Why Do You Care What They Think?

With so much of people’s lives being lived online these days, people tend to form e-communities based around any subject imaginable. About 7-8 years ago, I had a 1991 Volvo 240 sedan with over 300,000 miles on it. It had a reputation as a tank, but every once in a while something would go wrong. When it did, I would head off to Brickboard, the Volvo forums, to see if anyone could diagnose the issue. The first time I logged on, I quickly discovered I was entering another culture, and the inhabitants expected you to deal with procedures, rules, and even quirks the board members had developed over the years. Fine, anything; just help me!

Starting with the earliest chat rooms, online cultures were born. I remember AOL chats where themes ranged from cars to Christianity. Each had developed their own set of rules, and often many of these groups were taken over and run with an iron fist by members whose personalities leaned towards leadership (totalitarianism?). The rules could get weird, but the fact that cultures grew around subjects you wouldn’t expect was fascinating to watch.

With the introduction of Facebook and Twitter, cliques quickly formed even on the public face of the forum. Sure, people formed groups in the Direct Message section, but even publicly, people tribed up. As we’re in the age of Absolute Politics, it was bound to happen that so-called political movements would form on social media. But is social media real life? And if a political movement only exists online, is it one? That depends. The obvious item to address first would be, "Is it a serious political movement?" If it has no success in real life, the answer is clearly no. Then why do people let online movements become not only their chosen politics but, in many cases, their identity? I posit this is due to people having very little going on in their real lives.

The danger of having politics become your identity while living most of your life online is that if you piss off your clique and they shun you, you no longer have anyone to interact with. And most times the disagreements can be retarded. If your group values "consistency" above all else and you decide to have opinions that conflict, those opinions may well get you shunned. It could be something as simple as seeing the benefit of tariffs under the current globalist economic paradigm but revealing you buy things from Amazon. "HERETIC!!! You champion the American worker but buy cheap crap from Amazon! You’re inconsistent! You should be starting your own Amazon, only selling American-made goods!" Well, no, and how about fuck you? I’m playing the cards I’ve been dealt, and anyone telling you to "build your own Amazon" after 2020 should get an open-hand slap to the face.

It appears I was oddly specific with my political example, but this one hits home when you come from the cliques I used to run with. My point is to not only highlight the inherent folly of joining and identifying with online groups but also to show how dangerous it is in that most come with some kind of dogma attached, and violating said dogma can leave you alone on an island. Humans are social creatures, and there is no substitute for real-life human interaction. 

So log off every day and get out of the house. Find like-minded people to spend time with, even if you have to travel a little to do it. If you’re in our circles, I can say with confidence that a lot of you aren’t changing anything with your constant online activity. I spend less time online than I used to, but I still spend too much. I do have people that I get together with locally and am seeking to spend more time with them and put together a concrete plan for what to do when the "woke" eventually makes it out to us... or conditions get much worse. In my opinion, this is the way forward, and those who choose to forsake it will suffer greatly, along with their loved ones.