#leftbook

[boof-chamber]

i impulsively deleted my Facebook account because i have had it with the rabid toddler rage in response to anything outside of praise and devotion. Who the fuck do these people think they are? They were my friends for a couple of years but the behavior i’ve been seeing recently has been absolutely vile. Toxic, childish, abusive, lying, and honestly, some of that shit is what we expect to see from cops. It’s not safe there.

#memes #fresh memes #new memes #facebook #impulsive #oopsie #no regerts #Leftbook #toxic behavior #ouch my ego #rabid toddler #vent post #autistic experiences

[starfallensyndicate]

"we need to find more alterhuman friends, because all our friends are human and it feels lonely" — and then we don't do anything to actually find other creatures and we don't talk to them and we don't try to form any sort of bond if they make the first step

#and it's not better with human friends bc we have any bc they found us in the dumpster (leftbook drama) and brought us with them #we know it might be bc we are autistic and traumatised and have AvPD #alterhuman #otherkin #therian #nonhuman #holothere #vent

[autogyne-redacted]

hi! i saw your post abt race primacy and was wondering if you'd be able to expand on that a bit more if you feel like it. i am i guess kind of new to the idea that it's possible to talk about racism without doing what the example you posted does.

Yeah, absolutely.

As far as race primacy goes, the basic, short answer is that you can avoid it by not positioning race as fundentally, across the board more important or more fundamental than other characteristics. The "if you're white you're white before anything else" part of my example post.

Prioritizing race is an analytic approach, and it's certainly an important one, but if it's your only one you're going to miss a lot of what's going on.

To give a more thorough answer means getting into a lot of background and exploring the messy entanglements that lead towards race primacy and race reductionism, so buckle up it's gonna be a Long Post.

Most of the patterns I want to criticize here are (imo) the result of taking useful analysis and loosing the nuance, generalizing sloppily, slipping between different definitions of words, being overly dogmatic, or otherwise taking it in less than helpful directions. I'm not saying to throw out these frameworks, just to recognize that they don't represent absolutely and universal truths.

I'm also not opposing any specific language here. Sometimes ppl are casual and say things that communicate perfectly well but would make shitty philosophic positions if you took them literally and held to them rigidly. That's life.

.

Whether you're looking at how demographic categories correlate with individual actions or they affect how other ppl treat you, race is significant but saying it is always the most significant factor is a wild position.

To give a clear example, and show one path to race primacy, lots of the conservative Christianity is structured and defined first in terms of religion (obviously), and then around lines of Christian / family values and gender.

The Southern Baptist Convention has had a Black president. Women are still explicitly barred from even being pastors. Out gay and trans ppl are excluded pretty completely.

.

A common approach, to maintain a focus on race is to say that Christianity (or at least the SBC) is a fundamentally white religion and value system. PoC may participate in it, but that as a political and historical force it is solidly on the side of The West, Europe, Colonialism, etc.

I tend to talk about this as abstracting whiteness.

Whiteness often (even if not in our circles here) gets abstracted to talk about shit like cop calling, assimilationism, middle class values, etc.

"White feminism" is a great example of this, where the term can 100% refer to race, or point to middle class, carceral, cis, imperialist, or other shitty tendencies.

If we talk about the shifting boundaries of whiteness, especially looking back to when whiteness was necessary for full legal rights / personhood, whiteness was very directed the thing you assimilated into thru patriotism, middle class achievement, gender conformity, etc. (This is an explicit note that my knowledge is about a US context and I'm sure this shit varies)

There's a bunch of research that shows lots of minority and immigrant groups having initial disadvantages compared to white ppl (measured thru wealth, income, segregation, education, etc) that shrink over time. And a distinct lack of this gap narrowing by most measures looking at Black Americans. Related (at least in part) to this you get some theory abstracting Blackness as that which is unassimilable (some of which is really powerful).

From this and other angles I think it makes a lot of sense why ppl are drawn to abstract whiteness.

However, the second you do that you're no longer talking about race (in a way that can be mapped to individuals). And I (as a white person) am not necessarily any more a part of this abstracted whiteness than any PoC.

And since race (in the individual, traditional sense) does matter, loosening the terms to this point has significant downsides.

.

You can see similar dynamics at work when ppl constantly fall back on referring to Far Right groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer as white nationalist / white supremacist groups.

They're very much not. Both have had PoC leaders, and they're centered around Western Male Chauvinism and Christian Nationalism respectively.

But, if you see The West, right wing Christianity and American Nationalism thru the lens of abstracted whiteness, than these are all white supremacist groups.

And like ..... there's clearly something to that. Having PoC leaders by no means makes these groups less racist. But there's also a clear distinction between them and what you're gonna see in a hardine white supremacist group like, say, the Klan.

If you caught the mess a few years ago when a bunch of ppl decided that Chelsea Manning had joined the far right because whiteness is ultimately all that matters, that's a great example of mixing up abstract and concrete definitions of whiteness to reach completely ridiculous conclusions.

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I don't wanna go deep in this point because I haven't seen it since I got off of fb years ago, but I want to briefly mention the argument that the gender binary is inherently European, and thus PoC are inherently non-binary. This is another argument where there lots of individual statements that make sense on their own, and then thru some shifting definitions you reach a wild conclusion.

There's tons to talk about in terms of the imposition of binary gender and specific European norms as part of colonialism. (The Coloniality of Gender is what I think of as the classic piece making this argument).

And there's plenty to say in terms of PoC being held to different standards and negatively framed as too masculine or not masculine enough.

But this argument then acts as if no assimilation to gender whatsoever has happened, and as if there are no differences in levels of gender conformity and the social positions these produce. It's extremely weird and imo the kind of position that imo could only be produced thru a tremendous amount of ppl setting aside their critical thinking due to not having the right identities to see these issues as in their lane.

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A lot of this comes down to the question of how we name That Which We Oppose. Identity politics really pushed us to frame it in terms of identity, but the world of hardline identity-based structures is largely gone.

Part of what I love about the language of Civilization and Leviathan is that it provides an answer for this question that recognizes the slippery relationship between both individuals and identity-defined groups of ppl and the structures of hierarchy we want to dismantle.

#Long Post #theory #idpol #writing #this is long and self indulgent but i love analyzing discourse #and leftbook fucked me up with this shit so I'm just letting myself go deep in on it #also i said i was gonna cite a bunch of shit but decides this would be a better approach #there's a different version i almost wrote focusing on hiw Black Feminism handles racial gendered and class entanglements #but this is more to the point #or to a point at least idk if it's what you wanted at all anon

[childeapologist]

Can you imagine trying to call yourself an "influencer" when you are an unmonetized Facebook profile with barely 3k followers that has no brand deals?

Bc I saw someone do this

And not like a kid

A grown man in his 30s

#text #rack rambles #personal #and leftbook loves this guy #they let him get away with stuff they wouldnt let others get away with #so annoying #leftbook hates men until jts this guy

[fedorahead]

oh no

#post-post-post-post-leftbook flashbacks ensue

[doomhope]

#probably one of the only bands who could make a good song about leftbook lol #music #car seat headrest #bandcamp #upload

[gruelproponent]

The leftbook era was honestly such a bleak fuckin time and there were so many brains in frying pans on display. Like I remember people celebrating fucking operation olive branch and the turkish military kicking the YPG out of Afrin because they were lib-left darlings of the moment. Like the turkish military? The military of the government of turkey? That's your dude?

#I wonder if anyone ever got jumped over leftbook beef #I hope so

[lavendercoatedangels]

I am a leftist, have been a leftist for the vast majority of my life (save a couple of years in the late 2010s and a year or two as a teen who didn’t know much about politics) and yet a lot of leftists online piss me off.

Too many people automatically assume the worst of others and it’s frustrating.

One of my best friends wanted a source on Squishmallows being pro Israel and got labeled as something akin to a rape apologist, and even got labeled a genocide supporter. They are neither.

They were asking in earnest, and not being a smart ass about it.

Expecting the worst of everyone is fucking crazy.

After calling this person out for assuming the worst in them, they said that my friend lacked “self crit”.

Saying that someone lacks “self crit” is a cultist’s technique imo. You don’t need to use cult like tactics in order to scare and intimidate people into self flagellation. I’ve had strong opinions on this for nearly a decade, it’s not something one can really change my mind on.

My side of the political isle has lost the plot in the way that it treats people.

You will never get people to understand you if you assume the worst in others, and you will never get people to progress forward if you use cult tactics.

Rant over.

#epiphany rants #I absolutely despise leftbook #I hated it in 2017-18 and I hate it now #even as a sort of born again leftist #personal

[mos-twin-mattress]

yall who use/used facebook, do you remember leftbook? O my FUCK those were DARK times. I lived in CONSTANT fear that some random minor mistake i made when i was a teen/tween was gonna somehow come to light and get me completely DOG-PILED!

I was also SO scared of saying or doing the wrong things! Like FUCK! Now I just stay in my own lil bubble and work tirelessly to make mine and the voices of other oppressed peoples HEARD, and i dont pay any mind to what PERFORMATIVE ACTIVISTS have to say ab the way I go ab it! I DONT CARE I DONT CARE I DONT CARE.

I'm probably not gonna live to be very old bc of ALL my health conditions, as far as im concerned i DO NOT have enough time on this planet to be so terrified of what some performative activists have to say!

#leftbook drama #performative activism is NOT real activism #fuck leftbook #leftist #anti capitalism #socialism

[cuomophobe]

White western Facebook group mods are an absolute plague

#literally all i said was you guys in that sentence #im reasonably woke but come on #personal #also this isn't even a leftbook group its literally a haircare group

[rabbithaver]

i am going to fucking scream jesus christ.

i keep having nightmares about leftbook and i swear to god. im going to lose it. these are ridiculous, this is absurd, and the fact that it causes ME anxiety is a goddamn joke. i KNOW that i was an actively shitty person. i KNOW that subconsciously, i was actively trying to hurt people by not knowing shit. i KNOW that i was toxic to my friends and i treated others as disposable — my friends were terrified of messing up around me because they were afraid that i'd turn on them. i don't think i would have, but with the way i treated strangers in leftbook groups, it makes complete sense that they'd believe it

and the worst part was the harm i was doing just by BEING there. i was constantly straying way out of my lane. i used a lot of outdated terminology because i was so far behind everyone else on discourse. i took up space, time, and resources in a community that i had no business being in because being raised in a conservative family meant i was so wildly behind on social justice that i was literally just as shitty as the people on the right. sure i was (and still am) trying to unlearn all of the stuff i grew up with, but by participating in leftist groups before i'd caught up, i was just exposing more people to that kind of toxicity.

truth is, i didn't deserve to be there until i could learn to do better. but instead of stepping away and doing the research and self examination i should have been doing, i was selfish and interjected myself into a community i was hurting. i stole space and time from people who actively experienced oppression their whole lives should have had. they deserved to speak and be heard, not me — someone who basically hadnt experienced bigotry at all in comparison. i turned the few experiences i did have into weapons to try to be like "i experienced hate crimes so my take on this issue is more valid/important/relevant than your entire life."

there's so much more. i was SUCH a shitty person and i think i might still be. i was incredibly manipulative, i tried to take up space i didn't deserve, i centered myself constantly, i participated in dog-piling on others, i was constantly getting into fights, so much more. if someone was sharing their experiences, i would make it all about me by being like "i went through something similar, so i'm going to tell you all about it and what i did because you're clearly too dumb to know how to handle it yourself." i interpreted every single response in an argument in the worst faith possible in an effort to... i don't know... win, maybe? i STILL catch myself doing this — just goes to show that once an abuser, always an abuser ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and i was always blaming my neurodivergence for being slow on learning about SJ issues. like yeah, okay, i have trouble with reading comprehension because of my ADHD and depression, but using that as an excuse is literally saying, "everyone with ADHD and depression is too dumb to read." i couldn't even apologize and self critique correctly. every fucking time i tried i got it wrong, even when i followed guides and suggestions. sometimes i even convinced myself that i felt remorse, but if that was the case, i wouldn't have found it so difficult to apologize. nothing says "i love hurting people and won't feel bad about it" like failing to apologize 🙃

i spent so much time in the Leftbook community that i will never be able to make up for the amount of trouble i caused. i took up so much space and resources and support from people who had been through worse for longer. i don't even know if the regret i have is real or if i've just managed to manipulate myself into thinking it is. i even had myself convinced that i wasn't trying to hurt anyone, but if that were true, i would never have done even 10% of the shit i did. i was absolutely positive for so long that i "didn't mean to," but nobody does that much harm unless they're TRYING on some level. the only thing that makes sense is that i was subconsciously out to hurt people and a person who does that is, without a doubt, a fucking monster.

and even if it were true, even if i "didn't mean it," intent means less than nothing. subconsciously or not, i was actively harming people. i know i traumatized at least a few with my behavior. those people have to live with that shit FOREVER. what i "meant" to do doesn't matter as long as they have to live with my actions. i had the same negative impact to those people as a far-right extremist would have had. functionally, my actions were identical to the actions of an alt-right monster, and by having THAT in common with that kind of person, i'm no different than they are

i hate this shit. who the fuck has nightmares about being called out publicly on the internet for shit THEY did? what kind of self-obsessed freak with a victim complex has nightmares about being righteously punished for hurting others? it's pathetic and it's proof that i haven't changed at all

#terin.odt #long post #i am so frustrated and filled with rage and self hatred over this #i feel so guilty over it but I dont even know if it's real guilt or if im centering myself i havent changed and i really am that shitty #as much as i bitch sbout Leftbook on here i deserved all of it and more #i participated in such a toxic community and made it worse by being there #i hurt SO many people and i did so much irreparable damage to people i considered friends #i wish i could go back in time and kill myself before i could do anything #it really would have been better if that suicide attempt at age 12 had actually worked out huh. #venting tw #idk how else to tag this im sorry