Social media is essential for my work. I stick to a few platforms that I have found to be relatively effective for building community and spreading ideas, and I only quit a platform when it is providing me with too little value for the hassle.
Similarly, I minimize my consumption (of stuff in general — electricity, gasoline etc.) for planetary reasons, as well as for personal benefit (peace of mind and financial etc) – but if I need something, I need something.
That popular saying, “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” It doesn’t mean we should just give up and go hog wild and buy everything without thought or conscience. And not try to push back against anything.
But by the same token, it doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just do without everything and live in a cave and not do our activism & creativity & other work etc.
Thank you for this post Lee Flier, very well said.
Photo of my favorite local beach dune wildflower, Blanket Flower – Gaillardia pulchella. Gorgeous, tough, drought tolerant, salt tolerant. Tough & resilient yet beautiful, just like a grassroots community both online & offline.
And please enjoy the following wisdom from Lee Flier (fellow permie, and artist/musician, and very deep and creative and astute thinker on social issues) – well said as always!
“A few more thoughts on the social media mess. It’s going to sound like I feel “hopeless” or think we should “give up” but I actually don’t. I think my positions on a lot of things are being mischaracterized, and that sucks.
But the thing is, we are in an oligarchy and have been for awhile. It’s just accelerating now. You’re currently having a crisis because Facebook is, in your view, about to be overrun with Nazis and haters. But the thing is, EVERYTHING IS RUN BY THESE PEOPLE. Everything. Are you going to give up the Internet entirely? Stop going to websites? Because any website you go to is probably hosted on Amazon Web Services. The computer or smartphone you’re using? Made by evil oligarchs whether directly or indirectly. Same with the car you drive, the banks and credit cards and other financial services you use, the property management company who runs your apartment complex. The stocks that make up your investment portfolio or retirement fund if you’re fortunate enough to have one. We are all participating in this shit and there’s no getting away from it unless we all want to go live in a cave. EVERYTHING has been leveraged to the gills to extract value from the environment and from other people and benefit someone else, and funnel more money to the top.
Again, this is not to say it’s hopeless and we should do nothing. ALL I’ve said is, whatever we do has to be well thought out, well organized, and massive. You deleting your Facebook account or cancelling your Prime or WaPo subscription is not going to make a damn bit of difference. But we still get to use these tools, and we do, in spite of everything, because they have value to us. If you want to organize and protest oligarchy but you refuse to use a computer or a smartphone or the Internet or social media to do it, that’s obviously not a good move.
We all know people who won’t vote, or aren’t paying much attention to politics. Those people cost us the last election, and the one in 2016. They might tell you that both parties are corrupt, there’s no difference, so there’s no point in voting. But what I always tell people like that is: no matter what you do or don’t do, one of these people is going to be in charge of a lot of things that affect your life. And your failure to vote ensures that the very worst possible person will get in. You don’t have to spend all your time obsessing over politics, but FFS pay some attention to what’s going on and vote accordingly! Right?
I feel the same way about social media. It exists, it’s ubiquitous and really, it’s become necessary in modern life. Whether or not we who are morally sickened by what’s going on participate in social media, it’s going to be there, and FB is by far the largest platform of them all. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take breaks, do things to limit our time here for the sake of our sanity, etc. But if we don’t participate at all, we leave it to the wolves. It’s not going to just go away, and what happens on it will affect our lives and the lives of people we care about, whether we want it to or not.
Eventually there’ll be a better platform, and eventually the oligarchy will likely collapse on itself, or we will figure out how to overturn it. But for now, we’re swimming in it. Only by sticking together can we ever hope to change anything.”