I'm writing this the day after attending the most recent No Kings protest. I had a good time, and it's always inspiring to see that we are not alone in our concern for the world.

But in the lead-up to this weekend, I saw so many people posting videos on social media about why you should or shouldn't attend it. So much content being generated by well-meaning people who want us to get it right.

How much time was spent by people consuming content about this debate? How much time was spent in video editors, comments sections, and feeds? Did any of this content change anybody's mind about whether or not they would participate? Could they have used that time more productively?

Unfortunately, these are impossible questions to answer. But this week's blog post is about social media, and its value to a political movement. So naturally I'm thinking critically about social media, especially my own relationship to it. Here's a little preview of that post:

"I’ve been back online, dipping my toe in, for the last month or so. I’ve been trying to get a sense of what the landscape looks like because I’ve been thinking about making content again. As soon as I got back, I was almost exclusively being served content from leftist influencers. Some were friends from back when I was making content, others were new faces. They all had incredibly interesting things to teach, incredibly compelling analyses of current events, and I found myself excited to log back in and watch more of their videos.

But I very quickly noticed a dynamic in how I was consuming content. I would get a video about something I found interesting, and then scroll down to another video I found interesting, and then another, and so on. It didn’t matter how practical their advice was, or how compelling their theories were. It didn’t matter if there was a specific call-to-action, whether that was learning more about a topic, checking out a website, calling a representative, or whatever. I wouldn’t act on it. I would consume the content, and scroll. But it didn’t feel like scrolling. It felt like activism. It felt like the right thing to be doing, in those moments where I was worried that I wasn’t doing enough."

Read the full post

What I'm reading this week

In anticipation of No Kings, I spent one night this week poking around the internet reading articles about how past movements managed to succeed. I found a lot of interesting articles, including one particularly interesting one about how critical flyering was in organizing the anti-war movement during our invasion of Vietnam.

But the article I want to highlight is one I found about how to organize a general strike. The article focuses on what has been happening in Minneapolis, and how organizations have been able to successfully build the coalitions that have resulted in such a comprehensive response to the Trump regime's invasion of that city.

How to Spread the General Strike Beyond the Twin Cities

What I'm listening to this week

Citations Needed with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson is one of my favorite political podcasts. They focus on media criticism, and they recently released this episode which deals with how mainstream media is describing political content on social media to their readership.

It's a good look into the history of how "unsanctioned news" has been vilified by the wealthy and powerful throughout history, and it also offers an interesting perspective on the US Government's war on TikTok.

You can find it on most podcast streaming services, or listen to the episode directly on their website.

EP 234 - TikTok, Gen-Z's Move to Social Media and Elite Panic Over Unsanctioned News