this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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Hmm, I wonder if there’s more to the story than a headline. But considering that your account is mostly just bad faith trolling, I somehow doubt you actually read any of the articles you comment on.
Of course I read it. My comment is about the self-centered narcissistic navel-gazing of the modern left which is leaving mass victims of poverty out in the cold. Of which this is an example.
The hate crime issue is of course important, the poor victim of course has been massively wronged. The issue (and the purpose of this report) is with the complaint that this 'deserved' some front page treatment in way other deaths (by the thousands) don't.
There's only one front page to a newspaper and not everyone can be on it, so every claim that an issue should get more attention is a claim that some competing issue should get less.
Presumably, no one's suggesting the local papers all ran with big blank spaces where the story could have gone. They reported something else instead. So this is a claim that that something else should be kicked out and replaced with this.
In reality, that something else was probably some fucking Costco advert, but the thing it should have been replaced with is the continued mass starvation of thousands, or the genocide, or the hundreds dying homeless. There are bigger problems.
Go make the posts about starvation that you want to see instead of being a fucking weirdo on a thread about a murdered trans girl. Calling it nArCiSsIsTiC nAvEl GaZiNg to even acknowledge her murder is straight up transphobia. Fix your fucking heart.
Hmm, what did you think of this paragraph?
You didn’t read the article at all, did you? Do you post “what about starving kids” on every sad news story you see, or are you just here to shit on the idea that trans people’s suffering might ever deserve attention?
Are you posting any articles about genocide or homelessness? Because it looks like you’ve mostly been here to spot stupid COVID conspiracy shit.
And whilst I'm venting... This^
I swear this is a recent phenomena too, people so completely unable to get their heads round the concept of disagreement that they have to find convoluted reasons why.
It's like "it's surely impossible for this guy to have the same information I have and yet have come to different conclusions"
Baffling.
Can you point to any previous comment of yours that brought this point up when the person who died wasn't trans? Have you ever said this in response to the death of a straight cisgender person? If so, please provide a link.
Something tells me you only feel this way when it involves the death of a member of vilified minority group.
So, can you do it? Can you provide even one example of yourself making a comment like this in the case of a straight cisgender person?
I joined a few days ago. I've posted about a number of issues, all on a similar vein (the loss of effective action through a reversion to performative activism).
It pretty much the only topic I'm interested in posting on.
As such, I'm unlikely (even given time) to have said this about a cisgender person because cisgender activism is not one of the issues affected by such changes.
I don't go around balancing my comments by identity. I don't think "oh, my last comment criticised a woman, I'd best make sure I criticise a man next". That is exactly the type of performative activism I'm opposing here. Waste of time. Doesn't actually help anyone who's seriously suffering.
If we want to help prevent another such particular poor victim we'd be better off adding our voices to the already large campaign against gun violence in general.
Know what else causes a loss of effective action and leads to a reversion to performative activism?
Making good points badly, to such a degree that your (presumably personally and deeply held beliefs) come across as the inverse of your intention.
Because neither the erosion of effective action nor the rise of performative activism, occurs in a vacuum.
In fact, both play into the hands of those who benefit from said erosions, and who have guided the communual discourse in such a way that even the very act of discussion in regards to the topics most important to the themes at hand, is apt to fracture into a mixture of ineffective action, which itself can only come across as "performative activism" to those approaching the very same problems, from a different angle.
Like, are you even aware of how poignant your gun violence example is, how your approach can easily be misconstrued as the same performative activism (an angry, contrarian, lone wolf call to sanity online is practically a trope at this point)?
They're winning, because nuance cannot be shouted, it must be demonstrated.
You make a good point. But all of what we're doing here is performative. I'm not pushing back on these issues as an act of activism. That would be crazy, I'm immediately drowned out in every topic by hordes of self-congratulating back patters, giving a lovely comfortable feeling of puritanical martyrdom to anyone toeing the line. I can't compete with that.
You're right. I am the angry, contrarian, lone wolf trope. And I'm as much the product of the process you've highlighted as I am perpetrator of it.
This is venting. Activism takes place in the real world.
Where I don't agree is that this in any way leads to performative activism. That I lay squarely at the door of social media algorithms creating polarisation. I don't think anything we do here can be but a drop in the ocean compared to that.
Okay, contributing is good but are you going to comment this on any post relating to an issue you don't care about?
It seems some (most) are having trouble understanding the concept of performative activism.
It's easy to be pro-trans. It's easy to shout about anti-vaxxers. It's easy to hold a brunch party and complain about Trump.
These are all examples of performative activism because they cost the activist nothing and gain plenty in social kudos. They are actions aimed at enriching the activist (socially) not the group the activism is claiming to target. The equivalent of wearing a badge or waiving a flag.
This article (and the sycophantic Fauci-worship I previously commented on) are examples of performative activism. Easy wins to gain social brownie points. The article's author/editor is capitalising on the easy-win of sympathising with a nice middle-class, western, developed-world minority group, whose raising out of oppression would not threaten the dominant order one iota. We would live in exactly the same economic structures if the entire government were composed of trans and queer people as we do now when it's composed almost entire of white rich men. It's a totally safe, no risk way of showing how very much you care about people, and what great a person you are. You don't have to actually do anything - you don't have to change your spending habits, cut down on luxuries, give money to anyone, risk life and limb,...nothing. Zero investment maximum gain.
Calling instead for an increased in coverage of poverty-related deaths might lead to questions about one's own wealth, about one's own purchasing, how much one is doing to help the poor in one's own neighbourhood. Because helping the poor is material. It requires actual material sacrifice.
So no. I won't be commenting this on every issue. I will be commenting this on issues dominated by performative activism.