The Daily Dot

When it comes to marketing the final season of Game of Thrones, HBO has largely shied away from showing any actual footage from the show. It’s only opted for a single trailer and a handful of clips over revealing anything more than the two plot points it already has, and like Avengers: Endgame, there’s a larger focus on what’s led to this moment.

For HBO, that’s also come with the arrival of its For the Thronecampaign, which asks fans “How far will you go” for the Iron Throne, and over several weeks, it’s rolled out in stages. First, HBO had fans recreate iconic show props. Then it launched a large-scale blood drive in a partnership with the American Red Cross and asked fans to literally bleed for the throne, a rollout that didn’t come without its own set of controversies.

Now, it’s sending fans on a quest around the world to find one of six thrones with a countdown attached to it that will end around April 2 at 11:59pm ET. To date, two of the six Iron Thrones have been revealed, and each release includes three hour-long videos that show the throne at dawn, daytime, and dusk.

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Living with a disability isn’t always easy, but sometimes the greatest struggle can come from discrimination from non-disabled people, as the trending hashtag #AbledsAreWeird details. Users by the thousands have shared their experiences this week, shining a spotlight on the uncomfortable, rude, and sometimes just downright bizarre harassment people with disabilities face.

Writer and advocate Imani Barbarin created the hashtag last Friday when she shared that a stranger once threw her crutch into the pool to help her learn how to swim. It quickly garnered nearly 9,000 likes as other people with disabilities began sharing their similarly frustrating experiences.

Stories on Twitter outlined how people with disabilities routinely face such invasions of privacy and consent, even if sometimes the non-disabled person at fault means well. Others allow their curiosity and lack of experience with people with disabilities to totally disregard personal boundaries. 

The viral hashtag also highlighted how people with disabilities are constantly fielding health suggestions from acquaintances and strangers, as if they haven’t heard them a million times before.

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29-year-old YouTuber PewDiePie is not responsible for the New Zealand shooting. We shouldn’t shift the blame from the apparent neo-Nazi and Islamophobe who allegedly shot up two mosques last week.

Yet tragedies like this don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s crucial to discuss why, during a sickening live stream of his attack, alleged New Zealand gunman Brenton Tarrant gleefully encouraged viewers to “subscribe to PewDiePie.” If PewDiePie didn’t have a history of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, there’d be nothing to talk about—but he does. So let’s talk about it.

PewDiePie, born Felix Kjellberg, is an influential figure to over 90 million subscribers. Him using his platform to bombard a young, impressionable generation with the pillars of the alt-right isn’t just irresponsible—it’s dangerous. Casual bigotry leads to violent hatred; people have died because of that very hatred that PewDiePie mocks and, casually or otherwise, promotes and validates. The slow and steady dehumanization of marginalized groups via ironic humor is one of the most insidious and pervasive forms of radicalization we face today.

PewDiePie’s devotees revere him with all the cultish fervor of modern stan culture, going as far as to deface war monuments and hack the Wall Street Journal’s website to promote his channel. While PewDiePie has since encouraged his fans not to do anything illegal, he and his content hold an eerie amount of power over his supporters. It’s not all gaming and memes, either—that content is frequently problematic. Here’s a brief rundown of PewDiePie’s worst bouts of bigotry.

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A key vote was held at the United Methodist General Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, on Tuesday, banning LGBTQ clergy members and weddings, and giving individual clergy and churches until 2021 to affirm the stance or be expelled.

Initially, a vote was held on the “One Church” proposal, which would have allowed individual congregations to decide for themselves whether or not to allow LGBTQ clergy and same-sex weddings in their church. In a speech supporting a vote on the proposal, J.J. Warren, a gay student studying to become a pastor, spoke of his experience as a gay Methodist. “As someone who is gay and goes to the least religious college in the U.S., my evangelism on campus has grown,” said Warren in his speech before the conference. “We have brought people to Jesus because they said they have not heard this message before. They didn’t know God could love them, because their churches said God didn’t.”

Arguments over the plans lasted for several days before coming to a vote. The delegates to the conference voted 449 to 374 to reject the One Church proposal. In its place was another proposal, the “Traditional Plan.” This proposal affirmed the United Methodist Church’s stance against LGBTQ inclusion, explicitly rejecting same-sex weddings and non-celibate LGBTQ clergy members. The Traditional Plan passed by a vote of 438 to 384, giving Methodist congregations until 2021 to affirm the anti-LGBTQ stance of the church at large, or possibly face removal from United Methodist.

Methodists and Christians reacted to the news online and in person. LGBTQ Methodists who were prevented from entering the delegate floor sat outside singing worship songs, and people encouraged each other to not lose faith.

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Journalist Yashar Ali has gone viral again, this time for sharing a 26-part Twitter thread about ADHD and urging many others to share their own struggles.

“What people need to understand about those of us who have ADHD is we are not homogeneous,” he wrote.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health  as “a disorder that makes it difficult for a person to pay attention and control impulsive behaviors.” While many of the symptoms are classified as the tendency “overlook or miss details, make careless mistakes,” failure to follow instructions, or having difficulty paying attention or listening, Ali explained in the thread it’s not that simple and shouldn’t be generalized.

Mostly, he used the opportunity to clarify misunderstandings that people have about ADHD.

He also made a crucial point about gender disparity and diagnosis. A little over six percent of children were diagnosed with ADHD in the U.S. in 2016. But as Ali writes in the thread, ADHD tends to be diagnosed less among adults and women.

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Joel Thomas “Deadmau5” Zimmerman is at it again. While playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds with streamer SmaceTRON this week, Deadmau5 blew up at a supposed “stream sniper,” or a player who stalks a streamer in order to kill them in-game. Instead of handling the situation like the 38-year-old that he is, Deadmau5 said “is that some fucking cocksucking stream sniper fag?” on the stream, according to Kotaku Australia. Deadmau5 was suspended afterward by Twitch, leading him to remove his channel.

In a reportedly deleted Reddit comment, Deadmau5 explained why. And for the record, he outright refused to apologize.

“im not going to stand for twitch’s double standard when it comes to censoring and suspending me for harmless shit,” Deadmau5 wrote in his deleted comment, according to a screengrab from esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau. “the internet is just basically full of shit for the most part…. and while what i said was generally toxic as fuck, and not an ideology i hold closely to my moral standing by a fuckin longshot […] it wasnt ‘directed at an entire group of people who have a sexual orientation that differs from my own’ fuck off with that shit.”

Deadmau5 claims he used the word “fag” in “the heat of the moment.” But it’s incredibly suspicious that Deadmau5 would let a homophobic slur slip out of his mouth, as “fag” is a homophobic slur regardless of its context. When a straight person calls another person a “fag,” it’s implying that there’s something wrong with being queer. In this case, Deadmau5 is saying that stalking someone on a stream is just as bad as being gay. For queer gamers, it’s the kind of comment that can make us feel worthless and inhuman, and like we don’t belong in gaming.

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Ever since I saw the photos of people being tear-gassed as they attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in November, it felt like I’d been holding onto a lump of hot coal. It wasn’t until I reached Tijuana in December could I release that tension. No longer was I observing the events on the ground from a laptop or phone screen. I could be there to understand and grapple with the atrocities myself, without another person’s analysis. Here, in plain sight, was evidence that Donald Trump wanted to ruin the lives of vulnerable people.

What Trump and his administration have been calling an “immigration crisis,” a great many of us have seen as a humanitarian crisis. Trump’s drummed-up hysteria reached a peak on Friday when he declared building a border wall cause for a “national emergency.” “It’s a great thing to do,” he said of building the wall and executing his power, “because we have an invasion of drugs, gangs, people, and it’s unacceptable.”

However, I was in Tijuana a month after the elections, helping migrants from this caravan, and I didn’t see any gang members or drug dealers. In fact, many of the families I worked with, alongside a legal team that prepared them for the strenuous asylum-seeking process, were attempting to flee gang territories in their home countries. They had little or no possessions, other than necessary legal documentation and the clothes on their backs. The caravan also included unaccompanied minors and LGBTQIA migrants. Above all else, the volunteers and I learned firsthand that President Trump does not care the least about legal immigration because he has had made the process as difficult as possible.

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Stumble upon Audrey Kitching’s Instagram account, and it’s easy to get sucked in. The lighting is soft and pastel, the captions self-esteem-boosting, the star herself a cross between Rainbow Brite and Marie Antoinette. Even if you’re among those who would laugh at the woman who promotes herself as an “energy alchemist,” you’re likely to keep scrolling through her magical promise.

In fact, Kitching has amassed over 259,000 followers on Instagram. On Twitter, she has upwards of 155,000. Kitching exists as a hologram online—no speaking engagements, or public appearances—and yet her name appears in wellness publications as a trusted source for her knowledge of healing crystals, a “wellness ‘it girl.’”

Dig around and you’ll find an internet footprint that is incongruous. Specifically, Kitching has a history of reaching for, and amassing, the kind of fame that one gains not for any particular talent other than one for being noticed. How that path led her to where she’s landed today—doling out spiritual guidance via Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter—is unclear.

But what is clear is that that her role in her business—selling $18 jars of glitter, sugar, and dried flowers labeled Manifestation Fairy Dust—isn’t what she promises it to be, and that even though her followers might feel “healed” by her affirmations, there are at least three women who now cite their relationships with Kitching as abusive, manipulative, and controlling.

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When was the last time a Saturday Night Live host wore anything memorable? Typically, fashion choices are not the main draw of the sketch show, but host Don Cheadle changed that last night with two very memorable shirts.

First, Cheadle wore a t-shirt saying, “Protect Trans Kids” when introducing musical guest Gary Clark Jr.’s last song of the show. Clark’s music choice, too, was political; his song “This Land,” which Cheadle was introducing, poignantly and pointedly dissects his treatment as a Black man living in “Trump Country.”

Cheadle’s clothing choice comes as protections for trans people in the U.S. are eroding. Just last month, the Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender members of the military to go into effect, preventing many trans people from joining the military while lower courts review arguments.

Cheadle also wore his heart on his sleeve—or, rather, his sleeves, chest, and back—in a political hockey jersey during the closing credits. The jersey, red with the Russian acronym of the USSR on the front, had “45” on each sleeve, and read “Trump” on the back.

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Nonbinary flyers will soon be able to properly identify their gender on their tickets. Several major American airlines are rolling out gender options that go beyond the gender binary, with one company expected to roll out their options in the “coming weeks,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

United Continental Holdings, which operates United Airlines and United Express, plans to let passengers choose “U” or “X” as their gender markers on their tickets, for “undisclosed” and “unspecified,” respectively. United’s parent company will also let passengers use “Mx.” when buying flights instead of “Mr.” and “Ms.” These changes are expected in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Alaska Air Group Inc., Southwest Airlines Co., Jet Blue Airways Corp., American Airlines Group Inc., and Delta Air Lines Inc. are also looking into options for flyers who fall outside the gender binary.

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