if you’ll pardon me complaining about this publicly: some of the meanest mfs i’ve met online are internet-poisoned communists. If i weren’t already a marxist-leninist, i would have some very unsavory ideas about what communists are like.
Lemmygrad and Hexbear are very nice places, thank you comrades _ … but elsewhere, even IRL, i’ve met incredibly rude people calling themselves communists and i need to stress this: if you want people on our side, you need to give good impressions of what we’re like. Don’t be hostile or dismissive or just violently anti-social. If you have to explain something for the millionth time to yet another liberal or anarchist… do it [insert Sankara quote], or at least find a nice way of saying you don’t want to. Save your offensive capabilities for people who deserve it. And please, PLEASE, go outside occasionally. IRL interaction is healthy, and will quickly kill any terminally online behaviours you might have. Maybe join an org while you’re at it ;)
i’ll stop stating the obvious now. Have a great day, comrades.
Getting sucked into the toxicity of online spaces bleeds back into your offline conversations, comrades. I always appreciate whenever someone checks a statement of mine as questionable. I think we can all do better to hold each other accountable about behavior and in a respectful way.
And an additional note, One thing I’ve noticed about leftist orgs is that they are filled with a lot of neurodivergent people (talking about myself too) who have suffered a lot of trauma under capitalism. And in my experience I’ve noticed a lot of toxic communication tendencies arise from that, since not everyone is in a position to get therapy or meaningfully address their alienation.
I know “self-care” is a meme at this point, but everyone here really needs to work on healing their traumas and becoming aware of their own damaging impulses if they expect to build healthy relationships.