underrated reason for public tuning out is just that people here have little idea of consequences of activism and messaging since "Make Kony famous!" telling you to "PAY ATTENTION!" all the time
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It’s maddening because people were talking about the vacuousness even at the time! Not sure if I want to open the Pandora’s box of “I wonder how exactly I was thinking about this in college” by digging up old schoolwork but I distinctly remember the 4am argument we had while writing sociology papers
To me the funniest part of that empty wind blowing through people's heads was when Rush Limbaugh temporarily came out in favor of Kony as a persecuted Christian
people eventually get tired of being told to remain in a high state of mobilized emotional agitation at all times. the environment on twitter as it used to be and here is not normal
I have conflicted feelings on both the reality and norms of this.
I don't think posting politics stuff is "yelling" or necessarily emotionally agitating. It makes up a lot of my social media diet but i doubt others. I am also unsure whether it is new that bringing up politics is coded as impolite
what makes all of the "2010s culture war gave us right backlash" stuff false is that most people's reaction was not to get "radicalized" but rather to just tune out
The right's backlash wasn't organic bc People were suffering from results of bad policy, no. It was engineering by political messaging of Congressional Republicans & right-wing media against the ACA & President Obama.
That in retrospect turned out to be good popular policy & good popular president.
yes, and left of center groups spent a long time normalizing a mode of political participation that had the worst of both worlds -- ineffective and emotionally exhausting. the emotional exhaustion was the point
Screaming at people about your pet issue is good for establishing that avoiding you is the only way to avoid being screamed at, as well as associating that issue with lots of screaming, but I'm not really sure what else it does.
We also have a system that has refused to do much of anything for most people's lives. (Median US age is 39. Congress has done exceedingly little in the past 30)
Almost *any* high involvement activism in this era *will* generate burnout unless you can hold onto the Stockdale Paradox.
but more narrowly this is also why the term "awareness raising" should be banned. people have rich private live and at the very minimum the ability to tune out. even in the television era you'd see a report on starving refugees in a place you never heard of and then a commercial break for ACME Shave
A democratic system I'd like to see would be one where folks can more publicly more aggregateable more visibly say what is important. A nation's top 10 list.
The demand for attention is endless. Having a declared list might make us think, and might help us better see.
My experience of 'awareness raising' (albeit in the different environment of the UK) is it nearly always traces back to an NGO rather than to an actual movement.
Every interaction being ruthlessly optimized for income was completely destructive for things like video games, and its wild we dont see a parallel in politics
agree, though I think that a lot of that participation isn’t participation in a meaningful sense, it’s Reading and Posting. but that low effort stuff ironically can be more draining bc ultimately you’re alone at your computer. IRL participation is also time consuming and draining but also can uplift
like a failed protest can be a bummer/takes more effort, but at least you get to see a lot of people, some of them friends, see physical proof of engagement and get an emotional boost from that. whereas posting into the void usually leaves you feeling like you didn’t move the needle
So im all in on the liberals in Canada, im 100% willing to go out and door knock and theres a bunch of us. What i dont need is 2 emails daily asking me to donate and a sobstory from the campaign manager. Thats exhausting.
Theres no way to casually be involved with that stuff, its firehose or not
in america the fundraising/outreach strategies from official campaigns are increasingly hysterical and desperate. extremely off putting and borderline elder abuse given that a lot of that stuff targets retirees with deceptive marketing that basically says “give us $ or you’re not a real democrat”
That style of politics maximizes the base radicalization, while also alienating people who would be involved, because they are relentlessly optimizing the narratives they want to push. And honestly i hate pierre pollievre, i dont want to hate him every day every hour
I disagree with this as written. If it were revised as "people have been bombarded with a false definition of political participation that does, in fact, cause exhaustion" then I would be much more likely to agree with it
But the actual amount of "political participation" that would be required from the average citizen in order for things not to be utterly horrible (which I take to be what we're shooting for) is, like, miniscule. An hour or so, every two years or so.
This is of course assuming for the sake of argument that the average citizen is not, in fact, an evil monster, and does not, in fact, *want* things to be horrible.
I must make this assumption because the alternative is hopelessness, short of literal divine intervention
It’s not just tiring it’s discrediting. It’s hard to believe that all of these crises are the most important thing and people start assuming that anyone doing activism is a con man.
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I don't think posting politics stuff is "yelling" or necessarily emotionally agitating. It makes up a lot of my social media diet but i doubt others. I am also unsure whether it is new that bringing up politics is coded as impolite
That in retrospect turned out to be good popular policy & good popular president.
Interesting to contrast that with how social media overall has normalized "political participation" methods... wouldn't that be more relevant?
https://bsky.app/profile/aelkus.bsky.social/post/3lklkoqlvfc2w
https://bsky.app/profile/isaiahbishop.bsky.social/post/3lklkibe7jk2b
Almost *any* high involvement activism in this era *will* generate burnout unless you can hold onto the Stockdale Paradox.
The demand for attention is endless. Having a declared list might make us think, and might help us better see.
*commercial break*
"ACME Shave. So clean. So powerful. It's like taking an anvil to your face!"
....the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159364/musee-des-beaux-arts-63a1efde036cd
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus_-_Brussels%2C_Royal_Museums_of_Fine_Arts_of_Belgium_-_Google_Arts_%26_Culture.jpg/800px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus_-_Brussels%2C_Royal_Museums_of_Fine_Arts_of_Belgium_-_Google_Arts_%26_Culture.jpg
Theres no way to casually be involved with that stuff, its firehose or not
I must make this assumption because the alternative is hopelessness, short of literal divine intervention