Tumblr staff: ten options is enough for polls, right? No one needs more than that on a regular basis. The average tumblr user: Hey guys which element of the periodic table do you think is the most fuckable?
Posting hole
Lol
yeah yeah carbon nanotubes. but what about the copper nanotubes.
There’s a thread on r/books right now about what you should do with books that are genuinely terrible to you and so many people are insisting on donation over straight up trashing/recycling them and it’s really does highlight to me how… donation is the world’s garbage can.
The same way people who buy multiple copies of kpop cds for photocards end up trying to donate the cds. Or people will donate clothes with holes and stains to thrift shops. Or people will donate food that’s just been languishing in their pantry for months and are close to their expiration dates to food pantries.
And as someone who has needed to get rid of large amounts of stuff before… I get it. But I’ve also worked at the local library for a used book sale and had to sort and box all the donations–I’ve been on both sides of this.
The only worthwhile conclusion I have gotten is that people really abuse the system of donations. Donations should not be focused on shit you do not want anymore. They should be given on the basis of what you think other people need and want.
Real labor goes into sorting donations. HOURS of time. Time that is spent inhaling dust and mold and inspecting labels and often THROWING OUT DONATIONS. It feels like people are offloading their guilt and their labor onto volunteer forces, sometimes. You feel bad about throwing it out, so you’ll make someone else do it for you.
And my point isn’t that you shouldn’t donate stuff. I will say, it’s almost ALWAYS better to donate money or going according to specific requests. But even then… you can donate stuff. Even used stuff.
But like… people really do need to just actually pause and think if they are helping anyone with that donation. Like the r/books thread–if a book is morally repugnant, is it better to recirculate it for free? Maybe it’s good to prevent someone from paying the author for it but maybe someone who wouldn’t have ever read it picks it up and suffers from it. You should actually take a second to think about this before just deciding to make it someone else’s problem.
Donating is not always the morally correct answer. Some used or gross crap is better just thrown out. Or at least put on a curb so people know the risk they’re taken in inspecting it before taking it home.
If you’re scared of being wasteful by just throwing shit out, the better solution is buying less crap to begin with, btw. Not offloading on people.
