On the subject, I want to share my personal favorite “Tom Riddle is a massive idiot” move. Because oh, it makes me laugh.
See, I do believe that Tom made an earnest effort at protecting the diadem based on his knowledge. It’s just that his knowledge is wrong (and also that he was rushed for time and possibly that the Room of Requirement swallowed whatever protective spells he cast on the diadem).
I don’t think that Tom was arrogant enough to believe that he was the only one who’d found the Room of Requirement, but I do believe that Tom is arrogant enough to believe that the Room of Requirement would somehow ultimately be loyal to him and him alone. The Chamber of Secrets and that no one had discovered his horcruxes primed him to believe that Hogwarts (his birthright, in his mind) would serve his interests above all others and that the diadem would be lost in this labyrinth of hidden things forever.
But, see, not only does Tom not own Hogwarts, but Tom hid the diadem in a room designed to give up whatever any person desires.
Sure, there might have been protections, but Harry Potter walks in and goes, “I want a horcrux.” And the Room of Requirement basically goes, “I have a horcrux!!!” and practically throws it at Harry’s head with no charge.
The supposed different “generations” i.e. millennials/Gen X/boomers etc is just liberalism’s attempt to replace class analysis by framing the different generations as coherent classes with different interests. It conveniently fails to mention that there are working class & ruling class people in all generations.
By making all ppl of a certain age responsible for inflation & higher cost of living or w/e, the responsibility of the ruling class is obscured, to the detriment of the working class & to the benefit of the ruling class.
listen i also hate those dumbass political cartoons about kids and their phones but at the same time you’re a fool if you flat out deny there are negative aspects to the way we communicate in the social media age
facebook and instagram strategically time your notifications after you post something to make you waste time scrolling. those two platforms also come to mind as being particularly performative (“look at this beautiful picture-ready thing i’m doing today”) although any social media encourages that. snapchat’s streak feature, as well as those stupid emojis next to people’s names, exist solely to suck you into using the app every day. twitter and instagram display your follower count, and facebook displays how many friends you have. tumblr cultivates a culture of oversharing, and although you can have one-on-one conversations on here, most “communication” takes the form of shouting from a soapbox. all of these things are related to the problem of privacy online, which many of us simply assume doesn’t exist and should therefore be tossed aside so that we can dissect and manufacture every detail of our selves and desires online. you can’t honestly tell me these things are of no concern for the way we understand ourselves and others, and our relationships to the world.
it would be great if more poltical cartoons criticized the predatory, exploitative ways that social media corporations attempted to dehumanize us and commodify our need for connection and intimacy. but of course the crusty, unfunny, obnoxiously out-of-touch dudes making political cartoons would rather draw a teenager dressed like it’s still 2001 giving a heil hitler salute to pikachu and call it a day than actually make an effort to understand why so many kids are a) so fucking miserable and b) so thoroughly wired into a combative digital hellscape that offers a not-particularly-healthy distraction from their combative realworld hellscape.
backup blog in case tumblr explodes 