Bluesky and the Fedi: Winner's Syndrome, on "relevance", Diddy reference
@oliphantreal shit
a lot of it comes down to questions of values and what kind of place you want to build, and fedi is rooted in free software, p and anti-capitalist values ( even right leaning fedizens are generally anti corporate capture ) and BS simply is not, sure there are lefty foss types there, but the people making the decisions are the same tech elites whose California Ideology is destroying the entire planet.
When someone uses a term like 'relevance', I'm always like, relevant to what? mainstream American pop culture? whatever fashionable scam rich people are into this week is not relevant to me and my life and people care about, and the dehumanizing implication is: You Don't Matter, Poor People Don't Matter. Who decides what's relevant? Apparently it's not any of the millions of people on fedi -- it's rich people.
This is a bit of a leap, but watched a video on the Diddy, and how back in the 2000's "everyone" ( not everyone, the super rich/celebrities ) felt they needed to go to his "White Parties" in order to 'stay relevant"... "if you weren't there, you weren't relevant" one has-been said in an interview, and this bourgeois idea of keeping up with the next big thing is why so many hopped on crypto and AI. It's also used in gentrification "this neighborhood is the spot, this overpriced novelty cafe is "the place to be*" they say as they forcibly displace local inhabitants. It's a mass manipulation tactic used by powerful predators to coerce people into buying into and legitimizing their schemes, and afterwards all these marks are left with is some embarrassing photos with a notorious human trafficker. 📸
You know who else isn't relevant ? Palestinians, undocumented migrants, people living in tent cities, people in prison, minimum wage workers, turns out vast majority of human beings are not relevant. What is relevant is what insecure and gulliable rich people are being conned with today, and anything that doesn't vibe with their own self absorbed self-congratulatory fantasy world is not. But what's really disheartening is how many people who really should know better also fall for this because this kind of thinking is ingrained so deep in our culture.
To be fair, if I was a journalist or had a podcast or was some kind of content creator, or my career was tied to my reach in any way, then sure I'd probably be on Bluesky or some other corpo platform to advertise my product, even then I'd still come to fedi when I wanted to enjoy myself and talk to people who are relevant to me... but also news flash most people don't actually need or want to do social media as PR, and that's another con job altogether; convincing every person on social media they are actually a brand 🤳