Saw this one hyper active socialist blogger on medium who reviewed amber’s book and said that they are a socialist who got into their politics through chapo but stopped being active because they went to three meetings and it seemed like “an irl meeting of redditors” and it made me annoyed.

First of all, so many people pretend to be leninists and hold themselves to a series of political standards and believe in political discipline in some sense. Do you really think your encounter with a bunch of socialists isn’t in someway mediated by your own internal biases? Like so many people who complain about this stuff explicitly say they got annoyed by being asked pronouns so like I totally think the 20% of people who don’t say that it’s about using pronouns are just not saying the quiet part outloud.

Second, so much of these sorts of confessions read like the narcism of small differences. Really, you encountered a bunch of people with shared interests and they all sucked? Did you ever consider that maybe you yourselves are actually cringy or that you hate yourself and you saw a bunch of people who are alot like you and it upset you to see you’re own reflection? Maybe that’s not a problem with the DSA or the left, maybe that’s a you problem and you should work on that.

And lastly is just the fact that for an atomized, alienated subject whose social interactions are minimal and are usually online and based on hatred either shared or outwards, any sort of large scale social meeting that’s earnest is gonna feel bad at first. Work on it. So many things that are good for you like recovering from a drug addiction, starting to get a reading habit, going to the gym, cutting out sugar and processed foods, drinking less coffee, suck complete dick for the first 2-4 weeks.

If you’re lonely and your problem is you need more people in your life, go out and do it. It’s gonna suck at first like all good things do. Sure if you want to vent about how it’s hard or it sucks go ahead feel free. I’m not going to shame you. But on the other hand if you tell me “I’m dehydrated but drinking water sucks because I’m used to soda” sure I can sympathize and be understanding when you fall off or want to complain. That’s ok. What isn’t ok is “I’m dehydrated, but drinking water sucks because I’m used to soda, therefore drinking water is bad actually and I’m just gonna let myself die but also have a bit of ironic distance from that and pretend it’s water’s fault” then I’m sorry but while I’m happy to work through those feelings I’m not happy to just endlessly validate them if you have no intention to change them.

Anyway this would just be pretty masterbatory if I was just complaining about a type of guy I hate but I feel like any sort of critism should be paired with self-criticism to keep it dialetical and also not to fall into the social media trap of talking shit about people you hate to make yourself look better in comparison.

I’ve been feeling pretty alienated for alot of reasons and loney and while I’ve been working on my social life I got really depressed that I’m probably at a point where even though I’m working really hard on getting my social life back together I’ll most likely never be at the point where I hangout with people during the week days and I can only look forward to hanging out with people on the weekends which just isn’t fulfilling enough.

So on a semi-related note. My partner has been wanting to go to social events at the local grocery co-op. I feel out of place there and there are alot of vegan types there so I’ve been encouraging them to go without me and they haven’t really done that. These events are usually fridays and thursdays and have a turnout of like 8-15 people at them. Roughly 1/3rd students, 1/3rd classic vegan types and 1/3 regular working class members of the community.

I woke up and realized the other day that I’ve been walling in my own misery despite the fact that the solution has been in front of me for a year and I’ve just been ignoring it. I’ve been thinking this whole time how all the other anti-social personalities annoy me but I haven’t even looked in the mirror at my own anti-social behavior. So when my partner comes back home from work I’m going to talk to them about making an effort to go to these events regularly.

  • oktherebuddy@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    fuck it I’ll speak up for this person you hate

    Let’s talk about what it would take for an org to be actually effective. At minimum, the people in the org have to enjoy being around each other. Absolutely ideally, they’d be willing to die for their comrades. An org can’t function if, as described, their gatherings feel like a bunch of redditors meeting up irl. Which is absolutely how some (not all) orgs feel. If I go to a socialist meeting, one of the few pockets in the imperial core where everyone in the room approximately shares my politics, and they’re somehow less pleasant to physically be around than some ignorant but basically well meaning libs, then that is a fucking failure of an org. Sorry.

    As alluded to parenthetically above, not all orgs are like this. It takes time but I’ve found orgs in several cities where the people are authentically pleasant to have a conversation with. I would hang out with them in a non-political context and not find them annoying. Do you know how much easier it is to spend my limited spare time going to meetings with people I actually want to be around? It turns it from something like volunteering-to-bear-witness to something that I actually look forward to. It’s really telling that you compare it to things like cutting out sugar or getting clean from drugs. Read this interview with an old German communist. See how much focus they put on the social part of socialism. All their youth orgs were first & foremost based at schools or around sports leagues or sex education groups. People had a reason to attend beyond their specific political beliefs.

    You as a communist have a responsibility to learn social skills. This movement is about people. How can you feel such dedication to peoples’ liberation if you don’t even like being around them and they don’t even like being around you?