Sare, slipping in a plug for The Loft after I said she’d stopped giving them shout outs even though she loooooooved the owner and their classes
I’ve also notice she does the thing that American hyper-conservatives do a lot when they’re justifying something harmful. They pick the one thread of truth that would make you an asshole to debate, and then they act like all the other true things that don’t shed such a positive light on them just don’t exist.
Example: My state (and this won’t give my location away because there were many 🫠) was trying to get loads of books banned from public and school libraries. I was part of efforts to make the language of our laws and proposed bills more accessible to the average person. A direct response to folks laying out all the absolutely fucked aspects of the law, was to immediately begin the narrative “well, you don’t want children to have access to pornography! Do you? Are you saying children’s sections should carry PORN?” When, really, our opposition was to banning books about LGBTQ families, health books for kids to learn about their bodies, etc. They NEVER responded to those points because they had no justification. They just knew that we were unable to combat a nuclear topic like “children seeing porn” as effectively as we could “banning books that represent a large majority of children is discriminatory and low-key (high key tbh) fascist.”
Sarah’s Day Example: Sarah is a fairly absent mother. Even when she’s physically present, she does whatever she can to emotionally and mentally distance herself from F and sometimes Mal. She speaks horribly of her husband, seems to take advantage of her family’s ideas about sharing burdens, and refuses to outsource work from her businesses to ensure her products will be worth the money and that the team can offer solid customer support. She knows that there’s also a literal list of really problematic things she’s done over the years, and that public sympathy is waning. So, she’s leaning into the the “I’m a struggling mother” content. Or saying things like “just because I’m a mom doesn’t mean I can’t have a life!” To combat those deflections, people have to be “the asshole.” They have to say “well, you’re not a struggling mother!” which is hard to prove since she can claim she only shows the highlight reel or whatever whatever. Or, if you try to take on her comments about mom’s having lives too, you have to write a very nuanced, essay-like critique of how Sarah DOES have a life and this is an example of her using and abusing her support system. Then, you have to get her fans or casual followers to read what you’ve written and be willing to actually believe you’re not just some hater. It’s not an impossible battle but it’s an uphill one. And she knows it.