The user misses that it is only the northern hemisphere that gets cold and dark, not the entire earth.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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The Northern Hemisphere is where 90% of the world's population lives. If they're assuming they're reaching an audience of fellow English speakers, it's even more disproportionate toward the Northern Hemisphere. The holidays they're implicitly describing like Christmas and New Year's (as celebrated in the winter months) originated and developed in the Northern Hemisphere. This kind of defaultism isn't unwarranted.
On one hand I'd assume it can be annoying to have someone do all these default assumptions when you do not fit into them, "consider people unlike you exist and it might feel unwelcoming to have many people assuming X is true for everyone," but on another hand if I wanted to include everyone ever I'd probably have to stop making off-the-cuff remarks like what I assume the OP was doing, and edit everything I post to be inclusive of everyone all the time, when sometimes I really just wanted to share a generic thought I had with people. I do respect efforts to be more inclusive! I am happy to switch my language to be more inclusive, usually, but I also sometimes want to make an observational post without writing a bunch of disclaimers and considering everyone every time.
Or maybe I share it to all my friends for whom I know X is true, but because it's on a public platform it gets screenshotted and then there is a discussion in the comments about annoying defaultism. Which is another conversation entirely: context collapse. And how much I'm responsible for when making a public post: can I ever reasonably talk to a smaller audience on a public post, or will it always be "consider you made this public, your fault for trying to talk to a smaller audience when you made the post public"? How much do I have to keep in mind that because it is public, everyone can see it and participate, even if realistically I think it will not be propagated and screenshotted because I'm a nobody who tries to avoid the type of "sick burn" that goes viral? Something to keep in mind in the back of my head so I should not post anything identifying but I can otherwise reasonably post to just an audience of you and this thread, or something to keep at the forefront of my mind and so I should ensure I'm including everyone and making sure that people who did not start off reading this thread would be able to understand my tone and intent and point just from an isolated screenshot of my post?
I wanted to reply with "you can just opt out of those expectations and nap, you know" and then thought of how someone would probably come at me, possibly gently but also possibly "how easy is your life that that's an option!? You spoiled, privileged bitch! I have so many unbreakable commitments in the winter and reasons why I cannot just make it easier and why this post is right and we all have too many expectations," realized my reply might be both uninclusive of life perspectives I did not consider and insensitive, and did not post it. I do wonder how many times I have held back and could have contributed without backlash, and how many times this habit of mine is saving me people yelling at me on the internet.
TL;DR: communication hard
Come to the southern hemisphere. We have cookies and pavlova.
This is southern hemisphere erasure and I won't stand for it.
Down here it's too damn hot to do anything anyway.
How do y’all spend the winter solstice?
I'm guessing they spend it in June
As the dreaded extrovert who chats in a nerdy online space, I rather enjoy the holiday season. Having an excuse to spend time with people I like, thinking of them, the whole holiday cheer thing, looking at the world outside and seeing people put effort into decorating things to make them look nice.
disclaimer
Yes yes I understand all the many people who have to visit family they hate, who feel decoration is stupid and just keeping up with the Joneses, surges in how busy they are at their awful job, introverts getting their social battery drained too much because of social expectations around the holidays, parents who do not make enough money to afford a present from Santa for their kid and face hard questions from their kids. Please let me enjoy things, especially on a post in !NiceMemes, although perhaps I am the fool for posting "business is fun" on an introvert-coded "why are the holidays so busy" post.