Greetings #Fediverse members!
I've been joining a number of conversations about the recent growth on the Fediverse, and I keep hearing the term "users".
I'd like to remind everyone here that the community is made up of people, humans, members.
"Users" dehumanises, alienates, and allows for a particular brand of technospeak that smacks of addicted eyeballs and lost privacy.
I am a member of the community, not a user of software. Please try to reduce, ahem, using the word.
@jaz I use :mastodon: therefore I am a user.
@jaz I totally get your point but, having worked in technical support, I see a user as a person who uses the system and those who use the system are the reason the system exists. Our primary concern is to support the person who uses the system and make sure that the system meets their needs. At least from my point of view, the term "user" is not demeaning; in fact, the term indicates a person of primary importance.
@jaz
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
The specific tendency you point to is part of a far larger project whose function is to so infuse us with "essential individualism" that we have a hard time thinking of ourselves as parts of an ongoing, robust, richly-textured community.
This tamps down solidarity, makes it a flash-in-the-pan, which weakens the durability of any collective efforts at change.
"Economics" is one source of such atomizing conceptions of ourselves.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047228
@jaz
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
The specific tendency you point to is part of a far larger project whose function is to so infuse us with "essential individualism" that we have a hard time thinking of ourselves as parts of an ongoing, robust, richly-textured community.
This tamps down solidarity, makes it a flash-in-the-pan, which weakens the durability of any collective efforts at change.
"Economics" is one source of such atomizing conceptions of ourselves.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is