 I think one of the hard things about fedi, culturally, is that a whole lot (most??) of us are here because we are refusers of norms. And which norms and which levels of refusal differ. So even if you’re at the 80th to 99th percentile of resistance to corporate social media OR mainstream party politics OR mainstream journalism OR cars OR the normalization of repeat covid infections, there will always be people popping up to tell you that by not being completely pure, you’re killing everyone. 105 comments
@kissane And because we *do* care about resisting these things, those accusations of moral failure have potential to sting us in a way that “normie” folks wouldn’t feel at all. And even if you’re SUPER PURE along one vector, you’re always going to miss some other one someone feels very motivated to discipline you about. And this must be okay for some people! But I try very hard to live in a state of at least partial uncertainty, because the alternative is a real vulnerability to Going Bad without realizing it. The downside of that stance is that shit just doesn’t roll off. This is true for a lot of us, I think—maybe artists most of all, bc art requires sensitivity. I don’t have a solution for this, and it feels obvious when I write it out. But it seems worth grappling with across as well as within our various communities. 🪴 @emjonaitis For sure! I am thinking a lot about ways of getting into the needs of a bunch of cross-cutting groups, like people who really want to connect more but feel lonely and ignored + people in groups that are likely to be targeted (Black women, most of all) + “big” accounts whose work enriches the network but whose own experiences of it are often so alienating. This is one of 2-3 things I’d like to work on next, tbh, but I’m a little crispy so I’m taking a wee moment first. 🫠 @emjonaitis @kissane I was thinking along the same lines. Even if only 1% of users is going to get all up in their feelings about something, and you have--to pull a random number--13,000 followers, that means 130 people are going to get all up in their feelings about something. I don't want to have 130 pleasant and engaging conversations with people I know well in a given day, let alone 130 strangers getting upset at me for something, even IF I could sympathize with their perspective. @kissane I feel this hard, “purity culture” leading to subtraction (of self, of participation, of consideration, of ideas) and that we should be about growth, care, protection, revival. That purity is a test one is trying to measure up to, to force oneself (and others) into quantifiable boxes; chasing purity in all angles is not aligned with the messiness of human grown and maybe its allure is that it promises certainty? A way to KNOW we are safe (by whatever metric we measure that).  I'm personally really happy when someone takes time out of their day to explain why something might be a problem and respectfully offers a solution. But then there are those people who misread your message, or don't bother to contextualise it to another culture, and instead of checking did they understand correctly, they just jump forward to sending insulting pictures and tagging you for their friends, who just check the synopsis for the mob... I don't disagree on principle. But I do think that it's worth remembering that what you call "purity testing" is sometimes the result of hypervigilance. I also think the language "purity test" is...not the best. It belittles their position and their reaction in ways that scream "privileged" to me, because the more marginalized you are the less wiggle room you've got for "live and let live" attitudes. @johnzajac I’m inclined to give people a whole lot of leeway on health stuff, but there’s a still point past which it’s still bad and counterproductive behavior. Most of what I see here (and most of what I mentioned) is people exercising social discipline because someone else drove a car, linked to youtube, posted on another network, expressed excitement about voting, or used an iphone. As someone who grew up in fundamentalist purity culture, I think that stuff is classic purity culture. 🤷🏻 @johnzajac (And as someone on the way vulnerable and very isolated end with covid, I can understand and even sympathize with even fairly terrible behavior while also believing it’s doing the opposite of helping.) Haha for sure! When I was doing high school arts advocacy I had this staff of just post-college age activists working with me, and we'd often argue about stuff like this. My position was that sometimes the right thing to do isn't the strategic or effective thing to do, and that where the left often falls apart is that they do the right thing rather than the effective thing. I also had a soft spot for slacktivists, which irked them to no end lol. I think managing those "purists" is part of being an effective and strategic change agent. I've found that if you build a mutual and trusting relationship with them you can temper that energy and bring it to bear. I mean, this is the internet so whatever. Half of them are probably just trying to have a fight with you so they can let off steam. I just wanted to inject hypervigilance because the ideas we get on here can bleed into everyday life, and I hadn't seen anyone else do it. @kissane @johnzajac I've recently boiled down what's happening here to: "I understand you're [!SITUATION] but I still don't want to be treated like that." Everyone has their threshold for interaction and that MUST be respected. I mean, that's obvious to me, and it's part of why block function exists. We are the ones lobbing our ideas into the cyberscape, though, so we bear some responsibility for inviting the trampires in. @johnzajac I'm sorry: I'm not sure what you're trying to explain to me, or why you're explaining it to me, as we're strangers and none of this has been an information problem, just me chatting with a person I actually know about something we largely agree on. There's no query or debate in this situation to address. Anyways, I hope sometime we have the opportunity to discuss something on real terms, because your work looks interesting. Have a good day?  @johnzajac @kissane as someone who's marginalized in a few different ways, I disagree: I have very little wiggle room to purity test people because I can't afford to be picky about who I accept help from  @kissane Secondly, there are also people who have a very hard time moving beyond binary good/bad thinking for reasons of nature/nurture and how their brain works. There's an aspect of splitting and projecting all bad onto others involved in this. But everyone can learn to move beyond binary thinking and it gets easier with practice (we can all use some practice doing this, our brains ARE wired for quick good/bad categorizations and quick reactions). I mean, purity is a thing about fascism, sure, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, purity is a thing that also happens when you have to protect your identity against majority. That's how you get those flamboyant gays of 1980s, or vegans of the same period, or stop-oil -activists today. You either make yourself a caricature by demanding rights, or you stay in the closet. (I can only think how many gotchas Thunberg gets for owning a phone, or using clothes, electricity etc). Perhaps I used the wrong word, or wrong example. This isn't my first language, nor am I familiar with United States of today or or yesteryear (which I'm assuming you're contextualing my message to). What I tried to say is that pushing new ideas as an activist involves being a caricature for various reasons: to draw attention, to set an example, to not be pushed aside when others ask you to take it down a notch for their convenience etc. @fifilamoura @kissane no doubt there are many things going on. but i think contemporary culture has brought out aspects of activism that are hyper-individualistic rather than community-focused - you see people performing these self-improvement projects like changing their diets, altering their vocabularies, and displaying only the correct opinions on social media, using an abstinence-based approach to becoming a Good Person. but with purity comes contempt for the people who fail those standards. @fifilamoura @kissane what these people don't realize is that if the majority of humans fail your minimum standards of being a Good Person, you end up hating the human race - and your activism is no longer rooted in compassion, but contempt for the impure. you can't claim to care about humanity while despising almost all of it. there has to be room for forgiveness of human failure. @kissane I just want to say that I think you're doing great, I admire you a lot, and the person I saw who was engaging in all that finger-wagging at you seemed to be clearly working out his life frustrations in entirely the wrong direction. I think you're wonderful and I'm sorry you're taking such undeserved heat when you're clearly doing your very best, for yourself and for everyone 🫶 @elana Augh ❤️❤️❤️ I’m truly okay, my skin thickens back up fast! But I’m such a network nerd that whenever I see problems I start thinking about them in network-wide terms. @kissane This reminds me of the Bloom County strip where Opus tries not to harm even one blade of grass... @kissane I love to ignore and block the #PurityTrolls and #SanitySealions. Not much else can be done. They’re not here to have a nice talk.
@kissane the problem with zealots... You can’t let ‘em get to you. If you post online, you’re opening yourself up to attack. It’s a fun thought experiment tho. You either silo yourself with other like-minded people and defederate, or stay open and exposed. Maybe there’s a balance, maybe there are better controls we could implement. I’m not sure anyone’s really treating the “fediverse” as a “product” outside of Meta. It’s all individual instances and client software. people are messy.  @kissane I often think about the survivorship bias of the folks who've stuck around to post. There's a degree of intrinsic motivation and living in one's head that being in the fediverse requires.  @kissane It's the whole "perfect being the enemy of good" thing essentially. Agitation for purposes of purging out the bad is fine IMO and can even be a good thing, as long as it doesn't stray into actual attacks on others. I haven't seen a lot of attack behavior but I keep hearing it's a thing here (I do believe you and them) and it's a bit worrisome.   @kissane Yeah, I was amazed there's people here demanding that @mattblaze puts CW on his (excellent, black and white architecture and landscape) photographs. @kissane amen, been struggling with this idea a lot recently. The purity tests result in an inordinate amount of -this is why we can't have nice things- @kissane I agree with that And each of us also encounters others who make it clear that the norm refusal we care about isn't, as far as they're concerned, worth caring about. Sometimes it's said explicitly; sometimes it's implicit but still apparent in what they say. That can be stressful too, with enough scale and repetition. It's not something I think can be eliminated in wide discussions, for various reasons, but it's worth remembering (esp. when my own posts might heighten that feeling). @stephanie @kissane @stephanie Yes, absolutely. I’ve spent a lot of time since 2020 with public health folks who do things like HIV prevention and vaccine hesitancy comms work and they’re all quite clear that purism and condemnation are wildly unhelpful ways of moving more people toward more safety. It was eye-opening! I know that a lot of people are just venting their (very understandable) rage but it’s such a counterproductive mode.  Agree with this but would also add – moral purity (good vs. evil dichotomous thinking) is a trait of White/European culture. There’s a great book called “White Bound” by Matthew Hughey, who spent a year in embedded in both a White antiracist organization and a White supremacist group. Members of *both* groups (White antiracists and neo-nazis) were very preoccupied with demonstrating ideological purity to their group’s mission.  That makes sense to me. It’s weird, White culture is very individualistic/competitive, but it also values conformity/purity.  @kissane Yeah, there's a tendency to see "refusal of norms" as an identity that is, itself, normative—almost as though there were a checklist of norms, and anyone who finds their way here is supposed to diligently go through the list and put a red X next to each. But really, the most you can count on is that each person refused one norm in particular, and that made seeking out a social media alternative seem practical. @kissane . . .and they may be right. But sometimes I still get on a plane, eat some meat, compromise on policy preferences, etc. I am weak! @kissane Well said! Prioritization of multiple issues can polarize on a single issue that people agree on. On a single issue, Alice and Bob might agree completely with one another. But then...there might be 9 other issues that Bob believes are relatively more important. Now suddenly, there seems to be a big gap between Alice and Bob on that original issue.  I feel no need nor desire to be pure @kissane I'd love to know the generational makeup of those people popping up. I have a theory but don't feel like getting attacked for it myself!  That's well put -- and often folks _have_ of course thought about the tradeoffs they themselves have chosen, but get "explained to" by others. IME, many nerdy communities (especially male-dominated ones) have similar refusal of norms cultures, so for folks who've been part of such communities it may feel easier to tolerate or even normal, but it can be very offputting. I think a culture of generosity in how we approach each other is a useful thing for any fedi community to nourish. @kissane yeah well it's pretty hard not to be a slave to the system as long as you want a car or a phone. @kissane Thank you! This is such a great framing, and I can definitely see that I've contributed to this in my corner of mastodon. We should try to do better.  @kissane I think part of it is a tendency to increase the stakes/contrast between you and your opponent while repeating your strongest arguments that happens during a disagreement. You’ve explained yourself but your opponent Doesn’t Get It which means they are just dismissing the consequences so you’ve got to make them clearer to them. It’s a bad habit and I know I do it, too, as well as jumping into a new conversation already at that higher level. That’s when you need to walk away.  @kissane on the other hand,you are always more "pure" than someone else, and you will always find someone more "pure" than you. I don't like this "purity" terminology. The way I view it, in most cases it's just a way of saying that someone is concerned about an issue you don't care about (or not as much as them) -- and to discard their concern without bothering to rationally engage with it.  @kissane I read your post many times .. honestly I don't get it. I mean, I don't see the problem.  @kissane "...there will always be people popping up to tell you that by not being completely pure, you’re killing everyone." And the correct response to that is, "Well I goddamn hope so! People suck."  @kissane I don't deal with people like that. I try to be a good person, but I'm not gonna have someone come along and criticize me because I haven't deleted Facebook. If anyone comes along and does that, it's just an instant block – and I wouldn't care if they are friend or family in real life. I do not use Twitter/X because I believe that platform is 1 million times worse than Facebook at this point.   @kissane Wouldn't you say then that refusing norms has become the new norm, and thereby we should be refusing the refusing of norms?   @kissane it's one thing to be a refuser of norms and another thing to purity test and be a dick about it @kissane I Can teach you how to invest in stock mining turn your $200 to $5,500 in just 3hrs ask me How! text me for more info TEXT SMS: Text No:+1 (703) 879-8125 WhatsApp link below 👇 👇👇👇 @kissane For me, it's not so much a refuser of norms, rather, I seek out online environments that are more given to kindness and friendship and respectful exchange of ideas. |
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@kissane that is my newest unfollow/block criteria, sadly.