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.
Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.
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, says Cross, 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.”
In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking reaction for its own sake.
“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
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I feel personally attacked, I agree with the article, but painfully so.
Agree, best thing we can do is starve their platforms and deny them advertising revenue. Just delete our accounts.
I don’t know, i was thinking about it and it seems like they would love it if we would just unplug like that, because then we couldn’t reach the majority of people because they’re only using those platforms. I fucking hate psyop bullshit for making me have to question every single fucking thought like that.
If you must be on those platforms (because face it, that is where grandma is) don’t doom scroll. I block all from the creator of shared memes on facebook - then when I block two I use that as a sign I’m done for the day. You should follow similar rules - make it clear that you want social media for social purposes and the memes, information (which is likely false or exaggerated), and everything else is not welcome to you. Alone you and I are nothing, but together we start to become a statistics that they will notice. Thus my plea that you follow similar rules as me in blocking the non-social parts and not doom scrolling - if there are enough of us they will be forced to make their platform more useful to keep us for one more ad.
LF leftists in Kansas. Assemble
They’re dozens of us.
Funny, I find this in my doomscroll app. I just want out, man
literally just don’t doomscroll, go read my recent post over in eudaimonia.
You literally just don’t have to do it lmao.
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that requires effort to move away from platforms that force you to doomscroll with their algorithm. For many people that is very strong chain. If you relinquish your mind its not easy to even see the reason to take it back on your own. If you dont believe me, go tell someone who uses facebook a lot to stop using it, see what they reply.
it requires effort for sure, but even if you don’t want to permanently do it, just spend like a week, without using tiktok or something.
It’s worth it. At least let yourself understand both worlds fully.
the problem with this is that A LOT of people needs to do it. Personally I dont have any problems with trying to maintain my sanity by not reading about awful things or by treating tiktok like the plague it is. But so many are basically addicts and dont even want to hear anything about changing what they do or just plain dont care what you say to them.
the problem with this is that A LOT of people needs to do it.
yeah, and they should, it’s worth the time investment, or in this case, time gain.
Yes it is, but how to make them understand it is
As someone who is outside the US, the best I can do is share important information with people inside the US.
I would be very surprised if any of our US-Allied governments call out Trump. I would be overjoyed, but surprised.
I have the social skills of a cholla cactus and so when someone says ѻɼﻭคกٱչﻉ ץѻપɼ กﻉٱﻭɦ๒ѻɼɦѻѻɗ กﻉՇฝѻɼᛕ I find it only confusing and unintelligible. I did consider making cookies for my neighbors with a notice saying I don’t know how to ዐዪኗልክጎጊቿ ል ክቿጎኗዘጌዐዪዘዐዐዕ ክቿፕሠዐዪጕ but maybe someone else does…here’s some cookies? Mind you, my neighborhood is a tad lower class and has an air of desperation so they may not trust my cookies.
It’s a thought. My kitchen appliances are lent out right now, and I don’t actually know how to bake.
But I seem to understand enough leftist theory to bridge those who, like me, have been brainwashed to see communism and socialism as derisives and terms of contempt.
I’m also going through a psychotic break because a lot of stressors piled up at the same time seventy-seven million voters decided to give the Genie’s lamp to Jaffar.
People even knowing their next door neighbors NAME is leaps and bounds ahead of where we are right now.
Sure you can. Fight online propaganda with online propaganda.
“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet” - Andreessen, allegedly.
Thanks for sharing this article. What a disgustingly crass sentiment
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Disagree. Calling leftists Nazis for not voting for Harris is basically the same thing as Stalingrad
The revoltion will not be televised - Gill Scott Heron
Even people agreeing with this are wary of any revolution which is not in some way being televised. And more trusting to television than to what they can see with their own eyes.
They’ve been censorious for over a decade. It’s just the old target was “acceptable” to most denizens of reddit and similar social media. Now that the censors are expanding their reach, we see umbrage? Come on now. This was inevitable
But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
No shit, so when I’d say this in year 2013, it wasn’t worthless nerd screeching aimed at satisfying my hunger for attention which I don’t get because I’m a worthless nerd and can’t accept the new world where tech helps, you know, normal socialized people, not like me, to fix every problem with their mutual likes and reposts and flashmobs.
Seems damn clear that radio reproductors on German streets didn’t help against Nazism.
I would argue that journalism is necessary, just not sufficient, for moving into the future.
Ironically this is true for every one of the myriad sides in this conflict.
I recall a sci-fi book from CS Lewis… anyway my point is that this was well known after WWII, and probably often had to be rediscovered throughout history. Strong societies produce weak children and so on. We’ve had our Yin, now time for the karmic Yang to brutalize us for being so extremely negligent.
Maybe it’s better to refrain from growing strong men, though, just average will do, with average children, not weak.
ADD:
Also from LOTR, a smart thing in the same direction, I think one can find most of Tao Te Ching and Art of War rephrased in LOTR.
“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule”
I’m not sure how it is possible to produce merely average people though? Anyway, even if humanity itself were to not change, the world around us still does. Perhaps one day aliens will show up, assuming that climate change doesn’t kill us all in the moderate term future. Just like all those species of animals and plants and such that we’ve driven extinct: they lasted so long, but then could not survive us.
So I would argue that we always should remain strong… it’s just that the definition of what that even means will constantly keep changing, in response to our circumstances.
But, Stoicism, yeah - it’s literally all that we can do, so let’s do that.:-)
I’m not sure how it is possible to produce merely average people though?
Not getting excited with global solutions and utopias. At some point in my 12-15 I considered libertarianism a far wiser ideology than the rest due to this, but then noticed how there are libertarian utopias emerging for all tastes. Panarchy (that’s not yet a thing), agorism (that to some extent is, with cryptocurrencies and internet connectivity) and maybe something else.
Any wise construct stops being wise if you rely on it too much.
So people thinking “correctly” are not those you want to have, people familiar with good things, but not invested too much, are.
If you build a construct (say, in a game like Civilization) with -7 modifier to fascism, then the humanity will regulate to that and negate the modifier. Then your construct crumbles, and the humanity gets +7 to fascism. Was it really a good idea in the first place then?
So I would argue that we always should remain strong… it’s just that the definition of what that even means will constantly keep changing, in response to our circumstances.
And that means that trying to remain strong we’ll waste effort in all directions instead of having some when needed.
But, Stoicism, yeah - it’s literally all that we can do, so let’s do that.:-)
Stoicism is about spending effort where you should and not spending when you shouldn’t. It’s not pure inaction, it’s the way to do less nonsense.
EDIT: Or the biblical example with 7 abundant years and 7 hungry years - imagine taking all the increase in food for granted, many more children being born, many more slaves brought in, expecting to be able to pay many more debts perhaps, thus taking more, and then during hungry years not only the difference in population dying, but more (because those who die from hunger still consume food before it, those who are used to eating more need more to survive, some debt payments can’t be postponed, and a weaker state spends more resources to defend its borders).
Humans seem not to be great planners - we are too short-sighted and selfish, but like in a bad way where we first lie to ourselves, and then also to one another.
This allows us to get out of local minima as we spread to new areas, but that same trait seems equally likely to lead to our extinction when all areas have been found and we need rather to switch to a more stablilzed society, yet won’t bc we don’t feel like doing so.
Such situations would regularly arise till early XX century and even now, so, eh, humanity tries everything. I wouldn’t assume I know a solution.
Ironically, religion seemed to be helping. And before that (before humanity itself), tribes. An extension of “self” to include other who nonetheless were not “other”, at least not fully. But people seem to prefer wanting to game the system,
allowingforcing others to put into while themselves pulling out from.The age of enlightenment did much good to expose religious corruption, yet offered an inferior product to replace it: “knowledge”, which so few people know how to properly handle, lacking training. e.g. in the USA we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that most people were too busy and tired to properly educate themselves, yet we placed no restrictions upon voting (like a college degree, or even a test as simple as asking how many branches of government there are - which even that would cause many people to fail).nor did we offer the requisite aid (like a livable minimum wage, or conversely access to a minimum form of healthcare) to help people to help themselves, nor did we keep watch against the predators that would take advantage, e.g. safeguarding the media (instead allowing it to be bought out by billionaires, rather than staying true to the mission of doing “journalism”, the seeking out and reporting of actual truth facts).
We brought this upon ourselves. Even if Donald Trump were to have a tragic accident tomorrow, even if the entire Republican party were to disappear into thin air, or all politicians combined, we would still be left with a broken system, just as before. We cannot escape the laws of Nature (whether put there by a God or not, but it’s worth noting that for those who believe in such, He agrees that we deserve this fate).
Even so, I hope for better. I don’t know what, or how, only that I need such for the sake of my own sanity.
I suspect the vast majority of people turning to social media as a pressure release valve feel disempowered, and don’t know what more they can reasonably do. When voting is no longer enough, and you have little time or money to spare, what’s next? How can a fly meaningfully change the path of a rhino stampede?
This article is insightful, but practically useless. I think it would be better if it also presented specific actions and achievable goals that would lead to shutting down the encroaching fascism.
How about joining the Fediverse?
And ad blocking.
Seriously. Participation in Google/Meta/Tiktok/Whatever and their manipulative algorithms is what makes a lot of this go around. Break their ad revenue, break out of the algorithms, and you break their manipulation.
It’s easy. It’s free. You can do it on your butt, in the same timeslots you doomscroll. And it would draw more devs into developing/hosting.
in warhammer40k there was some saying about “armor of contempt” against influence of chaos. Imo, you need something similar against corporations to resist their shit. Maybe not as rigid and fervorous as in 40k setting, but in general.
participation in local politics is one.
a handful of loud people can deeply impact your local town operates…
Voting can never be enough when you have two choices at best.
People need to know that posting doesn’t actually do anything!
posts an article about it
Posts comment about it.
Vast numbers of people feeling disempowered … sounds like the Trump crowd when he appeared and proclaimed himself their savior. Liberals are in for the same treatment from someone with a different sales pitch. Some people think that’s who Kamala Harris was, I truly believed in her, but maybe that was the whole plan and it’s already like professional wrestling - you win this match, I’ll win the next one, and we both take home the money. I dunno.
It’s super helpful to identify the issue.
Well at least the article validated some of my feelings and gave me a sense identification of the problems I have been sensing around me with the flaccid liberal rebellion.
Hey wait a sec! Dammit!Most concrete action I can think of is some posts I remember seeing about coat-hanger do it yourself frontal lobotomies. I’ve seen plenty of very low IQ Americans with economic status as bad or worse than mine somehow perfectly happy with all the fascist shit that is going down. This seems like an opportunity to join in their bliss.
Get to know the people in your community. Take an interest in growing food, learn how to fix things. Get a gun (or two) and learn how to use them.
https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/
Establish secure lines of communication and start preparing for what’s coming. The next decade is going to be hard but we’ll probably know how it’s going to shake down by then.
edit: formatting
