Reader

Introduction

This is a mildly edited version of the scolds bridle essay which was posted last year.

When I see the vitriol directed at women and other marginalised folks online I'm often reminded of the scold's bridle.

There's a push and pull between those who want smaller communities and those who want to “Facilitate Network Discovery”. You've a lot of marginalised folks on the Fediverse, LGBTQ+ folks, Women, BIPOC, disabled folks. There's complexity in our communities and reasons why some folks want to organise in the open, but don't necessarily want to be searched for.

But as usual, backlash happens, and hurt white feelings abound. Somehow the community who never asked to be collated get called out as the hysterical folks who just need to shut up.

It's the need to shame the shamers because you felt scolded. We harshed your buzz and goodness, don't you just want to make us pay for it so we never do it again.

But let's address just why there's a backlash against any push back about lack of consent in our applications. White Supremacy is fearful of rage when it doesn't come from a cis white man.

What is the Scolds Bridle?

It was a form of punishment mainly of outspoken women or gossips or Scolds. It was an iron cage with a spiked bit that would pierce your tongue if you tried to speak. The scold would wear the bridle for an amount of time, often being led around the area. It was a painful, humiliating punishment. [2]

Scolds weren't the only folks punished, it was used against Quakers preaching as well. So let's be clear on this. The Branks as they were also known were used to subjugate women. To shame them and be an example to others to not speak up. A violent state punishment to protect the status quo.

Feminine Rage

Why did such a thing as the branks exist? Why do men feel the need to reply guy back to women explaining the world and the experience they live in? Why do we have Christofacism hand in hand with Trump in the Whitehouse? Why is there such a need to undo progress?

Why is there such a push towards restricting our places of assembly online? Why is there a need to reply back with technical critique rather than engaging with the very real danger we face online? Where's the empathy guys? To be clear it is the men I'm addressing here.

Why do Men feel the need to punch down on those who state their boundaries? Why is there the need to mansplain to folks on the internet? Specifically the femme presenting folks? Are you sure we don't understand?

Why are women harassed while men accuse us of witchhunts?

The thing that I note is that it is very often white cis men who do these things. When people push back, there are a lot of hurt feelings. There are accusations of harassment.

Every accusation is a confession.

Men are scared of feminine rage. They fear the scolding. Not just because their feelings of doing something bad may make them feel bad. There's some misogyny to work on there. There's some racism to work on. There's homophobia to work on. This is our socialisation to uphold White Supremacy.

As a cis woman, I've been socialised to keep my rage in. To be nice. To provide feedback nicely. To ask nicely and to advise nicely. I hold in my rage. It's a rather tenuous thread at this point. I'm not sure what would happen if it snapped.

I find it very hard nowadays to keep that rage in, every time I see another scraper, or pulling from the firehose tool. Sometimes it's physically painful to keep the scream of anger and tears in. But I do. My iron branks are mental, my socialisation. I know to scream out will hurt my career. There's the spike in my tongue and the spike pierces in so much further for others. The consequences for speaking out would be so much worse for some folks in our spaces.

I find it hard to keep my rage in every time we point out that we'd like to opt in for people reusing our posts. Or to have my phone not try to send back my metadata to a centralised point.

When I express mild annoyance, I get the odd patronising reply guy message. “Well that's the way the world works, Honey, Don't you worry your purty little head about it. Now just shut up and take it.”

As you ask for us to be forgiving like Mummy and your friends pat you on the back because we were so mean. As your fellow developers and fanboys talk as if we had torn you apart.

Feminine anger is seen as unnatural, monstrous. You feel we're been unduly harsh. Meanwhile we're just meant to excuse your outburst, your aggressive reply. The behind the scenes manipulation and aggression.

Dude. There's a reason lots of us push back. Very often we're not even angry. It's not rage. However it all piles up and at some point we will snap.

You see our push back to boundary and trust violations as rage. Sometimes you ignore a call in, keep violating peoples trust. When eventually enough of our community compare notes and finally from exasperation push back it's considered Cancel Culture or a purity spiral.

You put the Scold's Bridle on us. Accuse us of lies, of perpetuating malicious allegations. We're accused of a witch hunt as you put us on the pyre.

Vulnerable marginalised communities are very wary of being in public. We share notes, gather information for our safety and it's characterised by abusers as conspiracy against an upstanding Developer or Leader. When we whistle-blow the blow-back on our careers, our allowance into community spaces shows others it's best to keep quiet. We know if we whistle-blow, call out abuse in the open we are risking violence against ourselves. We know our careers are toast.

At that point it's often easier to leave a community. Even when it's something we love. Because very often the “popular” abuser is a missing stair.[3] But the work that abuser does is considered vital to the community. This is a problem in many communities, not just FOSS, not just tech. It's systemic in our societies.

So we keep quiet. The abuse continues and we offer quiet support. Knowing we are complicit in our silence.

We all have stories of abuse in FOSS, we'll never tell those stories in public. We fear our reputations being put on the pyre.

Ask us first!

So we do get annoyed when our work, our thoughts are ingested to be indexed by google. Even if they are public.

We claw our way out of the pit of our backgrounds, into the light to live, to exist, to organise. Sometimes our communities were taken away from us. We were pushed out or had to leave for our safety. We rebuild in new spaces.

Then you lot decide to take a bunch of our public posts without our permission, you don't seem to understand we'd like some control over where our public posts go. Who we want to work with. [1]

The flippant answer of “duh just don't post,” is shallow. It's exclusionary. It shows how little danger you've had to face. How little abuse. How much you've bought into rape culture rather than consent culture. Silicon Valley is very much the result of White supremacy. The meritocracy is a myth. We're reaping the political consequences of believing that lie right now. Meanwhile, you witter on about your hurt feelings and how harsh that criticism was.

Girls. It's utterly feminine to feel that rage, that incandescence. It's feminine to want to lift that baseball bat and smash. I'm the last person to police what counts as feminine. You define what is feminine. If you want to wear Jeans, a flannel and docs, that's feminine. If you tell me you're a woman, you are. Those jeans and a flanny are extremely comfy and practical. You need good boots to walk in. Or you can wear platforms. You define your femininity. No one else should.

It's feminine to say no emphatically. It's feminine to be extremely clear on where your boundaries are and to enforce those boundaries.

And so we continue ad-nauseum.

The pushback against the opt-in, that need to reply-guy back comes from the same desire that the branks came from.

To shut up the marginalised. To humiliate them, to scold them back into compliance.

It's the desire by others to perpetuate the harassment that Folks face on the Fediverse for stating their boundaries loudly and clearly. To hide and re-frame the issues of harassment marginalised folks face. We're interfering with the Fediverse Utopia by stating our boundaries.

But I should be fair because the devs aren't the only tech folks scolding the marginalised for requesting that their human rights be respected. You only have to look at the debate around alt text and see some high-profile accounts call folks “Scolds” when all they asked for was some alt text for a screenshot.

Sometimes I suspect that if the branks were around today, some of you would be the first folks to put it over my head. To slide the bit in, to tug on the bridle and break teeth. You'd take pleasure from me not being able to speak. To express my rage.

So yes, this is a scold.

The Internet form of the Scolds Bridle is politeness, it is tone policing. It is the threat of doxing and violence. It's the anonymous message threatening legal action. The violence of the status quo online.

For the same reasons, we disrupt the idea of the status quo. No one likes to be told they are harming others. [11]

FOSS still causing harm

We don't like the idea that we perpetuate harm, particularly in FOSS.

I'm tired that we have to protect our safety and justify our existence in public. I'm so tired of the fact that LGBTQ+ and BIPOC folk have to hold in that rage. Even if on occasion we do want to tear it all down. So we leave and we don't take part in your community. We form our own spaces. When we work together and make those spaces ours, we enforce our boundaries. So we get criticism, when we exclude people who share harmful ideologies and when called out on it, shout how they are being abused. It's unfair! How dare we enforce our boundaries! How dare we call out your violent language!

Here's the thing. Language evolves within communities. Sometimes it makes it way out into the mainstream. When issues happen to break apart groups, it's not particularly a feature of the left or the right. To frame breakdowns in community as a purity spiral is disingenuous. Breakdowns in community happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because it is the abuser in progressive clothing. Moving from community to community hoping we never compare notes.

So we see the same story play out at scale even here on the Fediverse. The purveyors of the abusive algorithmic walled garden are here. Our own Developers are welcoming them in. Because we must have Context Collapse 3.0. Some of our Developers seem want to get in on the gold rush that they missed out on with Web 2.0. So the welcome mat rolls out. We have threads and build bridges that ignore our consent. We have our projects being invaded by the latest bro fad.

I want something new. I want hope. I want consent and freedom of association built in.

I'm so tired and angry that our human rights of free association in safety are ignored.

I'm so tired of the rapey vibes I get from developers who would prefer us to opt out rather than consider building the opt-in. It's not that hard. It's what just my toots do. You look at my mastodon profile you see a link to just my toots. Which I opted into.

Why is it so hard for some folks to get the concept of consent? Why do we keep having to do this? Holding in my rage is tiring. So I try to direct it, to use my rage at the world and to speak up for others if they haven't the energy at the moment to do so themselves. This post isn't my first scolding and nor will it be my last. [5 to 8]

If you're a guy and you're wondering what to do? Take a look at the culture around us. When you see your friends doing the reply guy thing? Call it out.

Keep calling out predatory behaviour, whether it's apps or real life. I know they are your friends, but if you're scared of losing their regard. They aren't your friends. You're their fanboy.

If you don't see what's wrong with their behaviour but you're feeling a bit attacked right now? Be brave, step back. Take a breath and listen to what folks are saying rather than reacting. Don't try to point us at the technical information. Some of us do understand the technology. We're asking you to consider the human aspect. The very real dangers many of us face, it's not something to be poo-poohed. You need to expand your experience, you need to listen to the folks at the sharp edges.

We are at a stage in history where we need to band together and I want to work with people who don't want to bridle me but to work with me.

Be braver. It's braver to take the hit to your idea of yourself, rather than punching down on the vulnerable.

Further reading

[1] https://cathode.church/fedi-scraper-counter.html

[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/scolds-bridle

[3] https://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html

[4] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women

[5] Ignoring Boundaries https://www.onepict.com/20230906-boundaries.html

[6] Consent and the Fediverse https://www.onepict.com/consent-fediverse20230627.html

[7] Consent and the Fediverse part 2 https://www.onepict.com/consentpartdeux20240215.html

[8] On Bears https://www.onepict.com/20240506-bear.html

[9] UN report on STEM. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160041

[10] https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/about-history-the-scold-s-bridle

[11] https://youtu.be/BxQ15OEEuLM?si=30KIw8qWQpp5d797
Polite Women Are Not Safe – Parkrose Permaculture

I remember the first time I found a childrens book that covered Greek mythology in the Buckie Public Library. It was illustrated, yet for a childrens book it was incredibly detailed. It was the first time I learned the word “ravished”. I didn't realise what it meant until I was a teen.

That's not true, I did not realise it's full meaning until my late teens. As a woman who's nearing her fifties, the meaning becomes more loaded as I look around the world we have.

Greek gods went around ravishing folks. Sometimes they were defined as affairs. Consent wasn't really a concept.

The Greek myths after all, were collected up by Empire and compiled. We translated the translations. We added our own interpretations to a culture that when we started writing stuff down was already patriarchal. The original meaning and true history got distorted.

It filters down to a joke sequence in the Marvel movie Thor: The dark world.

“You look ravishing” says Loki as he casts an illusion on Thor so that he looks like Sif.

It's a clanger of a joke when you consider the meaning of ravish. The casual way we use language, clangs for many of us. As if looking rape-able is a compliment.

“What were you wearing?” We ask victims of sexual assault.

This is rape culture and we're deep into it. From Zeus taking his sister wife Hera, to the Manosphere. Women and femme folks are objectified. Androgynous folks are objectified. If you're not white, you are objectified. We aren't seen as human, merely objects to have power over.

Which is what this is always about.

Power.

Men get violent when we question their right to exercise power. They need to barge in and lash out when we say no.

When Zeus went around ravishing goddesses, nymphs and humans, this was about explaining how local gods, heroes and heroines fit into the dominant culture. Even this lens of interpretation is through our own lens of empire. The colonisation and homogenisation of culture. Forced into the box of white comfort, to be appropriated at will.

Organisations have a memory, and they shape humanity. We are so easily moulded.

When I read about Echo, it was a tale about a Nymph who was punished to repeat the last word other folks said.

Hera did it to Echo, because she'd helped Zeus with another of his “affairs”. As if a Nymph or any object of Zeus attention had a choice. When you're a child you accept the framing. You ignore Hera demanding that Echo should have acknowledged her power. Betrayed the King of the Gods. As if that's a choice Echo could choose. To defy power.

Hera, the goddess of Marriage framed as a Karen.

Meanwhile Echo fell in love with Narcissus, forced to echo back what he said, while he was cursed to fall in love with his reflection. Nymph and human wasting away. A dark reflection indeed.

This is the Patriarchy. Stealing power and ravishing us. Accusing us of being the scold, and refusing to acknowledge the harm they do. Then framing that harm as being our fault. We had it coming.

Forced to echo back Men's opinions, to be docile, polite.

If we smiled more we'd find a man.

How dare we have power? How dare we be happy? How dare we not rely on them for our happiness? How dare we prefer independence?

It's only as an adult you start to question the framing of it. Some of us never get the chance to start questioning. The Patriarchy trapped us all. It harms us all.

Tech and Power

As I've said elsewhere our political stances frame how we create our code. We cannot separate code from our politics. Our political beliefs inform our designs. How we solve a problem. How we see a problem to be solved.

Our humanity and communities inform the software that we want to use, how we communicate.

So when we hear technologists throwing around the words “Echo chamber” we should be concerned.

Last week a member of the Mastodon advisory board Scott Jenson posted a screenshot of a tech influencer's post on Bluesky and asked if Mastodon is becoming an echo chamber. He then proceeded to equate folks being unwelcome of AI enthusiasts to be the same as the existing issues we have on the Fediverse and the racism of some of our communities on the Fediverse. There was then a lot of DARVO and gaslighting. Folks weren't amused, there was discussion and many of us didn't do it in Jenson's replies. We know that is not a safe space for us.

Folks on the Fediverse are highly technical. A lot of us know what Machine Learning is. We studied it and some of us still work in the space . We know that AI, specifically LLMs is grifting hype now. Any true use of this technology is drowned out by the grifters. We will be cleaning up the mess in our projects for decades. So folks on here aren't polite.

We weren't particularly happy with the Blockchain or NFT grifter bros either.

We see the harms that LLMs are doing around us. As our columnists and politicians grasp for attention like Narcissus looking at his reflection. Allowing the LLM to reflect back our own narcissism and opinions back at us for a price.

We see the harm that LLMs and Diffusion are doing to our communities. As Milliardaires hoard our computing hardware and then welch on their deals. Personal computing is in danger of being out of the grasp of the general population.

So no. AI bro's are not welcome here.

The Fediverse is a very queer driven set of interconnected spaces. Mastodon just happens to be the most commonly used software to put your instance of like-minded folks on. The Fediverse is more than Mastodon.

Encoding Human Rights

The Fediverse encodes two very important human rights. Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association. Freedom of Association is the most important one.

Article 20

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

When instances defederate they are exercising the second part of Freedom of Association.

No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

This is what the Free Speech bro's want to attack when folks are very clear at pointing out that some ideologies, or technologies aren't welcome.

We criticise and we aren't nice when we do this. We won't be polite. We know that if we give an inch, Fascists will take a mile. Tech and Fascism have a long history together. We'd like to try something different.

So I don't think this echo chamber is a bad thing. I mean there are those who want the Fediverse to scale, they want it to be as big as Facebook. But there are just as many who don't think that's a good idea. I don't for one.

Some of us helped to build the internet and we can see the harms we helped to cause.

We will not help you steal others work, or enable genocides by using the companies that provide the infrastructure for governments to do harms to their peoples. We won't be polite to the people that allow the sloppy auto correct to cause extra work in an already overloaded technical community.

We will judge you. Which is what you fear really. Being an outcast and not being welcome in our spaces. The spaces we had to build for our safety.

You're not welcome here. You have plenty of other spaces online to peddle this. Leave our spaces alone.

There's a difference between ostracisation and persecution. But the tech bros sure do seem to love claiming that when we ostracise and mock them, they feel scared. But then men do become dangerous when we mock them. They push on, they gaslight us. They ask us to be “reasonable”

I'm not reasonable. I took off my bridle a long time ago.

Walk a mile in my shoes buddy. Go back to your own echo chamber.

We're the echo that's left and we don't want to reflect your narcissism.

Leave me and mine alone. We are ostracising you, you aren't welcome here. We reject you and your values.

Take the hint.

If you destroy our spaces, we will recreate our communities and find our folks again. We have that right of Freedom of Association.

We will rebuild the internet that you broke.

Well, it was broken from the beginning really. It was never designed with consent and privacy in the first place.

Perhaps this time we can rebuild our internet with those rights in mind. With networks that have the consent built in.

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter H Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

H is for Hoopy: a really together guy

Let's make wonderful art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

1 I took the first breath and exhaled existence.

2

Yearned and deadly is Love. Drives to, from and mad. But still... still... is yearned.

3

I've seen Death, Beautiful, waiting, Cruel, loving and caring, With all the time in the world.

#Lyrics #Poetry

In the past, I have stated that my purpose in starting the comic strip Untilted was to capture the experience of being - not just feeling - mostly alone. Like, always meeting an endless stream of new potential acquaintances, yet never maintaining a lasting association with any among them. Always finding constant opportunities for intimacy, though somehow never truly forming a definitive union with a single soul. Always finding someone you think gets you, only to find out that they really just “get you” in a way that is incompatible with your values or personality or whatever.

But, I also wanted my webcomic to focus less on the plot-heavy “relatable” drama that is so prominent in every well-known story on the subject, and just focus more on the whole random meaninglessness of it all. Now, obviously the decision to make it a no-plot genreless thing in a world of people that expect consistent and anchored stories with the usual tropes in them will garner mixed and often negative results, especially when it comes to building an audience these days. The common criticisms are: who is this story for, who will like this, what is the purpose of this story if it doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose?

On the other hand, I have found that I tend to be more motivated and do better when there is no complicated arc to think about because there is more room for creative freedom and I don’t feel constrained by a bunch of plot devices and other details to think too deeply about. So I don’t feel that Untilted’s narrative structure is the big issue that I’m struggling with here.

Since the start of the 2026 year, I’ve been finding it increasingly harder to translate my experiences into a narrative form, even a purely visual and abstract one. You see, I have discovered some personal revelations about myself that I feel are a bit too sensitive to talk about here, but for honesty purposes I will try to explain in a way that doesn’t make me feel too exposed. In order to do this I will talk in mostly obscurities, but not so much that it seems like I’m vaguely referencing people, because I’m not having any issues with anyone right now and I haven’t been having them for a while.

Generally, I clean up (i.e. delete) some old and half-baked stuff in order to reflect new content, but I’ve noticed that I may also delete stuff even outside of Untilted for different reasons. For example, I have had to delete a personal blog post I made about my challenges with emotional regulation, because, when I tried to expand on some of the points I was trying to make about how nothing really helped me even when it seemed that way, I realized that no matter how differently I tried to approach it, I kept hitting a nerve within myself. Like I haven’t processed things sufficiently yet for me to talk about it more openly.

This does not mean that I’m hiding things on purpose or deleting them just because I’m worried about what other people think, but rather; it began to feel less like I was telling a more honest and coherent story and more like I was building a case against something in order to defend myself against a common stereotype. It felt like I was just proving myself against a perceived opposition that:

1. I’m not just a “landmine” type (apparently that’s the new trendy term they’re using now?),
2. I don’t have or at least neatly fit in certain mental health diagnoses that others who may or may not be professionals may ascribe to me without my consent, and that
3. I’ve been more stable lately, honest to God.

This isn’t about what other people think in the pure sense, but rather, it was more about me myself and I specifically becoming increasingly burnt out about feeling like I have to build a case that shows I’m “one of the better ones” who stay out of trouble. So I ended up deleting that post because I felt that this was a personal thing of mine that really didn’t need to be shared, and therefore my own responsibility to deal with it myself.

Not because of any stigma. Not because of any feared pushback. But because I became tired of building cases.

In addition, the reason I haven’t been consistently or efficiently updating things for the past few months is because I’ve been experiencing a resurgence of old interests, old thoughts, old desires that I thought I had gotten over by now. I’m not just casually remembering old stuff with basic nostalgia. There’s something significant about these old things coming back that’s been distracting me from my usual work, that’s been keeping me awake, etc.

The fact that I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve been suppressing it all this time, or whether I just haven’t been paying attention to the obvious signs, means that I haven’t really been fully in touch with what I know about myself and what I really want.

It doesn’t help matters that some of my feelings are being made amplified by some of the things that have been going on in the world today, the things I’ve been looking up related to them, the connections I’ve been making between what’s happening and what I’m feeling personally - well, it’s just all been so… weird.

But I think what disorients me about it the most is that I’ve noticed a strong emotional component that wasn’t there before. Most times, when I like something I’m usually just mildly interested in it or just casually like it. But in this particular case, it’s been getting more sentimental, as I've been discovering some old things that I thought I just casually liked but realized that I deeply loved all along, and I've been discovering some new things I never knew or acknowledged before. To the point where I sometimes find myself lying in bed crying about it.

It’s not like I’m considering giving up the whole Untilted thing. I’m still sticking to it; it does speak to me still. However, there’s just been a kind of moment where the most overlooked parts of myself have been demanding my attention, and I have reached a point where I can’t just ignore them anymore.

A lot about Untilted is based off of my experiences, and I usually have no problem with communicating them in the form of the most typical fun gags or some sort of deep, semi-cryptic message for the audience to gauge (I don’t really embed any subliminal or hidden messaging in my comics, I’m not very good at it). But I’ve been having a hard time doing that precisely because of how personal some of my experiences are - sometimes way too personal to the extent that I’m not able to put things in coherent words or even images, relatable or not. That or I haven’t processed things sufficiently.

Am I running out of ideas? Not really. It’s more like I’ve been having trouble executing them.

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter G Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

G is for Giant Anteater

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

I will dress myself in warning signs Put a red light flashing Have my colours scream poison

At 18 I was told “You're gonna break hearts and not even know it, You are going to break hearts and not even notice”

Meet me at the gates of the gardens of heaven I'll take you to see the void

Meet me at the gates, I'll leave them unlocked Just be there, be there and wait

---

Documenting an ongoing process of lyric writing. First version just below this one in blog view.

The prediction (which was actually said to me) doesn't that well fit here. We'll see if it sticks or gets thrown out.

#poetry #lyrics

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter F Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

F is for Fox

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

even Witches can be slain. the fingerprints she left on the Doll's arms and hands have erupted into deep, crumbling cracks. every word she ever spoke to the Doll appears etched on its 'skin'. the cheek she kissed has shattered, and the Doll's chest now sounds a hollow 'thud' when struck.

searching for something to hold onto, anything, the Doll goes to the place where they met... only to find it torn down, and the barest foundations of something new in its place. she thought she had longer, and she'd started a new project... so the Doll goes to find the Witch's other places and it finds... well, it finds what was clearly her private chambers. and on every wall, huge artworks and photographs of the Witch, radiant as ever.

and then the Doll stops dead, instantly crushed under an unbearable weight. there it is, in the background of one of the photos. the Doll and the Witch, together. even in death.

rest well, Lils.

A few weeks ago we saw folks considering an exodus from Discord as age verification gets rolled out globally. This is the era of centralisation, of objectification and mass surveillance. There's a term for that, but it puts you in mind merely of Big Tech and profit margins. When the danger really is more to decentralisation and our human rights. The danger is to how we can safely exist in our communities and to advocate for our human rights.

It's not always caused by Big Tech, sometimes it's our governments after they've been lobbied by Big Tech.

Prisoners of our own Nostalgia

Now I wish to be clear. I and my project Librecast are very much against age gating. So much so, that we stopped using Matrix.org because it and it's flagship Homeserver are domiciled in the UK. The online harms act has caused many UK sites to shutter, and other sites to block access to UK users. This is a digital rights issue.

This is also a privacy issue, which was always there in our walled gardens of Web 2.0, our bounded realms where what you put online could be packaged up and sold later. Which wasn't just your messages it was your digital footprints.

Discord already had an age verification leak of user data, so folks were feeling nervous. Those of us who advocated against Discord, may be feeling vindicated. But there is no way for us to be able to provide everything that the folks who used Discord used to manage their Communities.

So do we give up?

NO. Of course we don't give up.

But there's some thinking and reflection that we all need to do.

We shape our reality and our reality shapes us

Shadow memory

When I was a child my parents split up and my mother chose to leave my childhood town to move nine miles away. I was uprooted quite rudely from my community of friends and activities. I felt I moved to the chilly hinterland on the coast. North Coasts in Scotland tend to be chilly. The wind blows into your bones.

So every weekend when my Dad visited, we'd go to my former town. Have a coffee wander around and grieve. We did this for years. I didn't see my friends, but it was a place of comfort for nine year old me, walking on the high street.

Eventually I got a new start and built a new group and home in the big city when I chose to live with my Dad. It was very different. But the new circumstances helped me to heal.

I've moved cities since then, and even Aberdeen the city I love, doesn't feel like home anymore. It changed while I moved, and when you haven't been in a place to see the changes, you realise your home isn't there anymore. Your community has moved on. Had kids, made new friends.

I'd say I grieve this. But my childhood was an early lesson on how your place in a community is a moment in time. You can never go back there. Your rosy memories of the past and the connections you made will stay there in the past.

You will never experience that particular perfection again. The connections will move on. Perhaps you will meet folks again and reminisce. But it won't be the same.

So take the time to grieve this. Then be ready, for you can experience new connections and make new memories. You can build new ways for your communities to organise and be together, and I don't mean coding.

Nostalgia

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L.P. Hartley The Go-Between_ (1953)

My formative years as an adult, were tied into University and competing in University Fencing. When I wasn't learning about Maths and Computer Engineering, I was training. I learned I loved Epee. I got team medals and a couple of Individual medals. I was a Vice President, and then a President of my University Fencing club. I competed with my team and qualified for British Universities Student Athletics. I earned my half and my full blue.

After University Finished, I did a few more years and met my partner at a fencing party.

I was hooked into a multi-city, multi club community. It was complicated and brilliant. I helped to setup and organise a local community competition.

As time went on work took precedence. We moved cities twice. We didn't fence as often, some clubs closed and some of the fencers like us, had work and other commitments.

The community changed, and the fencers that were left joined other clubs. My university class graduated and left the city.

Things change. That point in time with those intense friendships and connections fray to a thin thread of acquaintance. Some folks do grieve. I'd had this grief as a child. I learned to move on. It was a good lesson for me to learn in the early two thousands as I started to find others on the web.

Dot com blues

We had a plethora of websites that young folks and some adults joined. Not all of us grew up on Usenet or a BB board. Suddenly there was a riot of graphics and music auto playing on MySpace, or large comment parties on LiveJournal. I couldn't tell you what Bebo was as I bounced off it, my sibling loved it. Folks created Fansites on Geocities for bands or their favourite movies and shared their love, bootlegs and screenshots of their faves.

The Internet of our corporate Fae is rather bland compared to those early days.

Folks were used to having different accounts on different types of networks. It was rather scary for the unwary, on places like ICQ. Especially if you were femme presenting.

Gradually those sites were bought, stifled and retired out of sight. The communities scattered. The digital diasporas looked for a new home. We all chose differently, but sometimes we saw each other as we tried other networks.

Each time it happened I adjusted, found a new place to go. But I am of the first generation of the Web, We were used to new ideas, new interfaces. We knew that folks had different ideas of what a community was.

Our coders created software according to what they and their friends thought were cool. Folks came on and started to use it. The software evolved, partially shaped by the community, but the way the software was designed it shaped community interactions and workflows.

While Web 2.0 sought to keep you trapped, there's a point where folks decide to leave. It's hard to leave the spot where your friends and family post news. It's hard to leave the spot where your community groups organise. Sometimes you stay in a place longer than you should despite the fact everything is crumbling around you. On average mine is eighteen years. Nostalgia creates inertia, it keeps you imprisoned until you break your own bonds.

We're seeing the result of misplaced nostalgia in our walled gardens, in our communications and in our politics. There's a point in time when you put away childish things.

The walled gardens arrested our development in the same way my need to walk my old villages streets arrested mine. I was in an unhappy limbo. As a child I couldn't do much about it.

We are adults now. We can learn, we can grow. We can make new connections and sometimes some of our old connections come along with us.

We don't have the answer for an alternative to Discord yet. But at some point Discord also wasn't the answer to something else for a community. It hasn't been built yet. It certainly wont be built if you don't give the Discord community time to grieve and try out things so that they can say what would be better.

We all need to leave the shadow lands of our memory. They were a place in time. We can learn from them, but we should not let nostalgia dictate that these new spaces should be exactly the same. It's the chance for something new.

We need to build new places for our communities.

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

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Let's tell a Fairy Story

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

One upon a time in the online realm a cis white man did a controversy. That man then blamed the purity culture within his community.

More controversy kicked off, and the man doubled down on “Purity Culture”. Other's came in defence of the person and repeated that it was “Purity Culture”. Some folks were happy to accuse the left of fermenting discord. Of tearing the great man down.

To be clear I'm not referring to any specific incident here, that's not what this post is about. Although I'm very sure someone's come to mind. There's always someone.

Much like our fairy tales and folklore, there are variants on this story.

Sometimes the person kicks off the controversy referring to those nasty leftists openly. Sometimes it's a general reference to Purity Cultures or Purity Spirals. Sometimes someone finds out about the person doing abuse and raises the alarm. Sometimes it's not a cis white man.

Harassment can happen, the fans of the person rush in to defend them, or whatever disappointing thing the personality is defending. There are reply guys.

Some folks who know the personality hope that it's an aberration and perhaps they can be called in.

You get the idea.

On Spirals

This is a pattern I'm seeing happen again and again.

I keep seeing a libertarian pipeline, it starts where we lift someone up (usually someone who already had a lot of privilege), they manage to shit post and argue their way to popularity. We're very good at that on the internet, we've managed to create an adversarial space in a medium that was meant for sharing information. It's the market place of ideas after all.

They may write some books, create a massively used project, get into policy spaces. At the point they have enough power they decide they are so important. If you are against them, it's tall poppy syndrome or the Purity Culture of the left. “The bitches are out to get me”. Pick your poison, but the fairytale is always the same.

They are cancelled they say, as they appear on various podcasts or talk to authors about that time they dropped the mask. Some folks are a bit shocked, but some of us in the silence of the aftermath start to compare notes.

In the meantime, this person isn't really cancelled because cancel culture doesn't exist either. There will always be people willing to platform, support and patronise someone who is “cancelled”. There's always a talk circuit. There's always fans willing to pay for your work. There's a point in time where they've made it.

I've seen this happen in the past decade a few times online, I've experienced the surprise in person.

Folks, there is no such thing as a purity culture or purity spiral in the left. What you're seeing is the fallout from abuse in community spaces. It's just easier to tell the fairytale of the left not cooperating, rather than examine toxic individuals. Or folks leaving for their safety. Get a community started, at some point in time you will have abusers, or agent provocateurs, or well, people who start to form a cult of personality around them.

But it is easier as a centrist to ask everyone to just get along and follow behind this person. Get behind the banners, get behind the slogan. Which plays into the right wing, because the right wing are very good at lying to centrists and each other.

“Eyes on the prize folks”, you think smugly, as you dismiss leftists. No wonder we can't get anything done if we keep judging people. “You're so judgy on the left, why can you not just follow the banners? It's a purity spiral” you think, the left can't help itself.

So you bury the unease. Bury the niggle. Give chance after chance after chance, after chance behind the scenes. Vulnerable folks, or those of us who've seen this before break off. Start or find another group. Because it's not safe, Or because we know that we can't follow in that direction .

So the personality grows in power and influence. There's no dissension and no one now, to rugby tackle away the means of communication from them. To go, “hang on. Perhaps you want to rephrase that.” Or “perhaps you don't want to argue with people for several days on the internet. Go outside for a walk now and calm down.” They are filled up on Power and Hype, on yes men, who uncritically think that we must follow that banner. We grow that power by reading what they write, sharing their ideas. We open doors to get them to talk to our governments.

Then the controversy happens and those of us that left don't feel victory. We feel tired and start to pick up the pieces of community. We know the call in will be pointless, there will be more incidents like this. We know the personality isn't an ally anymore, and perhaps they never really were.

Can we stop this spiral

I'm so tired of this. Aren't you tired?

Aren't you tired of giving these powerful folks the benefit of the doubt, even as they defend folks like Minsky? Or do they just do good work? Does your favourite matter more than hearing from other points of view? From other backgrounds?

Do we keep having to repeat this spiral, the real spiral. It's not a purity spiral at all. It's bigging up people who confirm what we think, who explain it in a clever comfortable way.

It's the spiral of choosing our comfortable ideas over the truth of what's happening elsewhere. It's not really sacrificing anything for our values, but sharing great slogans to show support. We get behind someone's banner as we think we will get closer to real power.”

We shouldn't be surprised then, when the person drunk on their power does a thing. Throws away the leftists who bigged them up, who shared their ideas. Because they don't need us anymore. We're problematic to the cause. We tend to speak up and share criticism after all. It's time for the centrists to fall behind the banner.

As a recovering centrist myself, I've learned this the hard way.

But whenever I see a man; and in my experience, it is always a man, talking about purity culture (or cancel culture), I tend to wonder what abusive behaviour they are hiding. Or who they've excused because of the “bigger picture”. That access to power and influence. Their comfort, not yours.

Because if your worried about purity culture in leftist spaces, you are chasing power. You aren't particularly worried about hurting people, you are more worried about them exiling you from their group.

People do make mistakes. But the way you gain forgiveness is to be accountable. To examine your behaviour and your motives. To make reparations.

The group does not have to accept you back. But when someone is going from group to group, blaming purity culture in advance, you need to look for the wreckage. Even if their ideas are good, because they may well be packaging other ideas. They just happen to be the person you vibed with.

We do need to take responsibility for who we platform. Because ultimately it is down to us. We give power to our heroes by sharing their ideas, buying their stuff, using their projects. We need to understand the reciprocal nature of this.

Once we understand this, we can then consider if we should keep sharing those particular posts about an idea. We can choose to share our power with marginalised voices from the Global South. We can open ourselves up to folks who aren't from our culture. We're at a time where we need new ideas and viewpoints. We need to look at concepts from around the world.

It's a more positive thing to do than to try to change the personality, it's a more positive thing to do rather than try to argue with the personality. It opens us up to each other. Sometimes we find commonality in the concept of an idea, along with another way to describe it.

Sometimes we want a glib concept, a simple word to explain our world around us. But perhaps we could do a little more work and look outside words and slogans.

Perhaps we could stop putting folks on pedestals, or expand it and open up the stage for others. We can pass the mike. Perhaps those of us on those pedestals need to acknowledge that we are on stage and there's a responsibility towards that audience.

I include myself in this. You shouldn't put me on that pedestal, I can climb on the stage myself. I write well, and I do have a message I want to pass on to you, my audience. But I am sure that there are folks who have better ideas, who don't choose violence. Who are conciliatory rather than argumentative.

Who should we be listening to? This is something we need to ask across our networks. We need to be prepared to listen, especially when we feel uncomfortable and judged. We need to take a moment, think, let the feeling wash over us. After all, when we ask, we are asking for access to their labour. Then listen again, and go and learn. Work on ourselves, understand that discomfort.

People are human, but we do seem to be picking some folks who should never have been given so much power and influence over us. Our big men do have influence and power, we wouldn't be hearing about them otherwise.

We keep platforming them.

So give your power wisely. Build community locally, or in your online spaces. Consider also joining a union, or creating a union. That's really how to do something with our power.

Let's leave this spiral.

Too easy to fall for too strange to parse

Each of my touches seem to leave scars

Too old to hold to too young to die

Too cold to fondle too quick to cry

I will dress in warning signs:

Toxic waste, Beware of mines

********

Beginning last summer I posted a bunch of old lyrics of mine. Early drafts, scribbled down ideas, unused bits, unfinished thoughts.

Among these I posted some final forms, with sometimes only a line or basic consept remaining from those early versions.

The short piece above is what will in the future be an early draft. It was written on Sunday, 8th of February 2026 and by the time I got it written down I knew: this won't do.

The piece is raw and emotional, but the rhyming makes me feel like I'm going to get on stage on a local village culture night's open mic with a bunch of other uneducated in the arts of poetry but having a lot to say villagers.

Not that I'm anything but for village culture nights and uneducated in the arts of poetry folks writing rhymes anyway. At least in this I don't have double standards.

By the following day I was ready to ditch everything but the last four lines. While the feelings expressed in the beginning of the poem/lyrics piece come from trying to express heartfelt things, do I sound whiny? Granted, the lines were not written without tears, but still...

On the other hand, dressing in warning signs takes control of what happens to the narrator, be as it may the end result remaining the same.

We'll see.

#poetry #lyrics

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter D Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

D is for Dog Park

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!