As I pointed out earlier, factually posters here do care about lonely men
Yeah I’m just not buying it, especially since there was a sticked post (above all other posts, for the better part of TWO WHOLE DAYS) about the Bell Hooks book and it only received 35 comments: https://hexbear.net/post/1147813?scrollToComments=false. For comparison, my post about raking leaves had 28 comments: https://hexbear.net/post/1123921. And a post about herbal cigarettes gets 17 comments.
So yeah, when people say “bUt ThE lEfT dOeS cArE aBoUt LoNeLy MeN!!!” I feel like I’m being gaslighted by like an entire galaxy worth of gaslights… At this point if the right starts recruiting legions of lonely men and they become fascists, then what else can I say except “I told you so.” That’s on the left for failing to engage with them in a real, meaningful way instead of just telling them “READ BELL HOOKS!” Like bro this is 2023, if you wanna engage someone you can’t just tell them to read a book, it’s almost insulting and sounds very elitist. You gotta make youtube videos, tiktoks, etc. Make it short but impactful, as well as engaging. If they want to learn more then they’ll start reading “deeper” stuff.
the left doesn’t care about lonely men because there weren’t enough comments on the Will to Change reading group post
the left isn’t engaging with lonely men because telling them to read Bell Hooks is not good outreach
2: Hexbear dot net is obviously not an effective way for leftists to reach out to general population. This is an internal leftist forum, it’s not Youtube Shorts showing up in people’s feeds. Federation brings some confused liberals and conservatives in, but most users are communist. When people advocate here they are trying to get other leftists to learn more or develop politically. For instance I read Feinberg’s Trans Liberation after adding it to my list; I already supported the trans struggle but it gave me some understanding of its historical development. I forget if it there was a reading group for it or if I saw it on the trans subreddit sidebar, but it was on my list for maybe a year before I got to it.
1: The Bell Hooks sticky seems like a reasonable amount of engagement for a book club to me (and it demonstrates organizational buy-in via sticky, and general interest via upvote count). Even people who are interested in the topic may not have the time to read a book right then. Every one of those commenters read the book or (/u/moondog) was committing to do so. Bigger barrier to entry than a PBS article on raking leaves, no? I am attempting to join Socialist Alternative, which is a cadre organization, and one of their commitments is doing some reading to show up once a week for political discussion and development. If I join that’ll certainly be a big deal for me. Working people are busy.
I’ll be frank with you: if you want the normal internet debate goal of convincing others and developing the discourse, bumping month-old posts won’t do it. I don’t expect (or particularly care to) change your individual mind, and you’re not changing mine. So let’s cut it here. I think it’s good that you’re agitating to solve what you see as deficiencies in the left movement instead of just accepting them. Perhaps the next step is to get some people together who are interested in developing solutions?
Yeah I’m just not buying it, especially since there was a sticked post (above all other posts, for the better part of TWO WHOLE DAYS) about the Bell Hooks book and it only received 35 comments: https://hexbear.net/post/1147813?scrollToComments=false. For comparison, my post about raking leaves had 28 comments: https://hexbear.net/post/1123921. And a post about herbal cigarettes gets 17 comments.
So yeah, when people say “bUt ThE lEfT dOeS cArE aBoUt LoNeLy MeN!!!” I feel like I’m being gaslighted by like an entire galaxy worth of gaslights… At this point if the right starts recruiting legions of lonely men and they become fascists, then what else can I say except “I told you so.” That’s on the left for failing to engage with them in a real, meaningful way instead of just telling them “READ BELL HOOKS!” Like bro this is 2023, if you wanna engage someone you can’t just tell them to read a book, it’s almost insulting and sounds very elitist. You gotta make youtube videos, tiktoks, etc. Make it short but impactful, as well as engaging. If they want to learn more then they’ll start reading “deeper” stuff.
so you have two objections:
2: Hexbear dot net is obviously not an effective way for leftists to reach out to general population. This is an internal leftist forum, it’s not Youtube Shorts showing up in people’s feeds. Federation brings some confused liberals and conservatives in, but most users are communist. When people advocate here they are trying to get other leftists to learn more or develop politically. For instance I read Feinberg’s Trans Liberation after adding it to my list; I already supported the trans struggle but it gave me some understanding of its historical development. I forget if it there was a reading group for it or if I saw it on the trans subreddit sidebar, but it was on my list for maybe a year before I got to it.
1: The Bell Hooks sticky seems like a reasonable amount of engagement for a book club to me (and it demonstrates organizational buy-in via sticky, and general interest via upvote count). Even people who are interested in the topic may not have the time to read a book right then. Every one of those commenters read the book or (/u/moondog) was committing to do so. Bigger barrier to entry than a PBS article on raking leaves, no? I am attempting to join Socialist Alternative, which is a cadre organization, and one of their commitments is doing some reading to show up once a week for political discussion and development. If I join that’ll certainly be a big deal for me. Working people are busy.
I’ll be frank with you: if you want the normal internet debate goal of convincing others and developing the discourse, bumping month-old posts won’t do it. I don’t expect (or particularly care to) change your individual mind, and you’re not changing mine. So let’s cut it here. I think it’s good that you’re agitating to solve what you see as deficiencies in the left movement instead of just accepting them. Perhaps the next step is to get some people together who are interested in developing solutions?