Rook Lafetra
@rooklafetra.bsky.social
3.9K followers 680 following 9.1K posts
Author of SFF and historical fiction. Rambler about paleontology and animal facts. Snuggler of cats, dogs, and deeply confused chickens.
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Reposted by Rook Lafetra
Sure, buddy. That’s a real thing that definitely happened.
She called me a Nazi!

So we start talking and she says, “Well, I saw you get out of your truck with your boots, and you're like a big white man. I guess I just assumed because Elon's a Nazi and you fit the profile …” I stopped her and I was like, “My last name is Goldman, what heritage do you think that is?” She's like, “That's Jewish. My wife is Jewish.” I said, ‘OK, so you just accused me of being a Nazi when I'm a Jew. And you said that your wife was Jewish, so I'm assuming you're gay. Is that a safe assumption?” She said yes, and I said, “OK, so did you ever get profiled anytime in your life for being gay?” And she says, “Yeah, all the time. I hated it.” And I was like, “Well, do you realize that you just profiled me based off of the vehicle that I drive and me wearing work boots and being a big white guy as being a Nazi when it's completely something totally different?” And she broke down in tears and apologized. I'm a huge supporter in the gay community out here. So to call me a Nazi homophobe, it just blew my mind.
Reposted by Rook Lafetra
This extended to internship, fellowship, and scholarship applications, by the way. I don't know if it's still going on, but there was a grotesque trend of "tell us about overcoming adversity" in which students from low-income families had to show-pony their trauma, but in an optimistic, upbeat way.
I think a lot of people don’t realize how insanely pervasive and coercive the early 2010s “the only way to make it as a young writer is to publish insanely confessional, raw online essays about your darkest secrets and trauma” culture was.
Following other people in California is the most precise way of tracking earthquakes.
Reposted by Rook Lafetra
Even in genre publishing at the time, it was stunning how many people firmly believed you couldn't write "real" horror unless you'd had a nightmarishly traumatic life and were willing to share it all as credentials. And anyone who didn't was just a tourist who didn't belong there.
I think a lot of people don’t realize how insanely pervasive and coercive the early 2010s “the only way to make it as a young writer is to publish insanely confessional, raw online essays about your darkest secrets and trauma” culture was.
Reposted by Rook Lafetra
I think about this all the time how the outcome was almost literally: sell your soul to an outlet that is churning out 40 articles a day, reducing your deepest experiences to more grist for the mill in order to sell ads and get trafiic.
I think a lot of people don’t realize how insanely pervasive and coercive the early 2010s “the only way to make it as a young writer is to publish insanely confessional, raw online essays about your darkest secrets and trauma” culture was.
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The greatest lesson millennials learned was to keep our mouths shut
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A similar thing happened to me about 25 years ago, when I was a preteen. It was a nightmare.

Now, thanks to AI, so many young girls all over the world will have to live that same nightmare.
Reposted by Rook Lafetra
As a young writer in that era, I recall the pressure to publish DARK shit about your life as the price to recognition - ESPECIALLY if you were anything other than a straight white guy - was just overwhelming.

I never quite went there thank God, but I know so many who did. I feel awful for them.
Everybody gets quiet and uncomfortable and a little mad at you when you bring up your parental loss/abandonment/betrayal as a foundational experience.

People think you're """edgy""" and callous and start imagining personality disorders if you deflect with jokes.

There is no winning but silence.
Even today, if you want to write about a traumatic experience glib to some degree is required. There are five publishing slots per year for a sincere exploration of a terrible experience. The rest are "please don't query manuscripts about your father's suicide unless it's funny."
When you combine that pressure with the fact that the overwhelmingly dominant tone of online publications at the time was Vice-like “edgy and glib with lots of swear words” - well, I’m inclined to go a bit easy when evaluating the past work of writers who came of age in the 2010s.
Yes. Looking something up is relatively easy in most cases, but knowing how to determine the question you should be asking in the first place, how to evaluate a source, how to infer something, how to be critical of your own assumptions, etc, are among the most valuable skills learned in life.
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One of the fundamental flaws with this sort of thinking, assuming it is sincere which I doubt, is that a big part of college is about teaching someone *how* to learn. You can ask a chatbot about an infinite number of things, but how do you know which parts are important and which are irrelevant?
Wow. Just wow.

"Students pay premium prices for information that AI now delivers instantly and for free. A business student can ask ChatGPT to explain supply chain optimization or generate market analysis in seconds. The traditional lecture-and-test model faces its Blockbuster moment."
When Knowledge is Free, What are Professors For?
Higher Education Must Stop Competing with AI on Information and Start Teaching What Machines Can’t Do
www.forbes.com
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many conversations I have had with complete normie libs, the kind who have a tote bag from donating to NPR and shop at Whole Foods, involve the kind of rhetoric that under no circumstances should be put on the internet

people are very mad
look i was recently talking to a septuagenarian life long dem (who shall remain nameless) and generic lib, and she was like “i just think there should be firing squads and they should sell tickets.”
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thinking about the time a cool Instagram fashion account asked me to name my favorite products and i didn't know i was supposed to name fashion products, so i said pigeon food because i like feeding pigeons and their followers were like "why the fuck do i need pigeon food for my outfit?"
The Instagram account Saint featured me. The first slide says: "Derek Guy - Dieworkwear. Derek Guy is a menswear writer who has written for The New York Times, Esquire, and Mr. Porter. He also runs a menswear blog called Die, Workwear" One of the slides showing my favorite products. It's it's a big bag of Hagen pigeon food. The food is fortified with the vitamins and nutrients pigeons need. Instagram user writes: "Why tf do i need pigeon food for my outfit." I replied: "this is what i can afford to eat after spending all my money on clothes ::sad face::"
We were cuddling in bed with Pepper and the cats and Sylvie decided it would be a great idea to start gnawing on Pepper's floppy ears. I really don't understand that cat.
I knew something was wrong before I saw what you were responding to 💀
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Gonna start citing this post when I tell someone that their YA novel set in 2012 is historical fiction for today's teens.
just realized that this means that she knows who Justin Bieber is but not only thought that he was dead she thought he died so long ago it was a different age
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2025 feels like being one of the passengers in this scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, bathed in garish light in the scary tunnel scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The dialog is an unsettling poem: “Is it raining, is it snowing? Is a hurricane a blowing? Not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing..” Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, bathed in garish light in the scary tunnel scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The dialog is an unsettling poem: “Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly Reaper mowing? Yes! The danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing!”
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Before the internet, if you wanted to find the horniest people around, you had to go to the local Vampire: The Masquerade live action role-playing group
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The NBC Asian America crew regularly covered so many of my films, comics, and books over the years. One of the very few big, mainstream venues to give a damn. This is a kick in the teeth.
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One of my favorites! I also like it with a little bit of cinnamon.