A guide for staying honest and native

A community is only viable if enough people care enough to keep it relevant. In this era of #stupidindividualism, most people don’t lift a finger to make that happen.

This is the norm across many #4opens spaces: a near-total lack of interest in building or maintaining shared paths. It’s a textbook case of right-wing Tragedy of the Commons. Developers show up when it suits them, use the space for their narrow needs, then drift off without contributing to the upkeep. They treat community like free infrastructure – something passive they can extract from – rather than a living, tended path.

This same pattern plays out across the grassroots and #FOSS world. Devs focus on their code, their projects, their timelines. Rarely do they look up and engage with the broader ecology that their work depends on. In the #Fediverse especially, most developers ignore shared infrastructure, governance, and the standards they rely on, until something breaks. Then they complain.

Same social dynamics, same outcome: a mess that keeps repeating itself. And until we break that pattern, we’re stuck.

On the alt path, it’s fair to ask for clarity. When we talk about “#openweb projects,” we mean efforts grounded in the values of the early web commons: transparency, decentralization, collective ownership. This includes things like the rebooted #Indymedia, the #OMN (Open Media Network), and the #OGB (Open Governance Body). These aren’t about building shiny platforms, they’re about building the structures and relationships that allow real alternatives to survive and grow outside the #mainstreaming mess.

This isn’t just evangelism, it’s hands-on work: shaping frameworks for local and federated publishing (like the original Indymedia), and now modelling governance and trust systems that resist hierarchy and #NGO capture.

As for government institutions joining the #Fediverse – What we pushed was a bottom-up, native process rooted in people and practice, not imposed solutions. But as is often the case, after we laid the groundwork, the institutional #PR and #NGO crowd moved in and took over.

The “community” we speak of does exist, even if it’s fragmented, marginal, and ignored. You’ll find it in squats, permaculture collectives, activist media spaces, messy corners of the #Fediverse, and in the hands of people still building trust and tools outside the #dotcons. It’s not centralized or funded, so it’s not visible like capitalist platforms are. But it’s real. I’ve lived inside it for decades.

You’re right that real code is needed. But it’s not about one perfect tool. It’s about the network of trust and shared values that can hold many tools and projects together. That’s slower to build, less flashy to show off, but far more resilient and necessary.

The #Fediverse is a good first step. But let’s be honest: we’ve lost the thread when it comes to building tech that walks off the beaten path. Most #mainstreaming energy, and much of the #NGO outreach, still flows into reinforcing the same old ruts: centralization, enclosure, obedience to capital. Anything that doesn’t follow those routes is starved of support and often treated as a threat, a curiosity, or a waste of time.

But it’s exactly that off-path infrastructure we need, not just to resist the current system, but to outlast it. To still be standing when the old ways collapse. That means supporting tools and systems that aren’t profitable, aren’t convenient, and aren’t slick. They’re harder to fund, harder to maintain, but they’re what let us keep moving forward through the coming storm of #climatechaos.

If we don’t build and sustain these alternative tracks, the dominant ones will keep absorbing or destroying everything new. It’s a recursive trap: we need better systems to make better tools, but we can’t build those tools without some of those better systems already in place.

So we need to hold space – with care, mess, and trust – for that in-between.

That’s where projects like #OMN, the rebooted #Indymedia, and the #4opens live. Not trying to escape friction, but embracing it. Mediating it. Letting it guide us toward what’s honest, what’s native, what lasts.

The new litmus test isn’t “Does it scale?”
It’s: “Does it spread? Does it take root? Can it compost and regrow?”

It’s important to recognise that friction – the mess, the slowness, the need for constant negotiation – is not a flaw in native paths, it’s a virtue. It’s how trust, mutuality, and accountability are sustained over time. These are not bugs to be eliminated with slick #UX and #VC-funded convenience – they’re part of what keeps a community honest and rooted.

The problem arises when less-native, often externally imposed systems (driven by capitalist or institutional agendas) treat these messy, friction-full spaces as broken or backwards. This is the classic dynamic of imperialism and settler colonialism: imposing order, “fixing” things, extracting value, and in doing so erasing the lived, relational logic of native systems.

If you look through the lens of native/western histories – indigenous struggles vs colonial modernity, the same pattern plays out again and again: the native path is degraded, disrespected, overwritten. In tech, it’s no different. You see it when horizontal, trust-based networks get steamrolled by #NGO capture, institutional gatekeeping, or #VC-funded platforms that sell convenience and control.

So the real work is mediation. Not purity, not retreat, but balancing these tensions in practice: holding space where native paths can grow without being co-opted or crushed, while still reaching out to shift the wider terrain.

We need to stop seeing native approaches as “immature” or “inefficient.” They’re often the only thing holding the line against complete enclosure. The question isn’t “How do we fix the mess?”, it’s “How do we stay with it, tend it, and let it teach us how to do this differently?”

It’s an old but urgent problem: how do we support tech that walks outside the dominant paths long enough to clear new ones? Infrastructure that can challenge the mainstream only survives if we build support systems that reflect different values — trust, openness, and care over control, profit, and scale. Right now, we’ve stopped thinking seriously about this. If we don’t return to this work, building the path as we walk it, we’ll be stuck cycling through the same traps, watching each alternative collapse back into the old defaults.

People keep asking for my history, so a link https://hamishcampbell.com/introduction/

The Fediverse Is Social Tech Built by People Who Don’t Understand Community

We dig. Turn over the old soil. Question assumptions. Get honest about what’s working and what’s not. We plant. Build in the open. Share power. Let go of fear. We grow. Not towards scaling up, but spreading out, resilient, diverse, interconnected.

The Fediverse could still be a true commons. But we need to build it as one, together. Right now? Our thinking and common sense is building fenced off little kingdoms, each with its own rules, its own etiquette, and its own moderators-turned-monarchs. We wave our “federation” flags proudly, but let’s be honest, most of these flags are stitched from the same cloth: control, hierarchy, and a quiet hostility to anything really different.

Let’s stop pretending, the community side of the Fediverse is a mess. The instance as a community, was a good idea, but it never worked, the was no code that was needed to build the links that mattered, no mod tools, nothing. And it’s not a mystery why – it was built by the #geekproblem and marketed with white #PR lies. The developers who shaped this space were (and mostly still are) people who don’t understand, or worse, actively dislike, messy human social dynamics. They wanted control, moderation as containment, not mediation, identity as code, not culture.

This isn’t to blame them personally, many were doing their best. But structurally, the Fediverse was always going to build this current mess when it grew out of narrow foundations:

Built by people who think consensus means “do what I say.”

Designed in back rooms, then announced as done.

Sold as decentralised, while consolidating power around key projects.

Promoted with “diversity” stickers, while real diversity was culturly blocked or ignored.

No surprise the result is growing to be alienating, slow-moving, and hard to trust for actual social communities. So the question now is: how do we fix this? Here is my idea where to start:

Acknowledge the rot. No more polishing turds. Let’s call things what they are.

Shift governance from control to trust.The #OGB model exists to empower native communities, not gatekeepers.

Build openly. Work in the open. Use the #4opens.Transparency is the only path back to legitimacy.

Stop begging for NGO scraps. The #OMN is about building outside their logic. If they want in, they come on our terms.

Compost the techshit, but keep the compost. Acknowledge failures. Learn from them. Don’t drag them forward for brand reasons.

The Fediverse can still be a commons – but now we need to build it as one. Right now, we’re mostly fencing off little kingdoms, waving our “federation” flags. We’ve seen where this leads. It’s time to dig, plant, and grow something different.

Let’s look at this same issue from a different view, at the individual scale, self-hosting is pushed by the #geekproblem as the golden path to “being in control of my data.” But in reality, that’s a comforting illusion – like saying, “I grow a vegetable garden to be in control of my food.”

Yes, having a garden is valuable. It connects you with the land, the seasons, the rhythm of growth. But:

You can’t grow everything you need — rice, flour, salt, coffee?

You’re one bad season away from failure — drought, pests, illness, burnout.

It’s time-consuming, and often inefficient to go it alone — especially if you’re just trying to feed one household.

The same is true for self-hosting. Sure, it can be a great learning experience. You can run your own Mastodon instance, email server, or Nextcloud. You might feel a sense of autonomy and pride, “I’m off the cloud!”.

But, you’re now your own sysadmin, responsible 24/7. Security patches? Backups? Downtime? You’re one bug or hard drive crash away from losing everything, no safety net. If you’re DDoSed or targeted, you’re alone in the storm. Most people don’t know how to balance security and useablierty of their systems, and the risk of leaks or exploits is real.

This doesn’t mean “don’t self-host.” Like gardening, it’s a good and meaningful thing. But it’s not meaningful and sufficient for control or resilience. And the more we pretend it is, the more we set people up to fail.

The solution? We need to balance collectivizing resilience. Just like with food, we need shared kitchens, food co-ops, and community gardens – not just individual allotments. For digital infrastructure, we need to balance working #OMN mobile #p2p bridging to:

Small community-run servers with shared responsibility (like tech collectives or co-ops).

Federated services that respect autonomy and provide mutual aid.

Redundant backups across trusted peers, not just one node.

Tools designed for social trust, not corporate extraction or lonely geek heroism.

Because real control over data isn’t about having a castle with a moat. It’s about living in a village where the roads are open, the wells are shared, and people have your back when things go wrong. Resilience and transparency cannot be achieved in isolation.

It’s a social problem, and we need to bring social solutions, built with care, trust, and collective #DIY responsibility. What too meany people push is “common sense” #stupidindividualism that is so obviously prat’ish behaviour, let’s step away from this mess making, please.

We Don’t Need More Liberal Techno-Utopianism

Frictionlessness is a Poisoned Fantasy – an #OMN Reflection

In our current mess of a world, one of capitalism’s illusions is the promise of #frictionlessness, that everything should just work, that all interactions should be smooth, efficient, and untroubled. In tech this is the logic of the #dotcons, keeping the “users” engaged, never give them time to think, and above all don’t let the real world get in the way of the pipeline between their attention and your profit.

This has infected the #geekproblem deeply. In software culture, especially, friction is seen as a flaw to be eradicated. You get endless talk about seamless UX, microservices glued together with endless APIs, “AI” interfaces that complete your thoughts before you’ve had them. But in this drive for “smoothness”, we erase the very stuff that makes us human. Friction isn’t a bug, it’s the thing that matters.

We in the #OMN path think differently, humanistically, friction is where we bump up against each other, where ideas collide, where something has to be negotiated, not assumed. It’s where care, conflict, and collective learning live. Real life and community requires discussion. It forces mutual understanding. It invites shared responsibility. Not only that, but it’s slower – yes. Messier – absolutely. But in that mess, something native grows.

This is the fundamental difference between a society built for people and one built for control. A people-based network has thick edges, blurry boundaries, and rough interfaces, you feel each other. A control-based network is sterile. Optimized. Soulless.

This is what the #deathcult calls “progress”, the drive to strip the world of friction so that each of us can float through our own private consumerist delusion, never encountering anything real. Currently you feel this in the emerging cult of “AI as Everything Machine”, the idea that you’ll never need to interact with anyone ever again. Need something? Ask the machine. It won’t argue, won’t misunderstand, won’t push back. It’ll stroke your ego and reinforce your (their) worldview. It’s like having a compliant servant with no wages, no needs – and no truth.

We are encouraged to see this as liberation. But it’s so obviously the opposite. It’s a deepening of the loneliness machine. This is what happens when we build networks to eliminate community. No neighbours to disagree with, no comrades to compromise with, no community to be accountable to. Just you, “your” machine, and your carefully filtered feed, all controlled by the “invisible” #nastyfew in a feedback loop of isolation.

But, simply put, the real world doesn’t work like that, it is messy. The river floods. The server crashes. The refugee needs a place to sleep. The boat needs fixing. Your project needs people who don’t agree on everything, but care enough to stay and work it out. This is the world the #OMN needs to be built for.

Humanism is not removing friction, it’s mediating it. Friction can hurt, but it also brings growth. It’s how we learn, we feel our need for each other. And yes, how we fight, but also how we forgive.

If we’re serious about challenging the broken paths we’ve been led down – from #neoliberal isolation to techno-dystopian escape – we need to stop chasing the dream of #stupidindividualism, and start building networks that build communities of interest, that touch back. That remind us we’re not alone and push back, gently, when we try in our misery to float away.

Because only in activism – in tension, in movement, in shared resistance – can we build anything real #KISS

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.

What does mainstreaming do?

#mainstreaming narrows the field of imagination and excludes non-conforming ideas that could offer real solutions to systemic crises. Mainstreaming smooths the rough edges of society. It normalizes hierarchy, filters dissent, and packages politics into manageable narratives. It’s how radical demands are turned into reforms, then paperwork, then slogans, then forgotten.

Absorbing opposition into bureaucracy (e.g., NGOs, dead end consultancy)

Rewarding compromise and incrementalism, as blocking

Silencing or caricaturing grassroots resistance, as common sense

Making real alternatives seem "unrealistic", in the end

This is why grassroots #DIY matters as a counterbalance. On this path, Anarchism is not just rebellion or chaos, it is a living tradition of thinking and organizing that keeps real change alive when mainstreaming works to bury it.

Direct democracy, In a world of managed participation and elitist mediation, anarchism says: decide together, act together. It reminds us of grassroots power that doesn’t flow through institutions but grows in assemblies, co-ops, camps, and communities.
Mutual aid and cooperation, where mainstream narratives focus on competition, profit, and security through control, anarchism champions care, solidarity, and trust-based networks—a needed cultural shift to navigate crisis and collapse.
Decentralization of power, in the face of #dotcons, technocracy, and corporate-state collusion, anarchism is a map toward decentralization and autonomy. It’s the logic behind federated systems, commons governance, and resilient localism.
Critique of state power, mainstreaming always ends up strengthening state structures, even when it claims to oppose them. Anarchism pulls back the curtain on the violence and coercion baked into “order”, whether in border regimes, policing, or “benevolent” welfare systems.

Cultural compost: “We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism.” at its best this isn’t an identity, it’s a provocation, a composting force that keeps movements from hardening into systems of control.

This is why balance is key, without radical, un-mainstreamed perspectives, the so-called “left” drifts into hollow #NGO work, tech utopianism, or sanitized liberalism. The #openweb becomes a product instead of a commons, movements become brands, justice becomes PR. Balancing #mainstreaming means, keeping the imagination alive, creating space for alternatives and building systems that don’t replicate domination

In practice, projects like the #OMN and #4opens are examples of this balance: using basic tech to empower trust, not control. They are rooted in values without needing any label, community autonomy, voluntary association, transparent processes.

To reboot the #openweb, we need the cultural DNA of anarchism, without necessarily the costume. We need people unafraid to challenge power, even when everyone else says, “play nice, get the grant, follow the roadmap.” So yes, we need anarchism, not as a lifestyle, but as a counterweight, a cultural inoculation against decay to challenge the centre from the edge.

And we need to compost the rest.

The mess we make trying to move away from the mainstream…

“Doing the same thing in the same context and expecting different results is one of the clinical definitions of insanity.” 😄

This is the core of the #mainstreaming problem. Our hashtags try to name it: #stupidindividualism #deathcult #dotcons #nothingnew in that we repeat the same patterns, inside the same systems, and wonder why nothing changes.

The truth is, we’ve already solved many of these problems. From grassroots media to consensus decision-making, from tech co-ops to decentralized organizing, we had working solutions. What we lacked was a way to scale them without breaking them. That was always the sticking point. But the irony: the activist culture that once created these solutions has eroded, just as the tech finally caught up, the tech is ready, it’s the culture missing. This is the mess we’re in.

It’s about social trust, human-scale processes, messy cooperation, and doing things differently, this time with tools that match our values, not bury them. Let’s stop acting insane, let’s try something new, built from something old, let’s get biblical 😉

The #Hashtags Tell a Story: Building Trust in a Messy World

We live in a time of crisis. Climate, community, communication, all are breaking down. Our tools and platforms no longer serve us. To make sense of this, we need to tell stories. And in the digital world, hashtags are one of the most powerful ways we do this. But our hashtags don’t just tag, they trace the roots of our problems, and signpost paths out. Each one is a seed. Together, they are a map.

#dotcons – From #openweb to walled gardens. Once, the internet was a place of openness, built on free tools, shared protocols, and community spirit. Then came the #dotcom era, where profit became the driving force. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, what we call the #dotcons, reshaped the web to lock us in and sell us out. A handful of corporations own the highways of our communication, and their algorithms guide what we see, say, and believe.

#dotcon = profit for a few, con for the rest.

#stupidindividualism – A trap we set for ourselves, we were promised empowerment. But what we got was individualism without solidarity. We’re told: brand yourself, hustle alone, curate your reality. But without community, there is no resilience. Without cooperation, there is no change.

#stupidindividualism is the cultural poison that tells you “you’re on your own.” It weakens us from the inside.

#deathcult – Forty years of neoliberalism. The last four decades have been shaped by a ruthless ideology, that markets solve everything, government should step back, and people must compete, not care. This is the #deathcult – a term for the deadly logic of late-stage capitalism. It’s taken over politics, media, even our sense of self.

Climate denial, gig work precarity, housing crises, mental health collapse - these are all symptoms.

#geekproblem – The failure of trust in tech. Even our allies, the people building tech to fix things, fall into a trap. The #geekproblem is when developers replace trust with control, more permissions, more encryption, more complexity. Instead of building with people, they build over them. The result? More unusable tools, more silos, more #techshit that ends up needing to be composted in abandoned GitHub repos.

#4opens is a way out of the mess, we need this new paths, based on simplicity, humility, and openness, a compass. If a project doesn’t pass the #4opens, it’s not building for the commons, it’s just making another silo.

#OMN, shovels and compost, we already have the tools, projects that build media flows, not platforms. To connect blogs and podcasts into open rivers of content, using simple tech instead of complicated “Web3” vaporware or #dotcons mess.

We’ve built up piles of #techshit. It’s time to pick up our #shovels, compost the waste, and grow something new.

Hashtags = Soft tools for hard times. We use soft metaphors because we live in soft systems: culture, emotion, trust. You can’t “solve” these with code alone. You need care, community, and storytelling. Yes, many demand hard, scientific “proofs” or “frameworks.” But if someone can’t feel the metaphor, they’re probably not ready for the work of rebuilding. We need to focus on those who can, who’ve seen that a different world is possible.

If you can understand that different ideologies shape different realities, then these hashtags will start to speak to you.

Let’s recap the key tags in the story:

#dotcons – Corporations that own and fence in our web

#failbook – Facebook and its culture of manipulation

#openweb – The decentralized, people-powered internet

#4opens – A compass for ethical, sustainable tech

#geekproblem – Tech that controls instead of empowers

#stupidindividualism – Isolation sold as freedom

#deathcult – Forty years of neoliberalism and its collapse

#OMN – Building networks, not silos

#techshit – All the unusable tools that ignore real needs

#shovels – The work we must do

#compost – Making good soil from past mistakes

We don’t need heroes, we need gardeners, grab a shovel, let’s build a future please.

Building Alt/Grassroots Media Networks to Challenge and Widen Traditional Media

The current ecosystem of alternative and grassroots media is too narrow in its imagination of what media could, and should, be. There’s a persistent naivety or, in some cases, a self-serving dishonesty. Many of the most “successful” progressive media groups continue to mimic #traditionalmedia without understanding, or addressing, the fact that they do not control their distribution. In effect, they’re renting space in someone else’s empire.

This is not just a mistake. It’s the same mistake that corporate media has been making for years: relying entirely on the #dotcons, especially Google/Meta/Facebook, to reach people. The algorithms shape the message. The gatekeepers never disappeared, they were replaced by code, powered by ad dollars.

Where are we now? Most grassroots and alt-media outlets do have websites, which means they technically sit on the #openweb. But their sites rarely, if ever, link to other alt-media projects. Despite the rhetoric of solidarity, there is little visible network of mutual support, not even basic hyperlinking between allies.

They podcast, another foot in the #openweb. Yet their outreach and engagement still happen inside #silos like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. In practice, this reinforces the #deathcult’s control of visibility. You can’t build a new world inside the structures of the old, not if the old is designed to undermine you. Why is this mess happening? Two dominant forces are shaping this failure:

On the big scale, we have the #Fashernista embrace of the #dotcons

Many alt-media producers came of age inside the mainstream tech stack. They built their platforms and careers inside the same closed systems they claim to challenge. Their political commitments might be radical, but their infrastructure choices are entirely conventional. This is the liberal, capitalist version of #mainstreaming – reform, not replacement.

On the small scale, #Encryptionist obsession and the #geekproblem

At the other extreme, we have alt-tech projects so obsessed with privacy and control that they create pointless parallel networks that no one uses. They fetishize encryption and “clean standards” over actual human use. The result is tech that is “safe” but irrelevant, drifting into a shrinking ghetto of #stupidindividualism. This is the libertarian version of #mainstreaming – escape, not engagement.

The has been practical work on the ground, over the last years an #openweb tech revolution built around ActivityPub and Fediverse, with projects like Mastodon, which in theory is guided by the #4opens. Yet, despite this, we still hit a wall of self-interest, naivety, and careerist short-termism from the media groups and meany individuals inside this movement.

What can we do? The web is made of links, the #openweb dies without them. If alt/grassroots media want to be part of the solution, they must start acting like a network. A simple step is to start linking to each other. Publicly. Repeatedly. On websites. On blogs. On Fediverse accounts. Use hashtags. Use lists. Tag each other. Cross-publish when relevant. This one act can change the ecosystem.

To solidify this, it’s past time for a new alt-media reboot, a small crew of linked-up, working examples that can pull others onto a sustainable, #openweb path. A real, living network of trust and mutual visibility. If we can show what’s possible, by doing it, we might begin to shift the culture. Let’s find the hopeful, grounded people to help shovel this forward.

If you’re interested in building the open media commons, join the #OMN conversation at https://unite.openworlds.info/explore/organizations to “Make the world you want to see.” or splash some dosh here https://opencollective.com/open-media-network we will make good use of it

The #OMN really complex? It’s not in the code – it’s in us. Let’s be blunt:

The Outside Threats:

The #dotcons (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.)

Surveillance capitalism

Attention farming

Closed distribution algorithms

Platform lock-in

The Internal Saboteurs:

Encryptionist geeks obsessed with crypto but forgetting human users

NGO social media managers who talk community but build silos

Process vampires who kill projects by committee

Fashionistas who follow hype cycles and abandon working tools for shiny vaporware

The #OMN is native to none of these tribes. That’s its strength. But also why it’s often ignored or misunderstood. No permissions, no gatekeeping, no central database. It just works. That’s the #KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

None of the usual suspects like this: Geeks: Don’t like using old tools like RSS or thinking socially. Politicos: Prefer being seen at the cutting edge, even if it leads nowhere. NGOs: Want measurable outcomes, not messy grassroots growth. But we need to stop building castles in the sky. Start building bridges instead.

The real block? The mental model of our tech and political culture. We’re still thinking in terms of silos, ownership, and control.

Hopelessness is a deeply conservative reaction to change and challenge

In the face of mounting crisis – social breakdown, political polarization, ecological collapse – many people turn inward. And in this turn, they mistake passivity, irony and detachment for resistance. But hopelessness is not radical, it’s deeply conservative. It says: “Nothing can change.” “Everything is corrupt.” “Why bother?”

This isn’t rebellion, it’s surrender. And it’s the exact emotional state that power systems – what we call the #deathcult of neoliberalism – need us to be in. It feeds on your hopelessness, it wants your sarcasm, it loves that you’re “above it all.”

Meme culture & irony: Subversion or sedation? What started as absurdist and ironic commentary devolves into a feedback loop of reaction over reflection. Sarcasm and irony dominate, and this can be useful satire, but more often it’s deflection. You’ll see it in:

The snide quote-tweets with no solution.

The endless “vibes” critiques in social threads.

The collapse of political dialogue into aesthetics and shitposting.

This “cool detachment” doesn’t move us any were toward change, it actively blocks it. We saw this in the decline of many #Occupy offshoots, where internal meme culture replaced organising. Or more recently in parts of climate circles, where #doomposting pushes people into nihilism instead of movement.

Inward-looking tribalism in a globalising world, the creeping tribalism of identity performance, the tendency to build ever-smaller circles of agreement and define yourself against the world instead of with it. On the surface, this might seem like radical rejection of the #mainstreaming. But it’s the opposite, a deeply conforming reaction to consumer individualism.

“Build your brand.”
“Curate your followers.”
“Find your niche.”
“Be your own revolution.”

This is #stupidindividualism, a self-defeating survival mode learned from decades of #neoliberal collapse. But there is no individual path through #climatechaos, only collective ones. We see this mess when grassroots media creators ignore collaboration and #4opens publishing, instead choosing to grow their own follower count on YouTube, TikTok or Substack. We see it when radical tech projects are siloed by pride and petty grudges, while the #dotcons eat their functionality alive.

This performative tribalism ends in isolation, not revolution. All of this is the problem, not the solution, let’s be clear:

Sarcastic detachment = stagnation.

Tribal identity wars = division.

Hopelessness = inaction.

Together, they serve the status quo. They are cultural arms of the #deathcult, a system designed to:

Feed on fear.

Incentivize competition.

Reward silence over solidarity.

So what is the change we need? A first step is in #KISS reviving:

Networks of trust, not control (#4opens).
Tools that connect, not isolate (#OMN, #OGB).
Spaces where we speak with doubt, and listen with care.
Structures of cooperation, not only critique (#indymediaback).

We don’t need perfect answers, we need open processes, and we need to reclaim hope, not as naïve optimism, but as active engagement. So pick up your shovel, join a group of composters, feed the soil of a future worth living in.

Hashtags are the River.

What do you mean by “mainstreaming”?

At its core, #mainstreaming is how we, often unconsciously, uphold and reproduce the values of the dominant system. In our time, that system is #neoliberalism, or what I metaphorically call the #deathcult. It’s the air we breathe: shaping our politics, our economics, even the food we eat and how we relate to each other.

In activist terms, #mainstreaming too often means pushing this dominant worldview into alternative spaces, building careers and institutions that play progressive on the surface, but ultimately reproduce the very system that’s driving the crisis. It’s what happens when people take grassroots energy and repackage it in #NGO boxes or #dotcon business plans. The result? We end up feeding the monster we’re supposed to be fighting.

This is the path to #stupidindividualism, where neoliberalism “common sense” didn’t just attack unions, welfare and public goods – it atomized our very identities. Over the past 40 years, we’ve been trained to act as isolated economic units. Individualism replaced solidarity. Competition replaced care. This is what we metaphorically call #stupidindividualism – the corrosive belief that the only way forward is by looking after yourself, even when your actions are part of a system that destroys community and climate. And as history has shown us, when communities collapse, what rushes in to fill the vacuum is fear, resentment, and authoritarianism, in a word: #fascism.

In real-world examples, let’s take @NovaraMedia. They produce great content. But their distribution strategy is rooted in #dotcons (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram), and their cultural aspirations are aimed at becoming the next @Guardian – a new node in the old system. They’re playing inside the media ecosystem of the #deathcult. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow an audience. But if we don’t also invest in building and sustaining #grassroots alternatives, we’re just treading water in the mainstream’s tide.

Most NGO agendas follow this same mainstreaming logic: speak in respectable tones, aim for policy tweaks, never rock the boat too hard, and above all, protect your funding. This echos my experience of doing media training and its limits, i’ve spent 25+ years training thousands of people to create radical, grassroots media, through projects like #Undercurrents, #Indymedia, #visionontv, and now the #OMN. Here’s what happened: Most of those trained went on to have careers in mainstream journalism or #NGO communications. Almost none stayed with grassroots projects. And honestly, I kinda don’t blame them, it’s hard to survive outside the system. But that’s the problem: without long-term support for non-mainstreaming work, there’s no soil for alternatives to grow.

We trained them to change the world, but the world trained them to change careers. So what do we do? If we don’t build real, working alternatives, then the only future left is one where billions of people die or are displaced over the next 100 years, from accelerating #climatechaos, and the rise of digital authoritarianism and political fascism. That’s why we need to push back against mainstreaming, not with purity politics or infighting, but with tools and structures that offer real alternatives.

The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one such tool:

Technically solid

Politically grounded in the #4opens and #PGA hallmarks

Designed to resist co-option by the #NGO sector or #dotcon logic

Rooted in peer-to-peer cooperation instead of hierarchical control

This path is a seed of something better, not perfect, not finished, but growing from decades of experience. We can’t blame people for trying to survive, but still we can and must build and defend spaces that nurture something, different, better.

Otherwise, the #deathcult “wins” by default.

Everything we build sits on standards

An example of the #geekproblem is the refusal, or failure, to engage seriously with standards. In tech, as in life, nothing exists in isolation. Every app, every protocol, every line of code rests on a foundation of inherited agreements: protocols, languages, schemas, and governance systems. These are the invisible scaffolding of the digital world, we call them standards, and whether people like it or not, everything you’re building is already part of an industrial web of standards.

Now, here’s the issue, some people like building sandcastles, it’s fun, creative, and ephemeral and that’s fine for a beach. But when you’re trying to build something social, collective, public, sandcastles don’t last. Tech built without engagement with standards is just that, fantasy castles doomed to wash away with the tide. The #geekproblem is this tendency, to act like you’re inventing from scratch, when you’re just ignoring the foundations that are already holding you up.

So, what is an “Open Industrial Standard”? Think of it this way:

An industrial standard is a shared agreement that enables interoperation. Think HTTP, HTML, RSS, USB, SQL, IP, ActivityPub. These let different things talk to each other, without asking permission.

An open standard means anyone can read it, implement it, and improve it — without a license fee or gatekeeper.

When it works well, it becomes a public commons — infrastructure we all use without even thinking about it.

That’s the real power of the #openweb, these boring, beautiful agreements that allow radically different people and machines to cooperate at scale. And yes, the process of defining them can be nebulous and political. There are gatekeepers, old boys’ clubs, turf wars (just ask anyone who’s fought through the W3C or IETF). But without engaging with these processes, you’re not doing tech that scales, you’re doing cosplay.

Tribalism vs standards, some geeks mistake tribal loyalty for technical innovation. They reject standards because they didn’t write them, or because they’re seen as “corporate,” or because it’s not their language/community. This is understandable, but it’s also deeply destructive when building shared tools. This tribalism can be:

Beautiful — as identity, passion, and solidarity.

Problematic — when it blocks interconnection, growth, and real-world relevance.

And yes, nationalism is another form of this, some #dotcons are more powerful than countries, so perhaps it’s a useful metaphor. If Amazon or Meta can out-legislate half of Europe, then tribal structures and state structures start to blur. The violence of exclusion, whether through passport or platform ban, operates in similar ways.

The #geekproblem is a 20th-century hangover, a part of the tech tribe that’s clung to personal purity, control, and isolation. But this path is real damage: #climatechaos worsened by inefficient or extractive systems, #failbook dominating sociality through centralised design, #diaspora outreach falling apart from internal ego wars.

The #geekproblem refuses the hard, messy work of social coding, open standards, federation, collective governance. It prefers to build new silos rather than inhabit and improve shared space. We see this constantly. New protocols, platforms, forks. Few links, no bridges. We need to talk about this, as it’s not personal, it’s structural. But people get very personal when you point this out, that’s the #stupidindividualism talking. Instead of building relationships and cooperation, they build sandcastles and expect others to admire them from afar. Meanwhile, the world burns, and tech could be helping, but mostly it isn’t.

In Summary: Open industrial standards are the foundations of anything that actually works at scale. The #geekproblem is a block when it pretends these don’t matter. Sandcastles are nice, but you can’t build a future on them. Let’s engage, not isolate. Link, not fork. Share, not hoard.
That’s the path to a real #openweb, that resists the #deathcult and has a shot at making lasting change.

I’ve been fighting this for 20 years. I wrote this in 2005, and it still holds:

“It’s going slow but we are getting there… One of the main problems seems to be a dysfunctional idea of division of labour – ie. Everyone seems to think I should do everything – as I am pretty useless at many things it’s no wonder it is going so slow… If you wanna see something miraculous happen you gotta wave your arms around a bit and mutter some arcane words… Go on you can do something… Just look at the blog page to see what.”

Bringing #indymediaback: A Gentle Revival of Radical Media

The old flower beds of #Indymedia lie fallow, not dead. The seeds are still there, beneath layers of neglect, factionalism, and the noise of 20 years of failed “alternatives.” What we need now is not revolution or reinvention, but revival. A slow, careful re-rooting in the fertile ground of experience.

We don’t need to tear it down or rebuild from scratch. Almost all of what worked between 2000–2008 still works today, at least 90% of the original social structure is sound. Let’s focus instead on the missing 10%, the gaps that were never resolved. That’s where the real energy and creativity are needed. That’s where trust, experimentation, and diversity of tactics should guide us.

Change with Care: Soft Hands, Open Eyes – In today’s tech-social landscape, even the slightest structural changes can lead to rips and tears. And once those start, the momentum of destruction escalates. We’ve seen this over and over again: dogmatic reinvention, ego-driven platforms, over-complex redesigns, and every time, we’re left with more fragmentation and less power. Instead, we propose a path of slow change. Work with what already functions. Use the existing structure as a trellis to support new growth.

Let’s be clear:

#4opens is not dogma — it’s the distilled learning of 30 years of open-source and open-process practice.

#PGA Hallmarks are not just ideals — they’re the living legacy of thousands of grassroots organisers across decades and continents.

#Indymedia isn’t a romantic memory — it’s the real-world, working outcome of diverse radical media groups building something that worked.

Indymedia only fell when it forgot the principles it was built on. When the foundations faded, it couldn’t flex under pressure, from internal disagreements or external attack. Let’s not make that mistake again.

Old Tools, New Wisdom – We don’t need saviours with shiny ideas. We need comrades with shovels. We need “elders” who are kind and sharp, who know when to step forward and when to stay quiet. Let’s embrace our role in this: gently holding the centre path, not controlling it. When someone passionate comes forward with a “better” idea, let’s respond with:

“How does that work with the #4opens?”

“Does it move us toward the PGA hallmarks?”

If it does, let’s try it. If not, let’s compost it and try again. That’s the rhythm of real change.

Expect Mess. Build Anyway – Let’s not sugar-coat it. We live in a world collapsing under its own contradictions. #Brexit, #ClimateChaos, the digital enclosure of the commons, these aren’t trends, they’re symptoms of systemic failure. And into that storm, every grassroots effort will be met with confusion, conflict, and co-option.

Expect:

People driven by petty grudges and personal agendas.

NGOs smothering action with managerialism.

#Stupidindividualism hijacking community energy.

Waves of right-wing actors using open platforms better than the left.

The approach: Focus and fertility – The Open Media Network (#OMN) exists to nourish, not replace. It’s a shovel to compost the piles of #techshit and #NGO mess. It’s a network for linking what already works and rediscovering the strength of shared infrastructure.

This is what makes #IndymediaBack different from other “radical” tech revivals?

It’s built on lived practice, not theory.

It’s structured for diversity, not conformity.

It’s based on human trust, not techno-fetishism.

It’s deeply political — anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, rooted in care and collaboration.

Yes, this is slow work, there will be times when things get ugly, when howling mobs throw shit, metaphorically and otherwise. Our job is to stay calm, stay focused, and keep the compost warm. Reviving Indymedia is not about nostalgia. It’s about learning from what worked, and building with care on that foundation. Let’s dig in. Let’s grow something together.

4Opens

The roadblocks to change: #Stupidindividualism and the #Deathcult that breeds it

If you’ve ever tried to build something radical, collective, and actually useful, you’ve run into these forces. They’re not just annoying. They’re dangerous, structural, and they always show up. This post is about naming those, calling them what they are, and understanding how they’re entangled in the wider problem:

A culture that valorizes individualism, feeds on careerism, and bows to the false “common sense” of the neoliberal #deathcult.

The #NGO agenda: Careerism in activist clothing. Too many grassroots projects are co-opted by well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) NGOs and their functionaries, who come waving grant forms and talking about partnerships. But really, they’re selling a diluted, bureaucratic version of change that fits inside capitalist institutions, with jobs and funding flows to protect.

At best, they water down radicalism into “deliverables.” At worst, they actively trample grassroots horizontality to build careers. They normalize the #dotcons. They manage, rather than transform. This isn’t conspiracy. It’s structure. And we need to build outside this model.

Petty politics and personal grudges: Micro-level sabotage. Let’s be honest, some people would burn the future to win a petty feud. This is the everyday rot of #stupidindividualism, where narrow self-preservation and shallow ego become more important than collective progress.

Projects like #indymediaback, which depend on shared vision and mutual respect, break down when people refuse to grow beyond grudges. These behaviours reflect deeper cultural damage, we’ve been trained to see each other as threats, not collaborators. We can’t build anything real if we don’t actively mediate this. That means talking it through, holding space, calling it in, before it derails the work.

The liberal trap: Dogma masquerading as “common sense”. I’ll say something unfashionable, I have respect for old-school liberalism. It gave us social safety nets, education, some rights, a lot of good stuff came out of liberal traditions. But today’s dogmatic liberals, clinging to broken institutions and smearing “common sense” over radical action, are a drain on movement energy. Their default is always compromise, always moderation, even when the world is on fire. We’re stuck negotiating with people who believe the future is a reformed version of the past. It isn’t. We need to move forward, not beg to stay where we are.

The #geekproblem: Control, complexity, and disconnection. We’ve talked about this before, and it keeps coming up. The #geekproblem is when technologists build tools for control rather than empowerment, for complexity rather than access, for themselves rather than people. Often dressed in “neutral” language or “perfect systems,” these tools lock out users, deny social context, and kill collaboration with arrogant assumptions. The fix? Build for people, not machines. Use the #4opens. Work from #DIY practice, not just theory. Centre community. Make it work for the bottom, not the top.

The path we need is compost, this isn’t about perfection. We’ve all played roles in the mess. The key is naming it, owning it, and moving differently. Tools like #OMN, #indymediaback, and #OGB are not shiny new things. They’re grounded in lived practice, built to solve real problems. They don’t pretend to be magic fixes. But they are shovels, to compost the current mess, and grow something better.

We don’t need another app, another platform, another paper. We need to build trust-based networks, support each other, and get our hands dirty together. A humanistic, future is still possible, if we stop feeding the #deathcult and start feeding the soil.

Add yours: What Blocks the progressive path? We need to name these issues clearly, not to shame individuals, but to make them visible as systemic patterns we all get caught in. So tell me: what else is holding us back? What sabotages collective projects from within? Let’s document the patterns so we can start composting them.

#grassroots #DIY #openweb #4opens #nothingnew #postcapitalism #stupidindividualism #culturewars #commoning