ⓘ You Can Bite Your Friends.

I was just talking to Ahmed @90-ghost (alongside Av, who might be reading this, idk if they’d like to be part of this post tho). He has given me permission to write a post about our conversation.

This whole thing has gotten Ahmed to the point where he admits he’s started to hate tumblr after 12 years of being on here. He has over 3k messages in his inbox and can’t handle it right now, his brother and other family members are still in Gaza and he himself doesn’t have the money to help them out. I’ve noticed that donations have slowed among palestinian fundraisers in general, before this whole debacle that a few individuals on this site started. this is anecdotal, but I know Ahmed gets like $30-$50 per week in donations at this point, and that barely makes a dent in his and his family’s needs. Remember that people in Gaza need to pay massively inflated prices for what basic necessities are available right now. I think things are looking pretty dire to the people who would like to flee Gaza but don’t have the money. It already was dire that Egyptian government, working in lockstep with Israel and the west, charges $5k+ to Ghazzawis. Hala Agency, Ibrahim Al-Argani, and the other scumbags running the Egyptian state are all demons and they’ve lined their pockets throughout this genocide. But I digress—it was dire already and now the enthusiastic aid that helped people like Ahmed seems to have run dry.

All that is to say: Ahmed can’t continue to verify peoples’ documents or promote their fundraisers at this stage. He’s privately talked to hundreds of Ghazzawis and looked at their IDs, and he was the only person doing it for a while (a very small handful of other Palestinian users on here were doing it, but they’ve also gotten overwhelmed and stopped). When he was in Gaza, Ahmed was displaced multiple times, left sleeping in tents or on the streets while in active physical danger, starving, forced to drink unsafe water, and often sick. It’s not an exaggeration to say that his body and mind have been pushed to the limit. When he told me he’s depressed all day after doing this work while attracting a ton of negativity, I told him he’s allowed to stop for the sake of his own health, because frankly he needs to focus on his physical recovery. There’s nothing selfish about that, it’s not sustainable for him to be doing this, particularly not when he’s still under the immense stress of his brother and other relatives remaining in Gaza and relying on him for help.

Since I know people will ask: I currently don’t know of anyone on tumblr who still vets fundraisers. Everyone I know of who did has had to stop. I don’t know about the inner workings of Operation Olive Branch, but they seem to be one of a few collectives with enough members to distribute this work. It IS work, and those of us who have tried to do it have done so with a low failure rate (el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s spreadsheet had over 200 entries and they misidentified a scam as legitimate ONCE). I hope everyone will be more considerate towards the people at collectives like OOB.

This has always been a matter of personal discretion. The vetting process some users tried to implement on here is meant to help people who want to help and accept the risk of offering aid to strangers. If you don’t trust bloggers who’ve been proudly Palestinian on this site for years, that’s up to you—genuinely, it’s fair to think “I don’t know this person and I don’t know what standards they’re operating on.” In the future, anyone who has such concerns should consider asking good-faith questions to the people involved and to converse with them like adults before jumping to accusations, conspiratorial posts, etc.

🚨🚨🚨 KOSA being voted on in Senate THIS THURSDAY 7/25/2024

By now you probably have heard of KOSA, or the Kid's Online Safety Act. If not, a quick TLDR here: https://www.them.us/story/kids-online-safety-act-kosa-youth-lgbtq-content

Basically it is a mass censorship and surveillance bill being disguised as "child safety". Grassroots organizers have been fighting against this bill for two years, and now it's come to the point where it will likely pass the Senate unless we make a LOT of noise RN.

The best way to stop this bill is to go to https://www.stopkosa.com/ and use their call script to call your Senators and tell them to vote NO. After this, it goes to the House, and we need to show as much pushback as we can rn asap.

If KOSA passes, this will enable a possible future Trump presidency to go after any and every LGBT content online under the guise of "protecting kids from harm" exactly like they did with book bans. Except, it will be much, much worse.

(Source for the vote on thursday)

HI i would really love it if you could make a doodle of wallter and pest eating apple pie together! ! :333 also ur art is so awesumme :D

HEEHEEHE!!! wallter attends poob's party just to taste the pie. also THANKIES :3cc dialogue in alt text

<3's don't help! If you like something, you should reblog it!

Still cant believe you can just.... do this to avoid twisteds. Like bro I am taller than the table. YOU are taller than the table.

more Regretevator doodles ^_^

it is fnaf day

That’s pretty dandy

Bonus;

reblog and put in tags your reasoning!!

because i wanted to do one of these things and i chose this :)

Reblog to put one of these in your mutuals’ pocket when they’re not looking