The year is 2018. Your bills are on autopay. You just got paid and you still have $1200 from the last check. When you want something, you buy it without moving money around. Your credit cards are paid off. You and your friends have 2 international trips planned and paid for this year. Your parents are in great health and you’re able to help if they need anything. You love your job. Your desired creative career is falling into place and you get to take your little cousins to Six Flags and Universal Studios over the Summer. Your relationships are healthy and supportive. All of the toxic energy from the past 6 years is gone. You going to concerts, eating good across the states and your crib has art and warmth throughout. 2018 is going to be so good to you.
hey everybody please take my incredibly cool fandom survey so i can succeed in grad school!!!
yes, that’s right, you heard it here first–i spent my first semester of graduate school studying harry potter and internet fandoms, and YOU CAN TOO
i’m doing some research on information communities and participatory culture as they relate to FANDOM and if that’s not the coolest self-directed academic study shit i don’t know what is.
i’m trying to get a variety of opinions from a variety of places, so i’d really appreciate if you could take the 5 - 7 minutes to take my anonymous survey, and pass it on to your friends! all kinds of fans and fandoms welcome!!!!! <3
Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
i hate when ppl say shit like BUT ANTIDEPRESSANTS ALTER YOUR BRAIN FUNCTION UNNATURALLY READ UP ON IT NURGGHH like yeah, youre right, they force it to produce serotonin so i can function, similar to how i take thyroxine bc my thyroid doesnt fucking make the right shit, similar to how people with diabetes take insulin, similar to how people with low iron take iron supplements, you thin slice of nutloaf
do you yell at people for eating food bc their body doesnt just naturally photosynthesize energy on its own
Imagine My Immortal but written in the style of Shakespeare.
SCENE 1. A MAGIC SCHOOL CALLED HOGWARTS IN ENGLAND
Enter ENOBY
ENOBY
For truth, that which the gods have christened me Has many parts, like these locks, flow’n from my crown. That hellish sound, which forms mine name, sprung from The dusky shades of these roots, so like the stone But broken, rent, mottled; for, like the flames That hie from Hades, the dusk is split with peals Of cold violet, the shade of icy fangs Met with military scarlet; coils not But hangs; not ragged, but lustrous, set off Like a precious jewel made more pure by the Barren winds of silent winter deserts, So are not these jewels of mine own self-crown Brought forth in splendour so close to these eyes Frozen, as glaciers, forged by an artist Who, bereft of artisan tools, gives himself And sculpts his godly business with that Which the muses draw blindly from his vision. Thus sorrow, reflected twice in these mirrors, Casting mine eyes as icy limpid tears.
Imagine Shakespeare but written in the style of My Immortal
Hi my name is Hamlet and I have long blond hair that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like the sun god Apollo (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to him but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. My mother married my uncle after my father died. I have pale white skin. I’m also a student, and I went to a school called Wittenberg in Germany but I just graduated. I’m a prince (in case you couldn’t tell) but I wear mostly black bc I’m in mourning. I For example today I was wearing a black doublet with matching lace around it and a black tights, white undershirt and black boots. I was with my mother and Horatio. We were standing inside Elsinore. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. My uncle Claudius stared at me. I put up my middle finger at him.
