The only thing more important than “do nothing wrong” is to loudly correct those who are doing “almost right” and “in the right direction.”
I think it’s a tossup between “loudly correct” and “vilify as a disappointing libshit.”
I had an interaction once where I thought I used double quotes around a word to imply something obvious related to the posted article. A random person got mad at me and claimed I knew nothing about solidarity.
I felt insulted, they didn’t know my life experiences up to that point. I chose to ignore my feelings and pressed them to teach my why I was so wrong. They eventually disappeared from replies because they had nothing behind that image of righteousness. Rare win but I’ll take it.
If someone put themselves in harms way to punch an authoritarian follower in the face in my defence and also uses slurs I could find offensive to myself, that’s not my enemy. That’s someone awesome who could use a little more education. Later. When the current situation isn’t so wild.
Words are just words. That’s not as effective as punching a fascist in face.
Reminded me of an old meme I saw in like 2009.
CW homophobic slur
Also a content warning for a couple slurs, but the point from Patton Oswalt a while back is roughly the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKo1_RP_0c
We are really lacking in fascist faces punched these days, no one can have a civil conversation without them screeching and throwing shit
I haved discussions with others here where its people are just not happy with baby steps and want full change right away. Problem is we need to make more friends not enemies with each other.
I’ve started to make a habit on the internet to make amends and give grace to people who get upset in the comments as fast as possible. Textual online spaces are seemingly quite prone to disagreement, so it’s a huge help just to mindfully counteract that tendency.
Well easy for you my brave little Hitachi wand! Who can stay angry at you!
It helps if you’re fun.
Dude your username is amazing.
I worry people find it distracting, but it definitely captures the imagination
Ball big. Need lots of hands. Take long time move. Come. Help. Roll big ball with us.
Also, we don’t actually know which way we need to roll it. Some people have strong ideas, other understand the vague direction but there’s lots of invisible obstacles strewn across the landscape, and whenever we hit one there are a hundred different people with a thousand different explanations about what the fuck just happened.
I spent a bunch of time in such spaces before the election and was shocked how much time and energy was squandered with virtue signaling and purity testing. There was literally no room for anything else in some of them.
And sometimes those people will even destroy active progress because it doesn’t meet their definition of perfect.
Online leftists will destroy something because it’s not 100% of what they want, disregarding the 50-60% that would be what they want.
learned helplessness!
Or malicious purity testing.
Very good take.
I complained to a partner once about something they’d done that seemed vaguely unethical (by my understanding of their ethics). After they apologised, I was still upset, and they said “maybe I’m a little bit shit, just like everyone else.”
That really stuck with me. People (including myself) are often OK with accepting imperfections in other people in some spaces, but not in others. It’s pretty weird… Life is messy, even the bits that seems straightforward. And no one has a perfect understanding of any situation…
I think this “do nothing wrong” tendency has something to do with intragroup power dynamics. I’ve often seen it used as a cudgel to knock down others within a group and stop mild dissent even though everyone is on the same team. Usually the most prolific wielder of the “do nothing wrong” cudgel rises to a position of some authority in the group, after which the group fragments because the person is insufferable but unassailable due to their moral superiority.
So…You are saying that mods are, in actual fact , not based ?
HERESY
obviously a trap set by bougie liberals to try and get me to vote for a Democrat.
but i’m too smart for them
Great now we get to argue what nothing and something is…
The problem is they keep dissagreeing on details and forget, they’ll never agree on everything.
This one is fun because it could be both about tankies and actual leftists depending on what you believe in.
Oh it’s definitely leftists in general
Nah.
Because you’re the one in the meme you just don’t realize it
Because I don’t call tankies leftist?
I don’t usually participate in communities of my interest, like vegan, communist, anarchist, etc. because I know I don’t agree a 100% and that there will always be people that think are better than others or that have a lot more time to spend on activism than me. But all my friends know I never back down when discussing important topics with anyone, I always tell them that I will take the time to discuss with people they don’t like, like weird conservatives and other uncomfortable groups (which have a big presence where I study).
I usually can recognize when someone is close to being more left-leaning than what they think they are, and I take the time to talk to them about it, which a lot of leftist communities don’t (at least from what I’ve seen). Yes, there are trolls, but usually when talking in person, they aren’t that stupid.
Sometimes it feels like people are worse to people that almost agree with them than they are to people who are completely at odds with them.
online leftist
Important things happen offline, online is more or less a distraction.
I don’t know if that’s really true anymore. Or, maybe more accurately, I think we’re in between when that was true in the pre-social media age and when it’ll be true again after the social web breathes its last. There are just too many ways that megacorps, bad actors, and foreign agents can manipulate offline activity with online action.
Some of those things are manipulating small groups into large-scale action (see: Qanon), but misinformation and meme warfare also have a measurable effect on election, direct action, etc. Not to mention that local organization is best done online, and that has a very real effect.
Now, is offline action more important than online action? Absolutely, and if you’re saying that being an “online leftist” (as an identity) is a distraction, I think I agree with you. But online action is more than just a distraction, and to ignore it is probably counterproductive.
Trump is literally a 4chan meme gone too far, homie.
Simpsons did it first
still had to happen offline yes?
Yes, but they are inextricably influencing each other. Both are subsets of reality.
No improving the current system allowed!
There’s nothing wrong with encouraging others to be better versions of themselves. The problem is many people aren’t capable of doing so without being toxic AF.
