I think one of the hard things about fedi, culturally, is that a whole lot (most??) of us are here because we are refusers of norms.
-
I don't disagree on principle. But I do think that it's worth remembering that what you call "purity testing" is sometimes the result of hypervigilance.
I also think the language "purity test" is...not the best. It belittles their position and their reaction in ways that scream "privileged" to me, because the more marginalized you are the less wiggle room you've got for "live and let live" attitudes.
-
Erin Kissanereplied to Stéphanie Pageau last edited by
@stephanie Yes, absolutely. I’ve spent a lot of time since 2020 with public health folks who do things like HIV prevention and vaccine hesitancy comms work and they’re all quite clear that purism and condemnation are wildly unhelpful ways of moving more people toward more safety. It was eye-opening! I know that a lot of people are just venting their (very understandable) rage but it’s such a counterproductive mode.
-
@kissane I think there are a couple of things...
Firstly, purity tests are an aspect of fascism, they're all about the individual subsuming and sacrificing themselves to an ideology or belief (usually that of the believer so it's making the other person subordinate and using the ideology as the lever to do so). It's not a coincidence that people who are judging others on these purist standards also see themselves as martyrs (and greatly underappreciated for their greatness). None of this is reasonable nor does it leave room for people to be human and imperfect. (We're all human and imperfect, even the people who believe themselves above all this.)
-
@feelnotes @kissane competition mindset vs consensus maybe
-
@emjonaitis For sure! I am thinking a lot about ways of getting into the needs of a bunch of cross-cutting groups, like people who really want to connect more but feel lonely and ignored + people in groups that are likely to be targeted (Black women, most of all) + “big” accounts whose work enriches the network but whose own experiences of it are often so alienating. This is one of 2-3 things I’d like to work on next, tbh, but I’m a little crispy so I’m taking a wee moment first. 🫠
-
@johnzajac I’m inclined to give people a whole lot of leeway on health stuff, but there’s a still point past which it’s still bad and counterproductive behavior.
Most of what I see here (and most of what I mentioned) is people exercising social discipline because someone else drove a car, linked to youtube, posted on another network, expressed excitement about voting, or used an iphone. As someone who grew up in fundamentalist purity culture, I think that stuff is classic purity culture.
-
@johnzajac (And as someone on the way vulnerable and very isolated end with covid, I can understand and even sympathize with even fairly terrible behavior while also believing it’s doing the opposite of helping.)
-
@kissane yeah well it's pretty hard not to be a slave to the system as long as you want a car or a phone.
-
@danaloi I just had a whole I Lived in Berkeley in 2002 heart attack there
-
@fifilamoura @kissane no doubt there are many things going on. but i think contemporary culture has brought out aspects of activism that are hyper-individualistic rather than community-focused - you see people performing these self-improvement projects like changing their diets, altering their vocabularies, and displaying only the correct opinions on social media, using an abstinence-based approach to becoming a Good Person. but with purity comes contempt for the people who fail those standards.
-
@fifilamoura @kissane what these people don't realize is that if the majority of humans fail your minimum standards of being a Good Person, you end up hating the human race - and your activism is no longer rooted in compassion, but contempt for the impure.
you can't claim to care about humanity while despising almost all of it. there has to be room for forgiveness of human failure.
-
@kissane I tried to explain to someone on Bluesky why someone on Mastodon would say, "I refuse to watch a YouTube video".
-
@kissane that resonates. I had multiple people here tell me to kill myself for having a slightly different opinion.
Eventually I found out it is best to stay silent, or block, instead of grappling with issues publicly.
I guess a significant portion of humans are just jerks, and even if you can learn something from them to improve yourself, it's not worth the psychological damage.
After introducing some very serious filtering habits, I feel exposed to mostly awesome people I even share with.