The sad part is we could actually solve this problem, humanity could indeed solve this if we put our minds to it and unified.
Unified? With those disgusting foreigners? The degenerate leftists? The weird religious wackos? The MAGA chuds? The neoliberal shills? The Tankies? The know-nothing hoy paloy? The Epstein-loving bourgeois? The Hollywood sickos? The losers? The haters? The freaks? And some, of course, who I assume are nice people?
There’s a lot of natural social divides that are difficult to surmount. But more frustrating and complicated than that, we have a certain number of scammers and opportunists who will step in and seize the banner of a popular front for self-promotion.
We saw this during OWS, during BLM, during the Climate marches, and during the Tea Party protests. Lots of would-be celebrities simply rush in and start hawking their brands under anything with serious mass appeal. Whether its a Sanders socialism or a Trump fascism or a Buttigieg radical centrism, I regularly see media jammed up with the same clown car of Hawk Tuah Girl promotionals that quickly drown out any kind of serious organizing.
This, combined with the heavy hand of corporate/political censorship that lands on the back of the more sincere and credible activists, disrupts the organic popular movements and obscures them with layer after layer of scam. AI is supercharging the process.
Case in point, any time I say something positive about Gaza or critical of Israel on Bluesky, my mentions fill up with generic 2-day-old accounts showing vaguely Arab-looking profiles asking for donations to relief organizations I’ve never heard of. Organizing in an environment that’s overflowing with these kinds of scams - and, consequently, cultivating a ton of cynicism in the audience - is very difficult.
BLM is a great example. I remember being so mad, and wanting something to change, and there was a huge, massive cultural shift for it. I remember thinking how if everyone would unify behind one thing, we wanted one systemic thing to change - demilitarization of the police as an example, we could probably have done it. Everyone chanting and demanding the same one thing. Then we move onto the next, and the next, and the next.
Instead we got a list of like, 24 things that random people collected from chat rooms and online forums that they demanded. There was no way anyone was going to see a list that large and just say “Yup okay we’re on it”. But people wouldn’t budge, their thing was the most important, it was all or nothing - and so that’s what we got. Nothing. We could have had some huge systemic change there and instead nothing happened.
Occupy, BLM, protests, they’re all well and good but they depend on people unifying. This here, this is the thing we want. Make it a bill and push it through now. It won’t encompass everything. It won’t be perfect. But it’s progress. Instead we just go back and forth, and they know all they have to do is wait out the outcry until people get bored and they move on, so we can keep the status quo.
Cultural pollution. We are losing the ability to agree and act, piece by piece.
I dislike misanthropy, so I don’t think there’s no hope left, but climate change shows us how we built claims of self-autonomy, equality and compassion on a foundation of fake-it-till-we-make-it, thus on a foundation that is, simply put, not up to the task of our times.
Unified? With those disgusting foreigners? The degenerate leftists? The weird religious wackos? The MAGA chuds? The neoliberal shills? The Tankies? The know-nothing hoy paloy? The Epstein-loving bourgeois? The Hollywood sickos? The losers? The haters? The freaks? And some, of course, who I assume are nice people?
There’s a lot of natural social divides that are difficult to surmount. But more frustrating and complicated than that, we have a certain number of scammers and opportunists who will step in and seize the banner of a popular front for self-promotion.
We saw this during OWS, during BLM, during the Climate marches, and during the Tea Party protests. Lots of would-be celebrities simply rush in and start hawking their brands under anything with serious mass appeal. Whether its a Sanders socialism or a Trump fascism or a Buttigieg radical centrism, I regularly see media jammed up with the same clown car of Hawk Tuah Girl promotionals that quickly drown out any kind of serious organizing.
This, combined with the heavy hand of corporate/political censorship that lands on the back of the more sincere and credible activists, disrupts the organic popular movements and obscures them with layer after layer of scam. AI is supercharging the process.
Case in point, any time I say something positive about Gaza or critical of Israel on Bluesky, my mentions fill up with generic 2-day-old accounts showing vaguely Arab-looking profiles asking for donations to relief organizations I’ve never heard of. Organizing in an environment that’s overflowing with these kinds of scams - and, consequently, cultivating a ton of cynicism in the audience - is very difficult.
BLM is a great example. I remember being so mad, and wanting something to change, and there was a huge, massive cultural shift for it. I remember thinking how if everyone would unify behind one thing, we wanted one systemic thing to change - demilitarization of the police as an example, we could probably have done it. Everyone chanting and demanding the same one thing. Then we move onto the next, and the next, and the next.
Instead we got a list of like, 24 things that random people collected from chat rooms and online forums that they demanded. There was no way anyone was going to see a list that large and just say “Yup okay we’re on it”. But people wouldn’t budge, their thing was the most important, it was all or nothing - and so that’s what we got. Nothing. We could have had some huge systemic change there and instead nothing happened.
Occupy, BLM, protests, they’re all well and good but they depend on people unifying. This here, this is the thing we want. Make it a bill and push it through now. It won’t encompass everything. It won’t be perfect. But it’s progress. Instead we just go back and forth, and they know all they have to do is wait out the outcry until people get bored and they move on, so we can keep the status quo.
Cultural pollution. We are losing the ability to agree and act, piece by piece.
I dislike misanthropy, so I don’t think there’s no hope left, but climate change shows us how we built claims of self-autonomy, equality and compassion on a foundation of fake-it-till-we-make-it, thus on a foundation that is, simply put, not up to the task of our times.