I Think You're Right About This Creating Empathy Burnout, And That's The Goal.

I think you're right about this creating empathy burnout, and that's the goal.

Part of radicalization is no longer being able to perceive other people as people. It is objectification, but of a kind we don't like recognizing. It's weirdly hard to acknowledge it when there isn't (say) a feminist framework describing how the objectification works.

So let's use board games. In Ameritrash board games, the lowest unit of play is a chit. Chits are small bits of colored pressed cardboard with symbols printed on them, often used to track status changes in-game. Most Ameritrash games come with far more chits than you will ever need. The chit can be replaced by a slip of paper stating its value (the original meaning of "chit" is "voucher") and nothing in gameplay is meaningfully changed. You move your chits from one pile to another and that changes their value, but only inside the bounds of a specific game.

Outside of that, they are meaningless and worthless. Nobody's selling chits online. Nobody trades them. If you spill your soda onto a pile of them, you can throw them away or dry them out and it's whatever, nobody cares.

When I saw the brief burst of fame awarded to Bushnell, I was initially horrified. But once I thought about it, it made sense. He was a chit to the pro-Pals. He had moved from the Enemy Colonizer pile to the Brave Martyr pile. That changed his value, but only so long as the game lasted. And the game isn't "the war" or "defeating and destroying Israel" or even "driving all the Jews off Tumblr". The game is "hurting as many Jews as I can".

The game only lasted about two weeks. That's because most Jews online, quite sensibly, blocked everything having to do with Bushnell and everyone talking about him. At that point, the chit of his life moved from Brave Martyr to the discard pile, and they all stopped talking about him. He had no more value. He was discarded.

The purpose of traumatizing themselves, other than (linking to my own work on this subject here) pretending to believe they are Good People doing Good Work, is to make it easier for them to pretend to believe that their enemies and allies are all objects being shoved around the gameboard of Earth in the great sociopolitical struggle of Revolution! The Board Game!.

Posting untagged gore does not make sense as an activist move. It does make sense if you realize they perceive posting untagged gore as a magical spell in their Ameritrash game that will draw X number of chits from the Evil Colonizing Jew pile and put them in the discard pile, even if they themselves take Y Sanity damage to pull the spell off.

Last serious post from me for now, but every time I see people insist they have to talk about the conflict, that they HAVE to witness the horrors, retweeting untagged and uncensored real life gore and all it's just disheartening.

All I can think about is the therapists I know being told not to consume true crime content, to monitor their news intake to prevent empathetic burnout. Same thing I was taught. Because consuming the horrors you can't do anything about dulls you to it.

You aren't helping anyone, hell it's only hurting to spam post ACTUAL REAL GORE. And excuse my language, but I can't trust any "activist" who does this. It's why I've blocked so many people really, because it's not about protesting war, or advocating for a peaceful solution, or actually caring about the real people affected, it's about internet clout. Because now, you can get brownie points for driving yourself to a near second hand trauma.

I do think a lot of watermelon activists need to step back and reexamine what they're doing. Especially when it comes to their xenophobia, thing for suffering, and antisemitism. All it's doing is ruining their sense of empathy.

Tefillin bag, Romania, circa 1915, beads and velvet

Made by a professional Jewish bead-worker who during WWI, deserted the Austro-Hungarian army, was caught and sent to a prison camp. A Jewish guard became his protector. At the end of the war, the bead-worker made this bag as a token of appreciation to the Jewish soldier.

Octopus Chatelaine. Manufactured by William B. Kerr & Co. in Newark, New Jersey, ca. 1900. Medium is 800 silver, sterling silver. From the collection of Mary Nunn, exhibited by SFO Museum for their 'The Allure of Art Nouveau' exhibition, Feb 13, 2016–Aug 26, 2016.

(Source: sfomuseum.org)

Synagogue of Rome, Italy

Italian vintage postcard

Happy Pesach wherever you are and however you sat it! Our unique cultural traditions are beautiful and worth celebrating!