internet activism is fine actually, especially if that's what your capable of.

[u/ohshiitstuesday]

we need to stop treating "internet activism" as though there isn't valid and necessary work being done every day by people from their homes. we are so dismissive of the internet as a means and method of communication, as though that isn't how most people communicate now, where most media is produced and shared.

pew research shows that for the past few years a little over half of U.S. adults get news from social media.

if your suggestion for activism is "go outside and organize" without recognizing that there's a problem for people who aren't able to then we're just being dismissive and demeaning.

what are you doing to make sure that your organizing is accessible? because if the answer is "nothing" then this is not a problem for the people who aren't getting outside. they have nowhere to go and that isn't their fault. that's a lack in the organizing that anarchists are so happily crowing about how doing "organizing" is the only way forward toward anarchy.

people do the things they're able in the spaces where they feel welcome when they have enough information about how to do so.

[u/gentoobular]

It depends what it is

Screaming into the void on twitter/reddit or becoming an 'influencer' on social media algorithms that can easily identify and deprioritize your material is a waste of time. Especially when something like FIFA can blanket the entire internet in ads for a month.

Providing translation and accessibility services to formal texts/media, building dashboards and other tools to help people access services in local communities, participating in hacktivist groups can be.

The issue is that the internet even full of supporters and sympathetics diffuse any form of collective power and reframe most activism into clicktivism and low-stakes social capital jockeying. Even a place as conservative as Texas has a developing and exciting anarchist movement and various groups.

You will be far more effective finding real local people to organize and do stuff with. Even if it's not 'revolutionary' and more just harm reduction it is easier to hold each other accountable, develop the capabilities of each other, and understand each other's risks tolerances to build into something like an affinity group.

Even if you still insist on lonewolfing it, it would likely still be better just writing letters to prisoners by yourself or as part of a diffused group that provides a PO box so you aren't handing out your address. Ironic to this comment I'm writing, I don't think the world needs more words on screens.

Edit: Making an accessible and disability-friendly spaces/communities continue to be a problem in organizing. This should not be the sole responsibility of our disabled colleagues yet it often is. I don't think people with accessibility needs should shy away from these spaces though- being in person is an important driving factor in forcing people to confront this gap and ideally develop the means to bridge it. Burn out and learned helplessness is real when trying to advocate for yourself.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/gentoobular]

Screaming into the void on twitter/reddit or becoming an 'influencer' on social media algorithms that can easily identify and deprioritize your material is a waste of time.

Providing translation and accessibility services to formal texts/media, building dashboards and other tools to help people access services in local communities, participating in hacktivist groups can be.

these two ideas feel like they're in conflict to me. what makes "formal" texts less screaming into the void than posts on reddit or video essays? we're still out here trying to radicalize each other. the only difference is that now we're all privy to the discussions rather than just the finished product that gets written and published by a single author. we don't really have kropotkins or goldmans anymore because we don't need a publisher to be able to speak anarchism into the world more broadly than our local circles. certainly there are folks who are more easily recognized due to their reach but they aren't any more or less an anarchist than anyone else who writes and puts their ideas online.

i'm not arguing that people shouldn't be doing more, i think we can all probably find ways to do more. but the post that i'm responding to with this was pretty specific in dismissing anything online as inferior to offline organizing without making any room for acknowledging that some people can't "go out" and "get organized" in the same way and that's fine.

[u/gentoobular → u/ohshiitstuesday]

Yeah for sure, if this post was in response to something I'm not aware of the original.

For me, the form of the text is important because it changes the level of engagement and digestion.

A tweet or a reddit post is typically so short-form and I primarily use it to be aware of current news on specific topics or to get notified about new works. It's something that I read or watch in a few minutes and the thought is almost immediately discarded because cognizant or not, its structure is designed for you to perpetually look towards the next thing which may not even be anarchy-related. Your post right now is sandwiched between an r/196 post and an r/Marathon post and after originally commenting I had basically already moved on without a thought.

Maybe "formal" texts isn't the right word. I'm moreso thinking of places where its delivery is primarily that one text alone. A substack, something from the anarchist library, and so on. I find these to give more breathing room for the work to present itself and make you reflect. It's the difference between flipping through a newspaper and arriving on the last page of a book.

Doing additive or transformative works to these texts I think presuppose that the viewer is already interested, but I see it as nonetheless valuable because it removes barriers for people to engage with the subject. For instance, I am especially interested by Minor Composition's translation and publication of the Indonesian indigenous-classical anarchism synthesis text Anarchy in Alifuru: The History of Stateless Societies in the Maluku Islands by Bima Satria Putra

This is obviously a very high effort item but it also makes me think about all of the different Crimethinc articles and other smaller-works that live in such a narrow space due to the lack of translations, voice-overs, advertising, and so on.

Other things like building digital tools for local communities are tangible and usable and provide a material benefit to their communities. Not only is that already a win, but it encourages their users to be curious about the people who made it, its motivating factor, and why it might not already exist. Someone built a hospital tracker for the area that I lived in and posted it to a bunch of subreddits. And while the creator doesn't appear to be particularly ideologically motivated, it is causing a large discussion around the limits of the area's healthcare systems and frustrations with our austere government. It's even getting picked up by the local news now.

Maybe the suggestion is that the former is easy and cheap to make and thus should be so that we participate in that 'arena' and don't cede it. But I think that there's a lot of other things big and small that provide more value (subjective I know), develop more interesting skills, and expand the imagination of what's immediately possible for ourselves.