fire stones !

i am WIGGLING MY PAWS in the air

Everyone you gotta see this!

*uproarious applause*

**As a disclaimer my brother is a cis straight dude who only dates the most basic white girls you can find. He's very emotionally aware but doesn't linger on his emotions, just processes them and moves on (this is wild to me)**

He calls me on my break just to say hi, that he’s driving back to Denver from visiting his girlfriend, to which I respond “didn’t you break up with your girlfriend (of like a month) last month” and to which he says “yeah I have a new girlfriend, we’ve been together four weeks but I went up to spend the weekend and meet her friends” and I’m like ok great this is already ridiculous

So we’re chatting and I’m teasing him about how he doesn’t sleep with people on first dates and he says that he’s changed his policy, it’s just that he won’t have sex with them if he’d rather be doing something else, so I joke that I’ve had that where I’d rather be watching the show Chernobyl (true) and he says “yeah or watching a movie with my housemate” and I say hey bud that’s kind of gay and he says yeah I actually had a weird gay moment last night

And I go oh???? And he goes yeah, I was at the bar with the girlfriend and some of her friends and one of them was a guy and we were hitting it off, doing a little flirting as you do with your bros at the bar~

And then my cis straight brother goes on to explain that sometimes when you’re out with the homies and you’re having a good time and the vibes are right you just give em a little kiss, like just a kiss on the mouth between bros, “no tongue or anything like that but just to express that you’re close and having a good time”

I’m like “My dude that’s not a thing” and he’s like “between confident straight men it is” and I’m like “NO IT’S NOT"

So there we’ve got my brother having casual queerplatonic relationships with his homies at the bar, and he’s telling me this and I’m obviously speechless, so he goes on and he’s like “so because this guy and I were hitting it off I go in for a little kiss and he fucking swerves me” and I’m like yes my guy but because my brother is actually very good with respecting boundaries he was like “ok man great communication, won’t do it again"

BUT

Apparently my brother and the dude and my brother's GIRLFRIEND who has been there the WHOLE TIME go outside (I assume to have a cigarette but he didn’t tell me that part) and the guy turns to my brother and is like “man I should have kissed you when you offered it” and my brother is like “cool good shit man” like in the most bro way possible and then the guy grabs his face between his hands and just PLANTS a big one on his mouth

And THEN the guy panics and shoves him down on the ground!! And my brother has the normal reaction to being shoved on the ground unexpectedly which is to say “what the FUCK” and the girlfriend says “what the FUCK” and the guy goes “what the FUCK” and leaves

And my brother ended the story there and was musing on it like "this guy obviously has some complexes to work through about his sexuality, no confident straight man kisses another confident straight man and then panics and runs away”

Which took me out at the KNEES lol

And that, dear readers, is the batshit story my brother told me!

OH MY GOD AND

AND

I told my coworker this and they were like I’m actually shipping him and his roommate and I was like HUH because I hadn't considered that and then later my brother sent me a photo of his housemate wearing sexy handcuffs

nice

#WILD#this is so validating for fic writers everywhere#your blorbo Can In Fact Be that oblivious

love the prev tags

okay okay, but this is actually a really interesting example of why there is a disconnect between people who idolize the aesthetics of a specific period of time and the people who lived through that period of time.

the teens who are too young to have experienced the 2000s, but love 2000s fashion, music, aesthetics, etc. are operating based on a kind of survivorship bias. the 2000s they are experiencing is a curated version based on all of the aspects of the decade that were interesting or notable enough to survive the erosion of time, the things we’re nostalgic for, the music that made it onto “Greatest Hits of the 2000s” playlists on spotify, the fashion celebrities and internet personalities of the time wore. and that’s not intentional on their part! that’s something that happens all the time.

the disconnect comes from people in my age group because we DIDN’T live this more curated version of the decade. we remember all of the shitty media that weren’t preserved in the nostalgia cycle. we lived the historical and cultural context that all of these things existed in, and that also factors into our view of the decade. anyone who was actually a teenager in 2000s america likely associates the decade just as much with rampant homophobia, 9/11, the Iraq War, economic recession, the fitnessgram pacer test, and the terf wizard books/movies as with scene fashion, emo music, invader zim, mall goths, and flip phones. so there’s this kind of gap between the 2000s we experienced and the 2000s those younger than us are idolizing.

and this isn’t just a thing with the 2000s. this has happened with basically every generation and every decade. op brings up teens in the 2000s idolizing the 1990s, and yeah, that was pretty common.

i actually was kind of a weirdo and, as a teen in the 2000s, found myself idolizing the 1960s, but in much the same way that anyone would idolize any other decade. most commonly, i see a trend towards idolizing the prominent counterculture(s) of a decade instead of the culture as a whole. my experience in loving the 60s was really just loving the hippie counterculture of the 60s and had nothing to do with the mainstream culture of the time. similarly, the thing these teens seem to be latching onto is the countercultures of the 2000s. the scene, emo, and goth movements that were all somewhat distinct and yet connected in a disillusionment from the system and a drive for self-expression. something about these countercultures speaks to them the way the hippie counterculture spoke to me, and i find that very fascinating. just like i didn’t so much really want to be a teen in the 1960s so much as i wanted to be a “cool hippie protesting injustice wearing far-out clothes, man”, these kids are longing for something they see in 2000s counterculture, not the reality of being a teen in the 2000s.

and, you know what, that’s pretty cool. there are some problematic aspects of it that i can see, but they’re also just kids trying to find themselves just like i was, and getting obsessed with past countercultures is a very common way to do that.

and u know what, i missed out on the counterculture of my youth because i was scared and closeted, so i’m rather interested in revitalizing it, too!

i hope these kids have fun being XD so random ^_^

i am WIGGLING MY PAWS in the air

I reblogged this like 9 times kinda jokingly, but software should be able to run on older and less powerful hardware, and consume less power on newer hardware. Like, this is a real problem imo

On it, boss!

Bad news, boss!