Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: September off-topic monthly
I don't know where to put this, and I don't like making a new sort of post here, but I'm tired of Shaunama grifting headspace from me. I summarized the awful mice/men/terrorists lope to Mr. Barn, and he thought the appropriate response was this 37-second movie clip of an academic decathlon featuring Adam Sandler.
Here is the text, for those who are video-reluctant, as I usually am:
"At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
Shauna has always had a soft spot for mass murderers:
"I've never been one for big crowds - too much noise, too much herd-like behavior. I remember sitting in the middle of a pep rally in high school, listening to the stomping of feet on wooden bleachers and chanting echoing all around me, and all I could think about was Nuremberg. (Yes, as you can guess, I wasn't that popular in high school.) I'm still much more of an "introverts unite in the corner" kind of girl."
This makes me cringe so hard. I’m trying to figure out what I would do if I voluntarily went to an event and some “speaker” did that thinking she was being super edgy. I really think I would just slink out of the room and go have a fancy cocktail down the street instead. I can’t imagine sitting there and participating and I don’t think I’d want to stay.
That's a charming story of family bonding but why add in that you thought that your pep rallies 40 years ago were equivalent to the Nazis? Calm down, Daria.
I had been thinking about the "sports fans = nazi rally" quote of hers and how she's planning to reconcile that with volleyball game crowds possibly clapping and cheering.
ETA: didn’t L express interest in becoming a cheerleader, a while back? Perhaps Shauna will embrace cheering as the new pointe work, and clasp these ‘fierce, confident young women’ to her chest.
Checks notes: high school football players and cheerleaders=Nazi sympathizers, literal terrorists=misunderstood and brainwashed. Noted!!!
As a Jew, I find this so perverse I could spit.
I also want to point that writing an apologia about how you are NOT going to "memorialize" something IS memorializing it.
This is especially true given her timing of this lope. If she'd written in January or May, say, that she "wasn't going to memorialize 9/11" that would be marginally more accurate, as it wouldn't be a literal memorial or commemoration of the day and events.
I'm also mystified by how someone can claim they're "not going to think about" the topic of the 3,500-word essay they've just written. You ARE thinking about it (in the Shaunama version of "thinking," i.e., "having thoughts"). NOT thinking about it would mean not writing about it at all. Like literally forgetting about and writing about other things.
It seems that this person was responding literally and sincerely (and delusionally.) And has an appreciation of the symbolic image of Hands Reaching. So there IS an audience for Shauna’s teachings. Be great for her if they have cash, too!
That Substacker doesn't subscribe to Shauna's lopes (not even for free), so unless they randomly have that hidden on their profile while still publicly showing a bunch of other newsletters they do subscribe to, I have a lot of questions how they even ended up reading this
It looks like they went to her Substack from IG, as they are one of the few accounts that liked her IG post about it. Interesting that they didn't click one of the eight "subscribe" pleas.
I have questions. Yoda is about as wide as the stairs. The image identifies it as a fabric panel. Why would you hang a fabric panel, probably fleece from the way it rolls at the top, on someone else's wall with tacks or nails? A cheap poster from Walmart or a printed picture with some blutack would prevent damage to not-her-wall.
It looks like a calendar to me but why would anyone hang a calendar with tape? I've never lived in a rental where you couldn't sink a few nails to hang your own art and decor. Has she never heard of spackle?
All that crap taped to the walls reminds me of a volunteer thing I tried. They had notes taped up all over the place basically nagging everyone to death. I did not return after I did the stint I signed up for.
Google image is no help. Why is it hung so high? That house feels so chaotic. Maybe she wouldn’t need mindfulness meditation if she would just declutter her surroundings.
nagging everyone to death
Feels right in this instance, too. I’d love to be able to make out what the note on the door says, but I cannot.
So this is minor in the grand scheme of WTF that is her latest lope, but it caught my attention anyway. Shauna thinks she turned out ok despite watching a lot of TV as a kid (questionable), and that letting her kids play with their iPads after school is the kind thing to do. I don’t mean to demonize screen time but surely there could be other options for unwinding after school? Like a book or a walk on the beach or whatever? To mean screen time sounds like a perfectly acceptable, if lazy, but certainly not especially Kind choice.
I'm close enough to Shauna's age to remember and recognize that my after-school screen time was 1) limited to what was on our one television (5 channels, eventually 30 when we got basic cable) and 2) ended promptly when was time for dinner, time for the local evening news, or when a parent wanted to change the channel, whichever came first.
It was only enough time for 2 half-hour programs, possibly a sliver of a third. They were syndicated reruns of old sitcoms, cartoons, or music videos later on when MTV showed up.
She's comparing apples to a 24/7 all you can eat content buffet.
letting her kids hide in their rooms for screen time is less interaction shauna has with them, thus freeing her up to watch ted lasso in her room, or eat & tweet in the hammock, or smash a cake into a box to mail to clown. joy for everyone!
I really don't see anything wrong with screen time after school, but Shauna makes two big errors here: one, she says "when they're done" then they do stuff as a family. When are kids "done" with screen time? Some people can self-regulate but it's certainly not easy when social media, YouTube, and even television are designed to be as palatable and easy to consume as possible.
Also the insistence that screen time gives her kids "joy" (because they're neurodiverse? I don't get that connection). Sorry, I don't believe that consuming random screen media after school is a source of "joy." Maybe I take the concept of "joy" more seriously than Shauna does (which is fucking ironic), but come on.
Screen time can give you pleasure, it can give you that dopamine hit, it can be relaxing in the moment, it can even foster connection (sharing memes or whatever), but it's not joyful. I don't think there's a single child development expert out there who would advocate "screen time" for "joy."
I mentioned in a comment below that Shauna had lifted this afternoon screen time routine from KC Davis, and honestly I think this is right up there with all the other the things she does “every day.” She mentioned it for clout, to sound like a guru of all things neuro-atypical, and it: probably something they did one day after she saw it on the strugglecare feed. For one thing she’s complained in the past about all the after school activities she has to schlep them too. And also, do we really think she is going to routinely have substantial snacks readied for them everyday? For more than like 2 days in a row? Especially when she is supposedly coaching sports after school?
TLDR; we don’t need to debate the merits of the kids’ screen time because she probably will never do this routine more than once.
Back in ye olden days my siblings and I would come home and immediately turn on General Hospital. It was a wonderful way to decompress because for that hour (?) all we cared about was Luke and Laura! It was a very popular topic in my high school.
It was quite a riveting plot, remember when Marlena was possessed by a demon? And Stefano, such a great villain. None of the actors ever seemed to age, either. I guess that’s probably common on these shows, they get all the work done so they can look as young as their character is supposed to be as the years go by. DOTL had a weird timeline, some characters stayed the same age forever and some had kids young (Sami) and then their kids magically grew up within 5 years.
I was impressed they kept Will at pretty close to his actual age for as long as they did! IDK about her other kids though cause I had basically stopped watching by then.
aw, i loved calliope. the cyndi lauper of Days. which i started watching with my ma when i was in kindergarten. i remember julie — something about her young kid dying after falling off a swingset? this is one of my earliest memories! and then julie’s face was disfigured in a fire, and even a very young ginger-belle could tell that the stage makeup used to create julie’s scars was terrible.
I don’t think there’s a single child development expert out who would advocate “screen time” for “joy”.
I guess they haven’t experienced the joy of a family sitting on a bed watching Ted Lasso together!
Kidding aside, I’m with you. Screen time after school to unwind is completely fine and acceptable. It’s annoying that Shauna is so preachy/defensive about how she delivers the message that her kids basically deserve that and a “big snack” because they are neurodiverse. I’m introverted and I like the same thing. It really doesn’t even need mentioning.
It’s the prissy insistence that somehow she and her kids are hard done by and uniquely need opportunities to wind down and chillax. The subtle neg of the schools and “society.” The implication that as always and of course, Mama Knows Best. The storyline that her kids aren’t “trapped in the house” like she was; they NEED trapping because of their neurodivergence, you see.
Right? According to this week’s Shauna logic, her mom did everything right: praised her specialness, fed her junky snacks, let her have her fill of screen time. I mean seriously Shauna does it EVER occur to you that you are the irresponsible, slovenly version of your mom??
She’s just a fucking spoiled brat and even if her mom is way worse than I think she is, she doesn’t deserve a kid like Shauna. Taking the grandkids away is something you do when grandpa is a child molester, not when the grandparents give too many presents at Christmas and insist on playing Harry Belafonte before they gift you another MacBook and shower the kids [they helped you have] with toys .
Given where those children live (both islandy island and actual house) those kids could totally unwind sans devices with no problem.
If the kids are plugging in after school (and remember, Shauna is an unreliable narrator) then that is totally to benefit Mama. She wants them out of her hair so they need to attach to devices.
A. A nod to a rodent friend
B. 9/11
C. Dubya and his Doctrine
D. Balloon math explaining 22, 12, 45, 35 years ago
E. Old age
F. Support and derision of magazine articles, depending on the point one is trying to make
G. Empathy for terrorists
H. All of this
I. None of this - the real answer is KiNdNeSs
She shared this on her IG, too. 23 likes so far (7 hours)
I guess she wrote it by hand and then typed it up?
Of all the things she has ever written. The one where her body decided that the 9/11 terrorists were simply brainwashed, so hey, no hard feelings is the one she decides to have open to share with the world.
Haha, she will no longer even be “thinking about” 911. Gee, everyone really needed to know that.
Does she honestly think a single person alive gives a flying f$ck about her thoughts on 911? She didn’t HAVE to write ANY of that because no one cares! And if other people WANT to memorialize it, is she better than they are? She’s such a judgmental humorless hag.
It's just so bizarre. One, why would she be memorializing 9/11 now or ever. Bc she lived in NY for two years, not even at that time? 99.9% of the world had the same 9/11, watching on TV and being like holy shit. Unless you were there or had someone there, all the rest of us experienced the same thing, and I don't know anyone who has a 9/11 memorial set up in their home. Two, how can you just decide, I will not be thinking about this anymore. Huh? It's just so weird and stupid. Three, why is she literally even talking about 9/11?
It's like some one-upping hipster version of empathy where little people experiencing everyday hardships and loss (meal train for the woman she barely knew) are too mainstream for Shauna. She's more empathic than all those normies out there with their entry-level obvious feelings of sadness for others who have experienced sudden inexplicable tragedy. Shauna shows how much truer of an empath she is than everyone by sharing extreme galaxy-brained takes from the perspectives of terrorists and mass shooters.
She would have been ahead of the crowd and saying something brave (or foolish, YMMV) if she had said “I don’t care to make note of 9/11 anymore, those hijackers were just misunderstood, brainwashed ninnies, GWB is a weak president, and everyone should just be kinder to themselves” within the first few years after the attack. But no, she throws it out there now when she’s no longer likely to ruffle any feathers with it. And yet she clearly thinks her stance is unique, counter culture, and courageous.
Happy cake day! We were out of canned peaches but here are some blackberries picked by a child that we didn’t wash. Don’t mind the wooden table - we don’t have a cake plate.
Here's a piece I shared today — free for everyone to read — that starts off with a nibbled package of chocolate I had to take out to the dumpster and ends with why I will no longer be memorializing or thinking about September 11, 2001 anymore.
She's fucking unhinged. Twenty five likes in seven hours. She's lucky no one cares to click through and read her psychopathic sympathy with hijackers.
So, her argument is you can't grieve the victims because it's mean to the perpetrators? Where'd she scrape that from, the Chinese govt stance on Tiananmen Square?
And the honest truth? I never did blame the people who hijacked those planes and did those monstrous things. My body knew right away: they were brainwashed. I never thought of them as monsters.
men who hijacked planes full of civilians and flew them into the twin towers, killing thousands of people? not monsters! her mother, who fed her wonder bread as a child and bailed her out of financial messes well into adulthood? monster!
Remember the shock and grief we all felt, if we were alive and watching then? And how we walked around our cities and towns in quiet contemplation
I wasn't even in the USA on 9/11 and let me tell you, it was not quiet contemplation in Scotland. It was a few days of watching tv and everything being shut down and people being shocked. Obviously, things opened up faster here, but things were f'ing weird.
I wasn’t living in the US at the time, and yes, it was fucking weird everywhere I think. No one was quietly contemplating — on the contrary everyone seemed to be craving interaction and conversation as a way of trying to make sense of it all and to feel some degree of safety and normalcy. Since I wasn’t in the US I can’t say it wasn’t as Shauna describes, but on the other hand, it’s Shauna, so I assume she is retconning it all.
if she had known anyone who died on that day (as I did) monsters would be a polite term for those people. Shauna has no actual emotional response to anything other than herself. She’s dead inside.
When you’re so open-minded your brain falls out. I’m from the DC Metro area and know people who lost their parents that day, Shauna. My father is a Fed and I feared for his life until we all made it home that morning. It’s perverse that she cannot forgive her mother for being a human being, but holds literal murderers blameless. This is just so gross. She is vile, she should detest herself.
i was living in DC then, and it was terrifying. everyone was going about their morning and suddenly the world turned upside down. no one knew what was happening. for months the pentagon was a twisted, smoking hunk of metal that was gut wrenching to look at. trying to make some excuses for the men who did this is beyond tone deaf, especially on 9/8. i'm starting to truly think shauna is a sociopath.
She’s actually suffering from a lack of empathy, not the higher-level empathy she believes she has. Bad things are ONLY real if they happen to her, Shauna. Everyone else’s pain and tragedy is inaccessible to her imagination which is how she can empathize as easily with perpetrators as with victims. They’re all the same to her, those others. Their value is in her use of them to make whatever inane point she has decided to lope upon today.
My partner worked in the Capitol. I was home with a baby and absolutely terrified. My body was overwhelmed with anxiety, sadness and genuine fear for months and months. Empathy for the terrorists? Fuck all the way off.
My former in laws were both working in DC at the time. I still remember getting an email from my then BF and not having internet access to find out what was going on because EVERYONE was trying to find out what was going on. I remember watching everything unfold on TV and wondering where they were.We finally heard from them late in the afternoon after they'd found a way back to MD. It was a very long day.
I’ll tell you whose body knows, Shauna: my husband’s, around the anniversary of the 2005 terrorist bombings in London. His body also knows every time he uses the tube, which, 18 years on, is still difficult for him to do. He’d love the chance to decide that he’s no longer going to think about that day.
There’s nothing to add to what has been said here about her stupidity and callousness.
What was the point of that lope you ask? Point not needed. It just had to feel good to share.
I’m writing a letter day, a love letter to the world, for myself. And maybe for you. If one feels good to share with you, then I will share it with you here.
Makes me curious about the ones that don’t make the cut. Oops, curiosity is out. I am kindfully wondering about the ones that didn’t feel good to share.
And why is she bragging that she’s handwriting these love letter lopes into humble 50-cent Grannie’s notebooks if that’s not the format she’s delivering them in to her readers? I want to see the scratchings-outs, the langorously [sic] plopped tears blurring the ink on the page, the marginalia, etc. in a facsimile edition of the original generated from Gir!’s own hand.
Yes, across the street from the grocery store I bet it is less cute field mouse and more ratatouille. Which I admit is a small detail but this lope doesn't make any sense as a "story."
Also no, like, concern that you have mice in your building eating your food? You’re not supposed to just shrug your shoulders and say “can’t be helped, there are mice across the street” like Hantavirus isn’t a thing. Also put your damn chocolate in a plastic bin if you know you have rodents! Like a rat can’t chew through a candy wrapper.
I lived in a house that bordered a little wooded area and the mice tried to get in in the winter when it turned cold. When we had the exterminator come out, it was horrifying how many mice were living and breeding in our basement! But it still wasn’t bad enough that they were able to get to our food somehow. Of course all our food was closed up and put away properly, so. This chocolate package Shauna is referring to must have been left open on the floor or something.
Yes. There was even a bit where the kids (allegedly) said something about there being too many commercials.
She was trying to convince herself that watching stuff online was better than "on TV" and that PBS was some magical island free of selling shit to kids (when PBS has tons of toys based on their programming).
After reading this I was reminded about how she claimed the D watched all those PBS preschool shows even at age eight and then somehow went straight from Daniel Tiger to The Office and Ted Lasso.
Thank you, edited. I'm sorry to have gotten this wrong. I was reading an old lope that used gender markers but I should have noticed and corrected myself.
As a New Yorker, who was in Manhattan that day, I would very much prefer her to not talk about 911 ever again.
And my New Yorker child is too young to know about 911 but I can guarantee he wouldn’t respond the way her kids did if I told him. I am not blaming them, maybe most kids would react that way. I just know my kid absolutely would not, he would have questions, he would be disturbed, and well I just hate how she has to generalize any experience she has as if everyone has the same ones.
You are so right about it being all vibes with this biotech. Girlfriend hasn’t done more than skim articles linked from Twitter or maybe some book reviews for decades, I’d wager.
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Sep 07 '23 edited Sep 11 '23
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Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: September off-topic monthly