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. And which norms and which levels of refusal differ.

So even if you’re at the 80th to 99th percentile of resistance to corporate social media OR mainstream party politics OR mainstream journalism OR cars OR the normalization of repeat covid infections, there will always be people popping up to tell you that by not being completely pure, you’re killing everyone.

And even if you’re SUPER PURE along one vector, you’re always going to miss some other one someone feels very motivated to discipline you about.

And this must be okay for some people! But I try very hard to live in a state of at least partial uncertainty, because the alternative is a real vulnerability to Going Bad without realizing it. The downside of that stance is that shit just doesn’t roll off. This is true for a lot of us, I think—maybe artists most of all, bc art requires sensitivity.

I don’t have a solution for this, and it feels obvious when I write it out. But it seems worth grappling with across as well as within our various communities. 🪴
@kissane I just want to say that I think you're doing great, I admire you a lot, and the person I saw who was engaging in all that finger-wagging at you seemed to be clearly working out his life frustrations in entirely the wrong direction. I think you're wonderful and I'm sorry you're taking such undeserved heat when you're clearly doing your very best, for yourself and for everyone 🫶

@elana Augh ❤️❤️❤️

I’m truly okay, my skin thickens back up fast! But I’m such a network nerd that whenever I see problems I start thinking about them in network-wide terms.

@kissane @elana
Without being trite, once you’ve seen everything is connected, purity shows up as brittle, binaries look trivial.