Oh, Good, This Is One Post I Don't Have To Make Myself! Thank You!

What does the asker think "propaganda" means? That's the least weird explanation for this, is that they've never actually learned what propaganda means, but their childhood guess, that it means something like "antisemitism" or "Communism" or "dictatorship" slots in to what they hear people saying close enough that they never realize they're misunderstanding everything.

If the asker doesn't engage with politics or history or social justice much, there wouldn't even be much chance of anyone noticing, until they get confused enough to send this ask.

how are you people alive.

There are books now that are specifically used as status symbols: people use them to appear to be the person they want others to see them as.

Consumer culture has the distressing effect of enhancing the human tendency to convince oneself that one liked something, for the sake of conformity and peace of mind. People tell themselves that they liked what they were told they should like.

Reviewers often wind up with extreme biases for and against certain types of works, for similar reasons to the above. It's also not too crazy to consider there may be some corruption in the literary review community.

Marketing is now a powerful discipline with cutting-edge psychology behind it. When used by trained professionals instead of incompetent corporate outcasts, it can essentially function as mind control, even for the well-informed.

Also, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

TL; DR: Don't feel bad about hating something everyone else seemed to love. There are many reasons why terrible books can get good reviews. And your own opinion is still a valid opinion, even if it's contradictory.

the sense of horror when you finish a book that was Ass Bad and you go to see what fellow haters are saying but all the reviews say it is the best thing they've ever read. feel like i just saw my reflection in the mirror move all by itself or something

Spotted Towhees (Pipilo maculatus) look like someone took an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) and tried to make it "edgy."

By Pranav Tadepalli, CC BY-SA 4.0

And they really are edgy little fuckers, too. They'll pull up every single shoot that pokes its head above ground in your garden, and are very clever at getting through barriers. They do not fear humans, not further than you could lightly toss one.

If you find a roadkill or mysteriously-dead towhee in Spring, it's worth its weight in gold, because they are deterred by a corpse of their own species. The next problem is putting it somewhere these ground-feeding birds will notice it, without making it a free snack for the first scavenger that comes along.

I repeatedly spend an increasingly unnerved 10 dream-minutes trying to first turn off the clock radio, then unplug it, then trying to figure out where the annoying music is coming from... I don't actually stop dreaming and wake up until I'm fully panicking because I can't shut off the Eldritch Radio From Hell.

woke up this morning, rolled over, and very confidently tried to blow out my alarm clock like a candle. absolutely no precedent for that.

rudolph the red nosed reindeer

nosferatu? non. VOSferatu. c'est pas mon problème

YES, Fizz's parts are the ones that are living rent-free in my head, oh, I know the empty sick feeling in his stomach far too well!

Fizz in Mastermind

The Headless Snowman Flies Again! by Austin Pardun

@comicaurora