A Boring Dystopia

Very, very true. And I mean honestly, the fact we no longer have third spaces and our communities have moved online have given an insane boost to the most extreme voices. Groups based on location and hobbies might lean to one side, but there's going to be moderating voices

But in a right wing echo chamber, you just have to listen to people attacking others. The left is plenty welcoming, but there's these people who are just sitting there to attack any perceived bigotry or ideology - like once I got called out for using the wrong pronouns in a new voice chat because I had the wrong name... And it was just this one drunk girl and we just moved on and someone else privately apologized for her, but that injustice just feels terrible

It's not that left spaces aren't welcoming, it's just that it takes one person to make you feel constantly on edge and sour you on anything like it

And it's not like the right doesn't do the same - they ban people left and right for perceived purity tests and label you a far left instigator, but pound for pound they need less people because they're more organized than we are

They have leaders at every level and every checkpoint from general dissatisfaction to rabid Fascism to feed you the next level of hate you need to repeat

We have liberals who hate the left more than they hate fascism and constant infighting between what few communities we do have

We really need to set a set of next step goal posts, like universal healthcare, worker protections, and forcing corporations in line

We need to be able to talk to tankies and just avoid geopolitics, we need vegans to be able to talk about reducing meat consumption instead of all or nothing, we even need to be able to talk to bigots and focus on why they actually agree with our next step goalposts once they understand them

We need to provide a ramp to leftism, even if we have to hold our noses at some of it. We can still have our safe spaces and leftist spaces, but we need to do outreach and give people stepping stones and middle grounds so people can slowly learn, where we're lazer focused on key subjects and let the rest slide

We also need places where we can organize around issues we all agree on so we can organize and make actual progress, where we don't talk about end goals, ideals, and values - just on the next step

The truth is, most everyone wants a lot of the same things, and they'd support it if they understood it - we need to be able to teach them issue by issue what we want to do, no matter what baggage they haven't yet overcome.