blahaj, a stuffed animal sold by a company that is the number one consumer of wood in the world. it becomes extremely popular because of memes, more people buy it. i dont get it comrades, it seems like pandering to me. ikea isnt like boeing in terms of awfulness but its existence is resulting in increased deforestation around the world. the ikea stores act as cultural embassies for sweden, they provide a sanitized commodified disneylandesque experience of sweden which really helps their public image on the world stage when they are allowing hate crimes against muslims to occur in their country, but hey, buy the toy shark, trans rights, consume treats, all being trans is is buying useless shit with the pride flag on it from corporations that wouldnt have hired you ten years ago but now want your money. in conclusion blahaj is a class traitor, embrace neopets, i sure hope theres no weird shit going on there like a christofascist owns it and is donating money to trump, and no i didnt look up anything about neopets, im just assuming theirs something bad there too. i wonder how right i am about that?
Blahaj is innocent! The trans community just adopted him because he has a pink mouth, white underbelly and blue surface. These resemble the colours of the trans flag. To the best of my knowledge, Ikea is not behind this. They might be capitalising on it now, but it's not really much different than when Subaru noticed that a not-insignificant number of their customers were lesbians and started marketing specifically to them.
I never realized that it was because of the colors! That's interesting.
There's quite a bit of misinformation and assumptions on the trans-shark connection. The real deal of Blåhaj is actually rooted in the tragic rejection many of us face. I would argue actually that it is a currently developing piece of our culture and heritage. Blåhaj became popular with the trans community because it's a cheap stuffed animal from a cheap furniture store. Since so many of us get rejected and have to start our lives over sans financial supports, housing, or furniture, many folx have found themselves getting some basic furnishings at IKEA. So as they get the stuff they need, they pass by a bin of cute plushie sharks that are cheap. Small comforts like this can make a big difference in such a difficult time. It's a symbol of starting new, healing, and growing.
I don't know whether that's your personal narrative or a more widespread piece of the blåhaj canon, but I really like the interpretation either way. I was going to make some cynical comment about consumption as identity, but that sort of misses the mark by erasing the personal stories that people have attached to the blåhaj as a symbol. I appreciate you sharing.
Someone on
shared it with me several years back and that was their personal experience as well as that of a few trans friends if my memory serves correctly.
But even if it's not the average experience, we can collectively decide that that is the story and symbolism that we share. Sort of a modern oral history so we can have some semblance of community and belonging, and a piece of humanity in our collective stories. Lord knows corporate media isn't going to speak our truths.
World hard and cold
fluffy shark soft and warm
My understanding is that at some point Ikea has been an important factor in the deforestation of Borneo for the production of plywood. I haven't looked up the details in years so I do not know the current situation, but that is an accusation I recall being leveraged against them. That said, I personally do not believe that consumer activism is a productive thing to worry about, but I do fully support people to decide to liberate their sharks.
buy your blahaj from AliExpress. not only does it come with more stuffing and a zipper, but you're helping china export shark-shaped socialism
also the bootleghaj comes in many colours... like pink!
Show
or you can be so fucking gay that even your blåhaj is rainbow striped
I bought mine for the meme and quickly found out the toothy friend is just amazing for emotional support. You get a decent-sized plushie for a good prize and the overall shape is very huggable,
just works very nicely as a comforter. Mine got me through a lot of rough patches in that critical timeframe before i could start HRT, the one where every day is a war against your own body and the wait list simply crushes you.Also sharks are misunderstood, stigmatized beings. They are often portrayed as predatory monsters, but actually play a vital role as a keystone species in marine ecosystems, exactly like trans folks.
Counterpoint: I'm hugging one right now and it's great.
I'm cis though.
Lol. Apparently being on hexbear means I'm statistically trans, so we'll see.
Homie, you got "any" listed as your pronouns... That shark full of hormones and gay agenda.
tbh I just use "any" so there's one less piece of identifiable information on my account
Yo can you elaborate? I have "any" listed because I don't have a pronoun preference or really think of myself in terms of gender. Is that the sort of thing where I might need to get a shark? I've been confused on that one for a while.
I've seen that flag dozens of times but I never actually knew what it stood for. Agender, huh? I do like the sound of that.
maybe you're "just" agender, and would never have noticed the difference unless being in community with trans people prompted you to introspect.
This is only somewhat related, but during my recent visit to the USA I learned that one of my cousins who I hadn't seen in four years is trans and communist in pretty much the exact same way as me, with a lot of other similarities, too. It owns a blåhaj which it named "Kaworu" after the Evangelion character. That was my first time seeing a blåhaj in person, and the first time I experienced being physically proximal to a person I could actually relate to. It's very lonely being this closeted with no-one like me nearby. Maybe I'll get myself a blåhaj and name it "Shinji" to keep me company until the next time I see my cousin. God willing that won't be another four years.
Just sending some warmth your way in the tiny way I can. Hope things get better for you.
This is a pretty weird take, like trans people can only like things that are totally ethical? And then like oh but the microtransactions website that couldn't even pull off an nft is ok?
holy purity test batman
No it's a reasonable criticism of how we construct our identities with acts of consumption. The point isn't that you're a bad person for buying the toy shark, it's that a company isn't your friend because it makes products you like.
Shark isn't ikea, trans people liking shark isn't liking ikea, and calling out a single, extremely marginalized group for a meme toy when capitalist realism forces constructed identity on everyone every day is a little weird.
no one's bein called out, this isn't a sermon, and i think that ascribing the consumption of a single product to all trans people such that criticizing it is criticizing an entire marginalized group is kind of a good demonstration of the problem at hand
also the specific shark with the tradmarked name that everyone repeats literally is manufactured and sold by ikea
but the microtransactions website that couldn't even pull off an nft is ok
we despise microtransactions and anything even tangentially related to crypto/nfts in this house.
Potential struggle-session topic: If you're going to complain about misrepresentations of Sweden, please use the å: Blåhaj (and not say "blah hadge"; "blaw high" would be much better). :cat-trans:
If one cannot type ⟨å⟩, it is common to replace it with the digraph ⟨aa⟩.
Honestly, even just the "a" is fine, really. I'll just read it as "blah-hadge" for my own amusement. But if anyone wants the å, it's probably Alt-0229 on Windows, Ctrl-Shift-u e 5 on Linux, or hold down "a" until the accented-characters popup appears on Macs, iOS and Android.
It's also possible to create a custom keyboard layout or use an IME with a custom dictionary feature or something like that.
Aside from the comments on sustainable lumber that ikea may or may not use, most blahaj i've seen ppl buy have been much cheaper aliexpress knockoffs. Hmmm proof of the sino-transgender agenda?
While I'm not saying Ikea is great, I'll just take the moment to say wood is the most sustainable material. It locks carbon in and regrows with ease. We just need to make sure it has room and freedom and regrow, and that we harvest them with genuine care and responsibility for the future (which obviously nobody is doing in capitalism).
Trans people are relatively more left wing and Sweden is a socialist country. Ikea is also providing revolutionaries all over the world with critical supplies like durable marble tables and comfy yet affordable sofas for the meeting room
...
If dunking on social democrats becomes "sectarian" I'm going to bomb the servers
From what I remember, it goes like this: Shark is cuddly, you can use plausible deniability since sharks are "cool" and often considered a "boyish" animal (for those closeted), and its colors match the trans flag.
I hold no love for the corpo and their trying to capitalize on the phenomenon is distasteful to say the least, but in a cishetero world that denies softness (physically and emotionally) I think it's a small comfort.
