Hi! We're introducing Important Blue Internet Checkmarks here on Tumblr. They're a steal at $7.99—that's cheaper than some other places, when you consider that you get not one but TWO checkmarks for your blog on web only (for now). Why, you ask? Why not? Nothing matters! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Get yours here!

Okay, your blog looks great, but what's the point of being important online if you can’t prove it with an actual, physical unverified verification symbol?

We felt morally obligated to help you. That's why we made these Important Blue Internet Checkmark Stickers for $3 and Important Blue Internet Checkmark enamel pins for $6. Investing in this is investing in your future. It's the most financially sound investment you can make this fiscal quarter. Also, as a reminder: Nothing matters! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love their friendship bahaha

rainy day!

my body’s check engine light is on

my body’s check engine light is on

Here is our rough outline for the 17th, but it is subject to change. If you choose to let it rip, we ask that you please abide by the World Beyblade’s Organization COVID-19 safety rules. This is not a tournament, but we still take safety seriously! We may even refuse to speak to you if you aren’t wearing a mask. Our main agent will be in possession of Hell Kerbecs Giga Wave .

We also ask that you do not as any Chocolate World employees about our agent. They aren’t aware of the underground workings of Chocolate World, and she may run the risk of getting kicked out, or worse! We also want to reiterate that this is Hershey Chocolate World only, we don’t have that kind of money to afford to go to Hershey Park. 

Our main event will be at 6 pm when Forrest and I will put on a little show! This will be our main event, and while we can’t give away much details yet, we will be an even better show than @freddybenson’s iCarly! Forrest will be giving us a spectacular show, this is something I will make sure of. 

More details will be given in the coming days.

Do not agree to being captured i am throwing rocks preemptively

Who said you get a choice, Forrest?

so there have been quite a few people on here posting screenshots of old tumblr posts, and most of the time, it's because they can't find the original or don't know how. so I'm gonna let you in on a secret: all you need to use is an internet search engine. you just need to type in the op's url and one line from the post that's specific enough that other weird stuff won't pop up. add "tumblr" to the end so it doesn't pull up other websites with the screenshot and voila.

if the post has several reblogs and you want to make sure those are included, type in the op's url as well as the url of the last reblog in the screenshot and their comment, and it should pull it up. if you're on a mobile browser, click "notes" and it will open the post in the app. if you click "reblog," it'll open the app, but it won't open the post. you may have to reblog it from another source if all of them are deactivated, but it really is easy and it only takes like 20 seconds.

but why does it matter? it makes blogging more accessible for people who use screen-readers without the hassle of typing image descriptions, and for people with dyslexia or poor eyesight who have to adjust their viewing settings. you can't adjust a screenshot, but you can adjust apps' letter size and color theme. so, idk, I think that makes the extra 20 seconds worth it.

Today is the one day in the year when more allistic people are thinking about autism and maybe looking up information about it. And the voices you choose to elevate aren’t even autistic voices?

This crap infuriates me.

It’s Autism Awareness Day. Not Parents of Autistic Kids Day. This is like sharing an article for Black History Month that says, “What white friends of black people wish you knew.” Or for International Women’s Day, “What men with wives wish you knew.”

And here’s the thing: I read the article. I actually agree with a lot of it; a lot of these parents sound like good people. But this is the article chosen to be promoted on Facebook? When they literally have another article on “10 Things People with Autism Wish You Knew”? This is the article that got shared on social media? That is an active choice to ignore autistic voices in favor of broadcasting allistic voices.

I get that raising autistic kids can be hard in ways it’s not for allistic parents of allistic kids, and I’m not saying they should never talk about it ever. But that’s not what today is about. Today is not about the difficulties of parenting, autistic kids or otherwise. It’s not a day for parents’ voices.

What this tells me is that, in the eyes of the public, there are no autistic adults. Not really. Maybe we physically are adult age, but we are perpetual children. Imagine if society talked about other groups in this way—only ever talking about the children of the group, or the people who interact with them, never the adults. I mean, really imagine. What if society’s way to raise “awareness” of race issues was to post articles saying things like “what the white teachers of black students want you to know”?

And what this means is that we can’t speak for ourselves. It’s assumed that autistic people are all mentally children, so the only people who can speak for us are the allistic adults around us. It effectively means that autistic voices are silenced.

Everywhere on the internet, outside this little bubble and a few other isolated communities, today is BLUE BLUE BLUE and PUZZLE PIECES and WHAT PARENTS OF KIDS WITH AUTISM WANT YOU TO KNOW and AUTISM SPEAKS except even though autism does speak, allism won’t listen.

I feel like the Whos on their tiny speck in Horton Hears a Who. I am standing on top of my house with a megaphone screaming with my entire city of autistic people and allistics literally cannot hear us. We are drowned out by a tidal wave of blue puzzle pieces.

love when someone says something like "wow you're really awkward" or "wow you suck at reading the room" and i go "yeah, of course. i have autism." and they just go pale and get really uncomfortable. ha who's the awkward one NOW

Autism and empathy

Low empathy is an autism trait that is often misunderstood by neurotypicals, so I'm going to talk about it here.

It's common for autistics to have hypo empathy or hyper empathy. Hypo empathy is having lower empathy levels than the average person, and hyper empathy is the opposite. I myself fluctuate between both.

Someone having low empathy or no empathy at all can sound scary, but it's not what people think. To help explain it, I'm going to explain the difference between empathy, sympathy, and compassion.

Empathy is sharing the emotions of another person. Like if your friend feels sad, you do too. You mirror their emotions.

Sympathy means understanding what another person is feeling. You may or may not share their emotions, but you get why they feel that way.

Compassion is caring about the other person. You want to help them. You want them to feel better whether or not you feel empathy/sympathy.

So if my friend is feeling sad and I'm hypo empathetic at that time, I will not feel sad with them. I will still want them to feel better, even if I don't feel their emotions. I may not understand why they feel that way either, but I will have compassion for them regardless.

If I'm hyper empathetic, I'll receive a great deal of their emotions, to the point where I'm sometimes even more upset than they are.

Tw; death

My teacher unfortunately passed away a while ago. I didn't feel sad because I was experiencing hypo empathy. I knew that this was an unfortunate loss and I wished the best for the family, but I didn't feel their sadness. I cared, I just didn't share the family's emotions because of my hypo empathy.

On the other hand, my dog died in a video game shortly after and I cried, because I was experiencing hyper empathy. It's not that I cared more about my video game dog than a human life, it's that my empathy levels changed.

The day I received the news of my teacher's death, I had compassion for the teacher and his family/friends, I just didn't feel their sadness myself. On the day I was playing the video game, I felt the emotions of my character very intensely.

End of tw

Low empathy is a very misunderstood aspect of autism because people often use empathy when they mean compassion.

People associate empathy with being a good person and assume that the more empathy you have, the more you care about others.

This is not the case. Compassion doesn't require empathy, and compassion without empathy isn't less valuable.

I care deeply about other people whether I feel their emotions or not. I do not have to feel or even understand their emotions to care about them.

Basically, you don't need empathy to care about someone or to want to help them. Having low empathy or no empathy doesn't make you heartless or cold.

We are, and I cannot emphazise this enough, NOT talking about the same thing 🙃 Stop trying to empathize with me about something you’ve never experienced and help me put out the fire!

If you guys have ADD/ADHD, autism, OCD, or something else that affects your ability to concentrate, I highly recommend the chrome extension Mercury Reader. You just open whatever link you're using, then click on the MR icon (it should look like a rocket) and it'll simplify the page so that it's in a focus-friendly layout. Instead of having random pictures and word boxes all over the screen, it'll be in a vertical format with nothing to distract you so you can focus on what's important. You can also adjust the text size (small, medium, large), font (serif, sans), and theme (light, dark). And the best part is, it's completely free! It's honestly one of the best things I've ever downloaded.

This is an article without the extension. See that messy format, and how the actual article content only takes up a fraction of the page? It's no wonder it took me 7 hours to write that paper.

The same article, this time with Mercury. The user-friendly settings are at the top, and the rest of the article is formatted vertically down the middle with no free-roaming pictures or words. How nice.

Executive dysfunction in a nutshell

did elon m*sk literally just fucking make a joke about how autistics are “emulating humanity” and implied. that. we aren’t actually human. i’m frothing at the mouth. i don’t care if he’s also autistic i’m ready to fuckin fight

With Elon Musk coming out as autistic a lot of people are giving the "all representation is good representation" excuse, or celebrating it for any myriad of ways.

Please understand what exactly is wrong with this representation: Elon Musk is NOT on our side.

When some rich famour influential man comes out as Autistic, he will now by default lead the narrative around neurodivergence in the mainstream. People will see his views as correct and the foremost source on these matters. They will see his ableist language, outdated diagnosis, his ideas of "curing" autism, and his tendency to chalk his oppressive behaviours up to autism, and they will see that as the standard for how to talk about Autistic people. And further infantilise Autistic people.

Not to mention, we absolutely do not want the face of Autism to be an apartheid-profiteering exploitative billionaire in the first place. That's not an autistic icon. That's the enemy. He represents the very system that oppresses us.

Neurotypical people, please take this time to flood social media instead with autistic people who actually are involved in activism every single day and tired from not getting enough engagement. Amplify those voices. Otherwise this is nothing but a slippery slope that leads us towards erasure, repression, and even extinction.