Ah that hit the spot! I was beginning to miss the good ol’ CTH tankie long reply (even though it’s only been what, 3 days?) and you came through with one just like that.
I guess the question I really wanted to get at was that if people are insinuating that supposedly meme subs like CTH are effective at teaching (the job of the learner sub) while being somewhat less heavy handed (the primary criticism of the learner sub) and able to police more effectively, why even bother with the learner subs? Why not dispense with the learner subs and instead meme and mock your way into teaching communism?
Because in my experience it’s often only effective up to a point. They can disabuse people of anti-communist propaganda and even get them to have an interest in communism or self-declare themselves communists. And this is let me be clear, uh a good thing, unambiguously a good thing. Some people like myself would be the types who would at a certain point begin reading theory but a large number of people there are quite frankly uninterested in that and quite content to continue posting memes and remain somewhat uninvolved and uninterested. Call them whatever you’d like, meme communists, aesthetic driven, whatever.
Also frankly some people are going to be repulsed or off-put by the culture of a place like CTH and memes in general to say nothing of edgy ones. Some people are just not going to be receptive to that. Now a lot of younger people are but you definitely risk alienating people who want that more serious discussion and who want a place where they can mostly get straight answers in a relatively short period of time instead of people memeing and occasionally giving an answer. A lot of how CTH worked I think was osmosis, just stewing in it long enough to pick up enough good bits. Just as capitalist hegemony reinforces itself in a million invisible ways in our lives on TV, outside, in music, video games, etc so too does stewing a sub that is broadly anti-capitalist begin to work on a person in ways that we might call subtle.
I would say CTH could never replace a communism101 sub but that has more to do with it being broadly friendly to everyone from demsocs to anarchists and the mods having nothing resembling a party line or stated ideology. A lot of people over time learned in that sub thanks to effort posting and people kind enough to actually engage with others when they have questions. However a lot of other people probably gave up having their questions answered and have been kind of coerced into silence or conformity without understanding why and that’s not ideal. But that’s just perhaps a trade-off you have to make.
MTC back before the past two months or so certainly was closer to this mythical sub that isn’t strictly a leaning sub but uses things like memes while having plenty of theory-read comrades in the replies to answer questions. Of course it was stricter than CTH and as a self declared “tankie” sub it had certain lines drawn, against blatant imperialist apology, apology for the CIA, etc.
The truth is I don’t think I have a good answer to your question. I think certainly there are benefits to the mixture of content with memes model but also drawbacks. I think a lot of these drawbacks are eliminated if you have a strong moderation vanguard and learned posters willing to regularly reply and help new users and get a kind of turn-over process going over time where those new users once a bit more knowledgeable help even newer users with basic questions and subject matter they’re now familiar with.
Ah that hit the spot! I was beginning to miss the good ol’ CTH tankie long reply (even though it’s only been what, 3 days?) and you came through with one just like that.
I guess the question I really wanted to get at was that if people are insinuating that supposedly meme subs like CTH are effective at teaching (the job of the learner sub) while being somewhat less heavy handed (the primary criticism of the learner sub) and able to police more effectively, why even bother with the learner subs? Why not dispense with the learner subs and instead meme and mock your way into teaching communism?
Because in my experience it’s often only effective up to a point. They can disabuse people of anti-communist propaganda and even get them to have an interest in communism or self-declare themselves communists. And this is let me be clear, uh a good thing, unambiguously a good thing. Some people like myself would be the types who would at a certain point begin reading theory but a large number of people there are quite frankly uninterested in that and quite content to continue posting memes and remain somewhat uninvolved and uninterested. Call them whatever you’d like, meme communists, aesthetic driven, whatever.
Also frankly some people are going to be repulsed or off-put by the culture of a place like CTH and memes in general to say nothing of edgy ones. Some people are just not going to be receptive to that. Now a lot of younger people are but you definitely risk alienating people who want that more serious discussion and who want a place where they can mostly get straight answers in a relatively short period of time instead of people memeing and occasionally giving an answer. A lot of how CTH worked I think was osmosis, just stewing in it long enough to pick up enough good bits. Just as capitalist hegemony reinforces itself in a million invisible ways in our lives on TV, outside, in music, video games, etc so too does stewing a sub that is broadly anti-capitalist begin to work on a person in ways that we might call subtle.
I would say CTH could never replace a communism101 sub but that has more to do with it being broadly friendly to everyone from demsocs to anarchists and the mods having nothing resembling a party line or stated ideology. A lot of people over time learned in that sub thanks to effort posting and people kind enough to actually engage with others when they have questions. However a lot of other people probably gave up having their questions answered and have been kind of coerced into silence or conformity without understanding why and that’s not ideal. But that’s just perhaps a trade-off you have to make.
MTC back before the past two months or so certainly was closer to this mythical sub that isn’t strictly a leaning sub but uses things like memes while having plenty of theory-read comrades in the replies to answer questions. Of course it was stricter than CTH and as a self declared “tankie” sub it had certain lines drawn, against blatant imperialist apology, apology for the CIA, etc.
The truth is I don’t think I have a good answer to your question. I think certainly there are benefits to the mixture of content with memes model but also drawbacks. I think a lot of these drawbacks are eliminated if you have a strong moderation vanguard and learned posters willing to regularly reply and help new users and get a kind of turn-over process going over time where those new users once a bit more knowledgeable help even newer users with basic questions and subject matter they’re now familiar with.