The message from the Elmo account, the follow-up and the Sesame Street account linking mental health resources is some of the most wholesome stuff I've seen in a while.
It's easy to get in your feelings, and it would've been easy for a social media "win" to play into the doom and gloom or to add to it. Or even to ignore it! But the people responsible for those decisions definitely count as some of Mister Rogers' helpers. I'm grateful for that.
Mr Rogers could really help this world right now.
"Feelings are mentionable and manageable."
It isn't that everyone is special, like superheroes. Everyone is special because we are the only one experiencing the world how we experience it and how we react, in anger or in love can make the world a better or a worse place. He wanted the world to be a better place by letting children love and be safe, and work through the negative feelings in healthy ways.
Mr Rogers testifies in front of Congress for funding is a great video because the man in charge was completely ignorant of what Mr Rogers was doing but in minutes was able to change his mind about how the funding for public television education programs would clearly help children.
I've seen this before, and I watched every second of it again tonight. An amazing human.
A real time peak at what happens many years after selling out the health of your citizens so that insurers can generate money off of misery.
Just wait for the 23AndMe liquidation sale.
They're financially fucked and your genome is going to get sold out to advertisers and life insurance companies.
That site always sounded like a poly dating site to me. Is the domain for sale?
Been looking at therapists for my teenage daughter, she’s been debating therapy for a couple of years and has recently fully committed.
We have good insurance and are financially secure, and holy shit it’s still going to cost an extraordinary amount. I don’t understand how anyone struggling with financial insecurity could even consider having access to therapy as an option.
What a fundamentally broken system, there is not a single type of care that exists that is accessible to the people who need it.
As someone who is indeed struggling with financial insecurity, on top of depression, anxiety, and I’m pretty sure adult ADD, it sucks a great deal. My spouse also has similar issues, and so we try to just find the joy in our kids, but I’m worried about passing our issues on to the kids. I truly don’t know what to do at this point.
And I just thought I'd reply to say thats 1 of the countless issues facing average people today.
I came to the comments to see if someone just summarized what the article is about so I can decide whether or not I want to read it.
Since no one else did, here you go:
"Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?" the X page for Elmo posted. A barrage of responses – tens of thousands of them – were brutally honest and downright cynical about the dread people are feeling.
Here is Biden's (or his account's) response:
I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.
Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.
Even though it's hard, you're never alone.
Ask for help? This country is built around avoiding meaningful help for others because of “freedom”. You are free to live in a box under a bridge. Free to lack upward mobility. Free to be jailed because of homelessness, drug addiction or mental health problems. Free to lose your home because of a health problem. Help is “socialism” in this country. Can’t have that. Gotta have those freedoms instead.
In America, you are not free to live under a bridge. People get run off of that situation all the time.
The bridges around here all have no trespassing signs. In English and Spanish despite this being Indiana.
You'd think they'd at least have it written in Indian.
:P
You’re free to go find another bridge to live under.
Garfield, the animated orange cat, famously hates Mondays.
Actually top-notch journalism. There's that one fucker out there who still didn't know who Garfield was.
The older Garfield is, the more people there are who don't know much about him even if they know who he is.
Someone's a 10,000
That's me! Didn't realize they ever animated Garfield. Always thought he existed in panel cartoons only.
The Garf has been in animated form since 1988.
ImSorryJohn
Elmo asked how everyone was doing, the replies were so bad president of the United States had to come in.
Who got that on their bingo card?
If you are really experiencing anxiety, stress, addiction and/or dread, sometimes it's important to get it out there, acknowledge your situation and don't try to hide it from yourself and pretend everything is fine. Then get yourself the support you need from others and also try to change things, but recognizing the signs is a first step.
What I need is for the people creating problems in my life to get their shit together and fucking stop. No amount of support from others will achieve that.
"Wow! Elmo is glad he asked! Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you. #EmotionalWellBeing"
Elmo lying. Elmo sorry he asked, just wanted to sell more junk. Existential dread no good for selling junk! And slogans not further good policies!
I forgot HBO bought Season Street.
HBO/Discovery has an exclusivity deal, which expires in 2025. The show is owned by Sesame Workshop. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/sesame-street-hbo-max-pbs-deal-1235252239/
Inb4 MAGAts claim that Sesame Street was bought out by dark Brandon to spread his propaganda.
Part of the problem, IMO, is found in the deep divisions presently found in our country. Most forward progress comes from the network in which people exist (notwithstanding the myth of "rugged individualists" as the secret to success). Our present society is riven with deep divisions along generational, ideological, political, socio-economic, and racial lines. If we want to break out of the present "us vs. them" trap we're in, we have to begin to reach across the divisions in everyway possible. (And I am not suggesting that we give up our differences, only that we reference them only when they are appropriate to the overall welfare of our network/society/culture.)
It's a lengthy quote, but it comes from one of the foremost authorities on democratic leadership, James MacGregor Burns:
"The function of leadership is to engage followers, not merely to activate them, to commingle needs and aspirations and goals in a common enterprise, and in the process to make better citizens of both leaders and followers. To move from manipulation to power-wielding is to move from the arithmetic of everyday contacts and collisions to the geometry of the structure and dynamics of interaction. It is to move from checkers to chess, for in the “game of kings” we estimate the powers of our chessmen and the intentions and calculations and indeed the motives of our adversary. But democratic leadership moves far beyond chess because, as we play the game, the chessmen come alive, the bishops and knights and pawns take part on their own terms and with their own motivations, values, and goals, and the game moves ahead with new momentum, direction, and possibilities. In real life the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons." ~Burns, 'Leadership,' (1978)
Edit: typo
Jesus Christ that’s the worst website I’ve had the displeasure to visit all year :(
I learned of the below site recently to help avoid paywalls and crappy websites etc
Anyone remember when Elmo first started showing up and the horrible truth that Sesame Street was dead and would never wake up sunk in?
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