OP is behaving cruelly. No one should brag about treating another person like this. The third reblogger is spot on that conversations aren’t battlefields – you don’t “win” by shaming or rebuking your interlocutor into silence.
That said, I’m really not fond of statements like “kindness is free”, or “it costs zero dollars to be nice”, or any other permutation. Kindness isn’t free. No person has a limitless capacity for patience and understanding. To ignore that is to ignore the huge amount of work – yes, work – that humans put into cultivating compassion for others. And it not-so-implicitly shames people for whom that work isn’t easy.
Listening to someone infodump is not effortless. As an avid infodumper myself, I am always mindful that people willing to listen to me ramble are doing me a kindness. Hanging onto a topic that doesn’t interest you in the slightest, especially when the infodumper is speaking quickly or making leaps that don’t make sense to you, takes effort. That doesn’t make it ~emotional labor~, and it doesn’t mean you’re entitled to rudeness or to bragging about making someone “visibly uncomfortable”, but it’s not free. It’s a competing access need.
Responding with eye rolls or stony silence when I ramble about historical clothing is disrespectful, but so is expecting limitless attention. “Just listen! It’s not hard!” elides that. And it ignores the fact that the neurodivergences that make people prone to infodumping are often the same ones that make it hard to listen intently.
I don’t want to have to look up the “eat da poopoo” video and a bunch of articles about burning gays alive and child abuse and molestation to link to, so just imagine that the following sentence has a link to a different atrocity for each word.
Because Black Christianity is nothing but precious cinnamon rolls and has never done anything bad.
Unless you have context I don’t, I didn’t read OP as saying that only white Christianity could ever be flawed or abusive, merely that people who are familiar with only one religious paradigm (often white Christianity) will often claim that that is how “religion” in general works. All religions can be flawed and/or abusive, but in different ways depending on the internal dynamics.
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how to compliment someone without seeming like a fucking creep. an easy how to guide:
a) compliment them on something that they can change. don’t say ‘nice tits janice’, say something like ‘your shoes are rad’ or ‘your hair looks great’.
b) don’t be a fucking creep. if it’d weird you out if it was said to you, then it’s likely too creepy to say to someone else.
EASY.
also this pic is super strawmanny and gross. it is not hard to not be a creep.
My most favorite compliment I’ve ever gotten I got from a man who was a complete stranger who drove up next to me while I was walking home at 9pm in the night:
I guess he saw me speed walk, overtake, then completely outpace some really tall business man in front of me (who had also increased his speed to overtake me back but failed).
Anyway this complete stranger doing the exact stereotype of what a man shouldn’t ever do drove up next to me, rolled down the window and said:
“That is the fastest damn walking I’ve ever seen. Ma’am, you…have the soul…of a bicycle.”
Then rolled up his window and drove away.
He didn’t creepily drive behind me, he drove regular speed and came to a rolling stop. He didn’t roll down his window all the way or stick his head out, he said his piece quickly and with a great amount of awe and respect, then he didn’t act like he needed a response from me or expect anything from the compliment. And then he left as quickly as he came. The compliment was so good and politely delivered that I’ve thought about it with amusement for over a year.
It is NOT HARD to not be threatening to women. Those who can’t manage it are sus as hell.
So when I was a kid, probably 12 or 13, I checked out a compilation of post-apocalyptic science fiction stories from the public library. It looked like every other book on the shelf. It was fic from a dozen different authors, and the blurb on the inside cover was pretty vague.
Of the stories in that book, 2 were R-rated. One had surprise rape. One had surprise inter-generational incest. For the shock value. To make the reader ~think. Dude authors. Do I wish I hadn’t read it? Yah. Kinda. It lives in the back of my head with the other gross detritus of the world, all the horrible upsetting shit I’ve read. I read a Star Trek licensed novel with animal torture in it, to illustrate the horror of sociopathy, and I wish I hadn’t read that too.
During the summers of middle school and high school I read voraciously and while I managed to steer clear of MUCH upsetting content I sure as hell stumbled on some doozies.
If my library had been Ao3 I would have gotten a pop up asking me — hey, kid, there’s gross shit in that book, are you old enough to check it out?
And if I was a dumb kid I still might have said ‘yes’, but I would have had a heads up.
Quick personal statistics!
Surprise incest I’ve read in paperbacks I bought in a store or checked out from the library: I’m going to say…. half a dozen instances? Dozen? Surprise rape, at least double that. What is it about the fantasy genre that brings out the creepy writers, and why do they consider sexual assault ‘gritty realism,’ could they fucking stop.
Surprise incest I’ve read on Ao3: none. It has warnings and I avoid it like the plague.
Surprise rape I’ve read on Ao3: none. It has warnings and I avoid it like the plague.
Ao3 is one of the safest goddamn places on the web to read fiction because it has a standardized, mandatory labeling system. Is there appalling content on it? Oh god yes. Does it do a better job of warning you about that content than any library or bookstore? Oh my god yes by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.
I vote funding for my local library every time it’s on the ballot, even though there’s gross shit on the shelves, because I think it’s a resource that’s important to have.
I donate to Ao3 even though there’s content I find fucking appalling archived there, because I think it’s a resource that’s important to have.
Because I know that defunding libraries won’t stop gross dudes from writing gross shit and calling it ‘thought provoking literature’, and I know shutting down Ao3 won’t make creepy fic vanish from the internet. It’ll just take the warning labels off it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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