ESPECIALLY with how compromised so much of mainstream media is right now, don’t fall into the trap of thinking influencers are any better. They aren’t accountable to much, they’re a business, and they will exploit the parasocial connection they foster in their audience to stunt critical thinking
so please for the love of god, stay curious. look into shit before repeating or deeply internalizing it. don’t let ChatGPT or influencers do your thinking for you and form your own opinions after reviewing the actual facts as free from editorializing as you can get.
And ppl like PACman feed off our hopes and desire to have our biases validated.
and if you can avoid it, don’t get complex ptsd from people and things that continue to pop up in news cycles over a decade after the fact because boy howdy it is hell on your adrenal system and tummy
it’s honestly really gross how even people who claim to understand gg’s wider effects often don’t really pay any attention to the complex and ongoing ways in which its victims were harmed or how existing bad faith actors laundered the movement and its lies bc it served their own ends
:( (I used to find hugging the animals helped. Particularly the carpet sharks and the half Husky. But to be fair my PTSD happened away from home which made it much easier to compartmentalize as having happened to a different person. Which is maybe not the best way to deal with it but meh.)
tbh to hell with optimizing one’s recovery, shits hard enough. Compartmentalization is legit with some stuff, especially when you’ve already processed it and nothing more can be done anymore, and one can def be too judgy about one’s own healing. I will be hugging the cat snakes now tho, ty
(I have kind of the opposite of the old jokes about "getting a good grade in therapy" as one of my personal weird hangups. It's a long story. Also I have now ADHD'd myself into listing how many different phrases I have used or heard for ferrets over the years.)