Tag: stupidindividualism

Don’t be a prat, please try and recognize the roots of issues

DRAFT

Horizontal people always get fucked over by vertical people. Why? Because horizontals give away power to build social fabric, while verticals hoard and concentrate power to extract and dominate. Every. Single. Time.

And the only thing that makes horizontals work is shared worldview, which we currently lack. Instead, we’ve got swarms of #stupidindividualism, where everyone thinks they’re the centre of the universe, interpreting everything as if their personal “common sense” whims are political strategy. And then, surprise! We keep getting steam rolled.

Let’s bring in the rot of #postmodernism for good measure – the #pomo guy proudly clams that “Ah, but classification requires a classifier!” This is what #postmodernism does to your brain. It unplugs you from reality while pretending it’s insight. It’s true that classifiers precede categories linguistically. But the material world precedes both. Rocks didn’t need a PhD to be granite.

This kind of derangement isn’t just stupid, it’s systemically useful to the #deathcult. Because if you believe that value only exists if humans assign it, then a tree has no value unless it can be turned into toilet paper. A whale has no value unless it can be monetized or aestheticized. Nature becomes valueless. And so it’s obliterated.

Meanwhile, people in the #fediverse are still pretending codebases matter more than people. No. The value of the Fediverse is in the humans running the instances and inhabiting them. Not the bloody Git repos. Without people, the code is just more math.

Don’t be a prat. Recognize the root issue:

  • The #geekproblem
  • The collapse of shared worldview
  • The enshrinement of individual narcissism over collective meaning
  • The complete #deathcult worship of self over system pushed by our #nastyfew

Let’s compost this mess. #OMN #OGB #4opens #indymediaback

Digging over the rot and planting something more real

Q: People are angry about #AI scrapers and that this is exploiting everything for “free” – our art, our words, our data. But let’s be honest, we’ve spent the last 40 years gorging on “free” content online, music, games, video, writing, without paying for a thing unless forced to with a paywall. Yes. We block the ads, we hate the tracking, and we very rarely donate. So… with the idea that everything has to be paid for, are we really that different from the AI scraping machine?

A: The current “common sense” frames this as a moral issue, but it’s better seen as a systemic one. And that’s where people keep getting lost in talking about this.

We live in a society rooted in greed and extraction. That’s the baseline. It’s called capitalism, and for the last 40 years it’s been accelerated by the neoliberal #deathcult, where today “ethics” is bought in plastic tubs of organic yogurt at our local supermarket.

What grows out of this shit heap? #Stupidindividualism, people demanding everything for free while shouting about their personal rights to consume. They want to save the planet, but only with next-day delivery and zero commitment. Then you’ve got the #fashionistas – the “good people” who “perform” care while feeding the same destructive paths. It’s not irony, it’s the logic of the path we take.

No, I don’t want tracking ads. No, I don’t want my ideas and writing turned into #AI sludge. But I’m also not pretending this is a matter of “personal choice”, when we need to shout loudly and continually that it’s a system built to turn “creators” into social shit and call it innovation, when better to speak truth and call it compost.

We don’t fix this by feeling guilty, we fix it by building something else. That’s what #OMN is for, that’s why #4opens matter. Public media, open processes, radical trust, of native #openweb paths, not just another polished platform for exploitation with feel good #UX

It’s not about blame. It’s about digging over the rot and planting something more real #KISS

Let’s build from the rot something rich, wild, rooted, and real

The worst parts of people and society – fear, greed, envy, control – are self-reinforcing. They act as feedback loops in a broken sound system: shrieking, distorting, drowning out all nuance is the signal-to-noise issue we need to mediate. The problem is that some people feed on this noise. The media amplifies it. Social networks algorithmically reward it. This cycle of breaking – where outrage breeds more outrage, where mistrust deepens isolation, and where competition crushes collaboration – is an act of destruction. It corrodes relationships, communities, and in the end our capacity to imagine a better world.

We see this every day:

Clickbait headlines that fuel division because rage gets more views than reason.

Politicians who stoke fear to gain power, scapegoating the most vulnerable.

Tech platforms that extract attention through anxiety and reward extremism.

Economic systems that pit workers against each other, just to survive.

To compost this mess, we have to do the opposite to this current “common sense”: to normalize and nourish the best parts of people and society, trust, generosity, curiosity, empathy. When these values are much more visible, practiced, and shared, people can feed on hope instead of despair. This cycle of creation builds, it doesn’t break. It connects, it doesn’t divide. Examples of composting:

Mutual aid groups during crises, where strangers organize to care for one another without waiting for permission or profit.

Community-run media that uplifts real voices, telling stories not as commodities but as threads in a shared tapestry.

Free software movements built not on scarcity and control but on abundance and sharing.

Occupy kitchens, copwatch collectives, local food co-ops, and even open-source libraries — all rooted in the principle: we are stronger together.

The problem is capitalism, in its current form, is a system founded on the worst instincts, it glorifies greed, promotes fear, breeds control, and accumulates power in the hands of the #nastyfew. It at long last now be obverse that it is a system that thrives on destruction – of nature, of community, of meaning.

In contrast, socialism and anarchism, at their best, are grounded in trust, solidarity, and hope. They offer frameworks for cooperation without coercion, for shared abundance, for bottom-up resilience. These are not utopias – they are gardens. Messy, real, and alive. They root us in better soil – the kind where the seeds of collective flourishing can actually grow.

We do need to stand, together, shovels in our hands. The world is breaking, but we are not powerless. The mess is here, let’s not run from it, let’s work to compost it. Let’s build from the rot something rich, something wild, rooted, and real.

What do we balance this with? The #OMN projects – short for Open Media Network – are not a brand, not a platform, and not a startup. They’re a loosely coordinated, commons-rooted pathway emerging from the native #openweb trajectory. They’re aimed at building a livable media ecology, that grows from open-source ethics, affinity-based social organization, and federated infrastructure rather than enclosure, extractivism and spectacle.

Rather than falling into the traps of heroic dev culture or platform monoculture, #OMN treats tech as an ensemble process: modular, collectively maintainable, and explicitly oriented toward mutual coordination and deliberation, not content flow or engagement metrics. It’s tech that refuses to pretend it’s neutral.

The point is not digital for digital’s sake. These networks are meant to scaffold on-the-ground, hybrid practices – to support real-world collective activity, embedded presence, and the messy, rhythmic back-and-forth of embodied organizing.

Unlike most open-source projects that depend on the labour of isolated overcommitted maintainers (and collapse when they burn out), #OMN foregrounds shared stewardship and viscous governance – avoiding the trap of what is aptly called #stupidindividualism. This is code with a metabolism, not code as artifact.

Philosophically, #OMN differs from most “tech for good” efforts by refusing to detach “technology” from semiotic infrastructure. Defaults, interfaces, metaphors, these aren’t just UI choices; they’re interpretive compressions that shape how collectives think, decide, and remember.

So the stakes are high. Latency pressures, whether social, cognitive, or computational, have to be designed for, not ignored. That means systems that scaffold deliberation, not shortcut it. That means treating the commons as composed, not given, building stacks that help ensembles hold interpretive tension instead of collapsing into fast consensus or false clarity.

In short: #OMN is infrastructure for the kind of world where #4opens matters. It’s a path to build tech that metabolizes collective meaning-making under conditions of mortal constraint. Not because it’s ideal – but because it’s necessary.

Enclosure of self is deathcult worship in the era of #climatchaos

#deathcult / #geekproblem / #nothingnew

#Neoliberalism isn’t just an economic system, it’s a cult of self-enclosure. Its superpower? #stupidindividualism, turning people inward, away from shared life, into isolated fragments clicking, swiping, and scrolling through ruins. It disconnects us from collective being, and then sells the pieces back as “individual freedoms.” This isn’t an accident. It’s the plan, a trick of enclosure, take a concept of civic breakdown and turn it into a moral failing of the person, not the system. A classic #deathcult move.

Let’s call it what it is #stupidindividualism = the neoliberal condition of enclosure. A social operating system designed to lock us into self-referential survival while the commons burn.

We’ve all been forced into #stupidindividualism. The #dotcons enclose our attention. The gig economy encloses our labour. Even our friendships are enclosed in “encrypted” DMs, monetized by adtech. Public life? Gone, auctioned off to the highest bidder or locked behind paywalls.

We are encouraged to be good “idiots” in the ancient Greek sense – disengaged from collective power. This #deathcult under capitalism, is a feature, not a bug. They, the #nastyfew want “us” atomized, docile, and scrolling, not stepping away from the path to new norms. And so we rot in a swamp of aestheticized politics – “likes” over lives, vibes over values, empty radical branding over messy collective struggle.

Some symptoms of this sickness can be seen in commons destroyed: Libraries gutted, parks sold off, hospitals privatized. Nothing left to meet in. Social life enclosed: From Facebook groups to “creator economies,” all relations are branded and transactional. Fear replaces solidarity, precarity rewires our brains – everyone a competitor, every community a threat. Politics becomes content, no spaces for deliberation, only comment sections and algorithmic outrage. Under this path, “engagement” is a metric, not a practice. #stupidindividualism is the “normal” common sense path we currently walk down.

The left hasn’t escaped. We’re not immune. We’re infected. Too much of what passes for radicalism is just #stupidindividualism with better fonts. Buzzwords. Identity consumption. Internal drama cycles. Empty memes. Most leftist language itself has been enclosed into performative radicalism, saying the right things in the right tone to the right audience – but nothing changes. It’s a ritual, not resistance. Aesthetic replaces action: Solidarity becomes merch. Mutual aid becomes charity. “Revolution” becomes content marketing.

This is all the “common sense” #mainstreaming by another name. It’s simply #stupidindividualism on the left. And we can’t win if we keep playing by the #deathcult’s dogma. So how do we compost this? We grow living language from real ground. No more floating hashtags. No more semantic bubbles. Here’s the path, embed language in practice, political terms should come from mutual aid kitchens, picket lines, and assemblies – not Slack threads or Twitter feuds.

Don’t just “speak truth to power” – speak truth to each other, if we want to build a better world, we need collective life again. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s survival. We’re in a fight against a system that thrives on isolation. #Neoliberalism has turned us all into (stupid)individuals, and then blamed us for it.

Let’s be clear, the opposite of #stupidindividualism is not intellect, it’s interdependence. So let’s plant words in soil again. Let’s grow meaning from shared struggle. Let’s compost the #deathcult and sprout something real. On this path, just say no to self-enclosure. No to semantic drift. No to aesthetic radicals trapped in content loops. Instead, let’s get our hands dirty.

Messy language feeds back into our messy culture

The #blocking of current action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with the mess our use of language makes. And the deeper issue is how this messy language feeds back into our culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, erodes trust, and paralyses collective action.

The last 40 years of postmodernism and neo-liberalism have made this worse. #Postmodernism chipped away at the idea of shared reality, leaving us with endless interpretation and “personal truths.” #Neoliberalism, on the other hand, commodified everything, including language itself, into marketing, spin, and #PR. Together, they’ve hollowed out words like “community,” “freedom,” and even “change,” to the point that we barely recognize what they mean any more.

Take “mutual aid” for example, a term grounded in deep solidarity and reciprocal responsibility. Now, on both #dotcons and #openweb platforms, it gets reduced to casual crowdfunding and anonymous asks, with little relational context. Not bad, but far from what it could and needs to be.

If we want affinity-based action to work, if we want people to come together and trust and act together, then we have to compost this mess. And the way to do that might be surprisingly simple #KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid, not stupid as in naive, but stupid as in clear.

We need to reclaim simple language that carries shared meaning. This is exactly what we’re trying to seed with the positive side of the #hashtag story. Hashtags can act as anchors in this storm of abstraction. They cut through noise, bring us back to the root meaning, and allow collective orientation without needing corporate gatekeepers or institutional filters.

Think:

  • #4opens — a shorthand for open code, open data, open governance, open standards.
  • #deathcult — pointing to the suicidal path of #neoliberalism.
  • #techshit — composting the mess, not throwing it away.
  • #nothingnew — slowing tech churn, reclaiming meaningful pace and paths.

Each of these tags points to deeper, shared narratives that are simple, but not simplistic. They invite action, not confusion. Compost the abstraction. Regrow clarity. Reclaim trust paths in both tech and social spaces. Speak simply, act clearly, hashtag wisely with intention.

On this working path, It is important for the progressives and radicals to come together and focus on the real issues and challenges facing society, rather than fighting among ourselves. Finding this balance between being “nice” and being “nasty” is key to being effective in bringing about any lasting social change.

The #hashtags embody a story and worldview rooted in a progressive and critical perspective on technology and society. They highlight the destructive impact of neoliberalism (#deathcult) and consumer capitalism (#fashernista) on our shared lives, while promoting the original ideals of the World Wide Web and early internet culture (#openweb).

The #closedweb critiques the for-profit internet and its harmful social consequences, while #4opens advocates for transparency, collaboration, and open-source principles in tech development.

The #geekproblem tag draws attention to a cultural tendency in tech: where geeks, absorbed in their tools and logic, overlook the broader social effects of their creations. This feeds into #techshit, where layers of unnecessary complexity pile up, further distancing people from tech’s social roots. Meanwhile, #encryptionists critiques the knee-jerk reaction that “more encryption” is always the answer, reinforcing control and scarcity, rather than liberating people and community.

Together, hashtags tell a coherent and powerful story. They call for a more humane, collaborative, and transparent approach to both technology and society.

#nothingnew asks whether constant innovation is the right path — or if we need to slow down and improve what already works.

#techchurn names the cycle of flashy, redundant tech that fails to solve core issues.

#OMN and #indymediaback point toward an Open Media Network — and a revival of the radical, decentralized media that once rivalled corporate media on the early web.

#OGB stands for Open Governance Body, an invitation to practice grassroots, transparent, community-led decision-making.

It’s an ambitious but needed path and goal, to build social tech networks that “fail well”, meaning they fail in a way that can be fixed by the people, through trust and collective action, not closed-source patches and corporate updates. The #OMN’s focus is human-first. Tech comes second, as a mediator, a tool, not the destination.

Yes, the #geekproblem is real. Technical expertise becomes a gatekeeping mechanism. But tech can also empower, if we design for simplicity, accessibility, and community-first paths and values. The only working path is simple, trust-based, and human. That’s why we keep coming back to #KISS.

Why haven’t we been dealing with this for the last 10 Years? Over the past decade, we’ve lived in a state of quiet paralysis. Climate change, ecological collapse, technological overreach, all of it loomed. And instead of digging in, we froze. Well-meaning people chose fear over action. Understandably. But fear is a poor foundation for building anything sustainable.

We’re on this site to only blame – we’re here to compost. The problem? We stopped critiquing. We stopped examining the tools in our hands. Not only that, but we bought into the illusion that #NGO paths and tech would save us. That shiny apps and startup culture could greenwash a better future. And when the results disappointed, we turned inward, stopped questioning, and left things to rot.

But what if that rot could be composted? By using the #4opens – open data, open code, open standards for open governance, we have a practical framework to call out and compost the layers of #techshit that have built up. Tech that divides us, tech that distracts us, tech that damages the planet and calls it progress. Yes, like gardening, composting takes time. It smells at first. It’s messy. But give it care, and you get soil. Soil to plant better ideas in. Soil for hope.

One of the reasons we haven’t made progress is the #geekproblem, a narrow slice of technically-minded culture mad up of (stupid)individuals, which so far have dominated the design and direction of our tools. They mean well, often. But in their obsession with technical elegance and “solutions,” they’ve sidelined the social and the ecological. What’s left is a brittle, sterile infrastructure, constantly churning out newness without any substance.

Meanwhile, #stupidindividualism has flourished, encouraged by #dotcons social media systems built for engagement, not connection. These silos encourage performance over solidarity, branding over community, and endless scrolling over doing. We’ve all felt it.

And most activist groups, instead of resisting this tide, drank the #NGO poison, chasing funding, watering down their goals, professionalizing their resistance until it became another logo in a funding application. We’ve lost a decade to fear, distraction, and capture. But it’s maybe not too late.

We have the tools, in the #ActivityPub based #Fediverse. We have the frameworks, the #4opens can guide us to rebuild with transparency, collaboration, and care. The hashtags like #geekproblem, #techshit, #nothingnew, and #OMN give us a shared vocabulary for critique and regeneration. They point to a web where people, not platforms, hold power, and where technology serves life, not control. Let’s stop being afraid to critique. Let’s stop outsourcing responsibility and get on with composting.

Because that’s where the soil of a better path will come from.

On being a prat in tech and social spaces (Yes, this might be about you 😘)

From where I’m standing, a lot of people are being absolute prats when it comes to social and technological issues. That should be obvious… but clearly, it’s not. We’ve got two basic paths here:

  • #Block everything you don’t like. Predictably, this just creates more prat-ish behaviour and pushes us all deeper into toxic bubbles.
  • Ask questions. Grow. Listen. Respond. This reduces prat-ish behaviour – over time, maybe even composts it into something useful.

Now, in the era of #stupidindividualism, which path do you think most people are taking? Yeah. That one. If you’re blocking conversations that challenge you, you’re still kneeling at the altar of the #deathcult. Look up. You’re making a mess of social technology.

“Get off your knees” comes to mind, stop worshipping the #deathcult of neoliberalism, salted with postmodernism. These ideologies have poisoned our communities by turning freedom into isolation and choice into greed. I’m all for freedom, yes, you can choose to be a prat. But I reserve the freedom to call that behaviour toxic and self-destructive. What you do with that communication is up to you, just don’t pretend that #blocking it is some kind of moral high ground.

As Thalia Campbell rightly says, sometimes the best path is just to kindly correct, share info, or talk things through face-to-face. Most of this online prat-ness wouldn’t survive a real conversation, it’s bloated on anonymity, context collapse, and dopamine-fuelled feedback loops.

Yes, what meany people do now is a mess, but mess makes good compost, compost builds soil, soil feeds the common good. And talking about “common sense” is just a way of stirring that compost.

But here’s the mess makeing: we keep repeating the same shit, and instead of composting, we leave it to fester. Capitalism, rooted in self-interested greed, claims to serve the common good. But on the fundamentalist path we have been on for 40 years, it’s clearly failing. War. Growing economic divides. Visible #climatechaos. Poisoned ecosystems and communities.

We can’t survive, or flourish, in a society based on greed. That’s just a simple #KISS message. And neoliberalism, still much of our #mainstreming “common sense”, is nothing but extreme capitalism. It’s the purest form of the #deathcult. It’s eating us alive. Please talk about this.

The #dotcons we have been building our lives in for the last 20 years are undiluted deathcult, surveillance capitalism wrapped in shiny UX. The #openweb? Often like herding cats. And scratch the surface, and yes, sometimes you find the #deathcult there too. But we can’t keep going down this path. We need to stop pushing #mainstreaming agendas that lead us back into the same poisoned mess. That path is BAD. It’s ending in ruin.

We’ve got to try, seriously try, to make things better. Not perfect. Not flashy. Just better.

And that means less prat-ing about. More compost. More care. More common good.

A sharp take, systems are visibly broken

In the end, all social action happens through generalized talk, categories, metaphors, shorthand. That’s how language works. But we live in a cultural amnesia where this is forgotten, mistaken for “common sense.” The #OMN embraces this messy, human space, while the #geekproblem seeks rigid machine-like CONTROL. They’re often technically right, but socially intolerant. We, by contrast, are often technically wrong, but humanly right. What we need is a bridge between these approaches, or we’ll just keep circling. The #OMN needs some control; the #geekproblem needs a lot of humanity. But they don’t see this, and so they keep #BLOCKING. For example, take the common pattern where someone says, “why don’t you just develop it?” That line unconsciously dumps all responsibility on narrow “geeks” while ignoring the role of social imagination, UI/UX design, and the deeper process we’re trying to solve together. That’s the #geekproblem: not the code, but the refusal to look at the problem outside the code. So here we are again—rinse, repeat. Let’s not. Let’s build the bridge.

We are living through a deep crisis, not just of environment, economy, or governance, but of imagination and the will to live. The old systems are visibly broken, the #IPCC reports confirm what many already feel, we are trapped inside a #deathcult, and #mainstreaming culture offers only distraction, careerism, and status games for isolated individuals. There is no hope there.

But hope is not some fluffy optimism, it’s a social force. And in every grassroots, federated, DIY tech project, the solution is always the same, more people. Not more gatekeepers. Not more hierarchy. Just more people. This is the core truth of the #OMN (Open Media Network). It’s not a product, it’s a process. It’s not a startup pitch, it’s a compost heap where good things grow, if we turn it, feed it, and invite others to join in.

We already know how the far right wins, they appeal to real feelings of injustice, then twist those feelings into #stupidindividualism that serves their own class interests. It’s reactionary ideology, and it’s spreading fast. What do we do? Step away from their game. Get involved in building something different. The #4opens gives us a simple, powerful tool to judge who’s building towards the commons and who’s just repackaging and pushing the same poison.

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens

Paranoid individualism and composting the mess

Fighting the #mainstreaming is pointless if you don’t have anything to replace it with #KISS.

We need to present a sharp critique: funding structures not only shape but often stall #openweb development. The core issue is that #NGO funding models divert energy away from real grassroots alternatives, trapping projects in bureaucracy rather than fostering a thriving #DIY culture.

The rise of full-scale, paranoid individualism—born from #stupidindividualism and fueled by the #deathcult’s mainstream influence—further entrenches these issues. NGO funding mechanisms consume real alternatives, replacing them with sanitized, ineffective projects that lack transformative potential. The missing link is a genuine #DIY culture, yet structural forces keep it suppressed.

The #OMN and #OGB offer a possible escape, but without more organic intellectuals actively engaging, the cycle of stagnation will only repeat. The challenge is clear: can the #OGB carve out a space where real alternatives can grow, or will it become just another casualty of the NGO machine?

For the #OMN and #OGB to succeed, they must open a genuine alternative path—but the battle is uphill. The key lies in the organic intellectual: grounded, engaged, and practical. This stands in stark contrast to the alt-tech “chatting classes,” who recycle uninspired narratives instead of building real solutions.

Composting the #TechShit

The value of the #Fediverse isn’t in the tech specs. It’s not in the #ActivityPub protocol or the code itself, those are tools. The value lies in the culture that birthed it. The #Fediverse is the living embodiment of the #openweb, not some #VC Silicon Valley plaything. But as money floods in #mainstreaming forces will unconsciously increasingly try to turn it into another hollow platform, on this we risk losing the very thing that makes it powerful, its strong decentralized, trust-based roots.

The looming battle is CONTROL vs. TRUST

We need to shout this loud and keep shouting it: if we don’t compost the inrushing #techshit, we will rot in it. So if you’re plotting a power grab, do us all a favour – DON’T. These grabs for control create more mess that others then have to clean up. #Powerpolitics is a wasteful distraction, and we have better things to do. The #Fediverse is built on trust and open collaboration, it is not the place for #fashionista influence peddling or backroom power games. If you want real change, try the #4opens, it’s the grounded native path.

Look at history, every commons that survives long enough faces an inflection point. Do we defend openness, or do we let it be devoured by the forces of control? Right now, we are at that moment.

  • CONTROL wants to bring in governance models borrowed from the corporate. #NGO world, top-down, centralized, policed from above.
  • TRUST builds governance through open, messy, and transparent processes, by learning from failures rather than silencing dissent.

It’s the serious question: are you on the side of CONTROL or TRUST?

Breaking the cycle of destruction, the #mainstreaming web is collapsing under its own dead weight. People are stepping back to the #openweb, but they are bringing their baggage with them. We need better tools to mediate this influx. If we don’t, we’ll repeat the same mistakes that led to the first enclosure of the internet commons 20 years ago.

The Fediverse is working, and that’s terrifying to the #dotcons and the #NGO class trying to domesticate it. It still needs to destroy billions of dollars worth of CONTROL while growing billions of people and communities based on collective happiness. That’s the balance we push and maintain: keeping it messy enough to stay real, but structured enough to survive.

And let’s be clear, if we don’t call out those in our own communities who push control agendas, we are complicit in their mess making. If we don’t resist the #NGO push to turn the Fediverse into another grant-funded, #VC playground, we are signing its death warrant. If we don’t challenge the rising mobs of faux-activists and #fashernistas who police culture over substance, we are handing them control.

The Poison is the cult of control, isn’t only corporate overlords, it’s also being fed by dead ideologies like postmodern nihilism. Too many people are weaponizing identity politics, turning everything into a performative purity contest. The cruelty of social capital hoarding is just as toxic as corporate greed, it’s the same authoritarian impulse, just wearing a different mask.

YOU can’t do social change without annoying people. We need to stop chasing distractions and focus on real accountability. Otherwise, we are just repeating the cycle that destroyed the early web. Let’s be blunt: if you think you can do radical change without stepping on toes, you’re play-acting. You’re the problem, not the solution. If this annoys you, good—that means it applies. We don’t have time for the normal path of #stupidindividualism, for personal empire-building, or endless #powerpolatics struggles. The #Fediverse is about cooperation over control, culture over corporations, and trust over fear. Let’s keep shouting this, least we forget.

The reality is messy. The future is uncertain. That’s OK. The answer isn’t sterile management, it’s composting the ground into something fertile. We aren’t shouting into the void. We are building something new from the mess of the old. Dive in, follow the flow, and be part of the solution, click a hashtag to join the conversation:

#OMN
#openweb
#activitypub
#stepaway
#4opens
#geekproblem
#fashernista
#dotcons
#failbook

Are you here to build, or are you here to control? Choose wisely please.

These aren’t pointless projects

#mainstreaming #liberalism has lost its way. For the past 20 years, many self-described liberals have spewed out bilge water disguised as “common sense.” But when pressure mounts, they reveal themselves as dogmatic and intolerant, almost as if they aren’t truly liberal at all.

How did we end up in this mess? The #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the rise of #dotcons shaped the dominant version of “common sense,” warping it away from collective care and into something narrow and self-destructive. It’s worth reflecting on this if we want to reclaim a liberal liberalism, rooted in genuine openness and social good.

In practice, we can compost this mess by focusing on #nothingnew paths. Two longstanding cultural projects already embody this, working in non-federated ways for over a century. Now, we can add technical federation to the mix, building on 5+ years of #ActivityPub rollout.

This gives us two powerful, #openweb-native paths forward:

  • Grassroots #DIY culture — Local, self-organized, and messy, but thriving outside corporate control.
  • Technical federation — Interconnected systems designed to distribute power and ownership.

Both of these paths lead somewhere meaningful:

These aren’t pointless projects, they’re a chance to break free from the suffocating grip of the #deathcult and build something resilient, human, and actually free.

Shall we pick up the shovels and start composting? 🌱

Radical movements are too often their own worst enemies

Radical movements are too often their own worst enemies. The push/pull between the desire for real change and the gravitational pull of #mainstreaming feed the #stupidindividualism that keeps people locked into conservative, performative loops. These loops are not accidental, they are the result of movements that to often shift focus to prioritize (invisible) ideological purity, insular “safety” subcultures, and a morbid reverence for past failures over the messy, unpredictable work of building living alternatives.

It’s easier to mimic revolution than to risk anything for it. People cosplay as radicals, reenacting historic struggles, as if performing the gestures of revolt is enough to topple ongoing systems of oppression. The rituals of protest, the left pamphleteering, and the echo chambers of online discourse imposed as safe spaces to play at rebellion without any actual danger of dismantling and rebuilding the world as it is.

The #mainstreaming path is insidious. It draws radical energy into a cycle of visibility and co-option, the movements become symbolic representation not material transformation. Meanwhile, #stupidindividualism fractures collective power, as people mistake dogma for meaningful action. The result? A self-policing culture where standing out, innovating, or questioning sacred paths is treated as betrayal not (rev)evolution.

It’s very basic history that radical breakthroughs happen when people break these loops. An example I keep bringing up is the early #Indymedia, an example of when people embraced uncertainty and acted as if the world could be different, not just talked about it. These moments weren’t perfect, and most collapse under internal contradictions, but they proved that stepping beyond lifestyle/ideological safety nets is possible.

This is where the #OMN come I as a real path, that, by creating decentralized, native #4opens networks for storytelling and organizing, we build infrastructures that resist the gravitational pull of mainstream capture. Instead of reinforcing ideological bubbles, we make space for radical plurality, a compost heap where competing ideas decay and fertilize new growth. The goal isn’t another subculture; it’s a living, breathing movement capable of evolving while still linking and bridging to the wider world.

#KISS

Anarchism, the mess we make

Marking the difference between the #openweb and #closedweb

The last decades has seen a rapid shift toward #deathcult #mainstreaming, where the boundaries between #open and #closed have intentionally blurred, this is also mirrored in our alt cultures. The “common sense” #geekproblem confusion serves the interests of the #dotcons and the #deathcult, not the people. The language of the #hashtagstory can be used to sharpens this divide and give people the tools to see, thus act on, the reality of the paths they’re walking and engaging with.

The #openweb, is built on the principles of the #4opens: open source, open data, open standards, and open processes. It centres human-to-human connections, growing at best community, collaboration, and collective empowerment. By prioritizes social trust, transparency, and grassroots governance. And thrives in messy, organic, and decentralized environments.

The #closedweb is dominated by control. It is pushed by both the #dotcons and their shadow puppets, the #encryptionists, who sell privacy as a product while reinforcing isolation and distrust. Encourages #stupidindividualism and consumerism over community and collective action. Markets itself as progressive but reinforces the same centralized power structures.

Why marking the difference matters, when we blur the lines, we lose sight of the path we need to walk. People unknowingly feed the systems that oppress them, believing they are supporting alternatives. By #KISS labelling projects, platforms, and ideas as either #openweb or #closedweb, we create dialogue to empower people to make choices and shift their energy toward real change.

The #4opens acts as the shovel to dig through the #techshit, turning failed projects and false promises into compost for the next wave of more truly open technology. Please start using these #hashtags intentionally. Call things what they are. If a project claims to be open but hides its development, call it #closedweb. If a platform fosters community and embraces messy, social processes, celebrate it as part of the #openweb.

Change is happening. The centre isn’t holding, the choice is left or right. The #openweb is the radical, collective path in this choice.

Let’s start naming the terrain to compost and grow.