Instead of being here in DW, I have been slowly closing down my Facebook account, downloading the pictures, messaging people with my contact info, deleting posts, unfriending my friends, putting the chairs on the tables and sweeping up the big internet cafe behind me as I go. I will have to maintain a tiny presence there to participate in a mandatory school thing, but I’m pulling as much of my selfhood off the least trustworthy parts of the internet as possible.
It pisses me off, you know?
Not just the enshittification, not just the selling our data to bad actors, not just, as Cat Valente says, the “
stop talking to each other and start buying things” urging of the capitalists, but that thing that capitalism creates that gives rise to fascism - distrust. The less safe you can make people feel, the more they turn on each other. The more high-conflict you can make an argument, the less the people in it will trust each other, the more you can radicalize the people on both sides, the more easily manipulable you make the people who are arguing, and the less trustful you can make the arguers, the onlookers, everyone who has to hear about how vicious things are getting in social spaces. It eats away at social bonds by causing people to feel they have to mask who they are or risk having similar conflicts. People feel like they have to Gray Rock their whole lives, close up like a clam.
And then the less vulnerability and honesty people bring to the public square, the less people feel connected to each other, which reinforces the distrust. It’s a cycle of wackness, and
I hate it. So I’m going to be over here in my little corner of the internet, trying to protect others’ privacy while being honest and vulnerable with my own life. If bad stuff happens to me because of it, well. I guess bad stuff is going to happen. I will be tanking for the party, in my own limited way. I’m not going to take ridiculous risks, there’s not going to be a repeat of the White Rose’s scattering of pamphlets in a gymnasium (RIP Sophie Scholl). But I’m going to be here talking to people like they’re not incomprehensible murder monkeys, the way my traumatized hindbrain has been trained to think of people.
I love y’all. Be safe, and maybe meditate on trust once in a while?
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