🏳️🌈 hi there, i’m blake! i’m a silly gay bear 🌀
i’m encouraging people to find an alternative to this boycott, because it will not be effective, and it will take away energy and oxygen from other forms of activism which are much more effective. boycotts and petitions almost universally achieve nothing, and they discourage people from getting involved with real activism.
firstly, thank you so much for the thoughtful message. reading insightful comments like yours, where it’s clear that you’re genuinely trying your best to make the world a better place, and you actually think about what i wrote, makes all of the hate i get totally worthwhile.
in my opinion, it’s more the unity of the working class, that’s what scares them - when we work together, and when we’re organized.
that’s the biggest flaw with petitions and boycotts, they are all focused on individual action. You don’t get together and organize a picket line, you don’t get to meet like-minded people, you don’t learn about how capitalism affects anyone other than yourself.
i’ve been involved in activism efforts for a long time now and if we could get just 5% of people who signed a petition to instead get involved with a local activist group, we would have won this fight by now.
i’m a union officer and rep, and i’m engaged with activism efforts in my area. sometimes i get bored at work and comment on lemmy.
it was easier for you to lash out at me than it was for you to actually seriously engage with what i wrote - that kind of reaction serves the ruling class, and sows division between the working class.
i wouldn’t say they’re always performative, because there’s always nuance. but i would say that they’re probably #2 on my list of pointless bullshit that almost never actually achieves anything, right after petitions.
yes, it does literally nothing. even if nobody shopped at target ever again it would change absolutely nothing. they’d go into administration, get bought by some other corporation, and possibly rebrand. wealthy people would likely profit from short selling the stock.
target isn’t the problem. the problem is the system. you can’t change the system by boycotting some random business. i am begging you to do literally any other form of activism. because this aint it.
luigi, now there’s a guy with bolder ideas.
i hate trump probably as much or more than you do. please re-read my comment as i actually wrote it, because i meant what i wrote. i did not mean what you imagined i might be secretly thinking or whatever. please don’t jump to conclusions :(
do you genuinely think that i’m wrong? do you truly believe in your heart that a 40 day boycott of a single big box store will help people?
we’re literally watching the united states become a fascist dictatorship and you believe that this is an appropriate response?
people are suffering and dying because of us, and we’re congratulating ourselves for buying stuff on amazon instead of target for 40 days? seriously?
i don’t need a proofreader. i need people to wake up and actually do something, not waste everyone’s time and energy with performative bullshit that achieves nothing other than making us feel like we’re not doing nothing.
boycotts dont work, guys. keep trying, though! maybe try something a bit more proactive?
just an idea, maybe you could try recording a video of minecraft gameplay where a 1:1 scale recreation of the white house is destroyed in a fire?
edit: please read my other comment replies before replying, thanks!
i can tell you why - because it’s easy. this is slacktivism. it changes nothing about policy. it exists exclusively to make people feel better about capitulating and doing nothing to prevent their country from becoming a fascist dictatorship
don’t get me wrong, i would have voted harris. (im not american) but she wouldn’t have been good. she wouldn’t have even been ok. but she was better than trump.
she still would have supported genocide in gaza, and her term would have pushed people further towards fascism. there was really no real choice in that election, sadly. the usa was already too firmly controlled by the ruling class.
i’m not an expert by any means, but from what i understand, most symmetric key and hashing cryptography will probably be fine, but asymmetric-key cryptography will be where the problems are. lots of stuff uses asymmetric-key cryptography, like https for example.
do you mute them or something? i don’t think i could focus on reading anything with that shit blaring in the background!
microsoft rn:
✋ AI
👉 quantum
can’t wait to have to explain the difference between asymmetric-key and symmetric-key cryptography to my friends!
I can deal with ad when watching TV or YouTube.
i can’t! i really hate ads, they’re so loud and obnoxious, they’re like jump scares every time they come on! ugh! this car would be like my idea of a nightmare!
I think their comment was tongue in cheek :) like they’re saying you need to pay for server maintenance
It’s also gotta be one of the worst sentences I’ve ever read, yikes. Maybe get an editor to look it over.
here’s a question - if you had a friend who was making a mistake, would you try to encourage them to reconsider?
if you think I would poke fun at you, you have absolutely the wrong idea about my motivations. i don’t want you to fail, i want you to succeed. i just know that this boycott won’t achieve anything, and all of the time and energy put into it will be completely wasted.
i want people to take all of that time and energy and put it towards something that will actually achieve something meaningful. i want people to join a union and find a local activist group, and start actually making connections, building solidarity, and taking collective action that actually will accomplish something!