When a customer says some Weird Shit in the middle of check-out,
Okay, so very recently, I was cashiering for Publix, and it was late at night, and I actually didn’t wanna be there, go figure. So this woman walks up, buying about 15-20 items, which is a pretty clean run for me, so I’m scanning her groceries, and we carry a small conversation.
During this conversation, she asks me if I’m in school, and I say yes. I tell her about how exams went, as they were near that period, and told her I had a Biology exam that was over genetics. And she looks me straight in the eyes, with seriousness of a heart attack being read in every wrinkle of her white soccer mom face, and says: “Oh, I’m a Christian, I don’t believe in genetics.”
Flabbergasted. My eyes do that spinny rainbow thing that Apple computers do when theyre buffering. A second goes by. I’ve gone through all stages of grief at this point, but haven’t reached acceptance. I have to say something, I have to say SOMETHING. If I just stare at her through this, she’ll know I think she’s fucking dumb and she might get angry, and I don’t need that. Two seconds have gone by. I have stopped scanning groceries at this point, and am just being violently shot back and forth between two sections of the galaxy. I can feel my body taking leave of my soul. Three seconds. I have to say something.
“Anyway, I did well on my accounting exam, so that’s something. Do you have any coupons?”
I had one lecture me on the Clintons’ hit squads that they use to kill their enemies.
So in order to save a little cash, my roommate and I decided to get the offbrand Krogers sodas instead of the name brand stuff.
One we decided to get was the Dr. Pepper knock off, The Fizzicist. Clever pun, guys. I approve.
Overall I like Dr. Pepper better, but The Fizzicist definitely tastes better than Mr. Pibb. So there’s that.
It also has a strange spicy aftertaste I kinda’ like.
Don’t know if I’ll get it again, but it’s at least interesting.
At some point I should try their Mountain Dew knock off, Citrus Peak.
…?????
You’re sure these were Kroger brand sodas?
Last I knew…. I haven’t really paid attention in awhile… but, they were called Dr. K and Citrus Drop.
I mean, I work at one, I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed ‘The Fizzicist’.
Krogers in Texas has two sets of Kroger brand sodas. One set is normal ones with corn syrup like Dr. K and what not, then they have a second set that advertises itself as using real sugar and that’s the set that has Fizzicist in it.
I can take a picture of the can or box if you want.
Heb also has a sugar cane variant of their soda. They even have seasonal ones. The best is in the fall, the Apple soda
If you want to live in a “Children of the Corn”-style bubble of innocence and purity, well, to me, that’s a startling approach to adolescence, but every generation’s got to find its own way to reject the one before, so: do as you will. But you can’t bring the bubble to the party, kids. Fandom, established media-style fandom, was by and for adults before some of your parents were born now. You don’t get to show up and demand that everyone suddenly change their ways because you’re a minor and you want to enjoy the benefits of adult creative activity without the bits that make you uncomfortable. If you think you’re old enough to be roaming the Internet unsupervised, then you also think you’re old enough to be working out your limits by experience, like everybody else, like I did when I was underage and lying about it online. If you’re not old enough to be roaming the Internet unsupervised and you’re doing it anyway, then that’s on your parents, not on fandom.
If you were only reading fic rated G on AO3, if you had the various safe modes on other media enabled, you would be encountering very little disturbing material, anyway (at least in the crude way people tend to define “disturbing” these days; some of the most frankly horrifying art I have ever engaged with would have been rated PG at most under present systems, but none of that kind of work ever seems to draw your protests). In the end, what you really want is to be able to seek out the edges of your little world, but be able to blame other people when you don’t like what you find. Sorry. Adolescence is when you get to stop expecting others to pad your world for you and start experiencing the actual consequences of the risks you take, including feeling appalled and revolted at what other people think and feel.
Now, ironically, fandom’s actually a fairly good place for such risk-taking, as, for the most part, you control whether you engage and you can choose the level of your engagement. You can leave a site, blacklist something, stop reading an author, walk away from your computer. Are there actual people (as opposed to works of art, which cannot engage with you unless you engage with them) who will take advantage of you in fandom? Of course there are. Unfortunately, such people are everywhere. They will be there however “innocent” and “wholesome” the environment appears to be, superficially. That’s evil for you. There are abusers in elementary school. There are abusers in scout troops. There are abusers in houses of worship. Shutting down adult creative activity because you happen to be in the vicinity isn’t going to change any of that. It may help you avoid some of those icky feelings that you get when you think about sex (and you live in a rape culture, those feelings are actually understandable, even if your coping techniques are terrible), but no one, except maybe your parents, has a moral imperative to help you avoid those.
In the end, you’re not my kid and you’re not my intended audience. I’m under no obligation to imagine only healthy, wholesome relationships between people for your benefit. Until you’re old enough to understand that the world is not exclusively made up of people whose responsibility it is to protect you from your own decisions, yes, you’re too young for established media fandom. Fandom shouldn’t be “friendly” to you.
So this whole minors-in-fandom seems to be the big hot button topic right now, and this post pretty much sums up everything I have to say about the issue. But after reading this post, I had an epiphany while cooking dinner. While I usually don’t jump into The Discourse myself, I needed to share my discovery. So a few years ago I read this excellent article “The Overprotected Kid” - if you haven’t read it, go do it. Now. Seriously. It’s ostensibly about “millennials” but it’s talking mostly about kids that were 5-15 at the time the article was written, i.e. kids who are 8-18ish now. So, basically, this entire white-knight age group of kid crusaders.
Basically, all of this boils down to a generational divide on how we were raised. Like, I could have told you that, but. Really. Basically every line in this article is solid gold, and completely explains the phenomenon we’re embroiled in right now. The article specifically talks about how playing in “dangerous” playgrounds helps children mature and learn how to safely take risks. Well, fandom has long been called a sandbox for a reason, and the parallels are so close it’s bizarre.
Like, navigating your way through fandom spaces that have explicit content or disturbing themes?
“The idea was that kids should face what to them seem like “really dangerous risks” and then conquer them alone. That, she said, is what builds self-confidence and courage.”
Or
“At the core of the safety obsession is a view of children that is the exact opposite of Lady Allen’s, “an idea that children are too fragile or unintelligent to assess the risk of any given situation,” argues Tim Gill, the author of No Fear, a critique of our risk-averse society. “Now our working assumption is that children cannot be trusted to find their way around tricky physical or social and emotional situations.”
Or
Even today, growing up is a process of managing fears and learning to arrive at sound decisions. By engaging in risky play, children are effectively subjecting themselves to a form of exposure therapy, in which they force themselves to do the thing they’re afraid of in order to overcome their fear. But if they never go through that process, the fear can turn into a phobia.
Basically, the problem is this: the 14 and 15 and 16 year-olds on this sight have been, largely, helicopter-parented for every moment of every day of their lives. Many of them have never had to take care of themselves, or navigate difficult emotional situations without parental guidance. When I was a kid, the internet was the wild west, and parents universally told us that everyone on the internet was a pedophile who wanted to kill you, so you had to keep yourself safe. Now, kids always expect there to be a parent there to take care of their emotional needs, and when they go onto online spaces, the just assume that the nearest adult will fill in that role for them, whether that adult is interested or not.
Now, kids are out here saying shit like “i dont know how you dont know that as an adult its your responsibility to maintain a safe environment for children, just as much as it is their parents. for ex not swearing around kids or letting teenagers drink alcohol like every adult knows that.. “
I am not your mother. It’s not my responsibility to ensure that there isn’t underaged drinking. If I walk past a couple of teenagers drinking beers on the street, do you know what I’m going to do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, because I don’t care and I’m not their mother, and I’m not your mother either. I’ll watch my mouth if I notice that there’s a kid near me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t swear in public, even if there could be kids around me that I haven’t noticed.
This expectation, that every adult is there to monitor you and watch out for you, and if they aren’t willing to do that then they’re a bad person?
“in all my years as a parent, I’ve mostly met children who take it for granted that they are always being watched.”
Or how about this chilling factoid?
“When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult. Not 10 minutes in 10 years.”
These are the kids on here shouting “I need an adult!” and then getting offended when no adult rushes in to take care. It’s baffling to me, honestly, but. I didn’t grow up this way. My parents taught me how to make good decisions, take care of myself, and navigate difficult situations, both in the “real” world AND online. I… don’t really know what to say to kids whose parents didn’t.
I’m not your mom. If I want kids, I’ll have my own. And I won’t raise them the way your parents raised you.
Minors: why are you personally attacking me personally?
Adults: ….????????…………
Minors: I know you want to fuck children
Me: *looks at fic with one character that’s in his 40′s and another that’s in his 50′s, with no children in sight*
Me: ………please get out of my house
(I still get a lot of responses to this post calling me a pedo and I am t i r e d of this bottom-of-the-barrel quality discourse)
* this obviously doesn’t apply to all minors, and to all those minors (like me, when I was your age!) that manage to enjoy and participate in fandom without calling everyone a pedophile, I appreciate you.
Adults: we want to write/draw porn of these fictional adult characters.
Minors: that’s not appropriate for children.
Adults: yep! that’s why it’s tagged as explicit and has a warning for mature content and also is tagged for various sex acts in case you’re not into that.
Minors: that type of content makes me uncomfortable.
Adults: we totally get that but that’s why the tags and warnings are on it.
Adults: look you even have to agree:
This work could have adult content. If you proceed you have agreed that you are willing to see such content.
Adults: so if you’re not into that type of thing then you can just skip over it.
