You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them
-
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
@baggachipz @rimjob_rainer *shit furry -
I am trying to get people I know personally to stop posting and reading and instead begin to focus on the very basics of actual organization, in the form of simply being able to communicate effectively and securely.
I have collected and written up information for them with the consideration that they are non-technical, pertaining to secure and private communications primarily, but also many more potentially useful emergency-scenario information and data which I will not speak about here.
The package I have started giving to my friends contains information such as:
- How to communicate securely using something like Simplex or I2P
- How to correctly configure and use a VPN
- How to flash a security distribution of Linux such as TailsOS to a flash drive and how to boot to it from a computer
- How to securely encrypt data to a device using an encryption software with hidden volume features such as VeraCrypt
- A litany of manuals for all kinds of useful information you can use in emergencies, which I will not detail here
- Files containing the data required to build potentially useful items in emergencies given access to the correct hardware which I will not detail here
I firmly believe that the majority of Americans will not do anything until someone is actually showing up at their door, coming after them in the street, or destroying the regularities of their personal day to day life, so my intention is to disseminate materials which they can turn to when the fear sets into them well enough that they are scared to talk about such things openly.
It is clear to me that most of my American friends at least, at this point, still only feel superficial fear and outrage. The other day I asked them "If you had to vandalize a public space with a piece of art, what would you draw or paint? Let's say it is the side of a bank".
One said "tits", one said "flowers", one said "a fox".
Even in a fantasy, they would not express fear or outrage in a public setting.
i have been trying to look for any organization that would try to do something. I know i cant found anything like that myself so best i can do is support someone else. I have no idea where to even look or are there even such groups in my city or even country.
Only one i know of (extinction rebellion) are basically glorified facebook group(at least their local group, no idea how they are in general) that might occasionally do something that causes slight outrage and not even about the issue, just against them.
-
It's good, but it's centralized. Let's say an authoritarian regime shuts down the central Signal servers. Then what?
any group that hopes to have any success or effect on anything should thoroughly plan for the eventuality status quo wants to put stop to them. You make very good point.
-
literally just don't doomscroll, go read my recent post over in eudaimonia.
You literally just don't have to do it lmao.
that requires effort to move away from platforms that force you to doomscroll with their algorithm. For many people that is very strong chain. If you relinquish your mind its not easy to even see the reason to take it back on your own.
-
How about joining the Fediverse?
And ad blocking.
Seriously. Participation in Google/Meta/Tiktok/Whatever and their manipulative algorithms is what makes all this go around. Break their ad revenue, and you break their manipulation.
It’s easy. It’s free. And it would draw devs into developing/hosting more.
in warhammer40k there was some saying about "armor of contempt" against influence of chaos. Imo, you need something similar against corporations to resist their shit.
-
Such situations would regularly arise till early XX century and even now, so, eh, humanity tries everything. I wouldn't assume I know a solution.
Ironically, religion seemed to be helping. And before that (before humanity itself), tribes. An extension of "self" to include other who nonetheless were not "other", at least not fully. But people seem to prefer wanting to game the system,
allowingforcing others to put into while themselves pulling out from.The age of enlightenment did much good to expose religious corruption, yet offered an inferior product to replace it: "knowledge", which so few people know how to properly handle, lacking training. e.g. in the USA we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that most people were too busy and tired to properly educate themselves, yet we placed no restrictions upon voting (like a college degree, or even a test as simple as asking how many branches of government there are - which even that would cause many people to fail).nor did we offer the requisite aid (like a livable minimum wage, or conversely access to a minimum form of healthcare) to help people to help themselves, nor did we keep watch against the predators that would take advantage, e.g. safeguarding the media (instead allowing it to be bought out by billionaires, rather than staying true to the mission of doing "journalism", the seeking out and reporting of actual truth facts).
We brought this upon ourselves. Even if Donald Trump were to have a tragic accident tomorrow, even if the entire Republican party were to disappear into thin air, or all politicians combined, we would still be left with a broken system, just as before. We cannot escape the laws of Nature (whether put there by a God or not, but it's worth noting that for those who believe in such, He agrees that we deserve this fate).
Even so, I hope for better. I don't know what, or how, only that I need such for the sake of my own sanity.
-
If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.
But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action. This, says Cross, is the primary way tech platforms atomize and alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a sea of NPCs.”
In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking reaction for its own sake.
“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
Shamelessly reposting this here, because it seems relevant:
Negative news has a greater impact on people than positive:
https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdfMedia sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it's important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
- https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
- https://fixthenews.com/
- https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
- https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/
And here's 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/
Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
- https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
- https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or 'burying your head in the sand': https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn't mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
-
If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.
But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action. This, says Cross, is the primary way tech platforms atomize and alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a sea of NPCs.”
In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking reaction for its own sake.
“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
You can't even get Lemmings to leave Facebook because "muh marketplace" or "muh Auntie I haven't seen in a decade." Good luck. Y'all are addicted to this shit.
-
I wouldn't use any of those other features. I just browse by top all 1/6/12 hr (which piefed lacks) and the theme isn't great either.
How does it offer either of those things? I see an 'attitude %' on hover, and it says it has 'strong moderation tools'. But I mean 100% community run. Subscribers have to vote on bans or something. And proof of personhood verification tests.
There are multiple themes to choose from. People that already know how to use Lemmy will be able to do more with Lemmy, for sure - PieFed is atm more of a concept of what is coming up, hence exciting! Especially for onboarding new users who don't already know how to use Lemmy, i.e. from Reddit. I use PieFed as my daily driver, but I frequently have to fall back to Lemmy to accomplish certain types of tasks. So it's not yet ready for the masses who don't have an early adopter mindset. But it does offer tools to help with specifically those two things that you mentioned!:-)
Afaik, any proof of humanity depends on instance admin practices - same as Lemmy (and Mbin) too - but what PieFed offers uniquely along those lines is "reputation". This can either be used directly by a mod (or admin) - e.g. for the first 2 weeks after signing up I was not allowed to DM anyone - or even by the individual end-user, as I'll mention below with icons.
One really cool thing I see from PieFed already now is democratization of moderation: mods on Lemmy (and Reddit) have a binary choice to make between removal of content vs. allowing it, while PieFed significantly expands upon those options. One way is to auto-collapse, or even auto-hide, comments and posts below a certain vote threshold (different values provided for each of those, the first retaining the ability to always see the content just one single click away, the latter removing it from view altogether), thereby allowing people who want to avoid "controversial" content to do so more readily (related: there's also a NSFL option, on top of a NSFW one, attempting to maximize such features available to people), in a manner that is independent of a community moderator, and with the ability to change the setting at any time.
PieFed similarly allows people to block all users from a specific instance, without having to defederate that requires admin support as Lemmy does (Lemmy has a feature that it calls instance blocking, but it is horribly misnamed bc it does not in fact block instances as all, and despite being promoted by people as an instance block is really just a community mute, leaving users free to spam your notifications for WEEKS and WEEKS after you no longer want to receive them - which is a real thing that has happened to me, TWICE, and basically caused me to leave Lemmy altogether as a result, although fortunately I found PieFed so didn't have to go all the way back to Reddit to avoid such).
Another cool thing that PieFed offers is user icons: either placed by the user (whatever custom one you want, to help you recall whatever you feel that you need to - like "be careful, this guy is wordy!"), or automated ones placed by the system. Examples include new user (who may not know how things work, so be gentle), account which posts >20x more often than comments (hence may be an unregistered bot account), someone who receives >50x downvotes than upvotes (highly contentious person, very insensitive to whatever community they are in) - and to be clear these are overall, not specific to a community or post/comment, hence still works to brand-new content offered by each user. Whereas previously I spoke to removal or posts/comments based on such features, note here that this feature merely places a LABEL onto these categories of users - ultimately leaving it up to the end user, rather than a mod, to decide what to do about it. You can ignore these icons entirely, seek them out specifically, or whatever. But those varieties of "reputation" scores are made available to you in a numerical capacity.
Another cool aspect of labeling, this one requires an instance admin, is to place a commentary below every post from certain instances, like for Beehaw it says:
This post is hosted on beehaw.org which has higher standards of behaviour than most places. Be nice.
Note that link is to the exact statement from the instance admins themselves describing their policies in their own words. So this is far from "unfriendly", and rather more welcoming to describe for instances where the "normal" expectations differ, what their particular desires are. Can you imagine if for Lemmy.ml it would say "any post criticizing Russia or China or North Korea is subject to removal" or some such!?
Speaking of, note how the community "side-bar" text appears below EVERY post - while some apps hide that away, PieFed places it front and center every single time, so that users have access to the info that they may need.
Also, PieFed is written in Python, rather than Rust, so its future development should proceed forward more quickly than Lemmy, allowing it to reach feature parity soon and even exceed Lemmy, as it already does in so many ways (though crucially: not all yet, so again I'm mostly describing the future here rather than the present, even though all of the above already exists).
-
The US has experience being beaten by smaller, poorly-armed forces.
That’s been the outcome of every war we’ve fought for 50+ years. We just lost a 20 year war against goat herders.
Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara is a good starting point.
-
I'm talking about a guy who made no impact on a single company much less an industry and then went to prison, throwing away all of his rich boy ivy league education.
He traded his life for another. He showed the world that it’s possible. And “we” outnumber “them”. Making people realize that is an achievement in itself.
Would you say people like Rosa Parks “didn’t accomplish anything”?
-
He traded his life for another. He showed the world that it’s possible. And “we” outnumber “them”. Making people realize that is an achievement in itself.
Would you say people like Rosa Parks “didn’t accomplish anything”?
"They" actually won the recent election meaning "they" are actually the majority. The only way for "us" to accomplish anything other than constant bloodshed and a near 50/50 civil war scenario is to convince a bunch of "them" to change the system with "us".
We're not fighting a dozen people like Brian Thompson, we're fighting tens of millions of idiots who empower them.
-
Shamelessly reposting this here, because it seems relevant:
Negative news has a greater impact on people than positive:
https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdfMedia sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it's important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
- https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
- https://fixthenews.com/
- https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
- https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/
And here's 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/
Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
- https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
- https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or 'burying your head in the sand': https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn't mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
Excellent set of resources - ty for posting them
-
I suspect the vast majority of people turning to social media as a pressure release valve feel disempowered, and honestly don't know what more they can reasonably do. How can a fly meaningfully change the orbit of a planet?
This article is insightful, but practically useless. I think it would be better if it also presented specific actions and achievable goals that would lead to shutting down encroaching fascism.
participation in local politics is one.
a handful of loud people can deeply impact your local community.
-
If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.
But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action. This, says Cross, is the primary way tech platforms atomize and alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a sea of NPCs.”
In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking reaction for its own sake.
“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
Disagree. Calling leftists Nazis for not voting for Harris is basically the same thing as Stalingrad
-
If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.
But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action. This, says Cross, is the primary way tech platforms atomize and alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a sea of NPCs.”
In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking reaction for its own sake.
“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
For those who are feeling disheartened or numb and want/need a little push to get things started, you should check out AOC’s video she posted. It’s like an hour and a half long but she does a good job breaking down the situation, acknowledging the challenges, but also provides examples of things you and everyone else can do to resist.
In her own words/examples, you don’t have to feel like it’s all on just you to rollback illegal FAA staff appointments, to stop musk harvesting USAID, etc. There are specific concrete actions you can take within your capacity to make a difference.
-
"They" actually won the recent election meaning "they" are actually the majority. The only way for "us" to accomplish anything other than constant bloodshed and a near 50/50 civil war scenario is to convince a bunch of "them" to change the system with "us".
We're not fighting a dozen people like Brian Thompson, we're fighting tens of millions of idiots who empower them.
First, people supporting Trump are not the majority by any metric. They are 49.8% of the people who voted, which is 31,8% of the eligible voters and 23,3% of the total us population. You could argue that the majority of people “don’t hate” Trump, and while that’s still a scary metric, it’s not the point that I wanted to make.
“They” aren’t Republicans or Trump supporters, they’re wealth-hoarding billionaires that actively make people’s lives worse. As it has already been said, support for Luigi is pretty much bipartisan. Nearly everyone hates those people, and even plenty of people who voted Trump did it because they see him as “one of the people” (for some godforsaken reason). They’re propagandized into voting Republican through all the culture war, misinformation and fear mongering, but when people like Brian Thompson die, no one is actually sad and a lot actually celebrate.
Trump does indeed have a personality cult, but from what I’ve gathered the great majority of people voting him aren’t part of that and they don’t actually like him, it’s just that they hate “the gays”, “the libs”, or “the immigrants” more.
-
First, people supporting Trump are not the majority by any metric. They are 49.8% of the people who voted, which is 31,8% of the eligible voters and 23,3% of the total us population. You could argue that the majority of people “don’t hate” Trump, and while that’s still a scary metric, it’s not the point that I wanted to make.
“They” aren’t Republicans or Trump supporters, they’re wealth-hoarding billionaires that actively make people’s lives worse. As it has already been said, support for Luigi is pretty much bipartisan. Nearly everyone hates those people, and even plenty of people who voted Trump did it because they see him as “one of the people” (for some godforsaken reason). They’re propagandized into voting Republican through all the culture war, misinformation and fear mongering, but when people like Brian Thompson die, no one is actually sad and a lot actually celebrate.
Trump does indeed have a personality cult, but from what I’ve gathered the great majority of people voting him aren’t part of that and they don’t actually like him, it’s just that they hate “the gays”, “the libs”, or “the immigrants” more.
Anybody who didn't vote for the party who opposes Trump but was eligible is actively against the reform that caused these problems. If you're against reform but promote Luigi then you don't care about a single person who went into medical debt or died as a result of it.
-
That’s been the outcome of every war we’ve fought for 50+ years. We just lost a 20 year war against goat herders.
Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara is a good starting point.
This is what cracks me up about the "your rifle won't fight a tank!" jackasses.
It's like, have tanks ever worked against a domestic insurgency? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, I can't think of any time the U.S. military just wiped the floor and left.
-
Anybody who didn't vote for the party who opposes Trump but was eligible is actively against the reform that caused these problems. If you're against reform but promote Luigi then you don't care about a single person who went into medical debt or died as a result of it.
They’re not “against reform”, they’re disenfranchised, lazy or just… not the brightest minds.
They made a mistake (a big one at that), but that doesn’t mean that they like what’s happening. The upper class has been doing their best to keep us dumb, busy, tired and uninformed. And it’s clearly working.
