Tag: fashionista

Western Buddhists

This is too often the normal issue of spiritual consumerism, that meany Western Buddhists treat Buddhism as a lifestyle brand, meditation apps, yoga retreats, mindfulness at work. It gets packaged and sold as “wellness,” stripped of its history, politics, and social context. It’s self-care as consumption, not transformation.

This is the normal pushing of individualism over community. Where, traditional Buddhism is about Sangha (community). Westerners, raised on #stupidindividualism, flip it into a solo project, my mindfulness, my enlightenment, my peace of mind. It’s therapy without solidarity, which fits perfectly into capitalism but cuts the heart out of the practice.

This is the path of whitewashing & cultural appropriation. To meany, Western Buddhists act like they’ve “discovered” mindfulness, ignoring or erasing Asian teachers and communities who preserved it through colonization and suppression. You get white meditation teachers charging thousands to teach what’s been freely shared for centuries. This commodified mindfulness, is in te end, confusing inner calm with social change.

This is the path of political quietism, a big one. Western Buddhists love to retreat into “it’s all impermanent” and “just observe without judgment.” This gets twisted into political apathy. Instead of facing injustice, they retreat into cushions and incense. It’s the #deathcult of neoliberalism wearing robes.

With every subculture, you find Guru Culture & its abuse. Western sanghas are riddled with power abuses, sexual exploitation, financial scams, authoritarian teachers. This happens when seekers hand over their critical thinking in search of “authentic spirituality.”

Why this matters? Western Buddhism mirrors the same flaws we’re composting in #mainstreaming tech: It sells hallucination (smiling calm while injustice burns). It reinforces individualism (your inner peace, not collective liberation). It bows to the #deathcult (capitalism, exploitation, hierarchy).

With this subculture, like the #OMN and #4opens, the task isn’t to burn it down but to compost it. Keep the fertile parts: compassion, interconnection, collective practice. Shovel away the #fashionista fluff and capitalist branding.

Yes, some “Western Buddhists” aren’t bad people, they’re just stuck in a #mainstreaming hallucination where inner calm is mistaken for social change. If we go at them only with polemics, they’ll retreat further behind incense smoke. Mediation needs a different path.

The mediation path is not about trying to drag them onto “spiky” activism ground (agitprop, polemic). Instead, more fruitful is the fluffy path of composting their illusions from within their own language.

Compassion → solidarity.

Mindfulness → awareness of systemic harm.

Sangha → commons.

It can help to frame activism as engaged compassion: suffering isn’t only in your head, it’s in the world. Reducing suffering means addressing systems, not just breathing through them. This way, they’re less likely to block, more likely to shift. Maybe, reframe blocking as attachment. When they block change, call it what it is in their own language: attachment – to comfort, to neutrality, to ego. Instead of knee-jerk attacking, reflect: “Is clinging to ‘neutrality’ helping reduce suffering, or feeding it?”

#KISS

We need an honest conversation

To make real change and challenge, we need much better functioning activism. The current generation of activism is crap – fragmented, self-referential, lost in identity wrangles, #NGO capture, and #fashionista online posturing. What can be learned to work to compost this mess.

  1. Affinity and Trust > Bureaucracy and Branding

The 1990s/2000s alter-globalization movement and early #Indymedia weren’t “organisations,” they were ecosystems. Small affinity groups moved fast, trusted each other, and shared infrastructure without needing a brand deck or a funder’s approval. Lesson we can learn: build movements through trust, not paperwork. Organising should be messy but alive, not tidy and dead.

  1. Media as Commons > Media as Market

#Indymedia was open “trust” based publishing, anyone could access, and no corporate ad trackers attached. Compare this to today’s #NGO “campaign media” or endless Twitter/X outrage cycles: closed, shallow, fleeting. What lessons can we learn: if you don’t own your media, you don’t own your message. The #OMN and #4opens try to restore this, we need grassroots media infrastructure, not more silos.

  1. Direct Action > Endless Process

From anti-roads to climate camps, action mattered more than Zoom calls or social media petitions. Protest camps, blockades, squats: they disrupted the system physically, not just discursively. Lesson from this is to got off the digital timeline. Occupy space, take risks, make it visible. Without action, all the online noise is just background music to the #deathcult.

  1. Messy Coalitions > Purity Politics

Earlier waves brought anarchists, trade unionists, students, farmers, hackers, and faith groups into loose alliances. Today, movements too often fragment into micro-identities that cannot scale. The lesson: you don’t need to agree on everything, you just need a shared enemy and a common tactics. #KISS.

  1. Culture Matters

Camps and protests weren’t just strategy meetings, they were lived experiments with free kitchens, pirate radio, temporary autonomous zones. Joy and play sustained the struggle. What we can learn? Activism that feels like homework will burn out. Activism that feels like life will endure.

What, can we learn from this? The current generation needs to relearn: activism is not a brand you attach yourself to, it’s a practice of building collective power. You don’t need permission, you don’t need a platform, you don’t need an #NGO to bless you. You need each other, and tools you can trust.

That’s the rebooting of the #openweb and the #OMN path. Compost the crap. Pick up the shovels. Plant again. To take this path seriously, we need to remember a little history. In 1933, German conservatives thought they could “manage” Hitler. Two years later, they were being shot in their own homes.

Q. is there any time in history where fascists were voted into power and then peacefully voted out? The answer is brutal. Not once. Ever.

The Germany’s story, is useful for people to better work on the current hard right paths. Von Papen said, “We’ve hired him.” Within 18 months, his allies were corpses. The clever men who thought they could tame the beast were either dead, exiled, or crawling for survival.

Italy? Worse. The king could have crushed Mussolini’s blackshirts in an afternoon. Instead, he handed him the keys. Twenty years later: mass graves, partisans hanging Mussolini upside down like rotten meat.

Spain? A bloodbath. Franco staged a coup, the “democracies” wrung their hands, and fascism ruled for 39 years. He died comfortably in his bed. His victims are still being dug up in 2025.

Hungary? Orbán walked in through the ballot box in 2010. Within three years he controlled the media, the courts, the state. Fourteen years later, the EU is still “deeply concerned” while Hungary is a one-party state.

The only clean win? Finland 1932 – fascists jumped too soon, tried a coup before winning elections, and the army crushed them. That’s it. One time in a century.

The pattern is obvious:

  • Conservatives panic about socialism.
  • They ally with fascists as the “lesser evil.”
  • Fascists seize power.
  • Fascists immediately purge the conservatives.
  • Then you get 30–50 years of dictatorship, and mountains of corpses.

How many times did conservatives actually control the fascists they backed? Zero.
How many times did the fascists purge them once in power? Every single time.

A. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: violence works for fascists. They smash their enemies while whining they’re victims. They sow chaos, then impose “order.” Meanwhile, democrats write editorials, pass resolutions, and file lawsuits – while the fascists laugh and consolidate power.

The numbers don’t lie:

Fascists removed peacefully after winning elections: 0

Average length of fascist rule: 31 years

Removed by voting: 0

Removed by asking nicely: 0

Removed by war or coups: almost all of them

The historical record gives us three choices:

Stop them before they take power.

War.

Wait for them to die.

We missed the first. The window’s not closing – it’s closed.

And this is where the truth bites: fascism isn’t some freak accident. It’s not “outside” the system. It’s the sharpest edge of the #deathcult – the same system that sells endless growth on a dying planet, that privatizes solidarity, that mainstreams cruelty while smiling about “freedom.” Fascism is not an exception, it’s the rule, 40 years of #mainstreaming is now trying to enforce as the smoke and mirrors slips.

If history teaches us anything, it’s this: the centre will always betray, the right will always unleash fascism, and the people will always be left to dig up the bodies.

Please take note of the working activism at the start of this article. You can support and take part https://opencollective.com/open-media-network and https://unite.openworlds.info/ are entry points, there are likely more post them in the comments.

#openweb vs #closedweb is the battle for the Internet

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

Too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the fake illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes real alternative communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from protest camps to #openweb projects – I’ve seen this negative pattern again and again. Projects like early #Indymedia were messy, radical, and fiercely autonomous. That edge, that wildness was slowly excised until what remains is either safe, bland, and powerless or locked down and paranoid, both smother the naive grassroots paths.

At late era #climatecamp i’ve witnessed activist planning groups that masquerade as open and inclusive, but doom radical ideas by policing language. If someone speaks candidly about power or inequality, they risk being labelled as “derailing.” Not unlike what I describe on the Fediverse: “a consensus ritual where insiders quietly veto contentious proposals, pushing them offstage.” The effect is chilling – the bold, and meaningful, get diluted and then silenced.

I’ve also seen “horizontal” groups adopt soft authoritarianism: a handful of insiders subtly side-line contentious voices with endless calls for care, safety and more research or structure, this is simply polite gatekeeping, in those quiet pauses, power consolidates. These practices don’t just kill energy, they devour possibility. They cannibalize the chance for communities that are both fluffy (nurturing) and spiky (radical).

Smiling-face vileness is not satire – it’s simple #fashionista postmodern gaslighting, that slowly smothers life with calm care and precision. To compost this mess, the task of the grassroots is to replant what’s been stomped. That means cultivating friction -mess, disagreement, negotiation – because that is how community grows, trust is built, and real alternatives emerge. Let’s embed this friction into our code, our community practices, our shared care. Let’s compost the #NGO and fashionista chokeholds so we can grow radical, tender, collective futures #KISS

A lot of the “smiling-faced vileness” comes from a mix of personal psychology, learned behaviour, and the systemic incentives that shape #NGO, institutional, and #mainstreaming culture. It’s not usually deep evil – it’s something more banal, entrenched, and self-justifying. Examples of this mess making:

  • Fear of losing control when change threatens the structures they know how to navigate, so they subconsciously (or consciously) try to stop it. Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil idea applies here: harm is done by “ordinary” functionaries protecting their turf “The real danger is not that people will rebel, but that they will acquiesce in doing what they know is wrong.”
  • Cognitive dissonance management, as they see themselves as “the good guys,” so any action – even blocking positive change – must be reframed as “responsible” or “prudent.” #Postmodern self-protection: everything can be justified with enough narrative spin, “No one is the villain of their own story.”
  • Status preservation, NGOs and funding orgs reward stability over creativity, hierarchy over challenge. If this position, funding and reputation depends on maintaining the current order, so will fight disruptive change, even if it’s obviously better “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
  • Incompetence + insecurity, breeds paranoia. If you don’t know how to balance real change, you start to fear those who do. The façade of competence becomes more important than actual results, “When a man’s only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
  • Groupthink & conformity pressure, #mainstreaming cultures reward going along with the majority, even if the majority is wrong “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

This is why these people who cling to “power” often look “nice” on the surface while quietly gutting or neutralising anything spiky, challenging, and any change of path. It’s not just personal malice, it’s a cultural immune system against change, fuelled by fear, vanity, and comfort.

An example of this is when the tiny few “secede” in #mainstreaming media (and the history it writes) it is not neutral, it’s a kind of #PR machine. It launders power and polishes away dissent. The smiling faces and “respectable” voices then are just the velvet gloves over the iron fist. It’s fake history as PR – it isn’t history as lived memory or contested struggle, it’s official narrative, a “storybook” written to flatter the winners and confuse the rest. That’s why it feels vile and pointless: it distracts, pacifies, and reframes mess as inevitability.

We need to be clear, the people who produce this are not innocent. Yes, many are clueless functionaries who internalize the system’s values without question. Others are parasitic aspirants, desperate to climb into the #nastyfew by copying their methods. Even when they do “small goods” (a sympathetic article, a cultural puff piece), in the larger pattern they still serve the mainstreaming #deathcult machine.

The compost metaphor is about instead of raging endlessly at the mess, take what can be siphoned off (attention, fragments of narrative, disillusioned individuals) and redirect that flow into the alt systems (#OMN, #4opens, Fediverse, grassroots histories) then compost the rest: let it rot, break down, and become the fertilizer for something alive and grounded to seed. Because otherwise we get stuck in their cycle: doom-scrolling their fake stories, wasting energy on only reacting instead of building. Yes, the challenge is mediation, not just rejection. Spot the toxic flows, tap them for useful nutrients, to feed the roots of alternatives.

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

Dig, Plant, Grow. Compost the #Techshit. Repeat

This post is talking in the sense of structure rather than individual experience. Let’s be honest, much of the so-called “alternative” tech scene is still stuck. Yes, we fled the #dotcons for something better, but ended up with copies of the same broken models. The #Fediverse, with all its potential, is still as often dominated by “mainstreaming meta” chat (“Twitter refugees incoming!”) or conspiracy-laden, #fashionista rabbit holes. It’s little wonder that even the nerdy privacy crowd struggles to find meaningful content or community. And no, shouting “fuck the system!” isn’t enough.

If we’re serious about systemic change, we need to do much more. The question is not if people will come, some always will, the real challenge is what they’ll find when they get here. Right now? It’s messy, insular, and missing the tools people need to use for change and challenge, let alone feel at home. We must move beyond building clones of corporate platforms and start composting the path that got us here.

This is why we need a reboot, not from scratch, but from memory. Projects like #indymediaback aim to reclaim 20+ years of working grassroots media practice. With tools like #ActivityPub we now have scalable tech that can bring those old social processes – based on #4opens (open code, open data, open governance, open standards) – into the present. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is such a path: combining the solid tech foundations with the radical social methods that we know worked (but didn’t scale).

To move at all, we must change and challenge the toxic norms of the #mainstreaming #deathcult, and yes, this means building real alternative identities and spaces that don’t live in the shadow of big tech. Being “alternative” used to mean something, and it can again, if we stop ONLY copying the mainstream and instead focus on nurturing something more strongly rooted and real.

This isn’t about being purist, #FOSS and Open Source already works in this way, the #OMN just brings this path to media and community infrastructure. It’s not utopian, it’s compost. And yes, that means dealing with hard questions, including our own funding. Let’s stop pretending we’re neutral when we’re not. Let’s build from honesty. It’s time to dig, plant, grow, and repeat.

#OMN #4opens #indymediaback #openweb #fediverse #techshit #KISS #NGO #deathcult #mainstreaming #altmedia #DIY

NOTE: the comments below are a useful example of #stupidindividualism, and remember this hashtag is about social groups and their #blocking of social thinking. The history matters, flaming is not a useful response.

Where’s the Resistance to Algorithmic Monopolies?

The big question need to be highlighted: where will pressure for meaningful regulation of #dotcons algorithmic monopolies actually come from?

Right now, it’s hard to see. Lawmakers generally have a poor grasp of the real problems, decades behind on both the tech and its corrosive social consequences. Most legislation we get is either pre-packaged by lobbyists from the #nastyfew controlled platforms causing the harm, or superficial and narrow, #fashionista focus on headline optics like “online harms” or “child safety,” instead of addressing the deeper crisis of algorithmic control, attention addiction, and social fragmentation for control.

Even worse, and this needs to be said loudly, the civil society institutions that should be resisting this mess are captured. Charities, #NGOs, media orgs, #geekproblem digital rights groups. Whether for funding, publicity, or simple convenience, they’ve tied their missions to the very tools they should be questioning. Rather than building alternatives or even naming the deeper problems, they instead focus on “using platforms better” or “more ethically”, which only serves to legitimise the #techshit they should be dismantling for composted.

This is classic #mainstreaming. It’s how radical energy gets drained, redirected, and eventually used to feed the system it once opposed. Meanwhile, into the vacuum of real critique and action steps, conspiracy-driven nonsense and cynical populism to feed the cycle.

This is why grassroots and native #openweb spaces like the #Fediverse matter, not just as “alternatives” but as active resistance. They are places where we can build different logics, embed different values, and avoid replicating the same centralising, manipulative dynamics.

It’s also why we have to defend these spaces, especially when they’re messy or imperfect. Because if we don’t build and protect something better, we’ll be left with a fight where even the so-called opposition is simply more of the same problem.

Composting the EU Tech Mess: From #NLnet to #Eurostack

History has a lot to say on the peasant revolt vs. liberal half-measures

For thousands of years, the demands of the oppressed have remained startlingly consistent: Erase all debts, Burn the records, redistribute the land. These weren’t radical demands. They were and are common sense for those crushed by the weight of extraction, enclosure, and empire.

Compare that to today’s to often #fashionista “leftist” rallying cry of “Tax the rich.” Let’s be honest, this is moderate, half-baked reform in the #KISS sweep of human struggle. “Tax the rich” still assumes the rich deserve to keep most of what they’ve hoarded. It doesn’t touch the foundations of power. It doesn’t challenge the right of a #nastyfew to control the lives and labour of the many, it’s simply a polite request for a fairer share of exploitation.

Let’s talk about #conservatism – not the myth, but the mechanism. It’s not in any way about preserving “traditional values.” That’s branding. It’s about conserving power. Specifically, it’s about conserving the power relationships of the #nastyfew who own and rule, while the rest of us keep our heads down, grateful for scraps. It’s about saying the rich deserve their wealth, and the poor deserve their suffering. It’s about hiding violence behind respectability, and calling it “order.”

This didn’t start yesterday, from the French Revolution to today’s food bank capitalism, conservatism has been #blocking grassroots movements work to compost this mess. And now, it masks itself in liberal #mainstreaming, progressive slogans, while cops will increasingly beat your neighbours in the street.

And yes, if they’re beating your neighbours today, they’ll be beating you tomorrow. But maybe that shouldn’t be the reason to care, maybe it should be enough that they’re beating your neighbours today. This is not about guilt, it’s about clarity, we need to remember what real justice has always meant. Not tweaks, not taxes, not “top” tables with seats for the “marginalised.” But a complete rethinking of power, because if we don’t start #KISS thinking again, we’re not challenging anything – we’re decorating to hide the smell of the #deathcult

Please don’t be a prat about this, thanks.

This is a story of power, plain and simple

The state of the world, over the last few years, we’ve been watching a familiar story unfold, we’ve seen repeat itself in radical spaces, tech movements, and grassroots networks for decades. It starts in the grassroots with “progressive” #fashernistas (yes, them) pushing themselves into the front to speak for “us.” They talk the talk of decentralisation, care, community, and #FOSS ethics. They wear all the right hashtags: #opensocialmedia, #Fediverse, #commons, #techforgood. But when you look at how power is actually exercised behind the scenes, it’s something else entirely. This is a story of power, plain and simple. Not in the dramatic “revolutionary” sense. But in the subtle creep of careerism, institutional capture, and “safe” social capital games that flatten the real radical and uplifts the fake “palatable”.

Let’s take a few examples from the #activertypub world, first with the #SocialHub stagnation, this open space was originally created by the grassroots crew to shape the standards of the decentralised web. On the surface It was a working common, protocol-building and governance exploration space. So, what happened? The people now “leading” came from lifestyle #fashionista activism and wannabe #NGO circuits, who in the end were all trying to be embedded in the institutional funding environments, or visiting from the safe academic bubble. And thus they brought with them the dogmas of safe spaces, of “emotional consensus,” “hidden affinity group governance,” and “(ex)inclusive dialogue”… that JUST SO happened to exclude the radical and messy paths that are actually native to the #openweb flows, the bad mess they then made, ended up only pushing the dogma of the #geekprolem as it was the ONLY path they could imagine controlling in a way that would not threaten the thin connection to the institutions they were feeding from. This behaviour so often slips into forms of parasitism, that is not a good thing at all.

Then we have the current #Fediverse outreach infrastructure capture, where we’ve seen the same class of actors attach themselves to the most visible projects – like Mastodon, ActivityPub standards, and now “Fediverse governance.” They secure seats on boards. They host conferences with glossy branding and friendly logos. Not only that, but they use these controlled spaces to then push out “code of conduct” documents and “safe space” branding… while closing and excluding the real working infrastructure of discussion and direction that is should be native and needed.

Examples? #Mastodon’s GitHub, issue tracking, and moderation are all tightly controlled by a small clique around the project founder. Community voices are kinda tolerated at best, discarded at worst. The project is moving onto the #NGO path, no bad thing in its self, but with its years of pushing its own branding as THE Fediverse, it becomes a bad thing. In this, there is a very real debt of damage they need to pay back – as a part of a functioning gift economy – saying sorry and admitting mistakes would be a good limited first step.

Then we have the example of the #FediForum events, pushing into the space blindly, with zero historical context or any shared knowledge, to talk over, “represent” the #activertypub ecosystem. The problem is beyond this mess, they paywalled, which lead “naturally” to increasingly gate keeping with #NGO commercial interests being pushed to the front to represent “us”. When the radical and experienced grassroots voices obviously don’t get involved, as they simply refuse to step over the paywall. This is now an ongoing mess, that we do need to compost and not only with #fashionista outrage but with real working paths, we used to do this, but we can’t any more – why?

Over the last few years we have had proposals for genuine horizontal governance, that could have been used to shift this mess making and to actually shifts power outward – but these were labelled “too messy,” “too political,” or “not the right time.” This is not accidental, it is #liberalism functioning as control – with a smile. So… what can we do? Let’s be clear: This is a power issue, it’s not only about bad intentions. It’s about how power is used, and then abused, even in the so-called “horizontal” paths.

The first thing we have to do is recognise the smell of #NGO-style liberalism that so easily hides itself in good intentions, grants, DEI language, and “process.” But it then ends up:

  • Disempowering community autonomy
  • Replacing radical potential with “professionalism”
  • Marginalising away activists and messy real-world projects
  • Recreating the same vertical hierarchies, just with better “open” branding

Composting this is needed to break the cycle:

  1. Build and back native projects. The only way to push back against capture is to grow infrastructure from within our communities, like: #OMN (Open Media Network) #OGB (Open Governance Body). These must be trust-based, not credential-based. That means supporting those doing the work without demanding they translate it into pointless and most importantly powerless NGO-speak to be taken seriously.
  2. Use the #4opens as a filter, this simple social retelling of #FOSS is designed precisely to push out the 95% of #techshit and focus energy on projects with: Open source Open data Open standards Open governance. Apply these consistently, and the parasite class will struggle to keep and find a foothold.
  3. Push for messy, lived governance, stop waiting for perfect systems. We need to prototype imperfect, transparent, accountable governance now. It should be: Based on trust, not rules-lawyering Driven by use, not representation Grounded in solidarity, not status
  4. Refuse the “leader class”, just because someone has a title, a grant, or a #dotcons following, doesn’t mean they speak for us. Call out the unaccountable influence. Politely or not. Let’s not let careerists write our futures, please.

The Fediverse path could be the most important #openweb reboot of the commons of this decade. But it will only be that if we keep it rooted in social power, not polished #PR and #NGO mess. We don’t need new kings. We need more gardeners, to work together to compost the piles of #techshit and keep the space open and safe.

I think when our #fahernistas say to us “what have we done, please be nice to us, you’re not welcoming.” We need to reply: Am happy to be nice #KISS, just stop being a prat in this space please.

It’s really simple, please stop being (an often nasty) prat.

The Mess We Make (Again… and again)

A call-out for collective tech with teeth

It’s important to be honest about the messy world we’re working in. Just about every so-called “alternative tech” or #opensocialweb event, especially the ones run under #NGO banners, ends up riddled with institutional parasites. They talk endlessly about ethics, governance, decentralisation, and community, but their real role is to capture energy rather than release it. The value produced in these spaces is minimal, a few worthwhile corridor conversations, maybe a useful contact or two, but structurally they overwhelmingly reproduce the status quo rather than challenge it.

What we’re watching is the #mainstreaming of dissent itself. Change gets reshaped into something passive, safe, marketable, and grant-friendly. The focus shifts from building to branding, from autonomy to funding cycles, the result – performative process replacing meaningful action.

At the same time, many people inside these spaces are so used to the #feudalism baked into current #FOSS governance models – gatekeepers, toxic meritocracy, invisible hierarchies, and endless procedural blocking – that they struggle to imagine moving beyond them. Instead of recognising the limits of these structures, they double down on them, in practice, becoming a culture of #blocking disguised as principled caution.

This is why the #OGB project (Open Governance Body) takes a radically different path of build it permissionlessly and let it loose. No waiting for approval, no begging institutions for funding, no asking gatekeepers to validate the work before it can begin. Just creating space where people can actually do things together, openly and socially. If something works, people will use it and build on it. If it fails, we compost it and try another approach. What matters is breaking out of the dead ritual cycle of conferences, grant applications, strategy decks, and carefully managed “community engagement”.

The insight we need is that there is a much larger group of people beyond the usual tech and activist circles who can be empowered by technology – if the structures are simple, social, and human enough. Most people do not want to spend their lives fighting inside issue trackers, governance debates, or foundation politics. They want tools that help them cooperate, share resources, build resilience, and support each other in practical ways.

The technical side matters, of course. The tools need to exist. But many of the ideas already exist. What has been missing is a path that does not instantly collapse back into control, capture, and institutional inertia.

That’s why #OGB follows a #KISS approach. It is not about designing perfect systems. It is about creating simple enough structures that communities can actually pick them up, use them, and evolve them over time. Living processes rather than frozen frameworks. Something grounded enough to function socially instead of becoming another endless GitHub argument or abandoned grant proposal.

And honestly, people are up shit creek without a paddle right now. Most of what gets presented as “innovation” or “solutions” is simply more #techshit wrapped in cleaner UX and polished #fashionista language. If we want people to find different ways forward, we need to build different places for them to stand. That means creating tech ecosystems rooted in social trust, creativity, mutual aid, and practical autonomy – not more extractive platforms or professionalised NGOs performing change while maintaining dependency.

There is also the deeper cultural problem of apathy and laissez-faire fatalism. People know the system is failing, but many no longer believe meaningful change is possible. Decades of neoliberalism and #deathcult politics have trained people to internalise defeat before they even begin. This means we need to design structures that can survive low energy, inconsistency, and uneven participation. Systems that do not depend on constant enthusiasm or perfect behaviour to keep functioning. Systems that can hold space through both momentum and exhaustion.

This is where there is real room for creativity and care – not just in what we build, but in how we build it, and who we build it with. Not glossy pitch decks not self-promoting conferences, not another round of empty institutional networking. Compost piles and messy gardens are a better metaphor.

Things that live.
Things that adapt.
Things that root themselves in everyday needs.
Things that people can actually inhabit together.

That is the path worth building.

The #OGB project is just one shovel. But there are others. Pick one up, the ground’s ready.

Finally, make the most of my attention, I’ll be blunt, you don’t have my attention for long

The project is practical, the #OMN (Open Media Network) is a radical rebooting of what a working grassroot “news” network can be. It’s not another tech platform chasing the latest hype cycle or VC buzzword. It’s grounded in 30+ years of real-world, on-the-ground activist experience, built explicitly on the #4opens

One of the advantages of this path is that we’ve been here before, and we’ve watched it fail, repeatedly. I’ve personally seen projects just like this fail 10–15 times over the last two decades. Brilliant ideas, sometimes beautiful tech, all eventually collapse under the weight of poor social foundations, bad governance, and chasing #geekproblem dreams and #fashionista paths that have nothing to do with real people’s needs. That’s why, from this experience, we’re not doing this as another #techshit project.

We’re not building toys just for geeks, nor another doomed tool for #NGO grant cycles. We’re building a living media network, grounded in the organic, messy, grassroots communities that made independent media, with projects like indymedia and undercurrents, powerful in the first place, It’s where the value is, let’s use this opening to not just walk the same broken paths again.

One thing we don’t need is more #techshit to compost, we’ve got a whole graveyard of it already. Scuttlebutt, Diaspora, SecureDrop, and dozens of others, all had pieces of the puzzle, but lacked cohesive, social-embedded foundations. We don’t want to add to this pile, instead, let’s focus on building something that lasts because it is:

Rooted in existing communities paths

Built for human needs, not dev ego

Simple where it matters (#KISS)

Modular, federated, and easy to adopt

This isn’t about building – The Next Big Thing™, it’s about building something, working, local, resilient, and useful, something people can use and adapt without waiting for permission from gatekeepers or corporations.

Finally, make the most of my attention, I’ll be blunt, you don’t have my attention for long. I’ve seen too much, and I’m tired of false starts. So if we’re going to do this, let’s get real, move fast, and avoid ego traps. Make your work count, keep it grounded, build bridges, not silos. The #OMN is already moving, join in, you can fork it latter and go your own way. But whatever you do, let’s not waste another decade repeating the same tired mistakes. We don’t have that kind of time any more.

And PS. please try not to be a prat.

The false continuity

Everyone can see the mess we have made of society and ecology. So why can’t our normal #mainstreaming do anything about this. What we have now is context collapse and the false continuity of liberalism. Academic and policy discussions assume that the current liberal framework will somehow persist, that the road ahead is bumpy but ultimately paved. But climate science, geopolitics, and resource decline say otherwise. That the liberal “centre” cannot hold under these pressures. Equatorial regions, facing escalating #climatecollapse, are the canary in the coal mine, they are slipping into post-political spaces where governance becomes a matter of force and survival, not policy and debate. Think Mad Max, not Davos. And this future isn’t “far away” – it’s already visible in countries facing water wars, crop failures, and climate migration.

Politics is moving from fantasy to fracture. We need real discussion about the actual future political paths, not the illusion of stability. And those futures will likely be led, or torn apart, by two poles: The hard right, using fear, control, and militarized borders. The progressive left, if it can organize around collective care, resilience, and radical democracy. This tension will define the coming decades.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a poplar right wing story where context matters, Yes, Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” is ideologically flawed. He was wrong in assuming people can’t manage shared resources. But, and this is crucial, he is right within the logic of capitalism. That’s the tragic part. In a system built on extraction and competition, the commons are often destroyed, not by individuals acting rationally, but by structures rewarding private accumulation and punishing restraint. So in the context of our current #mainstreaming society, the “tragedy” metaphor is useful, not as a universal truth, but as a diagnosis of system failure. Use it carefully. Use it critically. But use it.

One path out of this mess is not to react to #mainstreaming – redirect It – when we react to #mainstreaming with outrage or purity, we feed the spectacle. Instead, we should build and walk our own paths. An alternative path, rooted in care, diversity, and solidarity, slowly force the mainstream to shift, not because we begged it to, but because we created a viable, compelling, and active outside. Think Fediverse vs Twitter. Mastodon didn’t shout at Elon. It just existed, and now journalists and their #mainstreaming assumptions are paying attention.

This leads on to monsters, Fluff, and Spikes, a note on social repression. In any radical space, when you scratch the fluff, spikes come out. This is not a personal failure, it’s a universal human problem, repression, both internal and external. The goal is not to eliminate conflict, but to mediate it through shared values. Respect for diversity, and the desire to debate with respect, is not a weakness. It’s how we build bridges across difference. Radical change without respect just breeds new hierarchies. Real strength is soft-spiked, compassionate, but uncompromising.

Then the next step is “Use and abuse” is a good strategy for dealing with the #dotcons while they continue to dominate our digital and social infrastructure. Why? Because refusing to engage with these platforms outright is the equivalent of shouting into the void – or living in a cave. And caves, while romantic to a certain type of purist, are never effective social solutions.

The truth is this #dotcons are still where the #mainstreaming people live, and mainstream attention is power, even if borrowed. As radicals or progressives, using their platforms to push counter-narratives, while simultaneously undermining their legitimacy and building our own independent infrastructure, is both necessary and strategic. Think of it as exiting from within by using their reach to grow the seeds of your use alt-path.

KISS: Keep It Simple (and Strategic). We don’t need more complexity. We need clarity and cohesion. Use the tools at hand (yes, even the dirty ones). Build better ones. Mediate conflict. Focus on real outcomes. And remember: purity politics is a luxury. Survival and solidarity are not.

A few steps, to become real challenge and challenge, not just a #fashionista wanker (this is a metaphor for non-productive). phhwww… best not to become a prat about this.

What we need is useful compost layer’s for growing native projects

Compost, not illusions, is a first step – A radical look at “light green” tech – For a second step we need a useful compost layer for growing native projects, like the #OMN. What we currently have in most so-called “green technology” promoted through #mainstreaming and #fashionista narratives is not ecological in substance – it’s performative environmentalism, built on omission, distortion, and branding. To help make sense of this mess, let’s use the lenses of the #4opens, the #geekproblem, and the broader #openweb.

The mess is “green” as branding, not substance. Most of today’s #mainstreaming “green” tech, like, electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind turbines – is “green” in aesthetics, not in impact. These are products sold as solutions, but they’re too often rooted in the same extractive, centralized, and opaque paths and systems that caused the problems in the first place. This is the heart of the lie we need to compost, as the needed social change cannot grow from toxic soil, no matter how glossy and plastic the flower appears. If we ignore the roots, we just keep geting more illusions.

Watch this critique: The True Cost of Green Tech (YouTube)

The #OMN critique is to move past the false solutions and the broken paths. Yes, light green solutions pushed by institutions and NGOs aren’t inherently bad technologies – but their production, distribution, and governance models are deeply flawed. They violate every principle of the #4opens:

  • Open data: No honest accounting of full lifecycle impacts.
  • Open source: Dominated by proprietary, locked-in systems.
  • Open process: Controlled by corporations and states, with no meaningful public input.
  • Open standards: Sacrificed for monopolistic vertical integration (e.g., Tesla).

The result is more #techshit – waste and violence hidden behind shiny #PR branding. Even our weak #NGOs point out the brutal costs: resource extraction (cobalt, lithium, rare earths), labour exploitation (child and Uyghur forced labour), and environmental dumping. These costs are buried beneath greenwashed PR aesthetics, making them palatable to consumers but invisible to our shared, and needed critique.

The #geekproblem, the “problem” in much geek culture, is tech as saviour, this is the belief that technology itself is inherently progressive. This takes us down the paths where proposed “fixes” like nuclear follow the same flawed paths: centralized, capital-intensive, top-down systems cloaked in the language of innovation. It’s new wrapping, same old crap.

This is not a path to climate justice. It’s a continuation of the #deathcult – digital colonialism powered by extraction, slavery, and silence. No genuine social or ecological transformation can grow from this poisoned foundation. Where the real cost of “green” tech is not just ignored, it’s deliberately silenced. This silence isn’t accidental; it’s structural. The narrative that we can “buy better things” and consume our way out of crisis is a pacifying lie. It sells comfort, not change.

True ecological technology must be social first. It should grow from transformation, not transaction. We need to compost the lies to grow real alternatives. We must compost the #mainstreaming myths-this is the role of #hashtag stories.

There are meany paths to take, the one I focus on is reclaiming small-scale, peer-produced infrastructure. Using the #4opens to demand transparency, accountability, and participation. Solar panels and EVs have a role, but only when embedded in a radically #degrowth paths: Open governance (#OGB), local, decentralized production (right to repair, community assembly), circular economy (reuse, repurpose, recycle), humanism as non-negotiable (no slavery, no offshoring of harm). It’s a simple, not to say old-fashioned idea of humanistic progress, maybe we can do this better this time, I hope.

Conclusion, please #KISS the illusions goodbye, build the compost heap. Now also, please remember, we are not against technology – we’re against the lies that accompany it. As long as we keep lying about the nature of change, we cannot begin the real work. We need fertile ground – a compost layer for native projects like the #OMN – to push openness and cultivate the genuine ecological thinking we need to grow. It’s way past time for people to lift their heads from worshipping the #deathcult and stop being prats about this.

We need to compost the spiky and the fluffy nasty

From hard walls to fluffy blocks – let’s compost the negative nastiness in our progressive spaces.

A reflection on toxic communication in radical spaces, and how to build something better.

In the 20th century, much of the nastiness came from the hard vertical left. Back then, control, ideology, and vanguardism created rigid hierarchies, enforced through forceful exclusion and dogma. In the 21st century, that same exclusion comes from the “fluffy” horizontal left, the #fashionista crew wrapped in progressive aesthetics. It’s still fear and control. It’s still the same mess. And it still needs composting.

Even in spaces that claim openness and justice, we see “common sense” pushing of gatekeeping, moral absolutism. From both ends, the old vertical hardliners and the new fluffy puritans, we’re still well stuck in cycles of not hearing each other. One of the hard problems of the current left/progressive paths is this intolerance and dogmatic nastiness dressed up in fluffy cloth. Historically, from the hard vertical left, but much more common today is from our “fluffy” #fashionista “progressive” crew and their pushing of postmodernist language games as #blocking.

It’s a real and persistent issue in left/progressive paths, we do all service by worshipping a #deathcult, so people are often “wrong” as this common sense worship is the normal, not the exception. It is a cycle where gatekeeping, moral absolutism, and social exclusion dominate on every side. But when this comes from the “fluffy” or “horizontal” side, it is even harder to talk about, as it’s too often masked as care or safety, but still ends up reinforcing fear and control.

Non-nasty communication would be rooted in trust, a touch of humility, and most importantly shared purpose, and could look like a presumption of good intent, default to assuming people are trying, even if they fail. Then we need to replace instant cancellation with curiosity, “What do you mean by that?” or “Can we unpack that together?” in more constipated language that works for some more academic people.

Yes we do need clear boundaries without exclusion, you can say “That’s not OK here” without blocking, shaming, or exiling. Encouraging dialogue before disengagement builds stronger communities than isolation does. Then in every step visible open process (#4opens Style).

In group process, clear decision-making, open archives, transparent moderation, and rotating responsibility make space for people to learn and grow instead of fear missteps. If this goes wrong, and it will, deep listening, slow speaking. Let things sit. Respond with reflection, not reflex. Allow pauses and silences; don’t rush to dominate with the “correct” take.

In the end, it’s best to see conflict as compost, not crisis. See disagreement as a chance to grow shared understanding, hold space for messy difference rather than rushing to resolution or punishment. A part of this is inviting language, use “we,” “let’s,” and questions more than commands or declarations. Say “I’m wondering if…” instead of “You’re wrong because…”

In short and sharp, what to do when people are “wrong”, treat people as comrades, not problems is a good first step. Communication should be generative, less about winning, more about creating together. #KISS we do need to compost this nasty mess, do you need a shovel #OMN

Then OK in the end you might end up hitting each other, but this should always be long down the process path, long down. Hope this helps 😉