Anti Intellectualism - Tumblr Posts
like it might just be me but i think calling anyone’s degree “useless” and “a waste of time” is fucking rude at best. absolutely unnecessary and it’s not just because i’m an english major that’s a fucked up thing to say about any field. there’s a reason all of them exist and the world needs professionals from the fields western society deems “useless” more than ever.
After months of staying silent on literary discourse here on Tumblr, I finally have something to contribute.
Fanfiction is not the problem. Fanfic is a free, communal and valid form of writing which, although not always high quality, has yielded some genuinely great stories. The real problem, the reason for ‘booktok books’ and the flaws in modern literature, is fanfic being hijacked by corporations. The minute people try to make money off of it, the minute fanfic and fanfic-style stories lose their meaning. Fanfiction is written on the notes app at 3am for you and 5 friends who share your taste. It is self-indulgent, chaotic, often told through a queer and/or neurodivergent lens, and free from any pressure to be commercially palatable. The minute a few stereotypical fanfiction tropes and ideas are stolen by commercial publishers and twisted into patriarchal, heteronormative versions of themselves with no character depth beyond the romance (a problem that for obvious reasons doesn’t apply to fanfic), that is where the real problem begins.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
saw someone refer to not knowing how to keep track of your money as "girl math" ......why are we in this weird era of treating women like idiots but repackaging it to sound cute and quirky. We All Need To Stop
People on this website will really mock anti-vaxxers and flat earthers for ignoring scientists and getting their alternative facts from facebook, and then turn around and insist they know more history than historians and more archaeology than archaeologists because they read an unsourced tumblr post once
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
— Isaac Asimov, 1980.
”Men think about the Roman Empire” “What’s the female version of the Roman Empire” SHUT UPPPPP. SHUT THE FUCK UPPPPPP. AS A WOMAN I LOVE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. AS A WOMAN I LOVE ANCIENT HISTORY AND BATTLES AND POLITICAL INSTABILITY. THE “GIRL VERSION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE” IS THE ROMAN EMPIRE. IM GOING TO STAB YOU 23 TIMES
youth have a right to be educated about the world regardless of what their parents/caretakers believe. youth have a right to learn accurate information about the world for themselves, including information that allows them to disagree with their parents/caretakers. we have got to destroy this mindset that everyone under 18 is essentially sentient playdough for parents to mold however they want and its violating "parent's rights" to allow their children to be educated on basic facts of the world (like that queer people exist or that america is founded on genocide) because it would mean they lose the slightest bit of control over their child's reality. imo schools have a moral responsibility to protect youth's right to knowledge and freedom of thought over their parent's "right" to control everything they know. your children should be allowed to fucking disagree with you, and restricting their access to knowledge in order to prevent that is abuse.
After months of staying silent on literary discourse here on Tumblr, I finally have something to contribute.
Fanfiction is not the problem. Fanfic is a free, communal and valid form of writing which, although not always high quality, has yielded some genuinely great stories. The real problem, the reason for ‘booktok books’ and the flaws in modern literature, is fanfic being hijacked by corporations. The minute people try to make money off of it, the minute fanfic and fanfic-style stories lose their meaning. Fanfiction is written on the notes app at 3am for you and 5 friends who share your taste. It is self-indulgent, chaotic, often told through a queer and/or neurodivergent lens, and free from any pressure to be commercially palatable. The minute a few stereotypical fanfiction tropes and ideas are stolen by commercial publishers and twisted into patriarchal, heteronormative versions of themselves with no character depth beyond the romance (a problem that for obvious reasons doesn’t apply to fanfic), that is where the real problem begins.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
Exactly 💯
When we say Islamic invaders, we never means current Islamic population living rn in India
Do you think Indian Muslims should not be part of the country?
This is their home, and they deserve to live here. Speaking about past invasions and current crimes doesn't mean I think Indian Muslims shouldn't be part of the country. Innocent people shouldn't have to suffer for their ancestor's crimes.
Interesting how my blog speaks about Hinduphobia, and you jump to conclusions like these.
has anti-intellectualism ever been as prevalent as it is now or is the internet just allowing us to see so much of it
a lot of ppl in the notes of the previous post are mentioning museums hoarding stolen cultural objects which is important beyond measure but museums shutting down due to lack of funding will not result in repatriation of cultural materials, they would most likely be auctioned off to private ultra-wealthy collectors to recoup some of their debt and we’d never find these objects again let alone be able to repatriate them. i understand the desire to say ‘fuck museums let them die’ for this reason but it won’t have the result you think it will, and it will also mean that all of their ethically sourced and donated materials (which for most museums are the vast majority of their collections) will no longer be cared for by experts but again, sold off to private collectors who can do whatever they want with them or deteriorate in storehouses indefinitely. this would be catastrophic for public history and collective knowledge-sharing across the globe across cultures, and museums in post-colonial and run by/for racialized or otherwise oppressed ethnic groups will fall first because they receive FAR less funding than the large western institutions. just repeating phrases and sentiments you’ve seen online as a form of performative activism without knowing anything about what you’re talking about does more harm than good and doesn’t make you look smart or clever just foolish it’s so deeply annoying and frustrating
It’s almost like when the majority of your sense of connection comes from television or media you fail to learn other ways to interact with media. Or when a significant portion of your self identity is the media you consume you never develop a way to judge media outside your self perception. Like, yeah, reading comprehension. But also, social comprehension.
I’d be extreme interested to see how this growing cancel culture/puritanical internet culture and the growing use of media as babysitter/human interaction substitute correlate over time.
people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”
PREACH!
Coquette blogs and Lana Del Rey stans taking over My Dark Vanessa as a "female manipulator dark academia" book is so sickening because that book is literally about a child groomed and abused by her teacher, it's about the Me Too movement and how white men have enough privilege to get away with doing heinous acts, it's giving Dolores Haze and victims of abuse a voice to speak for themselves, and white girls with 0 reading comprehension have co-opted it and used quotes from it out of context and used it for captions in moodboards and web weaving and just. What a way to reduce the essence of a book on a deeply disturbing subject. What a way.
I don’t agree with your politics but I 100% agree that censoring anyone just for having different political stances and beliefs is a transgression on liberty. It’s a part of our constitution that we are given free speech and it makes your own stance seem weak if you must suppress any opposition. It’s not a right wing behavior to suppress free speech it is the behavior of dictators.
I don't know how to explain this to a lot of you but acting like any and all criticism is dangerous and the same book burning or governmental censorship is not owning the right-wingers, it's acting like one.
Being unable to accept criticism is not "fighting purity culture" or "owning the pruiteens." It's right-wing behavior. You are all just acting like the dudebros who think feminists are going to take their games away because they heard some anti-feminism claim it so. Or those who cry about cancel culture while their favorite celebrities get even more attention after their crimes have been brought to light.
And even if you have a point buried somewhere in your crying, acting like some "puritanical" children have the power to oppress you just shows how much of a whiny edge lord you are.
Please join me
Twitter users are defending their right to assume Picasso was a renaissance artist. Tiktok users think watching any film made outside the US makes you a snob. “Replace classic lit with YA and fan fiction” discourse is flourishing. I think we’re just living in anti intellectual times.
You can tell this guy had a really shitty English teacher
AI people: we're just as much artists as you are, you gotta be so observant and go through so many correcting phases for the picture to look good uwu also AI people:
