My family's really poor, and has a history of voting for the for the NDP, so my values and class interests have always aligned with leftist politics. I got exposed to communism at a young age from Civ 4 (the communism civic). It's a fairly unbiased, for a western source, explanation so I pretty much realised by that point (age 12 or 13) that communism was good. I probably would have 'grown out of it,' if not for discovering Kaiserreich. I think a lot of people get pushed away from communism by the (heavily propagandised) legacy of the USSR, as well as contemporary China. Discovering libsoc ideologies through Kaiserreich let me avoid that; I could support communism, but through anarcho-syndicalism, rather than those nasty stalinists, or whatever. At this point I was like 15 or 16, and just entering high school. The only theory I had ever read in my life was the tvtropes pages for ideologies, and I was an unironic monarcho-syndicalist, had a lot of incel traits, and was just in general really cringey.

In high school I started moving more left. This was around the 2016 elections, but I didn't really follow any news at that point so I never even heard about Bernie. If not for my least favourite teacher I've ever had, I probably would have stayed around where I was for longer, drifting around as some sort of monarcho-syndicalist with succdem characteristics. In grade 12 though, I had the most lib social studies teacher to ever exist, and he pissed me off enough that I started reading. No complex theory, but I read (and failed to understand) the manifesto, started reading history, and discovered r/CompleteAnarchy.

That sub led me to all sorts of leftist subs eventually, but it gave me a coherent ideology. I was an anarchist. The USSR and China were bad, Catalonia good, etc, etc. At this point though I still had a lot of issues, especially with regards to culture. I was very class reductionist. As a white cishet male, I didn't really see any of the identity issues as important, and got really mad when memes, videos, etc, called white people privileged. To me, I wasn't privileged. I was an autistic anxiety and depression ridden poor dude. Luckily, I managed to take a course with one of the very, very few actual marxist profs at my university, and his course taught me what identity politics, privilege, power, etc actually mean. He also introduced me to how doomed we all are due to climate change. That was a terrible day for me. I don't really know where I'd be if not for him. In my first year of university I also had a super lib prof, and I tried reading Capital just so I could have a more theoretical base for arguing with my classmates. I got through the first volume by myself, but started struggling with the second, so I gave up. I also read the Bread Book, and in general just tried to engage with theory. At this point though I was still an anarchist, and had lib tendencies, like believing electorialism could work. This was around 2018-2019.

Last year I was in my second year of university. I went to pretty much all the climate marches in my city, but nothing changed. I was desperate for the provincial NDP to win, but they lost. I was mildly interested in the federal NDP doing decently, but they didn't. I got really enthusiastic for Corbyn to win, but he lost. I got even more enthusiastic for Bernie to win, but he lost. That pretty much crushed all of my faith in bourgeois elections, which moved me more towards ML. Every time the image of Lenin was posted on Chapo, I moved even closer. Then after Chapo got banned, I spent a few days lurking and reading through the China channel on discord. And it made me realise that, as much as I condemned China, the USSR, etc, I didn't actually know a single thing about any of them. So now I'm more optimistic for what China's doing, really depressed the USSR fell, and probably a MLM that's sort of critical of democratic centralism, and strong states. I'm also reading Capital again, and realising that I actually didn't understand any of it the first time.