So, I don’t know why I am doing this, but I was reading “Log Off” by Katherine Cross more carefully, after a short discussion here, and here. It seemed to me a good idea to have a post dedicated to this, and possibly in the future if this works out, about other books. The book is dense, and highly relevant to Lemmy and broadly Fediverse culture, and it spells out nicely some things I had thought before, but in much more packed and well thought-out way. I found myself highlighting something on virtually every page. So I guess I would like to post my thoughts on these highlights and see what other folks think about those as well. So here goes. I am posting the quotes as separate comments to this post, to facilitate them being discussed more thoroughly.

  • Marcela (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
    2·
    1 day ago

    First and foremost, one of the ugliest side effects of terminal COVID-posting that proliferated amongst the Extremely Online was a deepening mistrust of their fellow human being; every time they fell for outrage-bait about some wanker being a dick about not wearing a mask, their inevitable response was, “I don’t trust people anymore!” This is a neat fit for conservatives, whose entire movement is built on a notion of Original Sin, developed through two centuries of monarchism, fascism, nativism, and lesser varieties of know-nothingism, that treats strangers as essentially threats. But for anyone to the left of Mussolini, such contempt for your fellow human being, such unwillingness to reach out to one’s neighbour for fear they’ll be like That Bitch from Panera Bread I Saw on TikTok, is extraordinarily dangerous — and fatal to realizing the ideals we share, which are necessarily collective.

    • mononoke@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      3·
      20 hours ago

      Incredibly bad take. How one can look at the global negligence of COVID prevention, which I remind is a novel, highly-transmissible neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure, and conclude that it is actually bizarre and antisocial to care about it, that it is playing into conservative ideology to have trust issues from the immense trauma of navigating said global negligence as one cares about it, is beyond me. I treat people who are not doing anything to prevent the spread of COVID as a threat because they are. As it turns out, that’s a majority of the world population right now. We are all living the “if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?” scenario in real-time. Don’t blame me for not jumping with you.

      • Marcela (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
        2·
        19 hours ago

        I did not expect when I posted this that it would be a field trip on the very phenomena Cross is taking issue with.

        You are not jumping with me anywhere. I invited people to comment on the quotes of another author.

        Negligence of COVID prevention is important. To me, trans equality rights are important. And a score of other not only important but critical topics, from climate change to ableist structural eugenics.

        But by dunking on each other in places like these, even if Lemmy / Mastodon is not corporate, achieves nothing. Your comment does nothing. My comment does nothing.

        We had this mentality passed on from corporate social media, and it is just wrong to think that our posting achieves anything good the internet has to offer, to activism or otherwise. This is the true message of the quote, and not minimizing the importance of any macro-, structural, systemic topic.

        That said, for those still grasping with the notion of weaponized sincerity, the above comment is the more fine specimen of it.

        • mononoke@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          3·
          19 hours ago

          For the record, I’m aware that this is not your quote. I am adressing a rhetorical “you” in my message. However, I’ll use the more direct you now. You asked for discussion about the quotes you posted, and I gave it to you. I am not sure what’s weaponized about my sincerity but it is, indeed, quite sincere.