Whoah whoah whoah, people actually wanted the change they were advocating for? I thought this whole thing was just ironic! I'm as left as they come, and as a cis white male, I'm confident in saying that our society is largely free of prejudice, sure there's bad apples, but there will always be bad apples, and changing the system will be even worse than keeping it as it is! So we should just stay the course and focus on incremental change, after all, if our ship is headed for an iceberg, the worst thing we could do is turn sharply away from it!
I find people who have any shred of hope and optimism cringe
That's kinda cringe ngl
I'm really sorry for what your internal mental/emotional landscape must feel like. That is a brutal amount of shame/grief to be carrying around. I mean this genuinely, I hope it improves for you.
i'm very close to being one of those "anyone who isn't horribly depressed is sick in the head" cranks
Real talk, I'm not gonna say it didn't factor in a tiny bit, but at the end of the day, I can look back on my 35 years and realize I've always been this way. I always loved subversive cartoons where the kids try to right wrongs. When I hit my teen years, I was very interested in finding my identity. I fell in with leftist hippies and have been doing that ever since.
Once in a while I do feel like I have imposter syndrome. Like, my above joke is the crux of the issue. Then I think back on all the things I did when nobody was looking and know I'm the person I show to the world.
One of my biggest social problems is that I'm too earnest and I don't like lying. It catches people off guard and I end up having to over explain myself like I'm doing here.
truly awful take, leaving it up, hoping the shame changes your mind.
very cringe post except for the bit about saying "comrade." nobody talks that way irl, it's such an obvious affectation. it's the leftist equivalent of saying "folks" instead of "people"
Death to America
There are orgs where I live that call each other comrades, I thought it was odd at first actually hearing that in person but now I like it
i would probably spontaneously combust from cringe if i heard it irl
Death to America
Then it gives me inferiority/superiority complex vibes tbh.
Like no one can psychoanalyze a person over the internet but that's the impression I get from any kind of unironic "cringe" discourse, anything that looks down on people for sincerity or earnestness or buying-in or caring.
I'm not trying to attack you, you already admitted it was a you problem, and this mindset is widespread across social media, maybe caused by it. I felt it in myself back when I used reddit too much. Maybe a result of our identities being alienated and commodified, forcing people in the west to adopt an ironic, detached non-identity. Fear of the critical gaze of social media, internalized then projected outwards as a defense mechanism.
Idk, but it's not conducive to healthy interpersonal interaction nor organizing. Movements and revolutions require radical sincerity, no one's going to dedicate their life to anything based on nihilistic detachment. Historic revolutionary leaders weren't irony poisoned and neither are the global subaltern. The latter can't afford to be.
If that's not you I apologize, it's just a vibe I notice a lot on reddit and Twitter (and hexbear) and have started to see in real life. Maybe a continuation of the south park nihilism that hit a generation of white guys. But if so it may be worth examining and deconstructing.
Yeah that makes sense. The version of that I've seen seems to be an insecurity about being a bad person (or perceived as one). So seeing people care and do activism causes cognitive dissonance between the self image of goodness and the reality of inaction + privilege. Otherizing and demeaning the offender is an easy defence mechanism. Really strong effect in Mormon/evangelical culture ime.
If that's more accurate to you, if you're out organizing and working with marginalized people, that feeling seems largely vestigial, then.
Regardless of the source, I think it's still worthy of examination and deconstruction. But hopefully it diminishes with direct action experience (even if it's working at a food bank or something, if your current orgs aren't ready for direct action).
Also reading about successful revolutions helps on both an emotional and rational level, for me.
Yelling at a government building is kind of cringe ngl... but have you tried going to a bus stop or posting up outside a wal*mart and taking to people?
I think protests are more performance and not effective at doing anything, unless they're disruptive...
If you’re just yelling at buildings, yeah no shit its cringe. Even I don’t have any optimism for anything, but the orgs in my city are disrupting events and sessions held by politicians and liberal organizations. If you’re smart and coordinated, you can manage to waste their whole event because they’re trying to kick people out and it destroys morale.
Whether it change anything, I don’t know, but the liberals continue to screech about it online and make 50 articles condemning the protests because it’ll hurt Biden’s feefees.
Enough with the civility nonsense. It’s obvious the US won’t change shit. Start thinking about how to make these bitches cry for supporting genocide. Make sure they’re always looking over their shoulders even if you’re sleeping in your bed 50 miles away. And I’m not even talking about doing anything violent. Wearing a keffiyah is often enough to make these fuckers sweat. You want action? Call those fuckers out in front of everyone, ignore their nonsense drivel rebuttal, and just keep letting everyone know that the Zionist supports genocide. They will break.
These days, the only things that put a smile on me are videos of settlers running, zionists abroad crying, and women complimenting me. Just because things won’t change for a long time doesn’t mean the enemy doesn’t deserve to develop mental illness for their complicity in and perpetuation of crimes against humanity. You don’t need hope to accomplish any of this. Just pure spite and hatred.
I hope this is a joke, otherwise you are just a lib and I'm sure you've never even organized friends for your own birthday party much less any movement or campaign ever worth the effort.
Nothing lost here.
Organizers and Communists don't talk like this, unless they're joking, so No.
I would say this to a lib though.
Honestly, I think if you are a Communist and an organizer and you think this then you are much more dominated by your depression and hopelessness than you think.
Moments can be uncomfortable and cringe, even needlessly lead to failures and terrible losses, and characterizing it as uncomfortable or even comedic can be understandable but to just characterize it as cringe in this way is to ignore the victories and necessity of struggle in its current form. We always need a diversity of tactics but also a shared goal. Just calling it cringe erases the great hope and joy that come in organizing and movement and victory. I think you've either never experienced it or are so internally hopeless that you don't see value in it, which is sad. But coming to a Communist space and saying this as well as not wanting to be comrades with the people there and beginning with the pronouncement that you're liberal, won't win any sympathy and is the mistaken path to take.
I agree that 'protests' or demonstrations of the general public without either specific demands or particular pressure are useless. Direct action is the key, and for that you need achievable demands that can be won through some pressure. I also understand not immediately calling people comrades who you don't know or who haven't proven themselves to be comrades, but in this space you most likely will never know the difference between a fed and a committed revolutionary so it is best to just assume the latter because there won't be much consequence.
My reading comprehension might be questionable, doubtless, but so is your writing ability for describing your current thought. If you agree generally with my point then I apologize, but you approached this by writing in form as a lib wrecker and saboteur so I am not sure what response you expected here.
