> The purpose of being there is to communicate ideas, spread information, and help develop political/class consciousness. Like it or not, this is where people are. If we want to engage the public, we have to meet them where they already gather.
If we went along with that idea -that boycotting doesn't matter- we wouldn't get far would we? Instead thank goodness Facebook has been abandoned en masse leaving only boomers exchanging AI videos thinking aliens are real to themselves, and Nazis to twitter while there is blue sky.
I appreciate reach, but also that when you have a bar with ten people and a nazi sits at their table, if no one says anything then you have a table with 11 Nazis.
There's no point in allegiance to a corporation, but in A social media based society where attention is arguably more valuable than individual purchase power, choosing where we provide content, which will have people go to a platform to access, it matters.
And I say this as someone still on Substack, but that at least, given the Nazi sympathizing if not the gambling, is looking to alternatives like ghost.io or beehiiv.com to bring the 400 people that follow me here, there.
It feels like a necessary personal responsibility to exercise, or at least admitting if there's nothing to be done right now (if nothing else cause I personally lack the spoons for a conversion) that no, Substack is bad. There's no amount of mental gymnastics that makes it not bad. And unlike say YouTube -that doesn't have an alternative- there are valid alternatives to Substack.
Lenin literally argued in Left-Wing Communism that revolutionaries must go where the masses already are, even into reactionary unions and institutions, because politics isn’t about performative purity, it’s about reaching and organizing people. Social media is in a similar terrain today. Abandoning it doesn’t weaken capital, it just hands the narrative to others for now.
Boycotts without organization aren’t strategy, they’re symbolism. The question isn’t “are these platforms bad?” (they are). The question is whether we use them to build consciousness and mobilization while they exist. Revolutionaries don’t retreat from mass spaces, we fight inside them.
Individual answers to systemic problems aren’t enough. We need mass strategy and movements, social media even in its current iteration can be a tool towards that end.
i am not sure who does performative purity (white people i'd imagine?) but that's quite far from the point i'm making, vis-a-vis how leaving facebook and twitter en masse worked, and it was indeed organised well enough that BlueSky is defacto twitter without nazis now. Moving en masse is not an individual answer, look at upscrolled and tiktok more recently.
Liberals tend to do performative purity by committing to actions that seem like surface level accomplishments (ie. Protests and boycotts) but don’t actually lead anywhere. As for the Twitter example, as I do recall Elon Musk is still the wealthiest man in the world for better or worse. While Bluesky isn’t really a left owned political platform from my understanding. So even if you’re using Bluesky as an alternative that still feeds into my point of going where people are despite the platform being owned by capitalist. In retrospect, the boycotts of social platforms didn’t lead anywhere near political power for the left in of themselves, that’s why it’s performative purity. Now if the boycotts were tied to organizational movements and strategies that’s a completely different conversation.
I think that the value of Substack’s ideas delivery system - as it still exists today - far outweighs anything that could be accomplished by boycotting it. Boycotts aren’t the first tool I jump to, partly because almost every business is worthy of boycott in some way, and because of the improbability of achieving sufficient critical mass for all of them. I think people are call-to-boycott weary.
who said boycott is the first tool? i think in the case of substack is the seventh or eighth after just as many faux pas.
Also again, feels worth reiterating: I say this as someone who's here and still doesn't feel the need to bend over backwards as to why I am here. I find it extremely problematic when, in the face of an objectively bad behaviour, those who deem themselves erudite enough, try the exercise style of seeing how well their rhetoric can justify their inaction. I can sit with my inaction yet my will to do better when I can. is it just me?
Is whataboutism the best approach to this though?
> The purpose of being there is to communicate ideas, spread information, and help develop political/class consciousness. Like it or not, this is where people are. If we want to engage the public, we have to meet them where they already gather.
If we went along with that idea -that boycotting doesn't matter- we wouldn't get far would we? Instead thank goodness Facebook has been abandoned en masse leaving only boomers exchanging AI videos thinking aliens are real to themselves, and Nazis to twitter while there is blue sky.
I appreciate reach, but also that when you have a bar with ten people and a nazi sits at their table, if no one says anything then you have a table with 11 Nazis.
There's no point in allegiance to a corporation, but in A social media based society where attention is arguably more valuable than individual purchase power, choosing where we provide content, which will have people go to a platform to access, it matters.
And I say this as someone still on Substack, but that at least, given the Nazi sympathizing if not the gambling, is looking to alternatives like ghost.io or beehiiv.com to bring the 400 people that follow me here, there.
It feels like a necessary personal responsibility to exercise, or at least admitting if there's nothing to be done right now (if nothing else cause I personally lack the spoons for a conversion) that no, Substack is bad. There's no amount of mental gymnastics that makes it not bad. And unlike say YouTube -that doesn't have an alternative- there are valid alternatives to Substack.
This isn’t whataboutism, it’s strategy.
Lenin literally argued in Left-Wing Communism that revolutionaries must go where the masses already are, even into reactionary unions and institutions, because politics isn’t about performative purity, it’s about reaching and organizing people. Social media is in a similar terrain today. Abandoning it doesn’t weaken capital, it just hands the narrative to others for now.
Boycotts without organization aren’t strategy, they’re symbolism. The question isn’t “are these platforms bad?” (they are). The question is whether we use them to build consciousness and mobilization while they exist. Revolutionaries don’t retreat from mass spaces, we fight inside them.
Individual answers to systemic problems aren’t enough. We need mass strategy and movements, social media even in its current iteration can be a tool towards that end.
i am not sure who does performative purity (white people i'd imagine?) but that's quite far from the point i'm making, vis-a-vis how leaving facebook and twitter en masse worked, and it was indeed organised well enough that BlueSky is defacto twitter without nazis now. Moving en masse is not an individual answer, look at upscrolled and tiktok more recently.
Liberals tend to do performative purity by committing to actions that seem like surface level accomplishments (ie. Protests and boycotts) but don’t actually lead anywhere. As for the Twitter example, as I do recall Elon Musk is still the wealthiest man in the world for better or worse. While Bluesky isn’t really a left owned political platform from my understanding. So even if you’re using Bluesky as an alternative that still feeds into my point of going where people are despite the platform being owned by capitalist. In retrospect, the boycotts of social platforms didn’t lead anywhere near political power for the left in of themselves, that’s why it’s performative purity. Now if the boycotts were tied to organizational movements and strategies that’s a completely different conversation.
I think that the value of Substack’s ideas delivery system - as it still exists today - far outweighs anything that could be accomplished by boycotting it. Boycotts aren’t the first tool I jump to, partly because almost every business is worthy of boycott in some way, and because of the improbability of achieving sufficient critical mass for all of them. I think people are call-to-boycott weary.
who said boycott is the first tool? i think in the case of substack is the seventh or eighth after just as many faux pas.
Also again, feels worth reiterating: I say this as someone who's here and still doesn't feel the need to bend over backwards as to why I am here. I find it extremely problematic when, in the face of an objectively bad behaviour, those who deem themselves erudite enough, try the exercise style of seeing how well their rhetoric can justify their inaction. I can sit with my inaction yet my will to do better when I can. is it just me?
Well said https://open.substack.com/pub/thoughtsbyjae/p/why-i-am-not-leaving-substack?r=58ppih&selection=8ca8d4ce-6a2a-4db6-a0ef-c06d782b4108&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web&aspectRatio=square&textColor=%23ffffff&bgImage=true
Who are you, and why do you have my email? NOT MAGA, but this pisses me off.
Feel free to unsubscribe, but this isn’t an airport. No need to announce your departure.