Sharks are cool and comfortable!


Elden Thing | Back & Body Hurts Platinugggggh Rewards Member


Profile pic and banner credits: sharkaeopteryx art by @superkiak! eggbug by eggbug! Mash-up by me!
[Alt-text for pfp: a cute sharkaeopteryx sat on the ground with legs out, wings down, jaw ajar, and hed empty, looking at eggbug and eggbug's enigmatic smile.]
[Alt-text for banner: a Spirit Halloween banner with eggbug and the sharkaeopteryx that Superkiak drew for me looking at it with inscrutable expressions]


I'm a Vietnamese cis woman born and currently living in the U.S. You may know me from Sandwich, from Twitter or Mastodon (same username), or on Twitch as Sharkaeopteryx. I do not have a Discord or Bluesky account.

Ask me about language learning/teaching, cooking/eating food, late diagnosis ADHD, and volunteer small business mentoring. Or don't, I'm not the boss of you.


I think people deserve to be young, make mistakes, and grow without being held to standards they don't know about yet and are still learning. So, if you are under 22, please don't try to strike up a friendship or get involved in discussions on my posts.


Please don't automatically assume I follow/know/co-sign someone just because I reposted something from them—sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Also, if you think being removed as a follower when we're not mutuals is a cardinal sin, please do not follow me.


🐘Mastodon
search for @sharksonaplane@mastodon.sandwich.net and hit follow if you want
Hang out with me on the Auldnoir forum! (you can DM there!)
discourse.auldnoir.org/
Follow me on Twitch
twitch.tv/sharkaeopteryx
Add my RSS feed (not working yet but I'll get to it!)
sharkaeopteryx.neocities.org/rss.xml

alyaza
@alyaza
This page's posts are visible only to users who are logged in.

alyaza
@alyaza
This page's posts are visible only to users who are logged in.

chimerror
@chimerror

This has been an issue in quite a few online lefty spaces I've been in, and for the bigger picture I am in no way able to say why it happens because I myself am usually pretty far from the particular pulse of black culture, online or off. (Not really by choice as much as being too tolerant of being the only black voice in a group...)


TrashBoatDaGod
@TrashBoatDaGod

It's not explicity for black people and some could even argue the show is more for white voyuers, but not having an equivalent of black twitter does hit sometimes. It's part of the reason why i still hang on to my Twitter, IG, and FB.

I've really enjoyed moving to cohost and fedi. They're much more positive overall, but in addition to not wanting to lose contact with certain friends, there's not really an equivalent or corollary to "Black Twitter". I cant even fully verbalize what that would look like for cohost, but i know it's not here yet.

I'm also at a loss for how to "fix" this. It's not exactly something that can change by coding around it, although @chimerrir makes some good points above me.

If i had to make a suggestion, we may have to make something similar to a black students union. Not even a fully official group or account, but some way to concentrate the black users we do have and make the black content more easily discoverable. Even if it doesnt increase the amount of melanin users, we'll at least have more black posts we can see on the site.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @alyaza's post:

It does seem like the chronically recurring issue with every attempt at new social media platforms which nobody has found a solution to that isn’t really patronizing or tokenizing. The only thing that seems to consistently work is to just do mass paid advertising in as many places as possible.

in reply to @chimerror's post:

"But that isn't to say that I don't want there to be "black content'... I just don't have much I want to say myself."
And that's the hard part about creation, isn't it... The whole idea of "create what you want to see more of" is one I believe in and do try to apply to my own works when I can, but also it's a different experience compared to stumbling upon a poster/creative that speaks to you AND you can also relate to their racial/ethnic background!!
I think for me, once I started acknowledging my own identity/intersectionality and realizing "oh I have a unique or at least marginalized point of view, I should make something about it", it was followed by the immediate and debilitating fear that anything I make re: identity won't be relatable or insightful or even good. But then it's like... Am I making this for myself and people like me, or am I making this for general audiences which I know will be mostly English-speaking white 20-somethings?
Much to think about... I do love the topics of identity and representation and how it's represented, but it's such a broad topic that I tend to get off-track with it LOL... But like you said, it's more of giving personal insight on a situation, especially on a smaller site like this.

Yeah! I think one thing I have to keep reminding myself is that I do a lot of the stuff I do for art for me first and if it turns out it works for other people, it's a happy side-effect. (And one that's pretty much guaranteed...)

Like I legit keep getting that same "oh dang growing up essentially white gave me different view of whiteness and Blackness than a lot of people"

So even to hear others think it helps remind me! :3