Is it all just Posting? That is, can posting serve as a sort of political activity more important than venting impotent at your computer screen? Twitter swings wildly between viewing posting as almost a sort of activism and claiming that it’s nothing more than words shouted into an unfeeling void. Right around the height of the 2020 primary you could see both tendencies on full display. Bernie supporters were, broadly, convinced that they could influence the course of the election by bullying other candidates’ supporters online, and simultaneously found it ridiculous when Michael Bloomberg decided to draw attention to mean tweets about him during a presidential campaign. The more liberal wings of Twitter pivoted between scorning what they viewed as an entirely-online (and therefore trivial, insubstantial) personality cult around Sanders and, well… trying to make mean tweets about them by various idiots in Bernie’s staff into a mark against his politics. Shortly afterwards a candidate with almost no vocal online support casually steamrolled all of his opponents and everyone went on to assume (either in despair or in exultation) that the past four years of argument had meant nothing whatsoever.
Apr 3, 2023·edited Apr 3, 2023Liked by fish eating own tail
"It’s precisely the thing Elon most dislikes about the site, that it places powerful, important people and weirdos named garbage ape or bronze age pervert on an even footing, that makes Twitter such a potent influence tool."
Excellent article! Not a lot of people bring up the subject of Metapolitics with regards to social media but it’s very clearly a crucial point to discuss when talking about impact.
I see myself as neo-Aristotelian -- I like to think about social entities in terms of:
* history (effective cause)
* values (formal cause)
* aspirations (final cause)
* material conditions (material cause)
[Contra Aristotle: the final causes go beyond maintaining form -- evolution.]
I wonder if metapolitics isn't the expression of values - the propagation of formal causes? I wouldn't say values are for elites only; and so battles about them aren't just for elites, even if elites are by definition in a better position to change policy because of them.
Ideas are how anyone is able to conceptualize themselves. While poor material conditions causes suffering, lack of (useful, vital) ideas to structure aspirations is experienced as meaninglessness. The dislocations of late capitalism have foregrounded the insufficiency of core liberal ideas. IMO it is this, more than material conditions, which will be the end of capitalism.
"It’s precisely the thing Elon most dislikes about the site, that it places powerful, important people and weirdos named garbage ape or bronze age pervert on an even footing, that makes Twitter such a potent influence tool."
Excellent.
Excellent article! Not a lot of people bring up the subject of Metapolitics with regards to social media but it’s very clearly a crucial point to discuss when talking about impact.
I see myself as neo-Aristotelian -- I like to think about social entities in terms of:
* history (effective cause)
* values (formal cause)
* aspirations (final cause)
* material conditions (material cause)
[Contra Aristotle: the final causes go beyond maintaining form -- evolution.]
I wonder if metapolitics isn't the expression of values - the propagation of formal causes? I wouldn't say values are for elites only; and so battles about them aren't just for elites, even if elites are by definition in a better position to change policy because of them.
Ideas are how anyone is able to conceptualize themselves. While poor material conditions causes suffering, lack of (useful, vital) ideas to structure aspirations is experienced as meaninglessness. The dislocations of late capitalism have foregrounded the insufficiency of core liberal ideas. IMO it is this, more than material conditions, which will be the end of capitalism.