keepcarrot

I've seen it pop up in quite a few threads, sometimes in jest (or sort of in-jest), but I think it comes up enough to talk about seriously, both from an individual behaviour standpoint and a broader activism/socialism/whatever standpoint.

This is also coming from someone that sees themselves as very extroverted (but also autistic and socially anxious, so pretty poor at getting my social needs met), so maybe this whole idea is way off base.

There's two narratives here for discussion in this thread:

• I struggle with pushing myself to be social, and I am afraid this makes me a poor activist. At some point or another advocating for socialism will rely on socialists to talk to non-socialists in spaces and circumstances that are not comfortable.
• Socialism, on some level, involves a society with more time and space to socialise. What will this look like for a severe introvert? Will there be room for a person to buy a plot of land in the hills and live separate from society forever? Will I have to go to Commissar DanceClass's Dance Class?

And two sentiments that should be discussed with those narratives re: other people:

• Introvert, socially anxious, autistic etc. There are people they get along with and comfortable social situations, but for a variety of reasons need a break regularly
• "I just hate people"

This whole post was a thought I had when reading the second people-hater. My initial thought was that this was an internal pathologisation of people based on the society we live in. If the only people you encounter day to day are ladder climbing suburbanites whose main interests are competitively assessing lawn heights and promotions, you're probably going to "hate people". However, this may not be the case for all people who claim this of themselves. Maybe they hate other people on the road, people in queues for groceries etc. I just find it hard to believe that someone who genuinely hates all people would hop on to a forum (an entirely social activity) and spend any amount of time there. Nonetheless, it probably happens.

But, I figured that the topic had enough range and nuance to turn into its own thread instead of responding directly, and saw someone else post the introvert activism thing.

One of the things I thought of was the social battery and how it's often expended on work and commuting. If your main social energy is spent at work/commuting, I feel like it's very possible that one might come away with a dim view of any social activity (incl. organising) and your ability to participate in it, especially if you'd largely done it since school (another cutthroat highly hierarchical social setting).

(how is commuting social? You're in a constant negotiation with other drivers to avoid bumping your 2 ton $20k machines into each other, with a wide variety of levels of aggression, empathy, engagement etc. It's not words, but there is a communication there that can be very draining)

I didn't make it. We made it.

I just had an odd interaction. Someone called me a liar (online, heavens to betsy), so I gave a very low energy "grey" response. They escalated and seemed to get angry at that. I kept giving just very short "eh" responses and their responses rapidly got more extreme and unhinged. I don't think I even really defended myself or anything.

I realise I've had this a few times. Just people weirdly escalating to exterminating all leftists or threatening genocide after what were very normal responses on my part. Maybe my responses weren't that normal?

The hell was going on? Did they think they were winning something?

So, in my circles of friends, I am the most terminally online person. I remember being a soc-demmy kinda person (who called themselves socialist) when I joined r/cth when it hit 69,420 members.

Now here I am with opinions like "Stalin and the USSR weren't so bad" and "The tanks rolling into Hungary in 1956 were correct, actually". I feel like the community here on hexbear has kinda shifted in the same way. That said, we've steered clear of the patsoc menace, who aesthetically venerate AES while following the most regressive social/nationalist opinions of what they think of as the working class.

This has somewhat put me at odds with a lot of my RL friends, who are anarchists or trots of varying degrees. I'm generally not down with getting into spats with said RL friends, so I keep a lot of my opinions to myself. This is especially onerous with opinions about the Ukraine war.

How did I end up here? How did we..? I remember back on r/cth the line "This is enough to turn me into a tankie", or some such thing, as though being a tankie was just socialism + willingness to use violence to achieve it.

I can remember online anarchists posting fairly high profile Ls that I think split actual anarchists and left-liberals who just liked to call themselves anarchists (and now online anarchists who really like NATO? idk). But those events had a lot of people shy away from the anarchist label and kinda mull about their own beliefs. The main ones off the top of my head were CHAZ, Vaush audience watchers, and the anti-work breakdown. Certainly, I remember r/cth being a lot more awash with anarchist rhetoric and population (claimed or otherwise) than hexbear currently is.

I don't want this to be a sectarian rant session, but more a reflection of political journeys from r/cth's medicare for all socdem position to the current vibes of hexbear, both personal and pontifications of why this shift occurred.

This isn't the be-all and end-all of my thoughts of my own political evolution. I'll comment some more as I think of them (in between cleaning for rent inspection)

Because I'm a normal healthy person, when I wake up I browse worldnews to see what the normies are up to.

I also browse here and genzedong.

The principal actors are the same, and the wars are happening in kind of the same areas.

Posts that get over 1k upvotes in worldnews are something else. The comments section makes my brain feel like it's dribbling out of my ears