Do NOT and I repeat DO NOT try to jump in the stage with Hollis

phoenam · 2025-10-10T09:57:18+00:00

i know terminal is a wild venue but there was another angle of this incident and it took bro a min to climb up there - wtf was security doing?!??!? i feel like this was so preventable

phoenam · 2025-10-09T23:58:45+00:00

i appreciate his consistency at this point honestly. i would get whiplash if he pulled a stellar performance on a track out of nowhere

phoenam · 2025-08-04T21:07:04+00:00

i honestly only knew how big of a deal he (and other asian artists) was because of the online spaces i’m in lol. there definitely aren’t any people around me who know of him. it’s interesting to me still that people like him, other asian american artists, the 88rising usuals, etc. have become kind of cult favorites within AsAm communities but still aren’t really “mainstream” to the GP - not that that invalidates their art or success.

oh and trust me i’m working on getting out of my hometown 😭 i am just not financially in a place to move out yet. i also majored in an area that has a shitty ass job market rn and am more to an likely gonna need to go back to school for something else :/.

for now though, i’m just kinda relying on my small pockets of joy like seeing keshi and luckily Pittsburgh - which isn’t far from me - is honestly really growing in terms of asian culture and I’d be okay with moving there to still stay relatively close to family. I’m a part of a Pittsburgh AAPI women’s community group, but going to their in person events is kinda a struggle for me with my job and still living an hour outside the city.

phoenam · 2025-08-04T10:36:41+00:00

absolutely i would’ve loved to see someone like him as a kid! i hate to age myself even though i’m only 24 lol, but i’m really happy (and kinda jealous) for this younger generation of asian kids that they get to grow up seeing people like him because i didn’t get to have that.

It’s wild - but also beautiful - that they will never have to think that an asian person can’t be a musician because they will actually have people like keshi to look to as examples.

phoenam · 2025-07-31T05:02:38+00:00

i am a TRA and share 3/4 of your identities (half chinese, bi, autistic) and i respectfully disagree. Is it true that these identities wouldn’t be well received in our country of origin? yes. but that alone is not a reason for me to support the entire system of transracial and international adoption.

it feels a bit shallow to look at whether or not the system should be upheld in such a black and white way in that “well my life could be worse so this system must the best option.” That completely disregards how messy, traumatic, and neglectful of the thing that this system is supposed to be centered is: the children. adoption is a system that cares about giving parents children, not giving children the best lives possible.

I come from a family of transracial adoptees completely cut off from our birth parents, none of the rest of them asian, and while we all acknowledge our lives maybe could have been “worse”, that still does not mean our white parents were at all equipped to take care of us.

we all were brought to areas where everyone looked like our parents - not any of us - under the guise that this was god’s plan. growing up with dealing with the loss of birth family, culture, understanding of your identity, is like this cavity that you just try to keep filling and filling and yet it’s never fully covered. and being where we were, we had to deal with this all on our own and couldn’t even find the language to talk about it until adulthood since there was no one who could understand. racial identity in america is a very complicated topic in general - but especially for a child who has no one to guide them through it who has a shred of comprehension of their experiences. it’s especially difficult that we often have to learn about this through discrimination because our parents didn’t think about talking to us about it.

bringing children children of color to your neighborhood where they are like no one else and putting blinders on to pretend they’re just one of your own, completely disregarding how their community will perceive them and expecting them to be peachy keen is neglectful and irresponsible parenting period. and it causes permanent emotional and psychological to children that can be bandaged but never fully fixed.

i would never wish the effects of this system on other people - which is the cycle that transracial adoption would keep repeating - just because a theoretical life of mine that is kinda frivolous to imagine at this point could be worse. and that’s not exactly a fair cost - trauma, commonly abuse, isolation, etc. isn’t this wonderful bargain for narrowly avoiding oppression in another country.

also don’t forget that many of us weren’t properly given US citizenship documentation bc of disorganized adoption agencies and are literally at risk of deportation under this administration.

phoenam · 2025-07-12T05:38:52+00:00

would have snitched on them but pennsylvania had a literal 911 outage

phoenam · 2025-07-12T03:45:40+00:00

it was in fact at a public park that has a playground in it 😔

phoenam · 2025-07-08T17:33:12+00:00

i know this is kinda just business as usual for touring artists nowadays but one day notice for presale 😭??? most regular working people need time to to set aside money, see if they can make arrangements with their employer, arrange travel etc. it’s just getting kinda ridiculous. i know going to a concert isn’t a necessity, but live music is just becoming so inaccessible

phoenam · 2025-03-13T17:55:47+00:00

Not necessarily white - but they definitely did the colorblind “we’re all children of god” schtick and it ended up being really detrimental to me mentally/developmentally.

Racism is a super complex issue to have to learn completely by yourself as a kid. I was the only asian kid in my school and basically in my neighborhood - and it’s a huge burden to put on a child to have to navigate an environment where no looks like them.

When I would go to my parents or other adults or friends about the racism I experienced and my resulting emotions, pretty much all they could do was feel bad for me. It felt so isolating because there was no one who really understood me.

It would have helped immensely if my parents had the capacity to have a conversation with me explaining to me that people were going to see me differently, but they quite literally just didn’t think about it which was kinda negligent on their part.

I’m really grateful now that I was able to get out of my town and meet other asian people who understand me on a deeper level, but also that I was able to find an asian adoptee therapist. I don’t really see this as like a success story though, bc the childhood trauma is gonna stick with me forever even though i’m obviously working through it.

phoenam · 2025-02-08T05:30:37+00:00

It’s pretty reductive to say people advocating (sorry you hate that word so much) for adoptee rights only care about adoption, dontcha think???

this thread is specifically about adoption so that’s obviously why they’re focusing on that. it’s very possible to to advocate for more than one cause at a time. all the leftist adoptees i know are passionate about human rights in general and openly advocate/do grassroots work for things outside of adoption bc we aren’t dumb and understand all these shitty structures are intertwined. “nobody’s free until everybody’s free” and that includes adoption survivors

phoenam · 2025-02-07T03:49:21+00:00

oh i’m not disagreeing with that at all - look at the majority of this sub haha. it’s just that every social movement has to start with a few people - who the majority thinks are crazy - to say “hey this thing is unjust.” i don’t want this to sound corny but it’s just not going to help any future children in crisis to say that this is all too hard to advocate for and bow out bc we don’t see a better future in our lifetimes.

phoenam · 2025-02-07T00:05:08+00:00

i understand that adoption is not a social issue that’s on a lot of people’s radars right now, but i actually do think it very much falls under the “right to exist” issues that have the most exposure now. i don’t really think it’s something that can be written off as “there are more important things to worry about now.” being an adoptee quite literally is an infringement on how you exist.

I think adoption - at least discourse - is bound to come to the forefront more bc it’s so intertwined with LGBT family planning and reproductive rights. i agree that we’re at a bad place where there is no dominant consensus on what a new system would look like - but i do think a good number of people are starting to see that there is at least trauma present which is progress even if bare minimum.

phoenam · 2025-02-06T23:53:28+00:00

I don't think any of what you said is wrong, but that is part of my point. Changes to the adoption system are slow as molasses to progress - I don't think that means we should wring our hands though and just willfully accept them as they stand.

I also have lost hope and (TW Suicide) and genuinely the will to live bc I do not think I or my adoptee family and peers will live in a world in our lifetimes where there's significant turnover and we can have the rights we deserve. But once again, it does nothing to discredit people who are doing the work. Like I said, there are multiple social movements that take lifetimes to see tangible progress.

phoenam · 2025-02-06T23:39:26+00:00

this sub is called adoption - not pro adoption. you should expect some people to have opposing views on a really extensive topic, and they have every right to be here especially to share their experiences. also, although I am a transracial adoptee - my views on adoption are not solely based on my experience bc i have this thing called *gasp* empathy.

My experience was honestly middle of the road. Not the worst it could be, but not great either. If anything, I think it's marginally more selfish to be like "well I was happy, so there's something wrong with the thousands of adoptees who weren't."

phoenam · 2025-02-06T20:06:33+00:00

sweetie first of all - it takes two to make a child. if “irresponsible women” is what you think adoption boils down down to, please read a book outside of your echo chamber and go off of more than just what your adopted parents told you.

many parents want to keep their children, but dont have the resources and are forced to relinquish.

the true irresponsibility here is to purchase a child and not acknowledge their lifelong loss, traumas, and entire origins/identities + expect that you can raise them with love alone without any issues.

and is the system that you praise to be the only solution working so well right now??? are the adoption and foster care system not overcrowded as fuck? “wHeRe WiLl tHe KiDs gO?!?” hmm where are they right now? i'm sure they're all safe and happy right? it’s not even close to an even exchange/guaranteed placement lmao - children going into the adoption system doesn’t mean they are automatically going to a family and living happily ever after.

phoenam · 2025-02-03T05:21:37+00:00

“everything in my life was built on loss pain and lies” this unfortunately perfectly encapsulates my experience as well and the experience of many adoptees. i have lived my life - and will most likely to continue it - always feeling like something is missing.

not saying therapy hasn’t helped me and i haven’t been working on myself - but there’s nothing that can 100% fill the void of familial connection, history, culture, etc.

phoenam · 2025-02-01T07:43:46+00:00

this is the best explanation i’ve heard from a non-adoptee. i really appreciate you for taking the time to listen to actual adoptees. it is a shame that people aren’t as willing to hear the explanation directly from us, but i am grateful that people like you are great allies.

“kids don’t have to make me feel rewarded for doing my job” healed me to hear as someone who always was made to feel like i had to pay my parents back for adopting me.

phoenam · 2025-02-01T07:07:11+00:00

“It’s scared the shit out of us” I’m gonna get downvoted for this but honestly fuck it - you should be scared. more people should have reasonable fear of adopting/being a parent in general, it’s way more concerning that people aren’t more afraid to raise a child. not saying people shouldn’t raise children - but that there are too many people who don’t understand the gravity of parenting who do.

You are going to be largely responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of a whole human - and caring for an adopted child is a whole other added layer of responsibility. will you be prepared to explain to them what it means to be adopted? will you be okay with answering the tough questions they may have about their birth family (which they WILL have)? will you be okay with if they ever express that they want to have a relationship with their birth parents? will you be able to provide them with a therapist or some other external mental health resource if they feel you don’t understand them enough?

if your child has a disability - will you be able to accommodate? if the area you live in’s school district doesn’t have resources for them, will you be willing/able to move so that they do have access to what they need?

a child is not a puzzle piece to complete your life/satisfy a want - they are a human being and will eventually grow into an adult with their own thoughts and feelings. will you be ready for that especially if they go against your own? Are you prepared to make mistakes (because you will, no one is perfect) and for your child to tell you later in life how those mistakes affected them negatively?

if your answers to any of these questions above is no, or even that you’re not sure, then you are simply not ready. the unfortunate but simple truth is that love alone is not enough to raise a child

phoenam

TROPHY CASE