posting will not save us, mutual aid, and the shape of things

"... the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism..."

“If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.”

This is the opening paragraph of Janus Rose's essay You Can't Post your Way Out of Fascism. I can’t thank them enough for putting into words my every feeling about this moment. I can’t recommend enough reading the whole piece.

One more graph:

But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action. This […] is the primary way tech platforms atomize and alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a sea of NPCs.”

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Speaking of must-read pieces, this essay / overview / series of considerations by Sarah Thankham Mathews is worth your time:

“I grew up under autocracy, which is one form of authoritarianism. This shaped many things about me. The effects of authoritarianism are not evenly distributed. Once it is the settled atmosphere one is surrounded by, it can feel, for a number of people, normal and boring and vaguely pleasant in a haunted way. The first half of my life, as well as studying history and literature, made me understand how authoritarian political system change can arrive and stay in people’s lives, for some like carbon monoxide, for some like nerve gas, and for some like clean pure air.”

Read the whole thing here.

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Stray thoughts this morning.

We must never lose sight of the fact that social media platforms are engineered to encourage, facilitate and perpetuate meaningless exchange and “engagement”.

We all know this, but we have to integrate knowing it into active awareness.

Beyond the obvious reasons—especially that rage does numbers—rage and meaningless preoccupations with and about the inane keeps potentially engaged and mobilized people docile.

A math equation figures out what you're drawn to and what stimulates you and it spits content at you accordingly. Ideally for the platform, that content keeps you hooked on your most base, most self-serving impulses. These encourage consumption and discourage community cultivation and collective action.

In order to cultivate space for action, for community, for cultivation of self defense, for whatever this situation calls for, we must keep all of this in mind. We can't just know it. We need to breathe and maintain a healthy enough distance to be able to look in on it in real time and see how it shapes our action and inaction.

If every you find yourself engaged in some chaotic kerfuffle with strangers on the Internet, it may be tempting to ask, “Why are people like this?” But the questions should really be, “What do these platforms get out of encouraging this behavior?”

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I had a delightful time at the Presidents’ Day protest in Los Angeles this week. Being with others in action is undeniably energizing.

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I survived a plane trip to Montreal for a work conference. I was, if I am being honest, terrified with these goons actively gutting the FAA and — worse — threatening to bring in SpaceX cronies to… make things worse, somehow?

Anyway, I’m flying back to Los Angeles on Friday and as I said of my flight yesterday: should I go down with the plane, I expect y'all to avenge my death. Make it big, mean and bloody. And if you don't, my ghost will make sure you never have sex** again. I'll even find a way to penalize asexuals. No one will be safe from my vengeful ghost.

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I wanted to share a few resources I found useful this week.

• This comprehensive activist tool kit is marketed toward “youth”, but it’s a rich resource for anybody new to The Doing as it were.

• A pal online, though I can’t recall who, recommended that our culinarily skilled community members could bake / cook stuff for neighbors (a classic!) as a means of cultivating community. Food Not Bombs, I should note, was huge with regard to my political coming of age.

• How to create a mutual aid network.

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I saw and loved the Anna Kendrick directed Woman of the Hour, which is ostensibly about the so-called Dating Game Killer but was ultimately about the ways misogyny—overt and structural—allows violence against women to take place.

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Finally.

I'll be up in the Bay Area, Sacramento, Oregon, so much of Washington, and Vancouver throughout March. I’m tagging along on Carolyn Kendrick and Tristan Scroggins’ tour. Come see music and buy zines.