"Why? Is your president going to mistake us for a 13 year old girl?"

[jfz9580m]

36. That did make me chuckle

Don’t underestimate 13 yo girls though..I was one . Absent grooming, coercion and force they are pretty adept and shrewd.

I agree with Dave Eggers on that..young people (offline..online everything is aaaaa) can make one feel hopeful.

I met a couple of my nieces for the first time two years ago and I was in a low place wrt self image thanks to some harassment and gaslighting. I had had some asparagus cast (as we say around on here) on my sanity, which took me aback ;-/. That was one thing I never expected.

And when I met one of my nieces in particular, my self image started to mend. I had started viewing myself either as this conniving, sleazy Sheryl Sandberg lean-in type if I suffered these lousy emerging systems in silence or this paranoid, borderline, targeted individual type if I protested without careful self-coaching (not my style as it defaults back to sleazy lean-in).

When I met her, I liked her immediately. She likes books, cats, solitude and disappearing without an explanation to do innocuous things. But though she is very sweet, she is a skeptical little person. And immediately starts to assess any excess effusiveness like a quizzical little bird. And she is guarded and doesn’t overshare. Which I am sometimes forced to.

Over time we became close. But it reminded of how narrow and limited this pathologizing of anything but gushing, fawning enthusiasm of a surveillance built, militarized medical industrial complex running on garbage ai is.