🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)Jan 11, 2025

There's a type of reply-guy that crawls out of the woodwork when I post anything that might inspire others to take action, and they're deceptively insidious.

Regardless of the topic, they sound like this:

Alice: I don't own a gun because they're for killing and I'm not a fan of killing.
Bob: Then only the bad guys will have guns.

Alice: I deleted my Facebook account.
Bob: If the good people leave then the bad guys win.

Alice: I'm openly queer so others know they're not alone.
Bob: You'll make yourself a target.

In every instance, they defend the shitty state of things by discouraging action and change. It's a reply that is designed to support the default, the current power structure. It's a type of reply meant to de-fang movements.

I've posted about this before, but apparently it bears repeating. Fighting for something takes energy. Change takes sustained energy and momentum. These types of interactions sap energy. They're not posting anything openly disagreeable, they're just dropping little doubt caltrops, little concern anchors—making it harder to keep fighting, harder to gain momentum.

If you're about to jump into a thread and concern troll, don't. I'm fucking sick of it. The rest of us don't have the time or energy to drag your dead weight along.

#ReplyGuys #Concern #Trolling #Change

Show threadBadri
@alice I get that too (for other things, like avoiding plastic or using federated/XMPP messengers) and I'm not sure how exactly to respond. I suppose there's a sense in "but that's what everyone does" and "what difference is one person going to make?" if you look only at the immediate numbers. But the point of change is that someone has to start somewhere!

And if all the 'Bob's said "okay let's do this" instead I'm pretty sure that'd make a difference already! Maybe that's part of what the picking-up of momentum of a social movement is: an awakening of 'Bob's? 👀
Jan 11, 2025 at 12:28pmWeb
Show threadLi ~ Crystal SystemJan 12, 2025
@badri @alice gods my dad used to do this; we’d replace all our plastic bags with paper ones and he’d be like “our county is to small to make a difference why do this!” Aaaa
Show threadBadriJan 15, 2025
@Li @alice exactly! And I'm like "think of all the millions of people using the same logic and the difference they *could* have made instead" 😱
Show threadLi ~ Crystal SystemJan 15, 2025
@badri @alice to be clear; he’s a person who’s done and said many very very bad things, like I want to make that clear, honestly can I just not call him “dad” its giving too much credit/half-srs