ITT I will talk a bunch of shit on whatever you direct my attentions to

b i r d w a t c h i n g

So

I've got two posts on Tumblr giving me a steady flow of notes right now, and as it so happens they're both about birds. One of them was me slapping a pun on some toys I got out of a capsule machine and is sitting pretty at about 230,000 notes. That's got enough tags/comments to the tune of "new pokemon confirmed" to kindle in me a fiery contempt for people who don't take the time to check if a "joke's" been done yet, to say nothing of the nauseating round it did through a grody web of DDLG/kink/pedophilia apologia blogs. Stop adding kiddie stuff to your sexsthetic, you sick fucks

The other post is my recent craft project to which someone responded:

Never underestimate the power of the birb fandom.

Now, there's a juicy irony to my probably-autistic ass getting such a kick out of being able to place correct names and classifications to each animal I come across, but positively bristling at being lumped into a nebulous nongroup by a total internet stranger. I don't make/collect cool bird-adjacent stuff to appeal to a bunch of fuckerers I've never met; trying to create community out of things you like rather than things you do is screeching miles of facile away from "a good starting point for a genuine human connection"

I'm not saying you're a "fake bird fan" if you reblog a good looking pile of feathers without knowing its scientific name (I'm a judgmental enough jerkoff though that I'll probably be thinking it if you fuck up the common name though), but guess what! We've trained computers to recognise that pictures contain <arbitrary animal>; having a finite list of shit-you-prefer and being able to hit "reblog" on that noise does not make you an interesting human being!!!

Placed back to back with the kink shit it's actually kind of hilarious how mad I am about this, but hey! this thread is my garbage heap and I'll crow about whatever I want from atop my tyre-fire-spire.

Anyway,

birdwatching is a shitty fandom in the more traditional sense of shitty fandoms. The Dudes (not to be confused with "dudes" in the birding parlace, which apparently better-translates to "filthy casuals") attempt to codify a wonderful opportunity for inspiration+education+teamfriendliness into a cock-measuring contest of how many birds you see within a single season/year/lifetime. Of course, "winning" is restricted to the wealthy few who can afford to travel around the world, or who have enough systemic privilege that the prospect of selling all their shit and setting off on an international birdromp seems "fun" instead of "terrifying".

They also do that Archetypal Bad Nerd shit where they try to make their hobby "respected" by way of exclusion. "Birdwatching" is, apparently, not used for "serious" people-who-watch-birds, who should be called "birders" (or "twitchers" if they combine travel with rare-bird-spotting). It's apparently also acceptable to shit on people who show up to a rare bird zone and photograph it, y'know because to hell with the three-billion odd people with an internet connection but no immediate means to show up in some fuckwhere marshland to get a load of that smew. Makes a Manu want to go take selfies with a grebe just for the satisfaction of knowing I'm pissing off some nerds, except I'm honestly as bad as these tossers because if I actually saw a grebe while out and about, I would sit down, hold up the group, and be very ticked off at anyone who won't shut up and let me watch this floating babybus of a waterfowl in well-deserved peace.

Grebes are great. Organised birdwatching- sorry, birding - is essentially Pokemon Go, but aggressively Victorian England with waaaay too much of the shitty social baggage that entails.

Also birders talk about a bird's "jizz" when trying to ID it from a distance from limited characteristics which is, just, great, good job birdnerds