So, I don’t know why I am doing this, but I was reading “Log Off” by Katherine Cross more carefully, after a short discussion here, and here. It seemed to me a good idea to have a post dedicated to this, and possibly in the future if this works out, about other books. The book is dense, and highly relevant to Lemmy and broadly Fediverse culture, and it spells out nicely some things I had thought before, but in much more packed and well thought-out way. I found myself highlighting something on virtually every page. So I guess I would like to post my thoughts on these highlights and see what other folks think about those as well. So here goes. I am posting the quotes as separate comments to this post, to facilitate them being discussed more thoroughly.

  • Marcela (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
    21·
    3 months ago

    First and foremost, one of the ugliest side effects of terminal COVID-posting that proliferated amongst the Extremely Online was a deepening mistrust of their fellow human being; every time they fell for outrage-bait about some wanker being a dick about not wearing a mask, their inevitable response was, “I don’t trust people anymore!” This is a neat fit for conservatives, whose entire movement is built on a notion of Original Sin, developed through two centuries of monarchism, fascism, nativism, and lesser varieties of know-nothingism, that treats strangers as essentially threats. But for anyone to the left of Mussolini, such contempt for your fellow human being, such unwillingness to reach out to one’s neighbour for fear they’ll be like That Bitch from Panera Bread I Saw on TikTok, is extraordinarily dangerous — and fatal to realizing the ideals we share, which are necessarily collective.