https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime/status/1627029198245359618

Twitter thread continued:

Sometimes people will say "You made me an anarchist" and like... buddy, I don't even think it matters that I myself am an anarchist.

And I regret that that sort of "we're fighting the good fight" mentality has allowed some of the worst grifters on the platform to flourish by manipulating people's passions for their own weird petty reasons.

I think what I do has a lot of value, I'm just saying that what I perceive that value to BE is a lot different than what I thought a few years ago.

  • sootlion [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Eh, a lot of people have been radicalized by Youtube videos. Even if it's not directly achieving change, opening peoples' perspective and educating them lays the groundwork. Once a person has been radicalized by online sources, they will be undoubtedly far more likely to join real, material movements and parties.

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It 'can' lay the groundwork, but in my experience it mostly leads to sadness, isolation, and malaise. Political work and education has to be a community project, a part of a communicating body politic. Not isolated instances online or para-social communities.

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I will agree that perhaps it's more that it gives the malaise an identity, rather than creating it in of itself. But I have seen too many young, hopeful people look to these entertainment personalities for guidance only for that hope to be slowly worn away like rocks by so many waves, with nothing to show for it.

          Hell, there is far more hope and energy in the non-profit field, even if they still have absolutely nothing to show for it, because they are least getting paid for their nonsense. In my witness, the path of, as you call it, 'faux-radicalization', is absolutely more of a net creator of unhappiness than any other path of radicalization. I don't like to refer to it as 'faux-radicalization' though, personally.

          To me it's 'radicalization-as-entertainment', as opposed to 'radicalization-as-politics'. Both are radicalization, but the outcomes and affects are substantially different. And that doesn't mean that 'radicalization-as-politics' can't be exhausting and sad as well. It's just that usually there are better long term outcomes from the latter. With the latter, you generally still get to form a community, meet people, have kids, etc.

        • DoghouseCharlie [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I agree with that. There are things I otherwise wouldn't have known that I could have been comfortably dumb about. But a lot of Marxism is comforting because now I at least have the words and mental framework to explain the things I was already feeling and experiencing. I know people who are like me, but didn't learn Marxism, so instead they just assume the world is and will always suck and that humanity is bad. I'd rather be a depressed nerd than a nihilist or misanthrope.