i want you to extend the benefit of the doubt to the zoomers, generation alpha, and beyond. i want you to remember how many of us had brains brined in reactionary rot from news media. i want you to recall the bombardment of misogyny from impossible beauty standards. i want you to recollect the suspicion and distrust we were treated with.
do not reinstitute generational warfare. do not abhor and decry the future as a lost cause. if you have the power and opportunity to be a good influence to younger people, take it. i would not be the person i am today without the love and good faith extended to me by the people around me on my old forums. i grew up in an especially white, racist, and queerphobic village in Michigan, with a remarkably evil and miserable father while i was bullied literally every day in school until my senior year of high school. i literally had people tell me to my face they thought i'd be a school shooter.
I WOULD NOT HAVE ESCAPED without a moderator on a forum offering me a place to stay on her couch and the love from friends online telling me i could be better, do better. We are all in this together. I know it's safer to hide, to mind your own business. Sometimes you have to extend your hand anyway. I have gone from being a miserable little shit that used jokes to cover up a bruised ego to a loved woman who has been called an angel, a superhero, a shonen protagonist, a knight, and on one most memorable occasion a likely member of the Tzadikim Nistarim.
I DO NOT LIKE TOOTING MY OWN HORN. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to be anything but meek and humble because I was raised Catholic and to be otherwise was unseemly, and even besides that some of the worst people I know have big heads about themselves. With that in mind, I lay myself bare to show you what could be, what can come to pass when you offer love and support to the younger generation. I am not asking you to assume all trolls are secretly deeply sensitive people. I am asking you to look closely, to notice when a bleeding heart is among you. Extend them a bandage and an embrace. The future might be built with their hands.
