SQQ’s master plan:
Even I don't 100% know what they're doing
The sheer statistical difference in the use of beta polls versus tumblr live is killing me. Look at this
8 people go live. Clearly all bots or at least not your standard tumblr users. 315 total participants between the 8 livestreams including one with nobody tuned in at all.
One poll. Snail race. Five options, all the same emoji. 41,482 notes. 125,259 votes and counting.
This is the platform I want to be on.
Tumblr live???????????????????????????????????????
Has to be one of the best passages of a book I’ve read in a long time
it’s not an understatement to say I think about this all the time
yesterday i was hiking with my dog and passed by a family with their 14 yo princess of darkness trotting behind them in very unsuitable clothes and uncomfortable shoes that clearly weren't meant to get dirty on forest mud. oh the quintessential teenage experience of doing something in a way that is stupid and sucks because it's important that it's your own way 🫡
The experience of being a teenager, especially, is relentlessly being forced to do things by authority figures who have arbitrary power over you. As a result "Okay, I'll do it, but I'll do it in the least compliant way possible" is a persistent and entirely sympathetic element of being a teenager
Okay as someone who professionally works with kids, I'll weigh on on this and say: the thing about defiance and "brattiness" is they are defense mechanisms for having no power in your life.
Kids and teens do not have power in their life. Even in the most ideal of circumstances. They can't really make informed choices about voting or houses and especially in America, the entire social structure is hostile to letting them go where they want to go.
So OP is absolutely right and put it beautifully. "it's important that it's your own way." I've seen preverbal babies force their shoes off their feet in response to a completely unrelated obligation because I can force them to take a nap but I can't make them take a nap AND nicely keep their shoes on. It is arguably a pretty stupid defiance, but defiance isn't about being smart.
It's the scream of a person without power insisting if they have no choice but to do this, they will do it their way! And that's more important than practicality. It's more important than being reasonable.
I firmly believe that deep down adults aren't less bratty or defiant than kids are- they're just given more leeway and power so they're more used to having control and use that to cope. The average 30-year-old would absolutely have a meltdown in the pasta aisle if they were regularly dragged to places they didn't want to be by another adult who they were never allowed to be away from or choose where they were going besides very limited exceptions.
(also disclaimer that in using the term "bratty" I am by no means condemning this behavior. It's born of a frustration that is completely understandable.)
RE: that last bit, for many years I worked a job that required me to wear black socks, but allowed nail polish. I learned to do my nails with toothpicks (this was before nail art was a huge trend like it is now) and came to work with nails painted as different fruits, bright neon, once as an entire PacMan board...you get the idea.
Then I worked at a place that required black socks and no nail polish and tried to regulate our undershirts but couldn't actually do so without having to risk being weird about people's underwear. I got so many kinds of weird tank tops. Bright colors, unusual trim. (I was supposed to wear black or navy only.)
Now I work at a place that requires no nail polish for very legitimate food safety reasons, which is fine. But the rest of the safety gear is absolutely insane....
....and so I have a collection of socks that look like fruit, cats, anime characters.....
We absolutely are still this petty as adults. We just find ways to make it more socially acceptable because we can.
poorly-drawn-mdzs