Hey Fedi, I know there are a good lot of you want actionable ways to fight fascism. You know how one of the strategies that fascists use is to overwhelm people and make them freeze up, unable to fight back?  

I know many of you might not be used to this because it doesn't really exist on major social media platforms, but we have a thing here called a content warning (CW) that collapsed a post with little custom tags on it. Think of it as consent. Instead of forcibly pouring Scottish breakfast tea down a stranger's throat, you can ask them if they want it and warn them it's a smidge hot to chug  

This is especially appreciated by those of us that are marginalised because we have to deal with trauma, horrid news, and the like on a nearly daily basis as it is, and CWs allow us to decide whether we have enough energy and emotional capacity at that moment to deal with more of it which can literally save some of our days. (To use myself as an example, I'm mostly bedridden and spare emotional energy can decide whether I'm able to physically take care of myself that day or not.)

It's a small thing, and it may feel awkward or uncomfortable at first, but I promise once you get used to them, other social media sites will feel like needless barrages on your sanity and you'll feel oddly naked trying to make posts then realising they don't have that feature  

#Antifascim #SocialJustice #Fedi #Mastodon

p.s. if you need ideas for terms to put as part of the cw, I'm happy to help share some common ones I see~ 

Gonna add to this:

Shoving horror and gore at people degrades their resources. Assuming you're an antifascist, most people seeing your post will also be antifascist. Therefore, posts that deal with the horrors of current events that don't have CWs actively grind down the resources of antifascists as a whole while not doing much to fascist  (or worse, cull our numbers  )

boosts will continue until
1) people learn how to use CWs
or
2) the times stop being really interesting

(morale maaay improve  )

@OctaviaConAmore honestly, i hope the times will stop being interesting. i do not want to live in interesting times 
@OctaviaConAmore i don't get how times are interesting

they're between 00:00 and 23:59 every day

and you usually can predict it

doesn't sound very interesting to me ;3
@verita I'm pretty sure it has something to do with general relativity and time dilation?  

@verita @OctaviaConAmore

Off the top of Bri's head:

  • Unplanned political shenanigans messing with timezones (think there was Chile a couple years back?)
  • Planned political shenanigans messing with timezones (DST, my hated)
  • 30 hour days (for TV schedules or something)
  • Leap seconds (for that delightful 23:59:60)
  • Relativity (pretty sure that was a brief issue with early GPS satellites?)
  • Local time on other planets/moons (not really an issue yet? but also like pls no)
  • @forgetful_bri @verita oh, also time being denoted as 25:00 etc in Japanese transportation to denote post-midnight trains that come before the daily pause for maintenance 

    (I think you're right about relativity being needed to keep GPS satelites properly synced to Earth time)

    @OctaviaConAmore @forgetful_bri daily cat nap time ​
    @verita @forgetful_bri I thought super early morning was the cat zoomies time? 
    @OctaviaConAmore @forgetful_bri okay, train nap, cat take up the slack
    @verita @forgetful_bri wait it's that why the trains sleep and the cats zoom at that time of morning!? 
    @OctaviaConAmore @verita 
    magical…
    like, terrible pls no, but I do appreciate the meaning to it
    @forgetful_bri @verita it's the sacrifice necessary to have a 10/10 train system 
    @OctaviaConAmore @forgetful_bri @verita trains not running on time? merely change how time works

    @bri7 @forgetful_bri @verita
    What the world thought Japan's superweapon was: Gundams

    What Japan's superweapon actually was: manipulation of the fabric of spacetime (mostly just to make trains run on time  )

    @OctaviaConAmore idk if the times have ever not been interesting for a lot of people
    @elexia mmhm, it's just normally not this rapid nor intense  even just the psychological load is hard to deal with when it's this many awful things happening in the same location every single day 
    @OctaviaConAmore I think a big part of it is media. social media, news etc. back in the day people wouldn't know and would never hear a lot of the things that happened. news would trickle in slowly. now it's a deluge. all the news, all the time. before we can even react to one thing there's a bunch more things we hear about, it's overwhelming.
    @elexia in general, yes, but my country's currently going through a fascist takeover, so that's been taking up a lot of bandwidth recently what with groups of masked, armed thugs in the streets kidnapping and shooting people  Portland isn't as bad is Minniapolis right now, but it's a favourite target for Trump because it has a reputation for resisting his shit 

    @OctaviaConAmore That, and preferably more detailed CWs. There are very stressful terms I see in CWs, possibly depending on context, for which I need to see "fiction" or "non-current" unless the worst is happening now.

    It's not nice that e.g. some application developers see instead there being too many CWs as a problem.

    @lukyan oof, yeah, being able to get a sense of what's under the CW by reading the CW is kinda sorta reeeally important in how they ideally work, isn't it 
    @OctaviaConAmore It's also important to note that adding a content warning does not limit the visibility of your post because there is no algorithm to do such a thing. Adding content warnings actually extends the reach of your post, because people feel better about sharing it by boosting because it won't cause problems for followers who may not want to see it, & the extra words in the content warning make the post easier to find by searching too. You can also still add tags!

    @OctaviaConAmore This is especially so if you're just posting an image.

    We have term filters, sure, but that's not gonna block posts that have no text and only an image...

    And if you do escape my term filters and don't use a cw, then my only course of action left is to mute or block you.

    @OctaviaConAmore (💜 Marielle) Luckily, Sharkey takes this up a notch: https://enby.life/notes/acj42uohjh
    Hazelnoot (@hazelnoot)

    To clarify for those unfamiliar with Sharkey's UI: both of those posts lack any content warnings. They have been collapsed here only because of manual intervention by Enby.Life staff, and anyone outside of this instance would see the full, graphic text without any redaction. RE: Some examples of how a person with highly progressive leftist views can still fail to understand the concepts of sensitivity and triggers: (📎2)

    enby.life
    @Chishiki611 that's definitely one of the features of Sharkey that has tempted me in the past 

    @OctaviaConAmore ngl I've generally been someone who has well kinda been against CWs like people telling me to use them. I do use them but I really hate being told what to do.

    Phrasing things like this changed my mind. That's not always easy to do. Thanks

    @spycrab of course~  hearing that makes having written this post worth it 
    @OctaviaConAmore What i want is a way to add CWs to a boosted post?
    @OliviaVespera it would be nice to be able to just add it during the boosting process, right?  for now, all we can do is sub-post by pasting the post link into a post and CWing it (I usually also specifify "cw-boost" in the CW as well  )
    @OliviaVespera @OctaviaConAmore You can quote the post without CW and add your own CW to your post, that way people can see the original post under your CW.