I had a stranger try to debate me in my Tumblr DMs one time. When I refused, they asked me how I could ever possibly refine my opinions if I wasn’t willing to debate. I said that I’m always reading other people’s opinions and using them to figure out if I need to change mine. I finished by saying that changing your opinion is like pissing and shitting: people do it all the time but they usually do it in private.

This is important because if you decide that you’re very concerned about everyone having regular bathroom habits, to the point where you’re not only tracking their bathroom use but following them inside to make sure they do the deed, you’ll get a lot of people telling you to fuck off and leave them alone. You may conclude from this that there is an epidemic of people willfully refusing to engage in necessary bodily functions, that we must get the word out and raise the alarm.

This is how I feel about a lot of Tumblr’s mental health culture, the endless tirades about the crisis of mentally ill people who don’t want to get better (where “get better” is defined as “let me make them better”)

And, less cynically, I’ve been thinking more about how, if you want to do good in the world, sometimes you just gotta put out good deeds into the world without getting too pushy about measuring your own impacts. Plant the seed, and then leave it underground. Don’t keep digging it up to see if it’s sprouting. It will grow. Or it won’t.

@aisling fwiw i at least have some knowledge the good deeds i've done have directly impacted people's lives in numerous positive ways.

there's been quite a few people who've reached out personally to me to thank me for the one blog post i made, and some others who've gone as far as to say their minds were changed because of it.

i can only imagine that those people make up just a percentage of people who've been touched by what i've done, and that at least keeps me going a bit in life. knowing that i've made a sizeable enough impact that people are genuinely more knowledgeable about... what i do. to the point where they won't try to hurt other people like me, because i informed them.

so... don't need to check on that sapling for me, i know it's a nice lil tree that's growing. does help that i literally have a community i made that, while a bit small n quiet, is still there.

I know that I’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people I’ll never see or know, because a lot of people have done good for me without ever seeing or knowing me, and I’ve followed their footsteps

@aisling ultimately my "good deeds" are a bit selfish, if only because i did a lot of this out of some anger and spite that people treat me like complete horseshit over fictional drawings

but still, i threw away the chance to make a separate identity that'd protect me, for the sake of speaking up about this stuff. by doing this, i'm giving a voice to people like me... and to some extent, that voice is working.

a lot of people are forever unchanging, and have targeted me and tried to get rid of me. but despite that stress, i still think it's worth it, at the very least, to give voice and some shelter to the other people who want alternate identities to participate in all of this.

at the very least i'm a well-known entity that people can defer to when they need to vent or want to talk about the complex emotions about this stuff, y'know? and i'm glad i've been there for numerous people when they had nobody else.

@aisling ...i guess to go back to what your post is about, a good deed can come from just being there for people, speaking up on issues and being loud and proud, even for "selfish" reasons.

that's enough for the lil tree to grow, guaranteed.

@aisling (sorry if this ramble was unwarranted, i'm tired and mildly depressed lol)

@EeveeEuphoria @aisling I’m thankful you convinced me to try to re-connecting to a (now-shared) friend again. While i didn’t need convincing at that point that what i did was incredibly wrong, i didn’t think they would forgive me

i would say it doesn’t matter if your “good deeds” are selfish, you are helping others with them as well

@EeveeEuphoria @aisling more broadly, a lot of activism is rooted in the folks directly affected by the subject matter. You could argue it’s “selfish” but you are more likely to have a vested interest in a topic that you are directly affected by, and unaffected folks supporting your raccause only happens later