Social change and the challenge that comes with activism is a messy but needed process to make happen. When we push against #mainstreaming, bad faith actors will come at us hard. Our best, often only, defence is sticking to good faith, telling our own stories, and holding onto process. Without this, the dominant narrative (which serves power) will drown out our voices.
The problem is we to often let, well-meaning people, wreck everything, in grassroots social movements, some of the biggest obstacles come from inside. People who believe they’re doing good will still do harm, sometimes more harm than outright bad actors. The worst ones often work the hardest. Why? They lack experience with #DIY culture. They unthinkingly worship the #deathcult. Not only that, but they confuse personal virtue with effective action. Shit stinks, but composting it makes flowers grow. The trick is to turn the mess into something socially productive instead of letting it rot everything.
Mediation is a core #OMN process, we need tools and processes that identify bad faith early (before it spreads), to turn well-meaning but harmful actors toward productive paths, filter out the worst behaviours without turning authoritarian. This is a social problem first, a tech problem second. The keeping of the fluffy spiky debate in place, balances most of this, then the is a role for good moderation, transparent process, and community accountability.
What holds this path steady? The #4opens is key to clear outreach, if democracy is survival, then in the digital era, you can’t have real democracy without the #4opens. This has to be at the root of our growing garden of ideas. We need to frame this in a way that connects to real-life impact with questions like: Why does this matter for democracy? How does it protect against the #deathcult? How does it help people step away from #dotcons?
The OMN project is on e path of building from the grassroots because we can’t rely on the “progressive” top-down crowd to do anything meaningful. We need to tell our own stories before we get drowned in their bad narratives. Making the #4opens process simple and clear for outreach is mediation as a core practice (not just a reaction). Turn bad energy into compost, rather than letting it poison the roots we grow from. Keep the focus on real democratic structures, without them, it’s just mess and bad chaos.
This isn’t easy, but it’s the work that needs to be done. Ideas?
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