Posting is not praxis. Yet. I have a proposal on how to fix this which involves a bit of educational theory and I’d like some feedback.

Specifically, it involves Situated Learning Theory (Lave and Wegner, 1991). Here’s a short summary for anyone interested.

These are the basic mechanics as I understanding them. Keep in mind that I have no formal educational credentialing.

  1. Learning takes place in “communities of practice”, which means the information we internalize in a given social setting is based on how that information is used in that setting. We learn via social norms and practical application.
  2. We start learning at the periphery of a community and move our way inward as time goes on. You start out as a new-timer and end up as an old-timer as you learn. These terms are specifically meant to not imply that old-timers are the givers of knowledge and that new-timers are receivers of knowledge. If anyone’s read Freire, you know about the banking model. Situated learning is opposed to the banking model just as Freire is.
  3. Old-timers have more experience in navigating the community, but fresh perspective from new-timers is necessary to keep a learning community alive.
  4. Learning is done passively in these communities. It is a byproduct of other community projects and activities.

What are the barriers to posting-as-praxis?

  • Lack of organization
  • Opsec concerns
  • No pipeline infrastructure
  • Copying all but the most egregious bourgeois design decisions without a theoretical basis for doing so.

It’s always been obvious that independent leftist social media should not optimize for profit, but the question of what to optimize for has always loomed for me. Now I think I have an answer: maximize the sorts of socially-valuable connections that make up these learning communities. If this can be done while preserving a semblance of opsec, I believe all the other barriers will fall away over time. This is my proposal, optimize leftist platforms for learning and for community.

Hexbear and SLT

If we look at Hexbear through the lens of Situated Learning Theory, we see the sorts of activities it’s old-timers participate in, like:

  • Browsing bourgeois social media for content to crosspost
  • Discussing various leftist theory in comments
  • Engaging in meme culture of multiple scopes (world-wide, left-adjacent, and Hexbear-specific)
  • Sharing tidbits of personal info
  • Asking for advice or support when facing challenges
  • Enforcing social norms via gossip (often about celebrities and left wing figureheads)
  • Participate in offshoot discords, cytube, megathread organization, or the book club

Some of these are obviously more accessible to new-timers than others. Hexbear-specific memes and engaging with people based on personal background in particular can be difficult. Same goes for a lot of the satellite communities from the last point. They aren’t exactly included in an orientation packet and could easily be missed.

Furthermore, it’s not obvious how someone who has radicalized enough on bourgeois social media to end up here should proceed. It seems that the end of the pipeline is just… more posting and being angry all the time. We can’t partner with physical orgs because they need the plausible deniability that comes with distance from a pile of users yelling about how billionaires need to be shot in Central Park. At least, they can’t direct people here. And anyone asking which group to join will get a bunch of infighting about which group is revolutionary enough when the real answer varies mostly based on location. This should all be more automated and streamlined by now.

There’s also a tension in telling people that doing physical praxis involves logging off and grillpilling. I think there’s a balance that could be struck where people can go out and do praxis in meatspace and come back to report with their peers to learn. Independent leftist social media needs to optimize for these sorts of interactions. A need arises and people who are in the community should be able to connect the people with the need and the people with the resources to meet that need. Someone needs help starting up an org and they ought to be able to be quickly connected with people who have the experience to help.

As of now, there’s no good mechanism to encourage sharing of useful information and creating guides for newcomers. The amount of legitimate activities for newcomers around here to do are minimal and they aren’t systematically pointed out to new users.

So this is partially a design problem and partially about understanding what our goal is in the first place. But I believe that the book club in particular is a good place to start. Book choices and proposed and chosen collectively and learning is largely participatory. Things like this are a good start, but I think we can go much further in this direction.