From #OccupyWallStreet to #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo, Twitter is now recognized as an important medium of progressive activism. But while hashtags may be the quickest way for anyone to tap into the turbulent and frenetic world of online social justice discourse, their record for building the sort of institutions that can build popular power is an unbroken pattern of defeat.
I'm not even sure what you guys expect at this point. It's like you refuse to consider the space between fully fixing the problem and actually building anything has to be crossed. Like if you break it down most of the hashtags are just telling people what the issues are and getting them basic info on how they can help. It isn't harmful or anything to get mad at because we'd have to do that anyway. idk i'm just tired of the attiude where people will lash out at you for doing literally anything to try and actually build the left and just going "lol i dunno" when you ask them what we should be doing. I'm sick of people pretending anything we do in our own community also doesn't exist and any meaningful improvement is impossible and all existing orgs are impotent when people don't even bother to check in with what is happening. Like, shit at this point it's just a self fulfilling prophecy. I think a lot of people here are more in love with the idea of the failed revolutionary than anything else.
It’s like you refuse to consider the space between fully fixing the problem and actually building anything has to be crossed.
Sure. But that's the thing: That "space" hasn't been crossed by the Twitter movement. There's been "movements" but they aren't anywhere on a "national" scale. The national ones (BLM, OWS) have been pretty (IMO) abject failures. OWS notoriously so.
That's the book's point: Twitter can be a force of good (Arab Springs) but a lot of the "local"/US based movements have been pretty tepid in terms of response despite a lot of outcry on Twitter/online.
I'm not even sure what you guys expect at this point. It's like you refuse to consider the space between fully fixing the problem and actually building anything has to be crossed. Like if you break it down most of the hashtags are just telling people what the issues are and getting them basic info on how they can help. It isn't harmful or anything to get mad at because we'd have to do that anyway. idk i'm just tired of the attiude where people will lash out at you for doing literally anything to try and actually build the left and just going "lol i dunno" when you ask them what we should be doing. I'm sick of people pretending anything we do in our own community also doesn't exist and any meaningful improvement is impossible and all existing orgs are impotent when people don't even bother to check in with what is happening. Like, shit at this point it's just a self fulfilling prophecy. I think a lot of people here are more in love with the idea of the failed revolutionary than anything else.
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Sure. But that's the thing: That "space" hasn't been crossed by the Twitter movement. There's been "movements" but they aren't anywhere on a "national" scale. The national ones (BLM, OWS) have been pretty (IMO) abject failures. OWS notoriously so.
That's the book's point: Twitter can be a force of good (Arab Springs) but a lot of the "local"/US based movements have been pretty tepid in terms of response despite a lot of outcry on Twitter/online.