Leaving. Not Leaving. Whatever.

[daredtowork]

122. Politics of the Internetz

I only meant to post my petition here, and one of the reasons is the "politics" of political forms demoralize me. A lot. And I really don't need more demoralization in my life right now.

I used to post fairly regularly on Daily Kos, and after I GBCW'd there, I swore I would never invest my "crowd-sourced" energies again. On occasion I find myself tempted. Before I know it, I've wasted a surprising amount of time. I know it was a waste because instead of ROI, the end usually involves being overwhelmed by some troll activity combined with a feeling that all I've put in before has gone unappreciated. That might be going on here with the departure of all these older DU accounts, while some new generation is coming in saying "so what? we're here! move on!"

The Daily Kos thing is infuriating me all over again at the minute, though. They are a Bay Area operation. I live a block from their offices. Even if GBCW'd, I had good reason to. My welfare diaries were being trolled, and some Important Kossacks who shall remain unnamed were saying an egregious law against sitting on the sidewalks should pass because the little wifey got scared of panhandlanders (B.S.) using some neutral dehumanizing language in the process - all in with the Business interests, but not a glance at how this looked to the disabled community or the increasing poverty levels in Berkeley! Anyway, I had my reasons to GBCW, so I wouldn't suppose Daily Kos has any love for me.

But now I'm trying to draw attention to an important political issue with wide ramifications the Bay Area, and furthermore I'm communicating something that would normally not get across the divide to the mainstream. I'm sure Kossacks have seen it here. I'm sure they've seen it on Bay Area mailing lists. I'm sure they saw it when I emailed the SFKossack mailing list asking for Susan Gardner's current email to discuss it. But the WHOLE POLITICAL ISSUE gets iced out - and the only reason I can think of is that it's because I'm no longer providing free articles to Daily Kos anymore, and I removed my old ones (for the record I didn't make a GBCW post).

I don't do Facebook or Twitter. Frankly the whole "political" Internet feels like a corrupt "wink wink nudge nudge" party to me. Individuals reach out for help, they get knocked back by a tsunami of organizations and candidates asking for donations. Nothing ever gets done about their problem. Individuals try to bring an important issue to notice, there is some sort of gate-keeping system they have to go through first, and they may not get through it if they don't have the dime for the toll-keeper. It sucks.

So people make the occasional dramatic departure to try to send that message. Maybe that's necessary.