a set of somewhat related things I’ve been thinking a lot about:
As often as people say “google is free” on the internet, it seems like more people would have written about the experience of actually trying to learn about social issues by googling them and how much it fucking sucks.
like i very much did grow up in the Bible Belt in an EXTREMELY conservative community. Like, the bland, “centrist” moderate liberal type of person people on here say is basically indistinguishable from a Republican? people i was around as a young teenager would consider them dangerously close to being a communist. Both of my parents have had significant portions of their social circles completely ostracize them for not being trump supporters. Not even for having “liberal” views, for QUESTIONING the idea that Donald trump is God’s gift to man
what I’m saying is, I very much did have to learn about things by aimless googling and it is. not like people say it is
When you google things like “how do I help fight against racism,” you get a combination of resources. many of which are rather jargony for people who aren’t culturally familiar with “The Left” or whatever. And yet. they’re mostly the same set of very basic suggestions, many of which have unclear concrete application
I’m losing my patience with how much “activism” is expected to center around social media presence. like so much of what supposedly answers “how do I help fight against racism” or whatever basic question revolves around things you do online instead of in real life. In particular, “listen to minority voices” is basically just “follow people on social media.” It’s so internet-centered. A lot of the advice is suited more to a “people freely interacting in an open plaza where we talk about bigotry and inequality” kind of thing rather than the kind of interactions you have in real life with people.
at the same time, a lot of the guidelines about handling these conversations are so badly suited to the internet.
Like. On the internet, people’s identity isn’t always public or easy to find out, nor should it be, but no one seems to want to...admit...???...that this makes putting into practice “centering” and listening to certain voices kind of hard. Online, people have no idea who you are unless you tell them. You very much can lie if you want. It has always seemed to me like social issues conversations are better to have in real life with people you actually have a relationship with. Not that we can’t have them online (obviously) but we are limited.
Furthermore, though I agree with, and try to put into practice, the idea that basically people know more about the bigotry and discrimination they face than I do, and therefore I should listen to minority voices and let my viewpoints be guided by them...being a semi-popular blogger who interacts with and gets messages from loads of people means that it’s basically impossible for me to practice that online because this is the internet, where if you can think of an opinion, it exists and someone is telling you that you should die over it. I have been called a bigot over the most batshit fucking bonkers cuckoo for coco puffs things under the fucking sun.
like i have been called a racist and colonialist for believing that ADHD, as a label, corresponds to a real thing in my brain. I still have the screenshots. I know I’m not SUPPOSED to be like “yeah, I don’t think that’s correct,” but what can you do.
(Do any of you remember that big post a while back where someone was claiming that a Van Gogh painting was blackface, and it turned out that they were arguing that literally all art by non-black people was blackface? I still have no idea if they were a troll or what but it was a Thing, and a real demonstration of how someone who is a malicious troll or just bonkers can just say shit. I don’t think anyone took that one seriously, but still.)
basically real interactions in the real world are so much different than the internet and way more important and productive in my opinion but our ideas of how “activism” is supposed to work and how to be an ally is so internet-ified while at the same time not really working all that well online. both in terms of learning about things and about interacting with people. can we just admit that the internet is a REALLY socially weird place and by no means the baseline for How Human Interactions Work.
