Congratulations on discovering the morose whining of Morrissey. He’s a run-of-the-mill self-important right wing douchebag. But as someone who has been listening to the same songs for 30 years (including lots of Morrissey), i went almost my whole life having no info on who the guy is as a person, which is true of all the musicians and other popular artists whose work i consume. i’ve just never really been interested in that stuff.

then as i was spending more time in online leftist spaces, i started finding myself under attack for mentioning my enjoyment of particular songs or movies due to an artist’s demonstrated lack of character and/or crap right wing political beliefs. these artists’ stated beliefs/actions are not good and they do matter, and while thoughtful discussions around “death of the artist” and what not are warranted (and desperately needed), that is not what’s happening most of the time. what i see is pretty much just replication of neoliberal individualism.

People compete for social status by calling out others as a means of establishing their ideological superiority. it severely undermines solidarity and only serves to reward those neoliberal individualist tendencies that we really need to be focused on unlearning - and that can only happen when we embrace nuance and acknowledge that this is a complex issue, people are complex, art is complex, and so is the social context that shapes our character, values, and principles. for example, how many of us have taken into consideration the ways consumerism has shaped our understanding of what it means to be “political?”

that’s just my .02 cents or .72 cents or whatever lol

i’ve been concerned about this as well and as a non-tech savvy person, it’s hard to figure out how to even learn about ways around it. techie stuff is aggressively gatekept - in fact, i came across some interesting articles about LoRa communications and Reticulum Network, but i can’t find anything written up that doesn’t assume a certain level competence or background in tech - so i tried to ask in a socialist prepper subreddit, where i was told that i should not be interested unlearning about Reticulum Network because it’s way too advanced and only hardcore techies are capable of using that.

but anyway - wrt the concern of privatized internet infrastructure, i think that Reticulum thingie could be promising if the nerds ever start sharing their toys with us lolol

i use an iphone and i’m using Voyager. i don’t know anything about it except that it seems to work lol

edit: i find it easier to use than the browser version (due to neurodivergent touch screen struggles)

reddit did you a service

that’s corporate social media - where wrong things are right and bad things are good. that’s because of who owns them. it’s that cultural hegemony that gramsci told us about.

that’s how i found lemmygrad, big recruitment push on reddit during the period of moderator unrest in late 2022 lol

thanks!

what’s the name of the book?

(and ty for the reminder to join matrix)

bumpity bump to say that i am currently broke but I may have a few bucks to spare in a week or two.

i want to get better at using alt platforms like this, so i’ve been trying to spend more time here - and i signed up for matrix the other day but i don’t know how to use it. if someone could explain it to me like i’m 5 years old, that would be super cool lol

Death Wish 7