If you put a single crab into a bucket, it will climb out and escape from becoming someone’s dinner.
If you put a whole bunch of crabs in a bucket, however, the crabs in the bottom of the bucket will pull the crabs at the top of the bucket back down if they try to escape. Instead of allowing some or all of the crabs to survive, the group of crabs will ensure that every single one of them ends up on a plate.
This same phenomenon is seen in human communities, where it has become known – appropriately – as crab bucket mentality. From the outside, these crab bucket communities might look like support groups, or places to get feedback and advice. But in reality, they are black holes – these are communities where people go to tear each other down, and to actively be torn down in return. Instead of lifting each other up, these communities burrow further and further into their buckets, until everyone is too bitter and broken to ever climb out.
And you might be part of a crab bucket community without even knowing it.
Some online communities are obvious crab-buckets. The so-called “incel” community might be the most obvious example; these are angry young men who tell each other over and over again that they are worthless, unattractive, and that they will never be loved. Lonely teenagers enter the incel community to talk about how frustrated and insecure they are after dealing with romantic rejection, and they quickly find themselves pushed toward hopelessness, violent misogyny and suicidal fantasies. Likewise, the “pro-anorexia” and “thinspo” communities are crab buckets, where members encourage each other to adapt more and more extreme disordered eating, and often invite other members to make cruel comments about their bodies and food journals. Insecure young women (and some men) go to these communities because they want to like their bodies more, and end up weighed down with self-hatred.
But not every crab bucket is obvious.
Although there are lots of wonderful and supportive spaces online for LGBTQ+ people, the internet is also littered with LGBTQ+ crab buckets – especially for trans people. Some trans communities are almost entirely dedicated to discouraging and criticizing other trans people for not “passing”; these communities will pore over each others’ pictures, pointing out lingering masculine or feminine features, comparing each other to “a man in a dress”, or outright convincing each other that there is no point in transitioning, as they have no hope of ever “passing”. Anxious trans or questioning people join these groups to navigate a very difficult time in their lives, only to have their own insecurities magnified and distorted.
Communities and feedback circles for writers and artists can also be crab buckets. Again, while there are wonderful and supportive spaces available, there are also toxic black holes out there, masquerading as genuine communities. I’ve belonged to writers’ groups where every single piece of writing was viciously torn to shreds, no matter how promising it might have seemed, and there were constant discussions about how ‘pointless’ it was to try to get published. Members were so insecure about not “making it” that they frantically tried to crush the hopes and dreams of anyone who might be competition. Instead of producing better writing, these kinds of groups eventually produce no writing at all.
Activist communities are often crab buckets. On the surface, people join activism communities to lift each other up and feel less alone in their cause; in reality, however, many activist communities have underlying cultures of suspicion, gossip, and hostility. Members gleefully comb through each other’s posts and content carefully, constantly looking for any small mistake or out-of-context comment that will allow them to declare that someone is “trash” or “cancelled”. People join these causes to fight back against their own feelings of powerlessness, and often report developing anxiety, depression and panic attacks as a result.
The list of crab bucket communities goes on. Any kind of group can become a crab bucket group under the right conditions; just because a community is created by and for a marginalized identity, it doesn’t mean that that community is actually safe for that identity. As humans, we like to band together in groups to accomplish large goals and feel less alone… but sometimes, we turn those groups into echo chambers for our own toxic ideas, and try to drag as many people as we can down into our buckets of despair with us.
If you’re in a group that you suspect might be getting a little crabby, it’s probably time to leave. Turning a whole group around by yourself is an enormous and thankless task, and it’s not one that I’d wish on anybody. Once a group of people have formed a collective identity around proving why they’re all worthless or fat or problematic, it’s hard to turn that ship around, and any attempts to do it might be met with hostility. It’s okay to give up on toxic communities, and look for healthy ones that build you up instead of tearing you down.
Don’t let people make fun of you for liking japanese culture.
I am living in japan right now and let me tell ya:
There are people here who can’t speak or understand English who play nothing but Missy elliot and ludacris, even in businesses like housing offices and restaurants.
There are people who have cowboy hats and dead cow skulls in their home because they idolize what they assume American homes are like.
There are people who learn English strictly through music videos and American television shows.
There are entire karaoke bars with english songs often sung by people who have no idea what the lyrics mean.
Japan often takes American shows like the powerpuff girls and make japanese versions of them.
They often mistake common Americans for celebrities. I have been mistaken for Micheal jordan, tiger woods, Shaquille o’neal, Tyler perry, and saddest of all: queen latifa.
The act of sprinkling English into your japanese sentences is considered cute and cool and is popular with teenagers. Bonus points if you happen to use it correctly.
Japanese stores sell shirts with english on them and people buy them not knowing that most of those word combinations are nonsense.
Don’t let someone shame you for singing an anime opening, using japanese in your sentences, wearing clothing with japanese on it, ect. If anything, this is just one more thing that you have in common with them.
The American/Japanese cultural exchange is so pure and wonderful and I love it so much
OK BUT RESONATE WITH THE SHIRT THING THOUGH
My Chinese relatives buy me shirts from China with English letters on them hoping I think it’s cool
I have a shirt that says “Hi Quality Uality”
It’s amazing
It happens alot.
And then what’s really great is Americans getting tattoos of Chinese characters thinking they mean one thing when they really don’t
Also a topic where the reverse happens.
lemme tell you..i have been in a grocery store in Japan and heard the unedited Get Low playin over the intercom..it was literally a Katt Williams moment
Oh, unsensored songs are pretty common.
I should not be hearing an unsensored ‘Magic Stick’ playing at a family restaurant.
And the best thing is when literally no one shows that they understand what is being said.
– Praise the living daylights out of a show and shove its greatness in everyone’s face
– 2 years later, pick it apart violently and insult everyone who still enjoys it in as edgy a way as possible because negativity is cool
!!!
uhh maybe marginalized ppl were excited at the possibility of a show (such as su) representing them, only to be rightfully angry when the show ends up racist, homophobic etc. anyway, super bad post all around
I feel like a lot of hardcore accusations of problematic and offensive content that get thrown at media that was previously lauded as progressive come from a few sources; first, the creators are often a lot more accessible than the creators of mainstream media. you can message rebecca sugar on twitter personally to call her a racist bitch, but you can’t do the same to, say, jj abrhams or another large-scale creator. likewise, you can’t stand on a streetcorner and scream at people until they agree to stop watching law and order, but you can certainly bully large groups of people online until they stop supporting an independent creator.
second, the fandoms that tend to form around progressive media tend to be younger, more volatile, looking to media and fandom as forms of activism. mainstream media they can write off as garbage, but progressive niche media that makes a sincere attempt to represent marginalized folks must be Absolutely Perfect. the idea that a piece of media can have good parts and bad parts, that it can try and only partially succeed, but that that partial success is still worth something, is completely lost on many young fans. either its irredeemable garbage or its the literal messiah, there’s no in-between. so if a show falls short of perfect, as is inevitable, then it goes straight into the “total garbage” pile and must be condemned by the masses.
genuinely trying to represent certain groups and making a few missteps is not the same thing as being ignorant or malicious. making a sincere effort to mean something to folks who don’t get a lot of things made for them is something to be proud of. would you rather go back to the times when fucking nothing got made for us? when the only characters we saw that we could relate to were only there to be made fun of? you’re spoiled by a rush of new creators who took “go make your own thing then” to heart and set out to make content for people like them, you have the gall to look at what they’re trying to do and spit on it for not being better. no creator owes you shit, no creator has to bow to a bunch of teenage bullies who do nothing but demand and harass, that’s all there is to it.
Dear lord can everyone please read this post because it’s so relevant
People commenting like we don’t know that Bluetooth headsets exist and like we cling to outdated tech. No, but until that tech is better and more affordable then I’m not interested in being the guinea pig.
To replace a headset if you lose it is much more expensive, and Bluetooth is sill a huge battery suck which means we’ll get less out of our phones.
There are also many, many cars that don’t support Bluetooth but instead have a jack.
People aren’t upset because of silliness or knowing less about tech than you. They have their own legitimate reasons.
As someone who has a bluetooth headset and loves it, I hate the move away from 3,5 jacks on devices.
The sound over wireless is pretty good these days and the battery drain while noticeable isn’t as tragic either, but the removal of the jack is still a money grabbing anti-consumer move.
Apple might make fun of the connector for not having evolved for so long but that’s because it does exactly what we need. Nobody thinks that electrical outlets are bad for not getting an upgrade every five years, that would be silly and make everyone’s lives difficult. This is the same case.
The jack is an universal standard, doesn’t matter if you have cheap earbuds or and expensive set of studio monitors they still use the same connector, you can plug them to your phone, laptop, the plane’s on board entertainment system or your super expensive audiophile set up.
Getting rid of the jack does several things. It drives the cost of the device down. The manufacturer no longer has to include a DAC or an amp. While you pay the same money for your phone, you now have to pay extra for headphones that already have that stuff built in.
It’s also no wonder this has been started by Apple who now owns Beats. The thing about wireless headphones is they need batteries. And batteries only live for so long. And are not replaceable. Yay for being forced to buy new headphones every couple years even if the old set is perfectly fine other than not holding a charge.
I love wireless headphones, not having to deal with cords is great. Being able to do chores around the house listening to music without having to carry your phone is awesome. But people being angry about the demise of the jack without a proper real replacement (not that we needed one in the first place) are not some philistines or luddites. They just see the obviously anti-consumer move designed to screw them over and take more money out of their pockets and are not ready to cheer for that as some sort of a technological win.
French photographer Diane Özdamar shoots wonderfully kawaii photos of pet rats in effort to help counter the negative associations many people have with them. So great is Özdamar’s love and appreciation for rats that she also rescues and fosters abandoned rats and hopes that her photos will help them find forever homes.
“Here are some of these photographs, both of my rats and of my friends’ rats and, as you may see, they are far from being dirty nasty little monsters! They are actually highly intelligent social beings that love interacting with each other and their favorite humans. They are very friendly, smart, playful, they love cuddles and are very clean: many rat owners agree to compare them to tiny dogs.
I made all the little accessories (except for the little black hat) so these wouldn’t constrain the rats: they could remove them very easily, although they didn’t bother most of the time as they were quite cool and relaxed. No animals were harmed during the making of these pictures, the ladybug was also alive and well and flew away soon after the photo shooting.”
So I see a lot of people on here getting super shitty about lawns and how they’re the biggest suburban evil and the mark of gentrification and blah blah blah.
But here’s the thing.
You need to calm the fuck down about lawns. House lawns are not your enemy.
‘They take up so much water that could be used elsewhe-’ Not if you get buffalo. Not if you have a rainwater tank to draw your garden water from. Buffalo doesn’t fucking care you don’t need to water that shit let the rain do it. Don’t fucking plant Kikuyu if you value your other plants though. It will strange EVERYTHING YOU LOVE AND NEVER GO AWAY. Buffallo behaves itself a little better, you can control buffalo.
‘They take up space that should be used for producti-’ Lemme stop you right there, how many of you have the energy and money and time to actually grow enough food that you can subsidise your daily meals with it?
How many of you have experience with organic farming. How many of you have actually had to fight bugs off your plants without using insecticides?
There are so, so, SO many reasons your front and back gardens are not ever going to be useful as food growing areas to you. Do you know your soil type? Does it need enriching? Is it sandy? loamy? clay-bound?
Any amount of extra fertilizing you do is going to end up running off into storm water and that can fuck with the ecology of local streams and rivers and whatnot. Unless you are only using compost you’ve made yourself or very small amounts of fertilizer or you grow in containers with minimal water run-off, you’re going to be encountering this issue.
Don’t even get me started on how you can’t expect people with physical disabilities to be putting their garden areas to use by growing food. Gardening is hard fucking work. Farming on a small scale is still physically taxing, it’s also mentally taxing, you have to be able to discipline and schedule yourself so you know when you’ve planted things. You know when they need watering. You know when they need more liquid fertilizer and/or seasol. You know when to harvest and how to harvest and not all crops are the same. Etcetcetc.
Gardening is not the hardest thing in the world but it STILL requires a basic amount of motivation and energy and time and organisation skills. Not everyone has all of this. Not everyone should be expected to have all of this.
‘So just plant trees and stuff for bees and butterflies and stuff!’ Again. Not everyone can plant out a full cottage garden in their yard. Not everyone has the money or energy or all the other shit you need to keep a garden running.
You could argue that they should just plant hardy stuff, succulents and cacti or hardy natives (in Australia’s case, we have a shitonne of natives that are basically plant and neglect types, and they will grow regardless) But these are a very particular look, and people should not HAVE to live with plants they don’t like the look of just for the sake of avoiding having grass.
‘So just plant trees then-’ Listen there are SO MANY ISSUES when it comes to planting trees around your house. This is coming from someone who FUCKING LOVES TREES and would plant a forest around the house if I could.
Why can’t I? Lets see:
-Falling branch damage is a serious concern your house can get super fucked in a storm by nearby trees. And pruning trees? Hard work. Getting someone else to do it? That’s an expense many can’t afford.
-Tree roots in heavy clay soils will often go straight for your storm water and sewerage pipes and FUCK. THEM. UP. This is a current and real problem for us, we have to remove our decades old grafted dwarf Golden Ash in our front yard because it’s fucking up our sewerage line. We do not WANT to. But we HAVE to. And replacing that tree is going to involve a lot of research and probably MONEY on a container big enough for a new tree and a tree that will be happy to live in a non-draining container. Only reason we can do this? My parents have money. I’m the one doing the actual work and tree care and research. They do the bankrolling. Without me, they would replace it with nothing because NONE OF THEM HAVE THE ENERGY OR MOTIVATION TO GARDEN. Without them, I wouldn’t even have a house with a yard I’d be homeless so y’know.
-Councils can get shitty at you and make you pay them money for no real reason other than it’s an excuse to get money out of you. Not necessarilly common, but still a concern in some places.
-Neighbours may also complain, that is how we lost our also decades old Tallow wood tree out the back. It’s roots cracked and ruined fresh paving done down the accessway at the side of our neighbour’s house.
-Tree roots in general will fuck shit up if your placement isn’t just right, even with trees that have non-aggressive roots. You need to know where all the pipes run and then have enough area to plant away from them AND the house AND the road AND any other paving like sidewalks and driveways.
-Buying trees, even in sapling form, can be expensive. Not everyone can budget in plants.
-powerlines are a thing you need to watch out for in many places like this is a very serious thing.
ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, you will have a more expensive water bill if you have more plants than grass. Unless you are willing to spend the time and money on tap-timers and the right irrigation systems, you’re going to be having to deal with watering schedules and using more than before.
Growing plants is not always cheap nor accessible to everyone. While I do encourage growing in containers for those unable to work on their gardens, or who don’t have much space, I absolutely acknowledge that not everyone can garden.
So if you cannot fill a space with other plants, as many people can’t, lawns are THE BEST ANSWER. Why? Because lawns suck up a bunch of carbon. The right sort is not only drought tollerant and hardy, but it keeps the soil beneath in good condition.
Do you know what I did today in my clay heavy backyard? I reclaimed some lawn space for garden-bed expansion. Do you know how long ago we laid that lawn? DECADES. I think i was maybe 8 when we turfed the back lawn area. We laid down all the shit you need to lay down on heavy clay to let lawn establish. Gypsum, newspaper barrier, blood and bone, basic garden soil.
I was expecting depleted soil under that turf. Instead I found rich, friable soil that I could have stuck anything in immediately and not worried about fertilizing. After like 20 fucking years my dude, that soil has been kept lush by the turf. It has protected it from drought and flooding and mineral leach. There were a bunch of worms wriggling around in there. it is GOOD FUCKING SOIL because we had GRASS KEEPING IT GOOD.
Grass is probably the BEST alternative for people with no time, energy or money, to have in their yard. All it needs is occassional cutting in summer, in winter you barely have to do anything to it. You need to feed it maybe once a year if at all. I’ve never fed the lawns, and they go in regardless. They’re not the healthiest lawns, but they’re doing pretty damn well considering.
Listen, I support raging against lawns and fields when people want to make community gardens on empty plots and councils say no because they prefer to just hold onto useless grassy land. That’s a situation in which land IS wasted, because people have full intent to use it to better the community. The very least a council could do in an open field that they won’t let the public use is stick a bunch of trees on it to counter carbon emissions in the area.
And I’m not overly fond of people using excessive mowing and cutting to keep ultra manicured lawns, because that’s excessive carbon production for an aesthetic you can probably achieve just by growing a different strain of grass.
But for the LOVE OF GOD do NOT be railing against people who just have grass all over their front and back lawn. Grass is not evil. Society has built infrastructure that is not friendly to tree growing, and this is something it would be nice to address in future planning (even though I doubt it will be for some time) but you need to look at the reality we are dealing with.
On top of all of this, some people just really fucking like to see a lawn at their house, often bordered by garden beds with other plants, MANAGEABLE amounts of plants. And it’s important to like the look of your house, it’s your comfort zone, it’s SUPPOSED to bring you pleasure, not stress.
You cannot be angry at people who do not use their land for growing food. You might as well just be angry that not every single person has chosen farming as a profession. It’s a ridiculous expectation. Lawns may not attract Bees or butterflies, but they DO have their own positive ecology. THEY SERVE A POSITIVE PURPOSE. LAWNS ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY.
If you want to counter ‘lawn culture’ in a USEFUL way that ISN’T bitching and whining about people with lawns, GET INVOLVED IN LOCAL TREE-PLANTING ACTIVITIES. FIND OUT ABOUT YOUR LOCAL LANDCARE GROUPS OR GET INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY GARDEN PROJECTS AND NATIVE VEGETATION REHAB GROUPS. GO DO SOME POSITIVE PLANT WORK.
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