh professionals, which is, If You Appear To Have Accessed The Forbidden Psychiatric Knowledge And You Are A Patient, That Is A Bad Sign
like I remember a psychiatrist who got mad at me for my explaining that if I was bipolar I had to be having a manic episode and not a hypomanic episode because my symptoms were, by the criteria in the dsm, definitively manic and not hypomanic
the same psychiatrist brushed it off when i explained that me stimming was not an ocd compulsion, because it did not meet any of the dsm criteria for being a compulsion, saying that “well, no one is ever a textbook case“
same psychiatrist again, said “excuse me, are you the doctor?” when i was genuinely trying to be helpful by suggesting a starting dosage for a med I had been on before
he was clearly very threatened by me knowing or indicating that I knew anything about Official Psychiatric Information, and this is, aside from being very frustrating, is completely fascinating to me
why is it a threat if I know psychiatric terminology? why is it a threat if I have read the dsm? why is a diagnosis only valid if the patient doesn’t have the faintest idea what it means and adamantly disagrees that they have it? (one example: I was dxed with bpd for the first time, had never heard the term and disagreed, saw a different psychiatrist who I told about the dx and the fact that I had googled it and now I was more receptive to the dx given that I had read more about it, and this psychiatrist told me I “shouldn’t self diagnose” and dxed me with bipolar instead. in this instance, me agreeing with the bpd dx instantly made it no longer applicable)
like there is very much a power thing in psychiatry where the ideal patient knows nothing about their diagnosis or medication beyond what they are told by a mh professional, agrees with whatever they are told, and then complies with no further question, complaint or disagreement
I literally just describe the symptoms as I experience them and pretend I don’t know what any of it means or any of the psychiatric jargon because playing dumb is the only way I can get doctors to believe I’m actually experiencing those symptoms.
non-autistic authors write autistic characters all the time. they just don’t realize it. they’d rather not admit it most of the time, either.
the thing is, non-autistic people have met autistic people more than enough times. however, due to their stereotypes about autism, they often can’t identify it as autism. they see something is up, but they can’t put their finger on just what is up.
so they see people like us and they know the ‘archetype’ which is autistic people. they write us all the time: airheaded professors, awkward nerds, pent up geniuses, etc.
when autistic people point out how strikingly obvious it is that this character is autistic, they usually deny it, or at best, they say the character is ‘if anything, extremely high functioning’, which is more of a kick in the gut than a confirmation. we hardly get those, either.
so, here’s the thing: there are some characters that are very obviously autistic to actual autistic people. pearl from steven universe and papyrus from undertale are two of the most agreed upon examples that i’ve seen. nearly ever autistic fan of steven universe i met says, “yeah, she’s autistic”, and the same goes for papyrus.
when we, as a community, bring this up, however, we are shot down. “oh, he’s not autistic.” i once was told that – ironic as it was – my headcanoning papyrus as autistic offended autistic people or hurt autistic people. but i’m autistic and they weren’t.
two autistic people were both agreeing – damn, this character is blatantly autistic – but non-autistic people felt the need to but in and say how horrible it was to “project” onto characters with such a horrible thing.
listen, if you aren’t autistic and you’re reading this –
if an autistic person says a character is autistic, can you just shut up about it?
because if you’ve watched any amount of tv, read any amount of books, whatever – if you’ve consumed stories, there are tons of autistic characters in them.
just because neither you nor the media’s creators knows shit about autism doesn’t mean that the character can’t be autistic.
either way, it’s none of your business.
we have little to none confirmed representation that isn’t terrible and inconsiderately offensively written.
find something better to do with your time.
NT Author: *Writes lovingly nuanced character who is quirky, shy, physically sensitive, socially awkward, clumsy, brilliant at a few special topics and has the capacity to grow and learn friendship and love in a nontraditional way*
NT Author: They can’t possibly be autistic!
NT Author: I’m gonna write an autistic character!
NT Author: “Doesn’t talk, rocks back and forth, loves trains”
Gonna say this as an author:
It is 100% okay to use the phrase “well, they are now.”
If a ton of people approach you with a character you didn’t realize you coded autistic, and they’re like “fuck yeah, autistic character!”
You can 100% say “I didn’t even realize that’s what I was doing, but you know what? Sure. With the number of people who see it, I’m not gonna say no. They’re autistic now.”
Nobody worth having around is going to be offended by that.
artherra 