i think “video games aren’t really the violent child-corrupting threat some parents worry they are” and “certain circles of gamer culture are incredibly toxic and can lead people down dangerous/hateful ideological rabbit holes” are ideas that can absolutely coexist
Artificial violence is not actually a corrupting influence but hanging out with assholes sure is.
i know i joke about rent-lowering gunshots but i cannot emphasize enough that incest and rape kinks are extremely common. wildly popular. this is something that a lot of people fantasize about, because it’s an easily accessible taboo, it intrigues/scares/interests people and there’s a lot of content out there to absorb about it. it’s really not that out there or extreme to have those fetishes; we are talking top charters on pornhub of all places.
Also, sexual fantasies do not automatically indicate that someone wants to do that thing IRL. Thoughtcrimes are not real.
Also: sometimes the fetish is just window-dressing for something that IS deeply hungered for below the surface. Like I know people (both real ones and fictional ones) for whom a rape kink is about “What if I was INTENSELY DESIRED, so desired that nothing else mattered?” on one side, and on the other, “What if I could let loose and WANT THINGS without having to hold myself back? What if I didn’t have to be afraid of the power of my own wanting?”
Like yeah, sometimes kinks do reveal something about our underlying psychological issues, but it’s almost never “I literally want to do a real, violent crime against another person.” It’s way more interesting and deep and complicated and metaphorical than that.
This beaver is a rehab animal. He was found on the side of the road when he was no bigger than a potato. He is still young in this video (you do not realize how big adult beavers are, trust me) and is not ready to leave his home or family. Yes, beavers are social and they live in families. For him, his rescuer is his family. But he will be ready to leave at the age of two or three, when a wild beaver would leave his parents and seek out a territory of his own.
Anyway, he gets plenty of outdoor time and is also being taught to swim and do normal beaver things. He WILL eventually be released. So him building a dam out of plushies is not as sad as it might seem.
The truth is, animals are typically happy if they get to exercise their instincts, even if the environment is an artificial one. But in general, a wild animal should be either in the wild or in a captive setting that replicates its natural environment. Beavers are NOT good pets. Fortunately, this guy is not being kept as a pet. So it’s okay. Enjoy the video, and check out Raising The Wild on YouTube if you want updates.
[Video description: A small beaver inside a house drags and piles a variety of objects, including multiple stuffed animals, wrapping paper, rugs, towels, one flip flop, and an entire undecorated Christmas tree to form a dam between the edge of a doorframe and the bottom of a staircase. The caption above it says “Not a single drop of water is getting past that bad boy.” /end description]
And this little gentleman is both adorable and helpfully giving an example of not being a good pet, since most people 1) don’t want their house wrecked because their pet decided their stuff should become part of its dam and 2) would like their house’s doorways and walking paths to remain doorways and walking paths instead of becoming low walls made out of random stuff. 🤣
Did anyone ever like attempt to document and compile the variations of Barney the dinosaur murder ballads across the elementary school system in the early 2000s. Like legit it has always fascinated me as a phenomena and I would love to know if there were like traceable regional variations or what.
Looking at the tags so far I’m kind of fascinated by how much the ‘I Love You’ parodies vary in their phrasing/murder weapons but the ‘Joy to the World’ ones are nearly identical
here is my collection of barney murder songs as they appeared in the notes and comments of this post at about 4 pm pacific 7/25, somewhat arbitrarily color coded to show similar memes. it appears that “baseball bat and 2x4” is the mode configuration but there is so much variation that that exact phrasing only makes up a small part of the set. if i knew more about statistical modeling i would turn this into some kind of data tree that shows which phrases are most likely to follow other phrases.
