(Warning: This blog is one of those; “Old Woman Yells at Cloud” rants. So take my opinion with a grain of salt before jumping to the conclusion. It’s also very political as it mention current events, Trump, swearing and some depressing things. Please take care before reading.)
I knew that this year is going to be bad for minorities living in America because last year, 76 million voters (or nearly half of our country) decided to reelect this racist and sexist man as our president again. It’s so bad; I decided to stay away from most of social media and the news for the rest of last month for the sake of my mental health (with mixed results)! Mainly due to my fears of the discourse of Trump's upcoming Inauguration and what executive actions he’s going to pass.
The sites I had to get off are Reddit (which has some leftist and some libertarian views), Tumblr (who’s very progressive and that majority of the users are women, people of color and queer) and the Home and Activity feeds of both Neocities and Nekoweb (which majority tend to be either progressive or anarchist).
I did it a few weeks before Election Day, when Trump won his reelection and I only came back a month later after I got over the election aftermath. I decided to do it again a week before the Inauguration, so I can mentally prepare myself to see how bad the first two weeks were.
It turns out the first two weeks were one of the WORST two weeks in my country’s history! Trump basically fucking killed DEI in federal program and announced that anyone who was working there will be laid off! He rescinded most of Biden’s executive actions, one of them have Trump re-ban trans people from serving in the military, AGAIN! Forced the government to wipe out LGBT people from their websites, making them non-existence. Gave Muskrat a federal job by creating “DOGE”, which is one of the stupidest names I have ever heard and took over the Treasury (which many Democrats are calling it a coup). Tried to end birthright citizenships for new children of undocumented immigrants and decided to pardon the 1,500 terrorists, who fucking tried to attack the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 in order to stop Biden from being president!
And I only know those things because of me hearing second-hand news from my mother who (sadly) works in the government, where she HAS to keep update on what’s going on there! Hearing that news from her makes me sick as I thought we don’t have to go through this shit again. I guess I was wrong that he only won because inflation made things expensive and Trump’s voters remembered that the only time the economy was “good”, was when he was in office.
When I returned to my social media accounts last week, I saw bits of the aftermath of what he did on Reddit and Tumblr, where it made everyone there more divided, compared to five years ago. I read on the some of the comments there that we (as in Americans) fucking deserved this as (like I mentioned before) half the country voted for him. Stuff that makes me feels bad for being an American, even though I didn’t vote for him.
In order to keep the politics out of my feed, I had to mute political words, terms and not follow any large and popular subreddits/tags that might mention American politics. Do that and I tend to have a mainly, boring Home feed that is mostly subreddits/tags of things I like (such as cats and video games). But even then, the politics will still somehow get in and will ruin my day!
One of them was r/BikiniBottomTwitter (a subreddit that has SpongeBob memes about real life), who occasionally mentions American politics. But after the Inauguration, there were more of them than usual. I read some of the depressing comments there and it mentally drained me. Drained me so bad, that I had to UNFOLLOW it! And the thing is that I’m been following that subreddit since 2017 when I joined Reddit!
Two days after I came back, I heard Muskrat complained on his Nazi website that one of bigger subreddit, r/WhitePeopleTwitter (who’s very anti-Musk) wants him dead. So Reddit responded by actually BANNING THEM! Well, “temporary” as the subreddit was banned for only three days…
But it was bad enough that it made the news and caused some to get worried as it appears that Reddit is starting to bend to the Rats’ knees and it won’t be long until they start censoring them! Even thought it was due to violence (which is against Reddit's rules) and that it wasn't the first time Reddit had to ban a subreddit for threatening violence toward others.
Two more days later, Reddit end up BANNING majority of the NSFW subreddits for being “unmoderated”, along with some of the drug subreddits AND even a subreddit that have all the info of how to medically transition safety! The last one spooked trans and nonbinary people as they fear it won’t be long Reddit is going to come after them.
As for the NSFW subreddits getting banned, anyone knows if you ban porn, then you’re going to cause many to flee and lose traffic. Look what happened with Tumblr back in late 2018, where they end up banning all NSFW stuff. As the result, they end up losing at least 40% of their users (or Tumblrinas as some like to be called) because of the ban! Even when they later allowed nudity again in 2022 (only in artist form that is), some said that astrosphere of Tumblr hasn’t been the same since the day they got rid of porn.
Now, many feared that Reddit will end up like Tumblr and will have nowhere to go since the Internet is getting more prudish as of late, which is bad for those who (legally) express freedom of speech.
Fortunately, those subreddits were later unbanned thanks to a “bug” that took place. But many thinks that the large bans was a test to see how effective they are when the time comes. Because of that, some said that this might be the last straw into leaving Reddit for good.
The last time Reddit did something that controversial that caused many to leave was back in 2023 when they start pricing API, which then caused a bunch of third-party apps to die. It caused many mods to close their subreddit in protest, but they were forced to open it up again after being threatened of getting replaced as the blackout was causing Reddit to lose money.
It’s for that reason; I decided to make a Lemmy account, which is a federated version of Reddit. When the subreddit blackout occurred, some tried to make an account there but they got frustrated as it worked too differently and later coming back to Reddit. Of course, I get that as Lemmy can be confusing. And that it’s actually very quiet and spaced out, which make the federated site boring, in compare of Reddit. Despite that, at least I have my account ready to go in case there’s another mass migration of Reddit when porn does eventually get banned.
As for Neocities and Nekoweb, I’m a bit lucky to stay away from the more political websites there as I don’t have to read them, if I don’t want to. Of course, there some politics mention on some of the user’s blogs, which I tried to be careful by not reading them if I don’t want to.
I’m also a bit lucky on Tumblr as I mostly stay on the Your Tags section of my Home feed, where it rarely has politics. I won’t go to the Following section because it’s nothing but muted tags of politics and any current events that Trump and Muskrat did in the past few weeks. But if when I go to Trending section and scroll down to the posts (where some of my reblogs come in as of late), not only there is the muted tags, but also some political stuff that ISN’T tagged! So, I end up looking at them by accident and automatically get depressed!
Of course, I’ll still be on Tumblr as long as I can until the day its CEO does something stupid to the point it’ll drive some away like he did last year when he banned a well-known trans woman for “threatening him” (as she accused him of not stopping transphobic people from attacking her in her blogs) and end up misgendering her! Or like Reddit, he too eventually bends the knee to the Trump and Muskrat administration.
But outside of social media, it seems I can’t get away from the politics. I haven’t read the news since Election Day, but mom keeps mentioning it anyways as she works for the government!
Take last week as an example as she was one of the two million government workers who received an email from Trump, who told her fucking RESIGN from her position (that she had for almost 32 years) to not only to save “money”. But to eventually replace her and the others with his followers, which is something he promised in his campaign!
Thankfully, mother deleted the email as she refused to be bought out and later told me, that the government will have a hard time getting rid of her due to being one of the more hardworking employee. And that you can’t legally buyout government workers. Then just two days ago, a judge end up pausing Trump’s buyout, which means mom’s job is saved for now.
Another example of mom talking political stuff is from six days ago, where she got worked up (as she only slept for three hours) by telling us that she saw this astrologer on YouTube (who used a hanging crystal to predict the future), who predicted that Muskrat and Trump will be arrested this week, that the government will put a five day martial law in order to hide their arrests and then astrologer gleefully announced that Biden will resume as being president again once all this is over!
Obviously, I rolled my eyes over what she said as I know it’s nothing but nonsense. Like, it’ll be nice if they both got arrested and we can end this nightmare. But the chance of that happening is very low…
Then she said because of the upcoming “martial law”, she bought all the food that will last us though the month, tell us to charge our phone chargers and told me to fucking NOT go outside to take my walks, for my own safety! Like really? We live in the suburb outside of a major city in Southern Texas, where crime is less LIKELY to happen! All because you believe what this astrologer said, ugh! Even my older sister, who watches the same astrologers as our mom, wasn’t panicking like her over this news. Instead, she told mom that she needs to SLEEP!
Then few hours after hearing this astrologer, I realize what the astrologer said about Biden coming back, can’t be right. Like, he can’t just come back in like it’s nothing. Actually, he can’t legally do that because that’s not how the United States presidential line of succession works!
Like if Trump does get arrested, then should it be vice president Vance who becomes president. Then assuming that Vance get arrested too because he was part of Trump’s team, then it should be the Speaker of the House, who become president! Too bad the current Speaker of the House is a religious Republican freak from Louisiana…Thank goodness for me recognizing that and not fall for the same trap that mom did on that Sunday!
Then what about the arrest of Muskrat and Trump and the five day martial law? It didn’t happen. It’s nothing but false hope that astrologers gave out to people like my mother.
But actually, I’m a little worried about my mom as of late. With her going to lose her government job in the future and believing the “predictions” those YouTube astrologers make, I wondered how long until she ends up having a heart attack due to the stress she’s been going through the past few months!
Even though I (mostly) stay away from the news, I still end up seeing them in the news I like to follow; mainly gaming and electronic news. Thanks to Trump putting a tariff on China last week, I keep seeing news articles that smartphones and computers are about to become expensive as most electronic parts come from China. Console systems and physical video games are going to get expensive as well as they're also made in China. One of the console systems include the Switch 2, as I’m worried that it might end up more expensive in America than what I predicted because of the tariff (as they’re mostly made in China).
I feel like this is going to encourage people to pirate games more than usual and start a black-market for new smartphones, computer parts and gaming consoles! And this means my family won't be updgrading our phones or electronics anytime soon. All because Trump hates China…
Not even SPORTS (which sometime read for news) are safe from politics! Like on the day of the Inauguration, there was the 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship game that I watched. Why? Mainly because it I was rooting for the Ohio State Buckeyes (yes, I have a soft side for the team as I came from Central Ohio, where people eat, sleep and breathe Ohio State football) as this was their first national championship appearance in ten years!
Then right before half-time, ESPN showed a clip of Trump making a speech on “this is a new golden age for America” and he wished the Ohio State and the Notre Dame teams good luck.
People on the r/cfb thread (where they talk about the game) that I browsed, were PISSED that the fucking criminal had somehow weaseled his way in the National Championship as they wanted to get away from the politics! They even accused ESPN of kissing his fat, stinky cheeto fingers in order to stay on his good side!
It didn’t help that some of the Redditors think that prior to the game; believed that ESPN was bashing both teams because they’re mad that Bama (the nickname for University of Alabama's football team) was shut out of National Championship…AGAIN!!! That, Trump’s appearance and reading the comments made me depressed and that it nearly caused me to have a meltdown! Then this caused me to remind myself of why I even went to the threads in the first place!?!
Thankfully, my mood got better when Ohio State won after Notre Dame tried to play catch up with the scores, but missed the field goal at the end. At least the win saved Ohio State’s coach’s job as people want him gone for…losing to Michigan for a fourth year in a ROW (even though he has a strong winning record)!! God, I hate the sport fandom sometimes…
But it won’t be the last time Trump and politics got involved with sports. Just last week, not only Trump put a tariff on China, he also put it on Canada and Mexico. This spread real quickly in the sports world because a few hours later, I saw reports of Canadian fans BOOING at American teams that were playing against their teams in both the NBA and the NHL, all thanks to Trump!
Then a few days ago, Trump passed a law that banned trans girls and trans women from playing in women’s sports!!! This been a hot topic for Republicans for years and this was one of the first things they passed since they now have full control of the federal government! This makes me feel sorry for trans girls and trans women who want to play sports, but are now discouraged because our government said so. I think this will also drive away trans people from even liking sports thanks to him…
Then tomorrow is the Super Bowl, which I hear many people are boycotting for many reasons. From rumors that the Ch**fs rigged the game in their favor (which then allows them to appear in the Super Bowl for the third year in the row) to that we’re getting a repeat of them playing against the Eagles (which the former won two years ago) and that Trump is going to attend the game, which will leave a nasty taste for anyone who didn’t vote for him! Yeah no thanks, I got better things to do. I hope you enjoy your win, you bunch of cheaters!!!
So yeah, that’s been my life for the past few weeks. Like I don’t get it as during the first Trump administration, I was fine with some of the political stuff being mention there or two and not get stressed out over it. But now, it's making me feel ashamed of being an American as I rather crawl up in a hole and FUCKING DIE than hear one more nasty lie that Trump made about our government!!! But why?!?
I think becoming older and jaded is what happened. That I became too old to deal with that type of shit as I thought people would know better than now. I guess not as Americans tend to have short-term memories on bad things. And because of this, America might end up becoming a fascist empire with Trump becoming our dictator by the end of the decade (as I’m hearing rumors that the Republicans are trying to get rid of the two-term limit for presidents) and his supporters will be fine with it.
Hearing all that makes me want to flee the country for my own safety (as I’m a black, bisexual woman); where I’m mostly like to be accepted as a refugee. Too bad I’m too broke, disabled and I don’t have a job in hand. Then I hear refugees are getting frowned on in Canada and parts of Europe for stealing their jobs, housing and they're making everything more expensive. Thanks to that, I hear the far-right parties and even fascism are making a strong COMEBACK over there!!! But I hear that (most of) South America is one of the safest countries to be in right now and that’s not lot to say…
Like, I don’t know what to do now! I feel like can’t go anywhere both on and off the Internet, for the next four years without hearing nothing but Trump saying and doing shit! Like I can go outside and touch grass for the sake of my mental health. But I feel like that is only temporary before I have to go back inside and hear mom blabber about Trump and Muskrat destroying our government again!
I hope things will get better soon. But I know it won’t and I 'm worry that this might be where I’ll start growing grey hair due to all the stress!
As an American, I’m sorry for all this. Me and my family did not vote for this racist man for president last year, but I feel like we’re are getting punished for voting for him anyways. I swear not all of us are bad and stupid. It’s the vocal ones that are making us look bad.