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

@alice I was reading something about how the "great firewall of China" operates the other day. They don't block criticism of the government, they block anything that starts to mobilise people to action or cause any sort of community sentiment. The article closed with a question of the was this sort of censorship in the west that we don't know about.

I am pondering if this sort of reply guy thing is acting in a similar way to Chinese censorship. That is, squashing community movement before it starts. I also wonder if this is an organised squashing or purely self inflicted by society by accident (but still being leveraged by those with power for sure).