initial disclaimer: this is an uninformed political take. please dont be mean to me in the comments
this post is inspired by, but not a direct response to @lexyeevee's "piracy is not praxis" post, which i think people in the comments of that post are being uncharitable to her. it also has people demonstrating the common phenomenon of wanting Doing X to also be Doing Leftism (aka: praxis), which I think is a mistake. I think this mistake occurs, understandably, because people are invested in Being Leftist. however, this leads to the following incorrect argument:
- one wishes to believe: "i am a good person"
- one believes: "being a leftist means you are a good person"
- one believes: "doing leftist things means you are a leftist"
- one does X
- one therefore concludes: "doing X is leftist"
- one therefore concludes: "i am a leftist because I do X"
- one therefore concludes: "i am a good person because i am a leftist"
this isn't a rational argument, but it is emotionally very compelling. i think that most people either consciously or subconsciously believe this argument, even when they say they don't. (in fact, i think i also end up believing the above argument a lot). i think this is why there are so many arguments on the internet about whether or not it's sufficiently Communist to make chili for your neighbor or similar. it ends up turning The Thing You Do into an identity challenge.
to be very clear: it is possible for X to be a thing which is worth doing, but nevertheless is not Doing Leftism. its not leftist to make chili for your neighbor, but you should still do it because it means you make a friend and get to eat good food, and more over, it would be ridiculous to need to know if that "making chili" should be praxis or not before deciding whether or not you should make chili for your neighbors!
things which i think are not Doing Leftism but can still be worth doing:
- piracy of media for personal consumption
- piracy of software programs
- piracy of most academic papers
- installing an ad blocker
- making exceptions for specific websites for your ad blocker
- subscribing to most paterons
- buying games on itch.io instead of steam
- most archival work
- shoplifting
- participating in fandom, including furry fandom
- shipping, writing fanfic, drawing fanart, making fangames, and anything similar to that
- watching media analysis youtubers
- (most breadtube videos tbh)
- using webp as an image format
- not using webp as an image format
- using discord as a wiki, forum, or file host
- not using discord as a wiki, forum, or file host
- almost all foss projects
- using mastodon instead of {twitter, cohost, tumblr, etc}
- using cohost instead of {twitter, mastodon, tumblr, etc}
- using tumblr instead of {twitter, cohost, mastodon etc}
- using social media in general
i think about this thread constantly.
we have been tamed so thoroughly by capitalism that we have internalized as a generation the idea that passive consumerism is somehow activism, and it seeps into every discourse on the internet in the dumbest ways.
piracy isn't praxis for the same reason that watching the disney is/isn't.
none of it is. it's always just been bread and circuses all the way down.
we are not going to save the world by chosting through it.
you can make your own choices for your own peace of mind, but do not fool yourself into thinking it amounts to anything else, or you will be bitterly disappointed with the world.
