⬆ 0 ⬇ Pink Hair said:
⬆ pinkaunty247 • 0 points
⬇ Hello, I'm new here! Just got my pink hair a couple weeks back. How did you guys cope with it?
You look critically at the new post on r/pinkhair. It's mostly about people who got their hair dyed pink, but there's a sizeable number of people who've apparently done the same kind of digging you did and more.You want to ask
those people for help, but you don't want to reveal too much about yourself. You also don't want your thread to be flooded with helpful directives to suicide hotlines, family therapists, or "just get a wig" comments.
Actually, a wig might be useful if you want to go out someday without getting attention from all over the place. You open a new tab for Lazada, take a horrified look at the prices, gain a new respect for cosplayers, and close the tab. Maybe you'll just keep using that headscarf instead even if it gets hot and sweaty.
You start editing the post to try and filter down the comments. It occurs to you a bit too late that maybe it would have been easier to frame it as asking for a friend, sort of. Actually, not too late. You delete the thread and make a new one.
⬆ 0 ⬇ Pink Hair in Modern Days said:
⬆ pinkaunty247 • 0 points
⬇ Hello, I'm new here! Found this paper talking about famous people in history with pink hair but what about modern times? Trying to learn more about the pink shadow cabal here. Also do governments do anything about them? Never seen a pink haired prime minister.
There, you think. That sounds more likely to get you the kind of advice you want, right? Yeah. That should work. You hit post and check the time. It's afternoon-ish, which means most of the American users should be asleep. You won't be getting responses for a few hours, maybe a few days even. You set the notifications to ping you if/when you get a response, and leave it be.
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The first response comes in that night but u/conspinkracy has latched onto the "pink shadow cabal" part of your post and ignored everything else. It's… kind of educational, in the sense of that you didn't think anybody would seriously imagine a network of pink-haired people and their (subordinates/ puppets/ families) pulling the strings of every major government and organisation on the planet. You definitely don't think Ebola had some kind of true, sinister purpose against anti-pink-haired people or, for that matter, that African people were somehow specially threatening to pink-haired people. Are. The name makes you suspect this is a throwaway of some sort that they use just for this sub. You downvote them and move on.
There aren't any new responses that night, other than the occasional upvote, downvote, or bot-moderator auto-response ("Welcome to r/pinkhair! Please check the sidebar for rules. We're partnered with r/HairDye and r/FancyFollicles…").
What does happen, the next morning, is that you wake up and wonder if your circadian rhythm is super off, because of how dark it still is. Then you hear the low rumble of thunder outside, the beating of rain on the rooftop and against the window, and the shriek of somebody's oversensitive car alarm, set off by the thunder.
Oh, fuck, you think as you sink in to your soft, warm, dry bed.
Forgot to take in the laundry.
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You're soaked from the knees down from going out with an umbrella to pull the laundry hanger around to the porch. Thank goodness Ma insisted on getting a hanger with wheels instead of the fixed line thing Pa prefers. The clothes are soaked completely, of course. You decide you'll let them drip dry on the porch before taking them into the house to drape on chairs and blow-dry.
You've found you can barely see across the road to the neighbours, let alone to the end of the street, except when the lightning strikes and lights things up in silhouette. Wind whips the water about, but the road is flooding up to at least curb level and the drain covers are spouting water instead of draining it. One of the silhouettes that you see is a large fallen branch in the middle of the road. Pa was always on about the trees overgrowing the road, though he complained more about them blocking street signs and traffic lights. You wonder how long it'll take the
Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh to go deal with it.
Probably a week at least. Or never, given somebody will go move it before they get around to it.
Either way you're back in the house, nursing hot Milo and eating cream crackers for breakfast while you scroll through reddit on your phone. There's a new post, from r/flamingos_are_the_new_black and it's more or less everything you wanted. There are highlights from leaked NSA files, some more papers you hadn't found (and not by the same Shanxi author), a link to a separate megathread, links to paywalled news and research articles ("but you can just use Web Archive to get around most of these," notes the post), and at the very end it just says: "Be careful, okay?"
Something niggles at you. You scroll up to u/conspinkracy's post. You scroll down to the new post. A lot of their sources are the same, even if the conclusions are wildly different, because u/flamingos_are_the_new_black hasn't
made any conclusions other than "pink haired people exist and at least four major governments know it and are watching out so be careful". Which includes, you check, Britain, and that dates back to pre-colonial times. Funny, you'd always heard the legal and educational systems of Malaysia got copied over from the British, but you'd never heard anything about provisions for pink-haired people.
Still doesn't really answer why Pa and Ma ran away, and that's not really a question you can ask on reddit without immediately giving yourself away, throwaway or no. Still, it
is a throwaway, without any links to you.
And besides, there's a lot to settle down and read, and to think about. After all, you're not going anywhere with the way the rain is going on outside. So you boil some more water for some more Milo and settle onto the sofa.
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"The rainstorm is expected to continue for at least fourteen days," says the newscaster on TV. In the background are scenes of flooded kampungs, cars floating down the roads, abandoned shops and houses, and people huddling in school assembly halls. "The Perak government has announced relief measures for those affected." The screen shifts to some old guy in a songkok, talking about food banks and nasi leak packages being handed out. There is a brief mention about money handouts. There is another old guy in a songkok, identified by the chevron as an
ustaz , railing about the LGBT community.
You tune it out and go to r/Malaysia instead for better, more useful news.
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16 SPINS AVAILABLE!
1 ROLL AVAILABLE!
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Reddit responses are kind of a mixed bag, but you think you've got pretty much everything you're going to get from this thread, unless…? Choose three actions over the next seven days:
[ ] Thread necromancy: it's not quite necromancy if the thread just hasn't received any new attention in the last three days, but you could bump it for more attention and hope to get more focused resources. (Choose up to one topic to focus on.)
- [ ] Especially ask about any governmental requirements for parents or relatives of pink-haired people.
- [ ] Especially ask about the early lives of famous pink-haired people.
- [ ] Especially ask about Official Interest in pink-haired people.
- [ ] Especially ask about special abilities of pink-haired people.
- [ ] Especially look for other pink-haired people to talk to.
- [ ] Write-in particular topics of interest.
[ ] New post: reveal yourself as one of the mythical pink-haired people and see what comes out. You'll probably be asked to provide pictures as proof, but it's easy to mosaic your face, right?
[ ] E-mail the author of some of those scholarly papers, telling them you have pink hair.
[ ]
Go to a government hospital and tell them about your pink hair. In this weather??? Hahaha no.
- [ ] Call a hospital, pretending to have a pink-haired child, and see what they say.
[ ] There's a neighbourhood committee looking for volunteers to help distribute food to the older residents. Volunteer to do good deeds, even if it's uncomfortable.
[ ] Maybe all that anime stuff has a point. Binge anime with pink-haired main characters.
[ ] Start going through Malaysian laws looking for anything to do with pink-haired children. You're not sure where to start, but you have faith in your Google-Fu if not quite your grasp of formal written Bahasa.
[ ] You really haven't seen another living being in too long. Socialise with:
- [ ] Era. (She's off at university, so you'll have to make do with video calls. Still better than nothing.)
- [ ] Ben.
- [ ] Che Din & Che Mat.
10-Roll! Choose at least three items to put into the roll. (Amanda is hoping to get a wig, but would probably be happy right now with a really good umbrella.)
[ ] Plan Name
- [ ] Item 1
- [ ] Item 2
- [ ] Item 3
- [ ] Write-in.