Roblox cultural victory

Showering only every 2 weeks during summer back when I was living in a peasantoid lodge where getting water and a bath/shower ready is a major pain in the ass.

Been in the same exact position :(

Hope you get to make up for the lost time

Yeah, this is one of the differences between anarchists and communists I doubt we’d ever find agreement on due to the nature of our views. Anarchists reject the notion of power altogether, while Marxists don’t deny that power can entrench itself but attempts to explain why and under what historical and material conditions it can be overcome.

I have strong doubts that the people in charge will just give up power once it comes to that, and sadly most experiments with communism/socialism (in Eurasian at least) lead exactly to that.

To be clear, my intention isn’t to defend the past socialist experiments as seen in my original comment, but using them as examples where people in charge refused to give up power misunderstands theory and history. The countries were never in position to “give up power”, as they didn’t ever reach a point where state became unnecessary, and there are reasons for that.

If you look at a country like post-revolution USSR, the country was agrarian with vast peasant majority. The productive forces were far from developed to properly transition into socialist mode of production and meet everyone’s needs, which is one of the purposes of the centralized state, and this is something that would have taken a really long time given their productive capacity. Lenin and Bolsheviks did try to go for an international revolution angle in hopes they would escape this predicament, but they failed, leaving USSR isolated, forcing it to adopt capitalist markets and then quickly degenerating due to opportunism and the ‘bad actors’ the system inevitably creates over time as leadership changes.

Marxists such as myself would argue that USSR was doomed from the start due to their material conditions at the time unless they could have found success internationally. This is something that Anarchism wouldn’t resolve - decentralization in an undeveloped, isolated and hostile environment would weaken defense, cripple the development of productive forces and very likely would have lead to an accelerated collapse.

Also apologies - I can’t help but write unreadable walls of text.

To touch up on some of your questions you have at the bottom, and be warned that this will be somewhat anti-anarchistic:

After a successful revolution, bourgeoisie fall and people cheer in the streets. What now, do we go full horizontal hierarchy mode and decentralize? The truth of the matter is that post-revolutionary period is incredibly volatile (as seen by the fact that most revolutions happened in cascades) and faces a multitude of immediate issues, such as: 1. The previous ruling class trying to get themselves back into power again via counter-revolution or armed uprisings using their resources and connections, be it foreign or internal. 2. The need to overcome capitalist commodity production and reorganize it into planned production to satisfy human and economic needs (aka socialist mode of production). 3. Defense against foreign capitalist threats who would love to get more land/resources or major political influence via coup. 4. The need to spread the revolution internationally, as a country that doesn’t operate under capitalist mode of production simply cannot survive in a global capitalist world (can elaborate on this if anyone cares, don’t want this wall of text to be too long).

Decentralized horizontal systems are quite detrimental when it comes to solving these immediate issues - it fragments authority, decision making, delays responses to armed insurrections, foreign invasions and production reorganization. You need quick, decisive action during a revolutionary period or collapse follows even before “bad actors” become a problem.

The working class must seize state power - whether through a vanguard party, council republic, or equivalent to suppress the bourgeoisie, defend the revolution, and transition from capitalist commodity production towards planned economies to satisfy needs. Of course, the state must fulfill the immediate goals to no longer become necessary and for the state to wither away in a timely manner - else, and I agree with Anarchists here, the revolution will degenerate (into red bourgeois states) usually with the help of ‘bad actors’, as seen with USSR and China.

Also as a short addendum, comparing societies of today to primitive egalitarian horizontal societies is an error - these societies operated under radically different productive forces, population scales and social complexity, production was localized and individualistic. Today’s production is inherently social, large-scale and global, requiring entirely different forms of coordination and past forms simply cannot be revived or even be compared.

To preface, I’m a Marxist and not an Anarchist, our frameworks differ substantially.

I agree that “but what about bad actors” criticism is quite bad, but for different reasons. They don’t “spawn in” out of nowhere and ruin systems, the opposite is the case - it’s the system that produces them through inequalities, ideology and reward mechanisms. Capitalism rewards antisocial, domineering behavior because competition, capital and power accumulation demands it in order to “be successful”. This is something inherent to the system and its structures, not something you can fix simply by moral policing, so focusing just on the individual is a mistake.

The vertical power structures like the state aren’t there merely for individual power hoarding, but rather it’s a structure of class domination - the bourgeoisie control over proletariat. Enforcement and protection of private property (such as factories/company offices/other means of production), legal systems controlling who gets into power and what they can change, education and media promoting the status quo are but a few examples of this. The state isn’t merely there to preserve itself, it’s there to preserve the capitalist system.

I was germophobic my entire life up until like a year or two ago where I kinda got over it and stopped giving a shit, but I’m still incredibly paranoid about food expiration, even when the best before day hasn’t been reached as is 1-2 days away.

Thanks for sharing! Though, given today’s world and seeing the state of movements that want to change the present state of things (communism, anarchism), I would argue it’s even worse now.

According to this letter, 100 years ago there was theory but no practice - people would sit in their little book clubs and theorize, dreaming about a possible world and all that jazz. Now, if you look at your average anarchist (and communist but to a much lesser extent), there’s neither theory nor practice. Very often, it’s treated as an identity, a mere individualistic lifestyle choice or just a mere aesthetic (I hate solarpunk for this especially) rather than an actual coherent movement that aims to change society.

Without theory, you don’t know who the true enemies are, it’s a recipe for falling into traps and ideology laid by our current system and its narratives (like electorialism) and just in general results in blind, frustrated action that is more than likely to be counterproductive due to police crackdowns. Without practice, the movement places its faith onto future generations to try the plan in the real world, and put themselves at a severe risk of fizzling out. Without both, the movement is a farce.

Not an anarchist but a revolutionary Marxist, and I don’t really have any Anarchist literature to share on this topic but here’s how I understand it:

Essentially, both Anarchism and Communism operate within “production for use”, which sees things being manufactured for use and to satisfy people’s needs rather than for profit as commodities to be sold on a market, and so this necessitates economic planning - after all, how else would the community know what and how many goods they need to produce/trade for?

Anarchist economic planning is done communally via local assemblies with them also communicating their productive capacities (like what they can make and the manpower) and needs they cannot fulfill locally with other communes, creating a regional federated network of sorts. These federations would then coordinate with other federations globally which is where all the transportation networks and production chains requiring continental and planetary integration get handled.

How I imagine this would play out in reality is essentially an order based system, where factories making certain component would make X amount of goods, ship them over to their next step of assembly where they would be further developed or turned into a complex finished product and distributed to the corresponding communities.

And to address some of the comments I see here - the whole idea of “everyone producing as a hobby” or “everyone does work only when they feel like it” is absolute bs and is a surefire way to peoples needs not being met. If you’ve been told that you need to produce something like 100 tools or 100kg of grain as your quota to meet the needs, then it doesn’t matter if you feel like it or not - you gotta produce it, especially if its an essential good like food. Do not be detached from reality voluntarist utopian, read economic books like Marx or Kropotkin and whoever else Anarchists have - ground your claims in coherent doctrine.

If you’re torrenting and got some extra hard drive space, a good practice is to copy paste the game into another location and play for there. That way, you can modify or have the game update all you want without stopping seeding (as you need all original, unmodified files to seed), and you also have a backup in case something goes really wrong.

50/50, you either guess it right or you dont

In a number-go-up kind of sense, yeah - it’s inherently gamification of social media and it is fun for some of our brains. However, I also think that karma or any other kind of “engagement accumulation” turns social media from a place of discussion into a competition for attention, where you’re more incentivized to post solely for upvotes. Only a small minority takes posting seriously like this I admit it, but it does make the experience worse for everyone.

That’s not to say the mindset doesn’t exist without karma, only that it gets amplified.

That’s pretty normal, we all do stupid shit as kids because of our environments/friend circles or just general growing pains.

Recognizing that what you’ve done is actually horrible is the most important step in terms of maturing and growing up, though of course it’s not the full battle. After all, how would someone change for the better if they don’t have such realization?

All in all you’re likely not a bad person, just someone who needs to/is in the process of maturing.

Not an anarchist, but I think this is an excellent write-up, good job.

Though, I could argue that points 2, 3 and 4 aren’t necessarily exclusive to ML’s but rather the online ideology cultures as a whole - Anarchists, Communists, Liberals, Conservatives or Nazis included. There’s always going to be terminally online people who make political ideologies as their personality and attacks upon them being taken as personal attacks, and this doesn’t apply to ideologies exclusively but rather to hobbies like video games as well. However, both from what I’ve seen and experienced, it is just a phase that does blow over - after a while the enthusiasm subsides, other interests start taking priority, and while the ideas do stay, they do become less prominent and room opens for a more nuanced discussion.

Speaking of YouTube channels, I like Josh Strife Hayes when it comes to talking about toxic masculinity, bad role models, becoming a more positive and better person - things like that, though he mostly does this on streams, clip channel of which is Josh Strife Says.

I like this video in particular, but there are other clips that speak about similar topics.

Send the kids to the mines, they’ll love it

Been there, all depressed because of current state of the world, and learning that the “solutions” or “ways out” by the media are false or just delaying the inevitable/distractions, and judging from your comments you might be feeling the same thing.

However, if you do that, not only would your daughter suffer but the world would also lose someone truly radical in today’s society, someone who would truly sees past the ideology and propaganda we’re subjected to. If everyone like that were to off themselves or start heavily abusing substances as a tool of escapism, the world would never change and people with a future ahead of them like your daughter would be doomed for certain.

It’s important to cling onto hope - a better world is possible and you can be a part of building it, both individually but more importantly, collectively. Drop subtle hints in your conversations about what you think is wrong nowadays, who the real enemies you see are, plant the seeds in your colleagues and hope they’ll come to the same conclusions by themselves. If you see any resistance organizations aligned with your views politically, why not join them - after all, you’re not alone. Point is - there is still hope for change.

Though if it works and it does make you feel better, you can also start focusing on positive/good news, even though I’m skeptical it would work, pandora’s box and all. Maybe even seek counseling or therapy if you have access to it.

Coal mining, I fucking love mining coal

Not an anarchist, don’t agree with its theory but I’m glad to see posts like these actually encouraging people to read.

I’m on Linux, using Bottles to run pirated games. It adds a little bit of sandboxing, compatdata is usually a weird environment for malware to effectively work in (unless the malware is written specifically for it), if the game is really sketchy then I’d just disable network access for bottles flatpak too just to make sure.

All in all, I do sometimes have a little bit of paranoia and look through processes to see if there’s anything running and periodically go through some folders to see if there’s anything weird or unusual there, I’d still consider my machine to be safe.

As for the last question, PDF’s are an attack vector and should be used with caution. As for other file types, it depends on the software you use to run them - if it’s something pretty barebones that just plays it then it’s usually fine, but if its something more complex and reads some custom data embeded into those files, then it can be a vulnerability. Not a security expert though, but it’s the gist I got from looking at some historical vulnerabilities.