Nah, I wrote it while having breakfast. My best rants always come to me in the morning when everyone else I know is asleep so there are no distractions.

Our neurotypes synced up, evidently /j

I can never tell if the posts here are making fun of or agreeing with the screenshots they’re posting, I always have to wait for comments to roll in with context. :(

Didn’t we just finish telling off people on Blahaj zone for making ableist comments like this?

I think you misunderstood me.

This is a very rude response. I did recognize the other song, and asked a clarifying question. Not respecting people who communicate in different ways is kind of ableist.

I recognize and agree that it is a drop in the ocean, but that itself is indicative of how big the issue is and that we should be taking the problem seriously.

I understood the reference, but I don’t understand what you meant by it. This song would certainly be played on the radio in the kinds of small towns that the other song is talking about.

I don’t see why being sarcastic about it is warranted. I feel like being dismissive of the song’s reach is a bad thing: it means we are underestimating our adversaries.

I wouldn’t say “oh, only a few people are doing that” if Nazi flyers started appearing in my town, for example.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell.

I wouldn’t be so dismissive, it’s being played on the radio here.

I was about to take back my labour value from my company, but then some white guy told me the real problem is people milking welfare. /s

I put up one of those sticky hooks near a window just for this purpose! Never had a loofah get gross on me. I am using the gourd type, too.

Or, god forbid, use their Eminent Domain to take some private land along the sidewalk to improve life for poor people without impeding the ability of wheelchair users to navigate the city.

But that would anger the landowners, of course.

For the unfamiliar: “la sombrita” is the name of the corrugated metal piece on this bus stop post. It is designed to provide shade to people waiting for the bus, because the areas where these are installed have very little shade.

Due to a multitude of reasons from NIMBYs to building codes, it’s difficult for the city to install anything much bigger or better than this.

If you find this interesting, you can learn more by listening to episode 545 of the podcast 99% Invisible. It’s called “Shade Redux”

It’s a song that lures in discontented working class types with lyrics that court their hatred of their bosses and rich people who flaunt their wealth, but it also promotes right-wing talking points like “welfare queens.” It’s being talked about here because it has become very popular on social media recently. You do not have to listen to the song, it is not very good.

I feel like we need to make an effort to understand what people are trying to say and not shame them for communicating their ideas in a way that we don’t understand. To do the latter can be unintentionally ableist.

Am I reading something different than everyone else here? Because I completely understand what she’s trying to get at.

Leftists are dismissing the song because its early interest was astroturfed. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because it has actual interest among people now, because of the astroturfing. How do we combat this problem? Just because we dismiss the song as astroturfed right-wing propaganda doesn’t mean the listeners are. The right is changing minds with content like this, and it’s problematic for us.

“It can’t be viral because it was astroturfed” isn’t a helpful assessment, because the song absolutely is viral now. It even came up in my feed on a music community. I clicked it because it looked like it would be up my alley based on the title and thumbnail (I enjoy folk music that shits on capitalists) and I only realized it was that song once I got to the line about people “milking welfare.” The astroturfing may have raised the song up the hill, but at a certain point it had enough views and such to carry it based on momentum.

What I think the author is trying to say is that the right is succeeding here, and largely leftist media fails to make the same impact. Probably because we don’t have the same connections that allow astroturfing that the people who pushed this song do. But that does leave a meaningful question: how do we reverse this trend and get people interested in leftist topics through arts and culture? How do we promote the material we have already created?

Edit: Oh no, I just heard it on the radio.

Nobody is saying that.

Ughhh. This one really kills me, because usually it’s cis people saying this to trans people, telling them that they’re wrong. Like, would you do that to someone of a racial minority who told you something you said was a slur? Probably not.

I’ve even seen people say that their “transwoman friend” [sic] said it was okay. As if that makes it okay for everyone. It’s like they think they have some kind of weird “misgendering pass.”