And I’m genuinely hurt by this.
Someone in a tiktok comment section was talking about anarchists hiding cultural-conservatives but because tiktok comments are limited I didn’t really understand what they were talking about so I asked if there was a book or article I could read to learn more about this particular event. They then stated “do anarchist sock puppets read books now?” And I feel like shit. I don’t know what I said to provoke this hostility.
I know I’m overly sensitive but I actually am tearing up because of this. I hate the thought of being perceived as an enemy. I don’t know what to say to let them know I’m not a sock puppet…
Their comments mentioned something about the Chinese communists and the IWW.
That kind of hostility is so pervasive on the internet. That person has some sort of weird axe to grind and they took out their hostility on you for an imagined reason. I sincerely doubt that you did anything to provoke them. Hostility doesn’t always require provocation, some people are out looking for a fight and they’ll pick one the first chance they get.
Sometimes good faith questions look like sarcasm or sealioning, but there’s really no way around that. If someone is so wound up that “hey, can you say more about that?” causes them to lash out then that’s a problem on their end, not yours.
I understand that they’ve probably been approached by so many bad faith questions and reactionaries but damn does it hurt to be on the receiving end of their ire. Maybe a tone indicator would’ve helped, but then again maybe not. I liked their comments and followed the OP tiktok creator who I guess is their friend but they still came at me thinking I’m a sock puppet account if some American white guy. I just genuinely want to know which anarchists were protecting cultural conservatives and what the IWW is 😭
These big tech platforms are designed to be outrage machines, quite literally. They have been built and tuned to keep people engaged, and that engagement is often in the form of making people angry at one another. What you experienced is an intended result, whether the designers really understand it or not, of the way these systems are built.
That’s one of the reasons big tech is awful. They do not care how their technology is affecting people or the broader system, only that it generates ad revenue. You are a victim, but so is the misguided asshole who got so wound up about nothing that they started flinging shit at strangers to feel better about themselves.
The platform wants you to stay on it and fling shit back, on and on forever. Better to keep trying to engage in good faith where good faith exists, and remember that the structure of social media itself is leading people to be hostile to one another. Only way around it is to not play that game.
The IWW is Industrial Workers of the World and is a all-workers union which was extremely influential in the expansion of the union movement in the USA. It’s become far less important and lost many in recent years but was, in the past, a huge player in the unions. I know it used to be the largest in the world but i don’t know about anymore
This could be of use: https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/wobblies-radical-world-history-iww/
Thank you! See? This is all I wanted, it’s all I ever wanted; just a link or even a title plus the author would’ve been fine. This is the only place I can ever get information without judgement or vitriol.
You’re welcome. Hopefully it’s helpful! It says something about the Wobblies/IWW, at least. If it doesn’t help, there’s this, too: https://libcom.org/article/syndicalism-introduction – can’t say I know too much about this org. Both links are a little obscure, though, as it’s not clear to me from either source what ideology underpins the org.
The IWW website says they accept all ‘workers’ but no employers; which makes some sense but creates a theoretical problem e.g. for: workers who are also managers; employers who work alongside their employees and are sub-contracting off the real ‘not-employer employers’; and ‘workers’ who run/manage temp agencies or sub-contracting firms. The internationalism suggests it’s a Trotskyist org but that doesn’t really align with these three example problems as I’d expect Trotskyists to have a more nuanced concept of class. Which suggests instead that it’s anarchist. According to the second link (the first one in this comment), the IWW represents ‘Industrial Unionism’, which is related but different to anarchy-syndicalism. Who ever said the left is divided? On top of that, the IWW is a union in the sense that it does not dictate a political line; all workers are welcome (subject to the above contradictions, which I have no idea how it resolves).
With this brief understanding, I can see how the IWW or its members could get embroiled in tricky situations, such as protecting reactionaries (although I wouldn’t want to guess and I’m not certain that it was the IWW who was accused of supporting cultural conservatives in your example).
It would be a lot easier if everyone who cared about life on planet earth just became an ML. Far less confusing, for a start, and they might be more effective.
Yeah, see that’s why I asked them if they had an article or book about that specific scenario, but instead of giving me the information they decided to be a dick about it and say I can’t read because I’m an anarchist sock puppet. They mentioned the IWW in terms of them never being able to unionize a Starbucks compared to the amount of change the Chinese Communists made. So maybe their “anarchists protecting cultural conservatives” wasn’t about the IWW, and it probably wasn’t but that just confuses me even more.