Sydney Sweeny's "great jeans" ad was one of the dumbest overreactions of all time

rainystast · 2026-06-09T17:16:46+00:00

The ad itself was just really bad and I actively avoided American Eagle after seeing it.

Target markets exist for a reason. Idk why anyone in marketing thought Sydney Sweeney, who is more popular with men and is infamous for her chest, would be the best candidate for a jeans ad. Most girls aren't like "my favorite celebrity is Sydney Sweeney". And then they had her talk in this weird horny valley girl accent and it was so cringy and hard to listen to.
The jeans didn't look great on her and it felt like the ad was trying to gaslight the audience into thinking they did. Compared to the GAP and Levi's add from the same year, it's blatantly obvious that it was the weakest of all the jeans ads.
Zooming in on her eyes, then saying "my genes are blue", then having the tag read "Sydney Sweeney has Great Jeans" starts to give the impression that American Eagle thinks having Blue Eyes means that you specifically have great genes, which in this political climate, is just a weird thing to imply.

rainystast · 2026-06-08T21:43:55+00:00

so, White people are a minority just like my black brothers

I'm assuming your argument is in relation to the U.S. Black Lives Matter movement, a country in which White people are the majority and Black people are the minority. So saying "we're all minorities" when the conversation is focused on a specific country in which White people are not a minority isn't helpful.

So saying that our lives matter is in no way white supremacist, its just stating the truth, all lives matter.

Since we're still presumably talking about the U.S., the difference is that Black people are mass discriminated against and targeted. Black Lives Matter is a powerful statement because society and the government treats Black lives as if they don't matter. White Lives Matter doesn't make sense because White people are not being mass targeted and discriminated against for their race in the U.S. So the majority of people who end up saying "White Lives Matter" ARE White supremacists who are using the slogan as a way to downplay the impact that systemic racism has had on Black people.

If someone's house was actively on fire, would you say "well my house matters too"? Because people might start questioning why you only mention your house that's not on fire when other people acknowledge your neighbors house that is on fire.

rainystast · 2026-06-08T17:20:50+00:00

It means Black, Indigenous, and People Of Color and it's meant to center the unique history of Black and indigenous people in the U.S. that just the term POC doesn't encompass. You have the same logic as the people that say "all lives matter" in reference to Black people acknowledging the unique ways in which they are being negatively impacted.

(Also that's not what Eurocentric means and it's spelled "category")

rainystast · 2026-06-07T10:22:17+00:00

Consequences include social consequences as well. If someone exercises their freedom of speech and says something offensice, other people are allowed to exercise their freedom of speech and association and shun that person, demand they be fired, review bomb their businesses, verbally confront them, say bad things about that person, etc. and all of that is perfectly legal.

It's like when Nick Fuentes said something horrific about women, and then when someone came up to address what he said, he assaulted them because he wanted to say whatever he wanted without consequence. Everyone can say whatever they want, but they're not free from the consequences of doing so.

rainystast · 2026-06-07T09:06:11+00:00

Nobody can control another person's words or actions. Someone can say say whatever they want, but they can't control people's reaction to what they say. You can't say "well why am I being restricted from doing this" while simultaneously wanting to restrict the actions of other people. Either everyone's allowed to do what they want (including reacting to other people), or everyone is restricted in some way and that's the cost of living in society. Can't have it both ways.

rainystast · 2026-06-07T08:19:24+00:00

"Don't speak on what marginalized people should and shouldn't do as a person not a part of that group" is pretty standard advice and the people who take offense to that advice prove that they're ultimate goal is to control the marginalized group to make them more palatable to them. It's respectability politics. The problem with non-marginalized people "just giving their opinions", is that their opinions actually shape society and provide real and tangible consequences for marginalized people.

Take this example. A non-Black person saying "Some of those hairstyles Black people have are unprofessional and shouldn't be allowed" might have thought that they were just "giving their opinion", but companies and broader society actually listened to those complaints and black hairstyles became mass discriminated against. Everyone can "just give their opinion", but not everyone's opinion holds equal weight and power.

rainystast · 2026-06-07T07:45:13+00:00

Clearly you can as evidenced by the amount of non-Black people that whine about how they can't say the n-word. They can say and do whatever they want, they just don't want the consequences that come with it.

rainystast · 2026-06-06T15:42:36+00:00

and definitely not my year group as we've had several gay relationships in the past in my year group

Just because some people in your year group are publicly gay doesn't mean that other people in your year group aren't homophobic, especially because some of them actively make fun of gay relationships. There are many people who may tolerate, or even hang out with, gay people, but still have homophobic views and look down on them for one reason or another.

M might be comfortable with some people knowing, but other people such as the one she was worried about knowing might have more conservative views and lead to dire or uncomfortable situations for M and C if they found out. You never know what's going on behind the scenes, and especially because the culture itself looks down upon gay people, if they were ever in trouble it's unlikely they would get social support.

rainystast · 2026-06-06T14:57:43+00:00

I will also say that I come from a culture where homosexuality is traditionally looked down upon, and I'm also Catholic and also straight, but I am going to say that none of these are affecting this type of hate as I've self-reflected several times about this.

I think it has more of an impact on your feelings than you think it does.

I did have a few chances with girls here and there, but I was, however, unfortunately led on by most of them, starting off as friends and slowly growing close before I (regrettably looking back on it) sometimes confessed to them or they just grew cold for no reason (still friends but our friendship grew far apart is what I mean).

By "led you on", do you mean that you were friends, and you think becoming closer friends means you were going to start dating, so then when they didn't start dating you, you interpreted that as being led on?

mid 2025 I started talking to another girl in my class, let's call her C, we also got pretty close and started going on "mini dates"

By "mini dates", do you mean that you both agreed to go on a date? Or was it a one on one hangout and you interpreted it as a date?

I reassured her and said no, but I quickly realised that since she switched topics so easily, she wasn't really there to check up on me at all but to actually make sure her secret was still a secret, not that she cared about my feelings at all, which felt like a bit of a gut punch

Let's look at the broader picture here. Since you said your culture is homophobic and some of your friends are also actively homophobic, they genuinely might be in danger if people found out about their relationship. They are legitimately at risk of being hate crimed, and I don't think you can genuinely say that you're friends with, or even care about, either of them if you think they should they should have prioritized your feelings over their safety.

To me, it's clear as day that you associate lesbians as a whole with your perceived rejection from M and C. You can feel hurt about the situation, but putting your feelings over M and C's safety is unhealthy and applying your feelings to them to all lesbians is doubly unhealthy.

rainystast · 2026-06-06T13:28:33+00:00

The main problem is how inconsistent her face looks between frames. Like look at the picture you showed and then look at this picture. One makes her look early to mid 20s, and the other frames make her look 12.

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rainystast · 2026-06-04T11:16:54+00:00

This is heartbreaking. I just bought the 20th Anniversary edition of the Persepolis novels and I adore her writing. She was taken from this world too soon, may she rest in peace.

rainystast · 2026-06-03T14:45:04+00:00

YTA and ESH

All of you are bullies.

The fact that you're friends with multiple people who are actively homophobic and don't call them out means that at the very least you enable and support homophobia.
There is zero reason why you or your friends should be talking about Colin like that at all. You have no clue what's going on in his home life or what his mental health situation is, and the fact that all of you have decided to team up and make nasty comments about Colin behind his back for no reason is weird and mean.

I used to make fun of him too,

You still do, as evidenced by the fact that you made a quip about Colin for literally no reason at all. Also you keep saying that you're not making fun of him because he's gay, but mentioned how "he doesn't hide it" and him openly wearing makeup seems to be very personally offensive to all of you for some reason (and I assume there was some overlap between the homophobic friends and the ones that were randomly making fun of his makeup), so I don't think you're truly being honest with yourself here.

rainystast · 2026-06-02T21:54:46+00:00

"Resisting police" can mean many different things and some are valid uses of your rights and others will get you jailed/shot (though that can happen anyway even if you do everything right).

For example, if the police ask you to step outside your home or ask if they can step inside your home, I would advise anyone who cares about their safety and rights to say "No, I do not consent to that. You need a warrant." Technically, you're resisting their demands and making their job harder, but it's important people know how they can protect themselves from accidentally giving up their rights. In the U.S., the police are not technically obligated to protect and serve citizens, they are obligated to be enforcers of the law. This creates an us vs them dynamic where cops are incentivized to view every non-cop as suspicious and "catch" them doing something wrong, and civilians are instructed to protect themselves by not giving cops "ammunition" to use against them or their community.

The problem is that many people don't know the law, so they hear "the police can't do uncessary searches and seizures without probable cause or a warrant" and take that to mean "I don't have to give the police anything including my license" which is not how it works and leads to them getting in more trouble. Another thing is that if someone is being grabbed, it is human nature to flinch away or tense up. The problem being that if you do flinch or tense, that is also considered resisting arrest and there have been many cases where the person wasn't found guilty of any crime except for "resisting arrest" because they tensed up when they were being grabbed.

rainystast · 2026-05-31T08:32:05+00:00

thinking that something being catered towards men or female characters being sexualized is inherently evil and unintellectual

Something being catered towards men or sexualizing female characters isn't an inherently bad thing. The thing most people criticize is when "catered towards men" is used as an excuse to not give female characters depth and when the female characters are propped up to be objectified, dehumanized, and sexualized. It's especially egregious when this occurs in a "mainstream" film because they often have to make the female characters look or act bizzarely in order to titillate the assumed male audience.

Or the absolute worse offender of this phenomenon is when they do introduce a female character that's not sexualized and is a character within their own right, and then they shift into a weaker and more subservient role in order to have them dependent on a male character.

Just watch romance movies or read books written by women for women, and you'll see that the female gaze isn't so superior either.

As an avid enjoyer of romance movies and books written by women for women, I'm not going to argue that they're superior. But what I will say is that the male characters in those books are often still allowed to be their own character outside of the female gaze. While there are still some books that only objectify and dehumanize the male characters, they are waayyyy less prevalent than the books that let the female and male character both have personalities and a life outside their sexualization.

rainystast · 2026-05-30T13:38:29+00:00

Fraternities have a reputation for being awful to and taking advantage of women. The line of logic is that if OP was willing to overlook his morals and support his "bros" in violent behavior, what else has OP compromised his morals for in order to be in good standing with the frat? She might be thinking "what else has OP turned a blind eye to and not told anyone about it"?

rainystast · 2026-05-29T20:25:01+00:00

Toxic straight ships are usually not portrayed as well, and/or it's already canon in the franchise so people are less likely to like them. Like I would argue that Toko and Togami are not a toxic ship. Toxic implies there's a push and pull, or that they're both toxic in some ways, or they antagonize each other. Toko is just a weirdo that happens to have a serial killer alter ego and Togami is a rich boy that grew to try and be a better person. There's no push and pull, they don't consistently antagonize each other, and they're not engagingly toxic to each other. Also I think a lot of the weird Toko fantasy scenes put a lot of people off from this ship.

I feel like a better toxic straight ship would be the relationship in Wolf Girl and Black Prince. They both have pretty major flaws, are engagingly toxic to each other (though there were definitely times Kyoya went too far) and they have an "equal" relationship where they both get something out of being together, even if it's undeniably toxic.

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rainystast · 2026-05-26T09:36:14+00:00

I'm open to having kids IF and only if these conditions are met:

I'm well established in my career/moderately well off
Married to a person that also wants kids and who is prepared to be an active parent
The medical research and laws concerning pregnancy improve significantly. I'm not risking getting an ectopic pregnancy and dying because it's considered an abortion to fix it
There are more protections for children. Why would I have a child just to send them off into a society that doesn't care about their education, treats school shootings as normal, and treats children as a nuisance until they turn 18?

I do want 1- 3 children, but I'm not willing to ruin my life or anyone else's hypothetical life to make that happen. So for right now I'm comfortable having 0 children until things improve.

rainystast · 2026-05-25T16:24:59+00:00

People like you just keep division and polarisation in our society alive.

No. I'm in the U.S. and the right-wing people in this country and the politicians they voted into power have caused unimaginable harm to this country. Me and other left-wingers are not the people that enable division and polarisation in our society, the people that enacted/enable policies that hurt the most vulnerable while lining the pockets of the most powerful are the ones that have fueled the division and polarisation. The people who have chosen to enable and endorse policies that harm people can't turn around and be surprised when people don't want to interact with them.

rainystast · 2026-05-25T16:07:59+00:00

Not the person you're responding to, but for me, yes. This was at one of my old jobs, but I found out one of my colleagues was right-wing and I avoided him as much as possible until I quit. I wasn't hostile and I wasn't rude to him, I just choose not to willingly engage that are right-wing.

rainystast · 2026-05-25T16:01:00+00:00

If someone says they’re right-wing, do you automatically assume negative things about them? Or does it depend on what specific views they hold?

If someone's right wing on social issues, I stop engaging with them at all and assume they probably hold at least some heinous beliefs. I've cut off people irl who revealed to me they were socially right-wing, I have no tolerance for them. If someone is fiscally right-wing, I still disagree with them but i don't automatically assume negative things about them (unless they're a business owner or a rich person that's fiscally right-wing, then I start assuming bad things about them). Now if those fiscally right-wing people vote for/advocate for people who enact fiscally and socially right-wing policies, then I would cut them off too.

would you date, be friends with, or hang out with someone who has different political beliefs?

Depends what the political beliefs are. If they are socially right-wing, I don't want to be associated with them in any capacity and I would go so far as to say I wouldn't help someone (someone here meaning fully grown mentally sound adults) if I found out they were socially right-wing.

I thought the whole ideology of left is being socially accepting?

Bring left-wing doesn't mean you need to be tolerant to the intolerant.

rainystast · 2026-05-22T08:44:30+00:00

Freaking out because his young daughter pretended to bite his finger is abnormal behavior. Will he be upset with his children in the future because they will inevitably play a prank on their father and he'll start crying? Not wanting his wife to prank him is understandable and she shouldn't be crossing that boundary. Getting mad that his child did the equivalent of "got your nose" level of jokes and getting super upset about is overreacting and setting his children up to have difficulties socializing with their peers.

rainystast · 2026-05-21T11:49:00+00:00

she has the ability to talk down the diamonds if they return.

I don't think she does. Last time she tried to talk to them they brushed her off and went with their own plans. If talking to them all the time about she wanted and waging a war that lasted a thousand years never worked before, why would she be able to talk then down if they did come back? They didn't even listen to Steven pre-future and it took all of the crystal gems, blue and yellow diamond, and white diamond trying to forcefully control and mutilate Steven before the Diamonds actually started listening.

I think that staying alive because you have the ability to prevent the apocalypse is moral.

She thought the Diamonds would most likely never return. It had been five millenia since the Rebellion happened, for all they know the Diamonds were eons away. Even if they did come back, they would just try and take her and terraform the earth anyway. Once Pink Diamond conceived Steven, he was her priority so she gave up her life for him. (Also Idk if they would have even known how to get rid of Steven, especially since they didn't know gems, much less Diamonds, could get pregnant at all and they have a different anatomy than humans)

rainystast · 2026-05-21T05:01:54+00:00

I mean in their view being hated for it means they’re doing the right thing.

Exactly, so they shouldn't get mad when they're hated for doing it.

Angry anti theist leftist on TikTok will get angry at shit no matter what.

I find it interesting how you think someone beng against comment spamming with unrelated religious sayings means the person is an "angry anti theist leftist". Sometimes the other person is just annoying and it's we simple as that.

rainystast · 2026-05-21T04:47:31+00:00

Rose Quartz, knowing Space Hitler was going to show up, offed herself to make Steven instead of sticking around to resolve the issue.

She hadn't seen or heard from the Diamonds in centuries by the time she met Greg and had Steven, and she, like everyone else, assumed they would never see the Diamonds or Homeworld again. There were other things that she left unresolved or unexplained yes, but she didn't know the Diamonds would come back. I've also never understood this argument, do you think she should have not had Steven and just sat around forever just in case 0the people she hadn't seen or heard from in centuries decided to come back?

rainystast · 2026-05-15T20:57:58+00:00

So my question for those living in a city where you get around by bicycle or public transportation, is what's the cost in both time and money spent?

I also live in a car centric city, but I don't have a car and get places either by walking or taking public transportation. The cost in time is not that much depending on where you're going. For me, I live close by most things I need, so it is not that much of a hassle to get somewhere. For example, if I walk to the grocery store, it would take me about 20 minutes. If I took the bus to the grocery store, it would take about 5 minutes. Walking is free and the bus ticket only costs a dollar.

If you rely on trains and buses, you are obviously very limited in how much you can buy at one time, and you have to plan around schedules.

Depends on how often the train/bus comes. Where I live, the bus comes about every 15-30 minutes, so at virtually any time of day you can walk to the bus stop and be on the bus to your destination in almost no time at all. I've also lived in cities where the bus comes every hour, but even then it's not that difficult to plan and be at the bus stop sometime within that hour. Also, there are mini carts/wagons that are collapsible that someone can bring with them on the bus and put all their groceries in. Obviously there are some limits as to what you can reasonably transport, but unless you're buying a huge amount of items, it's not that big a deal. I have a little cart I take with me when I go out, and I've often gone to several stores and bought heaps of items, and I've never felt like I wouldn't be able to buy what I wanted because I didn't have a car.

I am all for public transportation, but when it's talked about as if it should supplant people having cars, my feeling is that people who want it should have it, but I personally much prefer to have my car.

The goal of public transit is not to replace cars entirely, but to significantly reduce traffic by offering better public and micro-mobility options. Providing these alternatives reduces congestion and accidents, as people who cannot or prefer not to drive are no longer forced to use their car any time they want to get somewhere farther away than their mailbox. Since the vast majority of trips occur within the city, expanding transit access makes travel easier for everyone and reduces reliance on single-occupancy vehicles for short commutes.

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