FishLake

Today I was with a group of colleagues. We’re all teachers. We’d just got done with a meeting and were gathering up our things before lunch. I asked the group if anyone had a certain resource. “Hey, does anyone have a copy of such and such standard I could print?” No answers. Not that everyone was quiet. They just kept talking amongst themselves. It’s not like I was trying to but into their conversations either. I was participating, at least somewhat. So I asked again when I felt like there was a natural lull. Still nothing. I looked directly at some of them too. Just blank stares.

This doesn’t happens to me a lot, but often enough that I fear it. And when it does happen it causes me a lot of anxiety. I don’t know what it is. I feel like a child, like when my older brother would purposely ignore me when we were kids.

I’m pretty attentive to other people when they talk to me. When I’m in big groups I try to make sure everyone is heard. I never want anyone to feel left out or unheard. Am I missing some social understanding that seems obvious to everyone else? Should I speak louder? Say different words? Most of the time I just shrink and walk away from whatever I wanted to say. I feel like people hear me but don’t want to respond.

I don’t know. It just stings. Maybe it’s just an insecurity I’ve harbored since I was little. I feel silly for posting this, but I’ve never really asked if this happens to anyone else.

…is what one of my students said to me today. She’s 6. For all intends and purposes she does not remember a time before the pandemic. It is “still COVID” despite what her Escalade driving mother says.

This is just a post to complain. One of those yelling into the void screeds you gotta get one once in a while. Feel free to skip.

I’m an elementary school teacher. I’m new to my current school building, but have been a teacher since before lockdown. I take great measures to keep myself, and by extension my family, safe from the on-going pandemic. First and foremost by masking. Everyday I come to school in what I call “business casual black bloc”, which is just typical teacher clothes but with a black hoodie and an n95/kn95 with a neck gator over it. And my long hair makes me look either like I’m going to throw a Molotov into a police precinct or fix a printer.

Allow me to tell you some more things I’ve heard this school year so far.

“Oh I get it. My sister has lupus, so I’m really careful,” is what a colleague says. She then hugs a student with a visibly runny nose and dead eyes. She hugs two more zombie children after that.

“You’ve never had it?!” the music teacher asks me as I’m washing my dry and cracked hands for the 80th time today. I guess he hasn’t realized that he has never seen my mouth or nose before.

“I just HANDISIZED!” cries a disgruntled student. I told them to go wash their hands after they wiped their nose on their palm. They turn the sink on for 0.006 seconds. They get frustrated when I tell them to try again.

“My sister-in-law is a yoga instructor and she got these for free from when we were all still, you know, crazy about COVID,” is what the office secretary says as she hands me a box of Lululemon designer masks. I will never wear them. The cloth is all but translucent.

“My son is worried he’s doing something wrong,” a parent says to me. Their son asked about my mask. I told him I don’t want to get sick. The parents says their son is now worried they’ll get sick. You can see how this is my fault.

“Do you have a duffle bag?” the resource officer asks me, accusingly, in front of my class. A parent called to say a shifty looking man with a duffle bag and a mask came in the side door this morning. I have a duffle bag by my desk. It’s full of more masks.

“Haha I guess I still have a little brain fog that gets me sometimes,” an instructional assistant says. I have flashbacks to ten years ago, when my depression induced brain fog was so bad I didn’t leave my apartment for nearly a month.

“GRHSAAHHACK,” a student sneezes directly onto my water bottle.

“I could get a mask if you want,” another teacher says in the doorway of the secluded supply room where I eat my lunch. I tell them it’s fine as I feel peanut butter stick to the inside of my kn95 I hastily slapped on my face. It was a newer one too.

“No no! It’s just that, you know, we figured with your newborn you’d probably not be able to come,” says a colleague about the grade level team’s monthly outing to Applebees. Don’t worry, I don’t feel left out. In fact, thank you for not inviting me. I am morally opposed to Applebees.

TLDR - My friends think r/combatfootage is totally fine and are offended when I point out it’s kind of fucked up. This isn’t an AITA post. I am the asshole, but at least I’m NOT a fascist.

I’ll be clear about what I think about the proliferation of combat footage forums like r/combatfootage and the myriad of duplicate communities on various fediverse instances. I find it abhorrent because of what it has done to my friends.

I have a very close group of friends who for the most part are fairly compassionate people. I love them with all my heart. We’ve helped each other for a lot, and they even helped me on my journey from being a rightwing libertarian to a democrat. While I continued to be radicalized by other events and communities online, they’ve stayed relatively the same, left leaning liberals. You know the type. They hate the republicans and will vote blue no matter who. They support the LGBTQ+ community, abortion rights, the recent rise in labor action in the US, and the Palestinian people. All good things to support. But they’re also armchair “socialists” who don’t know the difference between a socdem and a communist.

Which is fine. Not everyone is going to interested in theory, especially in their comfortable, white, micro-borgeious (three attempts is enough, I’m not looking up how to spell it again) slice of American life. They don’t know what they haven’t learned. And I’m not going to info dump our group chat with theory. I’m good with just sprinkling in class conscious takes into our conversations.

Last night I learned of this Reddit post from the mods of r/combatfootage. It amounts to a feckless update of their rules, to disallow footage from terrorist groups (ie Hamas). You and I know what that really means though, no Palestinian footage. I bring this up in our group chat. This is an exchange between me and one of my friends who is in the US military. (Please note that I use terms that are very general in nature, like “right wing” instead a more accurate term like “reactionary.” My friends are liberals. Their vocab is small.”

Me, “So you know how r/combatfootage is a right wing hate farm like r/politicalcompassmemes? Apparently Reddit is putting their foot down about them… by banning all videos from Palestinian perspectives. Really cool and good, right? (Link to post)”

Friend, “Are we talking about a group called combat footage or actual combat footage?”

Me, “R/combatfootage is a subreddit for sharing footage of actual combats and armed fighting. It’s pretty gruesome. Lots of really gross memes of Russians soldiers being droned. I’ve never been a fan of watching shit like that let alone making fun of a Russian teenager freezing his nuts off in a Ukrainian corn field getting killed by a grenade dropping on his head.”

Friend, “How is that right wing?”

Me, “Dehumanization is kinda step one for a lot of right wing radicalization. Plus equating people to a enemy figurehead. Stuff like, ‘All Russian soldiers are mindless orcs and just as sadistic as their leader Putin.’ Or, ‘All trans people are degenerate child molesters who want to brainwash your children like their leader Joe Biden.’ You know, bullshit like that.”

Friend, “The trans stuff and combat stuff aren’t really the same thing. How does that relate to combat footage? It’s kind of a stretch. Don’t get me wrong, trans bashing is real right wing but combat footage is pretty different. Maybe I’m not reading the comments but I do watch that stuff. If I go into combat I really want to be aware of a drone dropping a grenade on me when I’m taking a nap.”

Me, “The footage itself isn’t the problem, I guess. It’s the discourse and comments around the footage, and the presentation of it. What I’m saying is that the discussions around combat footage on Reddit are in a lot of ways similar to how bigots talk about queer activists in those ‘Ben Shapiro Owns Leftist Morons!’ videos.”

Friend, “Aren’t all comments sections full of monsters?”

Me, “Well yeah lol. But that doesn’t change how a lot of the videos on r/combatfootage are titled things like ‘10 Israelis killed tragically by HAMAS’ vs ‘100 rebels dead after IDF scrimmage’. So it’s not always comments. The posters are making a conscious choice of words in their titles. And a lot of them are fucked up.”

Friend, “This seems like a lot of spider webs and not super strong arguments. I think you might be right for maybe some people but are making too many over arching generalizations. Some of us can see both sides of the combat. Soldiers are Soldiers. They are enemies until they pass and then they are fellow fallen soldiers. Dehumanization is a part of war. There are a lot of papers about it. ‘How do I kill the person next to me? They are [racist term], Nazis, Antifa, MAGA assholes, etc.’”

Me, “That’s valid…from a soldier’s perspective I guess. You’re able to compartmentalize an enemy combatant from the person they are. Especially when not you yourself aren’t actually engaged in the conflict, right? But let’s be honest here, there’s not a whole lot of ethically minded soldiers on Reddit forums giving enemy combatants the same amount of respect. The most popular stuff I’ve seen is pretty tasteless. One video in particular stands out to me was shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It showed a group of Russian soldiers running and trying to find cover. And the footage was sped up slightly and Yakkity Sax was played over it as they all got picked off. And the comments were filled with “Putins dogs” and other dehumanizing language. If you laugh at that you’re being radicalized.”