So, I made the mistake of picking a performing arts degree, so I spend most of my days pondering how pointless of a degree it is. I did manage to pick a module about performance protest, and while some of it gets a bit bullshitty, there’s been other parts like looking at native American performance/protest at the Dakota pipeline and stuff, which have been interesting and useful.

Yesterday there was some group work. It was a bit of a brainstorming exercise but as a group we settled on the idea of spamming the illegal immigrant report line/letterbox with shit so that new reports wont go through. Ok, it’s nothing amazing, but it served the purpose of the exercise we were given.

Then this girl speaks up. Previously her contribution to class has been telling everyone about how she culturally enriched herself by going on holiday in places where poor people exist.

On our idea, she says that it might be illegal to do, so we should create a fake website and have people fill that in as a symbolic message.

A FAKE WEBSITE FILLED IN AS A SYMBOLIC MESSAGE

At that moment I realised why the arts seem so useless at changing things. It’s jam packed with trust fund kiddies.

that is complete insanity. what could possibly drive someone to have that thought at my young age? To remove all potency from the tiniest little act. Seriously ghoulish.

One time my mother yelled at a homeless man for having a phone

One time my burger joint owning cousin fired two high schoolers for speaking Spanish to one another

One time a college classmate gave a presentation about why gay people should be segregated into an internal country within a country because this would somehow sell more consumer goods

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gay people should be segregated into an internal country within a country because this would somehow sell more consumer goods

:jesse-wtf:

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His reasoning hinged upon some very shaky math and a claim that gay men “buy both female and male products.” It was some kind of bonkers idea you could test out how well certain clothes, foods, and cosmetics sell because in his words “gay people do both.” So he was coming at it both from an angle that gay people are abominations who should be removed from public, and that gay people are good test subjects for whatever pointless consumer products capitalism makes.

The professor didn’t stop the presentation and the other students mostly nodded along

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So concentration camps as focus groups to test out new products?

I mean it would get them a job at the :pete: consultancy company, but wow.

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*

I got suspended once for an art project in high school that involved portraying nazis as literal demons that were burning in hellfire. After my art teacher (who gave me the assignment to portray the most evil I could think of) defended me, I could return on the condition I would change my artwork to remove references to nazis. Meanwhile, I had literal white power necklace wearing skinheads in my class. I remember that one of the main demons had a swastika on its forehead, and I changed it to a dollar sign after. (okay remember I was a 14-year-old edge lord at the time that wasn’t very subtle). A week later, the art piece got ‘lost’ and I got a passing grade.

Looking back, it was a pretty successful art piece. It made me aware of how people like to put evil things under the rug/ignore it for comfort rather than to expose it and fight it.

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One time in high school I wrote an essay about how it would be cool to track down and burn every confederate flag in the country. I requested this essay be read aloud in the class, but was told it was too extreme. The teacher had a whole litany of notes in red ink on my essay, criticizing my hatred of the confederacy and southern reactionaries. At one point he even wrote “Think about the heritage the flag represents, not the hatred you say it represents”

My essay was returned to me, I was told to pick a different topic, and I had to go to the school counselor for three days for “violent thoughts.” A few days later someone carved a homophobic slur into my locker.

Yes I grew up in the south

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“Think about the heritage the flag represents, not the hatred you say it represents”

ah I see, YOU are the problem here, not the people who fought a war to own slaves. Lovely stuff.

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It’s like the cliche “I’m sorry you feel that way.” line.

So you owe the fash the energy to “see their point of view” yet you’re not given the same courtesy? Typical hogs.

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“Think about the heritage the flag represents, not the hatred you say it represents”

That heritage being a slaving nation run by and for slave-owning slave-raping slavers? Or did they mean grits and banjo music?

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i heard a farmer bragging about paying an undocumented immigrant below min wage and acted like he was doing them a favor

this was at church

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:jesus-cleanse:

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I got points taken off on an essay I had to write about an article that was boilerplate TERF shit about trans women going to public women’s bathrooms for being “biased.” So I basically got a lower grade for vehemently disagreeing with the article.

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“I’m a Trotskyist myself, Lenin was too violent”

Like she’s a nice old lady and seems to actually have decent politics for a boomer but holy shit.

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:data-laughing:

I guess she doesn’t know who lead the Red Army during the civil war

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That was what blew me away I didn’t even know how to respond to that lol. Like not only that, but what do you think he meant by permanent revolution lmao?

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Trotsky also was the one who came up with the KGB

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