I have a half-written effortpost about this but it’s not coherent enough yet. Basically I think that, in the same way capitalism makes it so we can only relate to leftist theory through the lens of consumption and consumer identity, we can only sculpt culture in ways that are fundamentally about competition for attention or liberal morality politics. Would appreciate feedback
I think social norms run into very simple issue online: if you talk with friends who you know, you can make wildly, eh, not-pc comparisons about types of people you invented in your head. However, if you translate same offensive language into online platform with say 100 audience, you very likely will offend 2-4 lgbt comrades, 10 neurodiverse and so on, depending on what you shorthanding. If your audience is thousands, you should basically skip all the shorthand stereotyping and actually think what you write. It’s more like curious self-examination of your own brainworms, when you rewrite stuff, then anything else. On the other hand I think people like dunking a lot, but that’s neither here nor there, just shrug and become better
I think that the goal is to create social norms that don't alienate anyone, and support class solidarity. This is achievable. Your social group should be pointing out and working together to eliminate these not so pc comparisons
I don’t think that is achievable. It’s not a zero sum game, but it’s not a perfectly optimizable one either, at least not without a cultural revolution. The very act of insisting on examining social norms will alienate a lot of people. This almost always makes for a more enjoyable experience imo, but it doesn’t make it less true. And then the negotiation over which social norms to deconstruct and what to replace them with is another set of compromises
I don't think I understand what you're talking about.
You appear to be saying that it's not possible to discuss social norms without being offensive to some groups - to me that's one of the main goals of communism.
Work towards being good to your comrades, don't punch down, don't alienate, it can be done.
It’s not that it’s not possible ever. It’s that it’s not currently possible. It can be done in small groups who make it their goal and work at it. It’s a beautiful thing. But bringing that to scale and convincing larger groups to adopt those same goals hasn’t been fruitful so far
That compounds with the fact that people seem to be bad at estimating exactly how many people are in their “audience” online. One thing I’ve noticed is that lurkers are way more likely to participate in surveys and we often got nearly 1000 votes on site surveys. Same with image views. Someone will post a private image to Imgur to link here. The comment linking it will have 3 upvotes but the pic will have 80 views.