Ugh

[greenstorm]

My tolerance for unkindness has been exceeded today. At work the crowd from the other office swept in, and someone else was back from another work assignment, and my office is all cubicles. There was one conversation where someone was extending the benefit of the doubt to a third party not involved in the discussion, and three conversations full of spite and malice and dissection of flaws and wishing people ill. Then the Queen died, and my facebook feed lit up with spite about that "good riddance" and "thank goodness" and "don't tone police". About someone's death.

I can't deal with this. I guessI couldn't deal with it last time someone died and everyone celebrated either, but it feels extra bad right now.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

it's rough out there. do you use FBPurity? it's a browser extension that lets you blacklist words & phrases - so for instance i have "trump" and "christmas" blacklisted bc i can't tolerate either of them, and it really makes my feed an easier place to hang out. you could remove references to the queen or colonialism for a while, perhaps.

one thing i'm struggling with even as i sympathize with some of the celebration (in the form of "this person whose policies & actions hurt my people is now gone" - that part i understand), is that it's not clear to me that anything will actually change with Charles on the throne. i mean, maybe? but he doesn't seem like a big change from Elizabeth to me, in terms of international policy which i think is where the real conflict/concern lies. i suppose we'll see.

[greenstorm]

Yeah, that's kind of what I meant - everyone accepts the queen as a figurehead, and so they celebrate the death of the figurehead with a ghoulish glee in a way they seldom to never celebrate the smaller but more common and meaningful victories that are decolonization-- with real emotion. If there was some real change from it I would be, not happy, but probably able to tolerate it better.

I don't use anything of the sort, no. I'm happy to snooze folks for 30 days, which is an innate fb option, and then if I find I've snoozed someone three to six times in a row to just unfollow them or unfriend them as appropriate.

As a Canadian I've sworn a couple oaths to the Queen (citizenship, government work), which seemed pretty normal to me, but it will feel very weird and medieval to swear to a King.

[yarrowkat]

the one thing that seems like it might change, from what I'm reading, is that some Commonwealth nations may choose to exit the commonwealth in favor of being wholly their own, and would be able to do so. so that's a thing.

it never occurred to me that Canadians have to swear to the crown. very interesting! certainly the idea of a King of England feels impossibly outdated, we don't have those anymore! i keep seeing that Elizabeth's reign was the longest ever at 70 years but also apparently Victoria reigned for 64 years.

[greenstorm]

Native-born Canadians don't, but it's part of the citizenship oath for new citizens.

Yeah, she's been in power basically as long as my mom has been alive, and she's on all the money. It'll be hopelessly weird to have a king on our money, I wonder if that will change.

I did not know there was an opt-out in the commonwealth upon a monarch's death! That would be a thing, though less a thing than Brexit I suspect.

[yarrowkat]

yeah, i read that they will stop printing coins & bills & postage stamps with her portrait and phase in ones of Charles. so that'll be strange.

[greenstorm]

So weeeeiiiiiiirrrrd.