Why Fail Safe Matters Now

Full film Fail Safe (1964) is a cultural mirror, from another age, that helps us think about the next ten years of mess. With technical systems out of human control. The film’s malfunctioning machines map directly onto today’s algorithmic governance (#dotcons, #AI, automated warfare). Once the chain starts, humans can’t pull back.

Leadership under impossible pressure. Henry Fonda’s president embodies the loneliness of decision-making when systems collapse. Compare that to our current leaders, who are weaker, more performative, and less willing to carry the weight of consequence.

The Professor’s logic vs. human life: Matthau’s cold “game theory” feels like the #neoliberal technocrat mindset – numbers over people, outcomes over ethics.

The unthinkable concessions of the ending forces us to imagine the price of avoiding total annihilation – not a win/lose game, but a choice between different forms of catastrophe. That’s climate politics, resource wars, pandemics, and #dotcons algorithm risk we face.

What lessons can we learn for the next decade? System fragility is the real enemy – climate systems, financial systems, digital platforms: one glitch, and collapse ripples out. We don’t have the principle modernism, Fonda’s gravitas – our current elitists class are hollowed out by #PR driven populism; when the crisis comes, trust won’t be there. The “Professor” mindset dominates – policy is still guided by “hard” data, models, metrics, and “rational actors,” even though reality has long escaped those dogmatic frames. Watching Fail Safe today is like watching the #deathcult’s worldview in black and white: centralized control, elitist decision-making, people as statistics.

What we need is open, collective mediation – instead of waiting for one lonely leader in a bunker, we need horizontal systems (#OMN, #openweb) that can act before catastrophe hardens. The #OMN and the #openweb reboot are the anti–Fail Safe projects: decentralize agency, mediate conflict before escalation, building trust outside fragile centralized systems. It’s a powerful film, because it frames the stakes not just as “politics” but as civilizational survival.

It’s a film of our times, what can we learn for the #openweb? In 1964, Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe held its audience in terrified silence. A simple technical malfunction – a misread code – sent American bombers hurtling toward Moscow. No one could call them back. The world’s survival depended on one president’s unthinkable decision. It was fiction, but it spoke to a truth of the nuclear age: centralized systems, once in motion, cannot be controlled.

Sixty years later, we are in our own Fail Safe moment – but this time the system is digital. The malfunction, is #neoliberalism embedded in our algorithmic #dotcons pipelines. As we push more #AI moderation system, hallucinates flags, the error replicates at machine speed across platforms. What began as a technical hiccup hardens into policy. Governments, seeing chaos, step in “to restore order.” dictators empower security agencies to control networks, to stabilise their hold on power. Like the bomber wings in Fail Safe, the system escalates itself. Once the order is given, there is no recall code.

The #OMN alternative to this is #KISS we need to build is affinity groups on the #openweb – messy, small, federated – to keep our communities talking. Instead of one brittle command chain, thousands of small nodes exchange trust. Instead of a sinal voice, a new signal-to-noise ratio emerges. This slows the shift right. People can begin to rebuild, bottom-up.

Fail Safe ended in tragedy, with a president sacrificing New York to prevent global annihilation. It was a portrait of lonely leadership in a centralised system gone haywire.

Our age offers another path. The lesson is stark that In centralised systems, malfunction = collapse. In federated, mediated systems, failure = resilience. The #openweb reboot is not about nostalgia for old tech. It’s about building structures that can survive the malfunctions ahead. When the next ten years are defined by glitches, spirals, and breakdowns – and they will be – then the survival of our social fabric depends on embracing the horizontal path.

The nuclear age taught us that a single misread code could end the world. The algorithmic age is teaching us that the current glitch could end society.

The #openweb native path gives us more of a chance to be Fail Safe.

#Film #coldwar #review

“Your Party” and the Fluffy/Spiky debate – a working path

A wider view of this https://nathanakehurst.medium.com/whose-party-ce23a8099624

Fluffy side: cautious, slow-moving, grounded in “keeping the peace” and managing optics. Classic problem: avoidance of conflict means bottlenecking decisions, blocking energy, and trying to centralise control, so things don’t blow up. Spiky side: impatient, direct, “get it done” energy. Spikiness pushes things forward, but often burns bridges, creating splits and mistrust. Neither path alone works – one stalls out, the other fragments. Their clash in the UK “Your Party”, just tore apart what was an opening for a broad left #mainstreaming alternative which we do need.

There are lessons here for horizontal/grassroots paths, a big one is that centralisation kills: When “leadership” becomes bottlenecked around personalities (Corbyn as “elder statesman”, Sultana as “young firebrand”), it reproduces the same control problems we see everywhere – #NGO capture, careerist gatekeeping, etc. Energy without mediation burns out: Spiky approaches are essential (they break inertia), but without social glue and open processes, the movement shatters.

Sadly, it’s looking like the political vacuum, is back. The 700,000 people who signed up are proof that there is real mass desire for something beyond the #deathcult #mainstreaming. But they’re now “homeless” – with no trustworthy structures to plug into. That vacuum will either be filled by opportunists (careerists, NGOs, “#fashernista”), or open the path for something like the #OMN: messy, federated, not centralised around personalities. And/Or the Green Party (this needs a separate post).

Focusing on the grassroots path I have been working on: this is exactly why the #OMN and #openweb reboot needs balance, so the signal-to-noise ratio can stay healthy. Otherwise, we just mirror the left’s long history of splits. What it means for the fluffy/spiky debate: The “Your Party” implosion shows us:

You can’t fix spiky by being fluffy. The soft style just frustrated allies and deepened mistrust.

You can’t replace fluffy with spiky.

The only path forward is process, not personality. That’s where horizontal projects like the #OMN can work – by creating open, transparent, mediated structures that don’t depend on charismatic individuals at the centre.

For the #openweb reboot, this bad moment is actually what we are working to fix. It shows how much energy there is (hundreds of thousands signing up). It shows the cost of control blindness. Likewise, it creates urgency for native governance paths and experiments in the #fediverse and beyond – where messy affinity-based groups, guided by the #4opens, can provide a home that doesn’t implode around personality clashes.

The question now is who can see the need for the practical mediation layer of the #OMN, is designed to bridge – not abstract theory – it’s the path that makes messy, spiky, fluffy humans work together without blowing everything up. For the #OMN and #openweb reboot, the answer isn’t “less conflict” or “more central leadership,” but better mediation and horizontal process, so collective energy isn’t wasted on repeating the same old splits.

What we are the seeing is the limits of #fashionista and #geekproblem control blindness.

How do we deal with this generation of people – formed by #neoliberalism, #dotcons, #mainstreaming, #stupidindividualism – when what’s needed is collective change and challenge?

The generation of the last 40 years of “There is no alternative” (Thatcher → Blair → Sunak/Starmer) produced passivity and cynicism. #Dotcons capture: people live inside algorithmic bubbles, shaped for consumption, not collaboration. This is the era of individualism as common sense: many can’t even imagine “the collective” except as a threat. We now face naked, fear + distraction: #climatechaos, wars, economic precarity → endless doomscrolling instead of agency. And this is why movements implode: the raw material (people) have been warped by the #deathcult.

What we can work with, even in this mess, people still show hunger for meaning (why 700,000 signed up for Corbyn–Sultana’s thing). Anger at the #nastyfew elitists (but it often gets channelled rightwards – Farage, Trump, Reform, conspiracies).

There are moments of solidarity (mutual aid, Palestine protests, climate camps). Skill fragments (#geekproblem energy, activist culture, DIY practice – but siloed). We don’t start from zero – we start from these contradictions.

Practical paths for dealing with this generation is in part about: Break the spell by expose #mainstreaming as a control system, using simple, repeatable stories (hashtags, memes, metaphors like composting/shovels) to make the invisible visible.

Then the path, affinity first, not mass. Don’t try to herd 700,000 people. Start with small, trust-based circles that actually work. Show results, not rhetoric. This attracts people who are sick of endless talking shops. Compost the conflict, instead of suppressing spiky energy (which turns toxic), build mediation layers, so conflict gets processed into growth. This prevents the inevitable splits from killing projects before they start.

We need working, visible alternatives, things people can touch: #OMN publishing hubs, #fediverse tools, radical media gardens. Each working piece is a counter-spell against “there is no alternative.” This is about reframing success and stop only measuring change in electoral wins or #NGO funding circles. We need to measure it in resilient collectives, working infrastructure, and shifts in common sense.

The challenge we need to compost, is that, the current generation has been trained in #stupidindividualism. What we need to learn is you cannot beat that as individuals, the only path is to recreate collectives – messy, organic, trust-based – where people can unlearn the #deathcult through practice. That’s why #OMN, #OGB, #indymediaback matter: they’re not just tools, they’re containers for relearning collective life.

Looking for an affinity group to take the first step #OMN

The #algorithm on #YouTube has flipped hard right wing for me, a few other people have said the same, please add if you have seen this as well? If this is widespread, it shows how important it is to get normal people back to the #openweb reboot we are all involved in here.

This is obviously a form of social control, with the dominating of the #dotcons platforms in most peoples lives, plain and simple, the price of us building this domination.

The #hashtag story begins with disempowering the #mainstreaming in our own minds. First step: breaking the spell, realising we don’t have to live inside their frame.

Second step: forming the affinity group circle. Gathering with others who can see through the smoke and mirrors. From that circle comes the power to build the #OMN shovel.

Third step: composting. Taking all the #techshit – the failed projects, poisoned cultures, and dead ends – and turning them back into fertile soil. #OGB

What we do with that soil is up to us. That’s where the future grows. #KISS

The #geekproblem only sees #cavetechnology. But society is far too complex for that, you’d have to kill billions to make it work.

4opens is the opposite: a data commons. Light as a tool to fight with, not darkness to hide in.

Thinking outreach of the hashtag story

Composting the #techshit, planting the future

DRAFT

We have been stripped naked by the last 40 years of the #deathcult. Every assumption that we lived in a tolerant, “good” world is slipping away. The growing #classwar was historically balanced to stop the possibility of a soviet takeover, as blinded liberals see this, two accidents: a temporary ecosystemic surplus and a temporary post-WWII settlement. Both have been rapidly dismantled. And when the foundations are gone, the liberal illusions fall with them.

What this looks like in the USA, Trump, neoliberalism’s golem, is dismantling his creators’ project. The Democrats wander listlessly like puppets with their strings cut. Client states are facing rebellion without the normal imperial backing. This growing stagnation wasn’t an accident, it was the plan. Just enough suffering to keep people scared, not enough to spark revolt. Just enough democracy to keep people hopeful, not enough to allow change.

If things keep going without major changes, we end up with fascism or authoritarianism in every major country. The next possibility of change is whether China’s technological developments manage to hold global warming under 2 degrees. If not, every border becomes a vicious killing zone, not the “minor” ones we already live with, but a planetary system of militarised exclusion and death.

What would stop this? It’s unpredictable, maybe the reboot of an old ideology, or the dramatic growth of one that barely exists today. A return to #neoliberalism won’t help, and a return to pre-neoliberal #liberalism is impossible. Between 1850 and 1950, ideologies bloomed, clashed, and died. In the last 80 years? Nothing but consolidation and suppression pushed the current blindness. In digital media ecosyteams the #dotcons algorithmic machine is accelerating the mess, the traditional media world is closing.

The suffering is accelerating beyond tolerance, beyond what can be hidden. Some say immiseration brings revolution, but, revolutions comes when expectations of something better are dashed, not when misery drags on. The 20th century Marxism of the authoritarian socialism crowded out other left paths, and when it faded, little remained. #Neoliberals didn’t have to control everything; they just had to preside over a void.

And into this void the blinded #fashionistas pushed the #dotcons. YouTube, Facebook, TikTok – as algorithmic machines of fear and control, that then went on to feed the hard right, who picked up the agendas and traditions of the left with the fall of the past left projects. The right twisted solidarity into nationalism, collective action into mob violence, critique into conspiracism. We fucked this up, and we have to fix it. The fix for this mess isn’t going to come from #mainstreaming policy papers or NGOs. The real fix has to come from the messy, grounded rebuilding of #classwar based open networks to grow grassroots trust.

To make this change we need an affinity group to short circuit the hopelessness they sell us, yes, it’s easy for the few to see that this hopelessness is a lie. But shifting to the majority to rebuild #mainstreaming is a much bigger project. So a small step is projects like the #OMN. If we don’t plant something better like this, we will be force-fed the future YouTube and Meta have already chosen for us. And that future looks a lot like fascism dressed up as entertainment.

#KISS

A small view of steps we need

A small view of steps we need

I normally talk and work on big issues, let’s look for a moment at smaller steps. To make a big change, we need to start with practical paths (everyday grassroots & do-able). A personal short step is to detox one feed, not your life. Pick one algorithmic platform and shrink usage: unfollow, mute, or temporarily uninstall the app. Replace 15–30 minutes of scrolling with one intentional action by using replacement tools (not perfect, but better).

Try ActivityPub/Fediverse clients (Mastodon, PixelFed, PeerTube), RSS readers, or small community forums. Start with reading, not posting – build habit.

Curate your attention, subscribe to a few human-edited newsletters, local news, or blogs (#RSS). Teach friends how to set up an RSS reader or follow a small subject blog.

Practice media hygiene, verify before sharing. Pause, check one source, ask “who benefits if this spreads?” Be boringly sceptical.

Vote with time and money, support small creators directly (tips, buys, memberships) and donate to independent projects like community news sites, local papers, or tech co-ops.

Community & organising moves, host local “show-and-tell” sessions. 1 hour: show alternatives, how to use RSS/Mastodon/PeerTube, and why they matter. Bring tea.

Build small trust circles, start a group that publishes a single short community bulletin or podcast – keep it non-algorithmic and share by link.

Make open culture visible, put simple “we’re #openweb-friendly” stickers/links in local cafés, libraries, community boards. Make it easy to find one another.

Teach the next person, each person teaches one other person how to escape one algorithmic trap – then they teach another. Tiny chain.

Tech & product-level tactics (simple, not spectacular). Run a tiny, friendly instance. Local gatherings or collectives host a low-cost Mastodon/PeerTube instance with clear moderation and a friendly onboarding doc. Promote link-first publishing.

Encourage people to put content on a simple blog (or even a shared public wiki document) and share links rather than rely on feeds.

Use interoperable standards. Favours tech that uses open protocols, so people can migrate and mix services without being trapped.

Policy, campaigns & pressure. Demand transparency. Pressure institutions (schools, libraries, local councils) to publish simple rules about algorithmic tools and offer alternatives.

Support regulatory fights that protect attention. Back campaigns that limit manipulative design (dark patterns, endless feeds) and push for algorithmic audits. Amplify worker voices. Support platform workers and former moderators who expose harms – they are crucial allies.

What positive outcomes do we want? (clear, concrete). Less algorithmic amplification of fear. Fewer engineered outrage cascades in our local networks. Resilient, localised media ecology. Lots of small, trusted outlets (indymedia, community radio, blogs) that aren’t driven by ad-engagement. Restored civic trust & shared facts. Communities that can act together because they share a baseline of reality.

Shared infrastructure under community control. Instances, archives, and services run by people and collectives, not opaque ad corporations. More empathy in circulation. Content that rewards kindness and care rather than outrage.

This matters because if we don’t act, the future is already written by the #dotcons. Their algorithms don’t just reflect society, they shape it – twisting attention into fear, isolating people in bubbles of paranoia, and feeding the hard right until cruelty looks normal. This isn’t an accident; it’s the business model.

Every minute we spend scrolling through their poisoned feeds, we’re training ourselves to be more divided, more hopeless, more powerless. That’s their plan: keep us distracted, keep us arguing, keep us consuming, while the world burns and the billionaires laugh at us.

We don’t have the luxury of despair. Walking away from the #openweb and our own traditions of collective action left a vacuum, and the hard right rushed in. They stole our language of freedom, community, and even rebellion, and twisted it into authoritarian poison. That’s on us. We fucked up.

Now we fix it. The alternative is watching the world sink into algorithmic fascism, where cruelty is the currency of attention. The positive outcome is right in front of us: small, messy, grassroots networks where kindness and solidarity are amplified instead of hate. The #OMN, the #4opens, the trust-based paths we already know work.

We compost the #techshit because what grows out of this soil is hope, and without hope we’re already lost.

The algorithm is feeding us fascism – Time to step away

The hard right is taking all the agendas, traditions, and paths that the left abandoned, and twisting them to push its authoritarian politics harder. It’s a mess of our own making. When we walked away from the sense-based left paths – trust, solidarity, open debate, collective action – we left a vacuum. The right filled it with fear and control. We fucked this up. Now we have to fix it. #KISS

With the spreading of right-wing propaganda on the #dotcons what we’re experiencing is a late-stage symptom of the #dotcons algorithm machine. Once it starts feeding this level of right-wing “recommended” propaganda, you can be certain that the average person has been saturated with it for years. That’s how we end up with the cultural rot and polarisation we see now.

The dynamic is simple:

Engagement is the only metric → anger and fear drive more engagement than trust or hope → the algorithms amplify right-wing and conspiratorial content.

Normalisation follows → people stop noticing the manipulation, because it comes wrapped in everyday “banter,” “debate,” or “news.”

Politics bends to the feed → #mainstreaming media, #NGOs, and politicians chase the same attention flows, further dragging “common sense” into the gutter.

So yes, getting people to step away from #dotcons and back into the #openweb is crucial. The compost metaphor fits:

#techshit to compost → all the broken, manipulative, ad-driven “social” platforms.

#OMN → a messy, trust-based garden where communities can grow their own media again, rather than being force-fed monoculture by algorithm.

Path forward → build simple, transparent tools (#KISS) and link them to social practices (trust, affinity, #4opens) so people see the difference in their own lives.

The move is urgently necessary because the alternative is to let the rotting #deathcult (#neoliberalism + #dotcons) push smoke and mirrors, feeding on our attention, poisoning our discourse, and steering our politics to the hard right.

The right propaganda, commentators, try to distract us from the extremes of the right by claiming there’s an “extreme left.” Let’s lift the lid on this. The right is driven by individualism and the obsession with “winning” as if it’s a contest. This path breeds selfishness and calculated cruelty with zero empathy – more selfishness, more cruelty. The left, is a strong contrast, it starts from kindness and mutual support. It believes in sharing, in building together. The extreme of that isn’t violent chaos but extreme kindness, extreme empathy. Which side would you rather see amplified by algorithms?

We need to get to work with shovels to compost this mess.

Pick up the shovel, build the commons

Right now, our digital lives are stuck between two bad choices: Stranded silos, your notes, photos, chats locked into one device. #dotcons capture, hand it all to Google, Apple, Meta, and rent your own history back from them.

We deserve better. What we actually need is simple: Blobs of data that syncs across devices and servers. A conflict resolution flow. Sync is hard, but not impossible, better to resolve a clash than lose flow. A protocol path that isn’t “just another cloud,” but part of a commons.

This is the path of the #OMN (Open Media Network). Bridging client/server with #p2p flows, people power, where people hold their own history instead of renting it back from the #deathcult. To make this work, we need to keep it #KISS so normal people, not just geeks, can understand and use it. It’s not about building a new shiny app. It’s about laying the pipes, tanks, and flows – the plumbing – that keeps our media and our history, as a reflection of us, in native flows.

This is shovel work. This is how we compost the #techshit and grow something real. The choice is clear, stay stuck in silos, lease life from the cloud. Or pick up the shovel and build a trust-based, decentralised future. The tools are #OMN, #4opens. What’s missing is you. That’s the shovel work. That’s the compost. The question isn’t “can we build it?” – the question is: who’s going to pick up the shovel first?

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network

https://opencollective.com/open-media-network

Pick up the shovel: turning habits into compost

The current mess we make

If we “common sense” build a hierarchy, the prats will always float to the top. Then all we have done is create another pile of mess that needs composting later. A better path? Don’t build hierarchies in the first place. #KISS, instead, build open flows – compost heaps, not pyramids. In a heap, everything breaks down, mixes, and feeds new growth. In a pyramid, the few sit on top, blocking the agency of the many.

Heap vs Pyramid

Heap (good) → A compost heap is messy, organic, and alive. All contributions mix, rot down, and feed the next cycle. Nobody sits “on top” because everything breaks down and transforms.

Pyramid (bad) → A rigid hierarchy. Those at the top block, exploit, and feed off those below. It looks tidy, but it’s sterile and suffocating.

Shovel vs Perfume

Shovel (good) → Cracking open the rot with real tools. Airing it, turning it, letting the stink escape, so new life can grow.

Perfume (bad) → Glossy projects that spray chemicals over the pile, masking the smell but never dealing with the rot. It just festers underneath.

Backbone vs Smiling Violent Man

Backbone (good) → Shared, visible structure that holds the body of the collective together. Transparent, flexible, and accountable.

Smiling Violent Man (bad) → What you get when “structureless” cultures collapse: an informal tyrant, hiding behind charm while wielding coercion.

Forest vs Plantation

Forest (good) → Open commons where we can sow seeds, share harvests, and tend the land together. Diversity makes it resilient.

Plantation (bad) → Controlled monoculture, fenced in, run for profit and power. The workers labour, the overseers extract.

Soil vs Concrete

Soil (good) → Soft, porous, full of worms and bacteria. It holds water, recycles nutrients, and supports growth.

Concrete (bad) → Hard, brittle, blocks life. Looks strong but cracks under pressure, leaving deserts in its wake.

Put more metaphors in the comments, please.

Content in the #OMN

In the #OMN we keep things simple. There are 3 main categories of content (plus a 4th, transitory chat, which we don’t cover here):

Post
The main media object. This could be an article, photo, video, or podcast – the core piece of content you want to share.

Comment
A flow branching off each post. This is where dialogue, debate, and reflection happen. Comments are tied to the post but flow outward as part of the network.

Feature
An overview object. A feature gathers together related posts on a subject, adds context, and links both inward (to posts and hashtag flows in the #OMN) and outward (to other sources).

Together, these 3 categories form the data soup that flows through the #OMN’s pipes. Posts are the raw material, comments are the social metabolism, and features are the compost heaps where meaning is aggregated and fed back into the commons flow.

It’s all just linked objects in trust mediated flows, that’s it #KISS

OMN projects are tools for YOU to change and challenge the world we live (and die) in

Official Steps into the Open Social Web… but Whose Steps?

We’re seeing “official” moves in the development of the #opensocialweb. Big players are turning up. Conferences in Geneva. Glossy orgs like @ProjectLiberty positioning themselves as bridge-builders between tech and governance.

On the surface, this looks like progress, recognition, and legitimacy. But let’s be brutally honest: these are completely the wrong people to be steering the direction. The problem isn’t that they show up, it’s that they try to take up all the air in the room.

Where are the bridges to activism? Where’s the link to movements that actually push change and challenge? Without those, all we have is tech-for-the-sake-of-tech, more elitist panels, more smiling faces managing decline. Looking closer, is this anything but a bunch of ****wits in suits?

What we need for a real path isn’t only glossy conferences or new standards documents pushing more #techshit to add to the compost heap. What we need to resource is the real work: https://hamishcampbell.com/pick-up-the-shovel-turning-habits-into-compost/

The #OMN is an example project, about building the shovel factory, simple tools that anyone can pick up. Open pipes, trust flows, collective publishing. Not another empty standard, but working soil where communities can actually grow culture and power.

We can’t keep ignoring the stink, Yes, it’s nice to see recognition. But let’s not confuse recognition with change. Without shovels, glossy projects just pile up stink. No perfume, no branding exercise can hide the smell.

We need to say VERY clearly that in the native #openweb, bridges go both ways. If you build them only toward governance elitists, you’ve built a cul-de-sac. If you build them toward activism and grassroots, you create “native” flows that actually move.

So the question remains: who is resourcing the shovel factory? Because without shovels, all this talk is just another layer of rot. With shovels in hands, we can compost the mess into something alive #OMN #4opens #KISS #fediverse #decentralization

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

Pick up the shovel: turning habits into compost

The problem isn’t that people refuse to act. The problem is that most are stuck in paralysis: “What do I do?” If the only options they see are worshipping the #deathcult or reinventing the wheel, passivity looks like the safest choice.

The design challenge of the #OMN isn’t just tech – pipes, tanks, metadata – it’s rituals and rhythms that invite participation. We need a seed affinity group whose job is simple: set the shovel down in front of people.

Don’t only complain that they aren’t digging. Literally put the shovel in their hands and say:

Run a local flow.

Tag a batch of data.

Moderate one stream.

Host one screening/fire circle.

Tiny, clear tasks. The kind you can do in an hour. That’s how you turn passivity into momentum. Shifting habits into usefulness, instead of fighting people’s flaws, turn them into leverage.

#fashionistas crave visibility. Fine. Give them the role of spreading compost metaphors, making the work look alive and fresh. Let them shine light on the soil.

#geekproblem crave puzzles and edge cases. Good. Hand them the tricky parts: trust plumbing, metadata sieves, redundancy logic. Their obsessiveness is an asset if aimed at the right joints of the system.

#mainstreaming crave “safe” recognition. Use it. Frame #OMN as “the next big thing everyone will need to join.” Let them be the “early adopters” who stay safe by appearing ahead of the curve. They don’t need to lead, they just need to follow momentum.

Each group moves in circles, polishing surfaces while the compost pile rots. But if you show them something real – a flow that works, a network that breathes – they drift toward it. Shiny surface with soil beneath, puzzles that connect to lived use, recognition that feels inevitable.

The Lesson, is, don’t try to convince people in the abstract. Show them working compost. Show them trust flows in action. Show them that it’s easier to do something useful than to do nothing. That’s how we push. That’s how we turn paralysis into practice. That’s how you start to compost the #deathcult.

For this in activism, some traditions work, many do not. It’s more complex than it looks, because those traditions that “don’t work” often do work – but only for the people who push them. That’s the root of the hashtag story: a tactic, a format, a ritual can give visibility, ego, and career advancement to its promoters, while leaving the commons weaker. The tradition “works” as a personal lever, but fails as a collective tool.

We’ve all seen this: Endless meetings that build someone’s identity as a “process person,” but drain energy from action. Branding projects that make a clique look good to funders, while hollowing out grassroots trust. Campaigns designed for headlines and hashtags, not for long-term change.

The bitter truth: a tradition can succeed as a ladder while failing as a bridge. We don’t need to throw everything away. We need to compost. To ask: Who does this serve? Does it build trust, or personal power? Does it strengthen the commons, or just the clique?

The hashtag story isn’t about rejecting all rituals. It’s about refusing to confuse personal gain with collective growth. Traditions that build soil – trust, flows, openness – must be tended. Traditions that rot into self-serving traps must be turned, aerated, broken down. That’s the cycle: compost the false, nurture the living.

#OMN #4opens #KISS

Commons and the metaphor of “grow a backbone”

With the tyranny of the structureless path, every attempt to share the commons decays into a fog of personalities, cliques, and unspoken power. What needs composting here is that, at best, you end up with a smiling violent man as the backstop of governance.

Without mediating structures, what emerges is not freedom but hidden hierarchy. “Smiling violence” – the agreeable man (or clique) who insists they’re just holding things together – quietly blocks challenge, manipulates process, and reserves the final say. If you’re not paying attention, and can’t move away, you wake to find yourself living in #feudalism, with its ever-present threat of personal violence lurking behind the smile.

This is how “horizontal” spaces rot. They confuse the absence of shared structures with openness, when in fact it is poisoned soil: domination by those most willing to coerce, block, or flatter. Without functioning myths and traditions, shared trust, and open processes, what grows is not commons but personal power, one person’s will, or a small group’s grip.

The smiling violent man is not an accident. He is the inevitable product of structurelessness:

Without flows of accountability, you get bottlenecks of control.

Without mediating trust systems, you get gatekeepers posing as “protectors.”

Without a backbone, you get a backstop, a hard edge of coercion dressed in kindness.

The result: commons replaced by fiefdoms, trust replaced by muscle, care replaced by the mask of “caring the most.” Once that happens, the commons are no longer common, they are held hostage.

When I see this again and again, I sometimes say: “grow a backbone.” But this rarely lands well. So let’s pause and ask what backbone really means in social settings:

Structure / Stability: Like a spine holding the body upright, a social backbone is the framework that keeps everything from collapsing into mush. In #OMN terms: the #5F framework is the backbone, UX, UI, and culture all grow around it.
Courage / Integrity: To “have backbone” means to stand firm under pressure. For movements, this means holding the line when mainstreaming forces, fashionistas, or gatekeepers push back. Backbone is refusing co-option, staying rooted in trust.
Invisible but Essential: The backbone is not the face, not the style. It’s the quiet strength – shared trust and open processes – that allows everything else to move. Often invisible, but without it, nothing functions.

A social backbone, then, is the shared trust + open processes that holds a community upright against both internal decay and external capture. By contrast, on the progressive path the #fashionistas build style without backbone (pretty, but collapses quickly), and the #geekproblem builds bone without flesh (rigid, alienating).

Metaphors work when people use them, this might become convoluted 🙂

The comments brought up some points -When we talk about composting bad process, the stink comes from rot sealed off from air, the smiling violence holding the heap down, suffocating flows. The shovel (#OMN) exists to turn the pile, let oxygen in, keep the ecosystem alive. But the real work is done not by the shoveler but by the hidden actors: the invertebrates, fungi, and bacteria. The slow, distributed, many-voiced work of transforming mess into fertile ground. That’s us, when we build trust-based flow networks.

So let’s think about this backbone metaphor more. In biology, spines give structure, but ecosystems are held up just as much by invisible scaffolding: fungal networks, soil webs, rhizomes. In tech, the Internet “backbone” was designed with redundancy, no single node decisive, everything routing around damage. That’s closer to an exoskeleton or even a rhizome than to a rigid spine: strength through distributed paths, not central authority.

Back to the subject of tech #Mainstreaming likes to tell the story that the Internet came from the Pentagon, born a war machine. There’s truth there. But there’s also the buried history (see APC’s work) of people shaping it into a commons, a tool for organizing, a network not of command but of association. That history is the “invertebrate” path, fragile, messy, hard to see, but alive. And in truth, tech is ideology embodied: the people who built the early net built something that could survive without the state, routing around command and control. That’s a good definition of anarchy.

So the wider metaphor isn’t just backbone, but ecosystem: A scaffold that gives form (#5F of the #OMN as the bones). Shovels to aerate and mediate (#OGB as the process tools). Invertebrates and fungi (the hidden actors – users, trust webs, communities). Rhizomes and redundancy (the net’s anarchic, native design).

The danger comes when we forget this, and mistake surface style for soil depth. The #fashionistas offer flowers without roots, the #geekproblem offers bone without flesh. The commons require both – backbone and compost, scaffold and ecosystem. Otherwise, the heap stinks and collapses into fiefdoms.