Wrong, they will just go back to getting angry on Twitter on their phones. They have no revolution capabilities. Everytime I see this signature thing, it feels like slacktivism. It does not help organise, its just a “civilised” way of screaming at ruling class.
This holds true as long as people are relatively comfortable. As material conditions continue to erode, people are start getting pissed and we’ll see a lot more people on the streets.
There needs to be way more erosion of that imperialist loot privilege in order for that to happen. Paycheck bill struggle is not enough, people need to feel the pitch black hollowness of ruling class, and from that anger they need to not become INGFASH, and actually become revolutionaries. Considering that they are surrounded all these decades with anti-communist rhetoric, that is a lot of conditions for things to go the correct way.
It’s definitely going to be a process, but at this point I don’t even care what happens in the west to be honest. It’s isolating itself from the rest of the world, and rapidly losing its ability to project power and dominate countries. The rest of humanity will move on, and if people in western countries want to live the way they do then power to them.
You know, I often have had this thought. A little unhinged if you will, but you could answer it. There is something about Russian participation in Western tech development, and a lot of it in places like Western internet tech and gaming culture, like gaming mods, pirated software, a lot of preservation of old games, and stuff. Westerners have appreciated it. I cannot make sense of it in words, but people have cross participated so much between USA/Europe countries and Russia over the internet during the 2000s until 2016 or so.
Why are we here, and how did this openness of digital culture fall apart? Or am I just being too nostalgic softie and insensitive? It just feels so weird, and I have always wondered if old enough Russian culture/society folks have had this kind of outlook as I do.
Have you participated long term digitally into tech forum space and old style games/mods communities in this manner to have thoughts about this? The internet historian grandpa in me makes me over think and deepdive into thinking these things a lot.
I’ve wondered about this before as well. I recall that people in Russia really looked up to the west after USSR collapsed, and everybody was very hopeful thinking that Russia would be integrated into the western system and life would improve. Most people didn’t really understand what capitalism was, and didn’t expect the west to act in a predatory way towards Russia.
I haven’t participated much in the old games/mods communities myself, but I’ve done a bunch of open source work and connected with a lot of people across the world that way.
The promise of the internet was that it allowed people all across the world to connect with each other and build relationships. I suspect that ultimately this didn’t translate into high enough level of connections in general public to make a difference. Niche groups of people who established relationships and understanding, but majority of the people remained insular within their cultures.
That is quite coherent and helps make sense of what has been in my head. There was that aspiration of western assimilation being productive, but western assimilation has never been productive, only exploitative. I think people assumed this because the conditions were already chaotic and the lack of global communication media disallowed masses from learning about what they were trying to do with Africa (slavery), or in the past with India and China.
The other day I was on old-games.ru, looking at the comment sections of some of my favourite old games, and the crowdsourced files and patches. People from everywhere contributed files. It disgusted me to see all this is being treated as collateral damage by west elites, and western citizens are becoming uncritical parrots.
I have viewed since very long, this ecosystem of old internet, FOSS software and digital piracy as some form of digital communism, and have always wanted to preserve and empower it as much as I can. Its a very untalked topic and I do want to see if I can write something about digital communism that has existed silently within the western capitalist framework this world exists in.
Yeah, I feel the same way about this stuff. I see open source and digital piracy as political efforts first and foremost. Digital communism is a good term for that.
Wrong, they will just go back to getting angry on Twitter on their phones. They have no revolution capabilities. Everytime I see this signature thing, it feels like slacktivism. It does not help organise, its just a “civilised” way of screaming at ruling class.
This holds true as long as people are relatively comfortable. As material conditions continue to erode, people are start getting pissed and we’ll see a lot more people on the streets.
There needs to be way more erosion of that imperialist loot privilege in order for that to happen. Paycheck bill struggle is not enough, people need to feel the pitch black hollowness of ruling class, and from that anger they need to not become INGFASH, and actually become revolutionaries. Considering that they are surrounded all these decades with anti-communist rhetoric, that is a lot of conditions for things to go the correct way.
It’s definitely going to be a process, but at this point I don’t even care what happens in the west to be honest. It’s isolating itself from the rest of the world, and rapidly losing its ability to project power and dominate countries. The rest of humanity will move on, and if people in western countries want to live the way they do then power to them.
You know, I often have had this thought. A little unhinged if you will, but you could answer it. There is something about Russian participation in Western tech development, and a lot of it in places like Western internet tech and gaming culture, like gaming mods, pirated software, a lot of preservation of old games, and stuff. Westerners have appreciated it. I cannot make sense of it in words, but people have cross participated so much between USA/Europe countries and Russia over the internet during the 2000s until 2016 or so.
Why are we here, and how did this openness of digital culture fall apart? Or am I just being too nostalgic softie and insensitive? It just feels so weird, and I have always wondered if old enough Russian culture/society folks have had this kind of outlook as I do.
Have you participated long term digitally into tech forum space and old style games/mods communities in this manner to have thoughts about this? The internet historian grandpa in me makes me over think and deepdive into thinking these things a lot.
I’ve wondered about this before as well. I recall that people in Russia really looked up to the west after USSR collapsed, and everybody was very hopeful thinking that Russia would be integrated into the western system and life would improve. Most people didn’t really understand what capitalism was, and didn’t expect the west to act in a predatory way towards Russia.
I haven’t participated much in the old games/mods communities myself, but I’ve done a bunch of open source work and connected with a lot of people across the world that way.
The promise of the internet was that it allowed people all across the world to connect with each other and build relationships. I suspect that ultimately this didn’t translate into high enough level of connections in general public to make a difference. Niche groups of people who established relationships and understanding, but majority of the people remained insular within their cultures.
That is quite coherent and helps make sense of what has been in my head. There was that aspiration of western assimilation being productive, but western assimilation has never been productive, only exploitative. I think people assumed this because the conditions were already chaotic and the lack of global communication media disallowed masses from learning about what they were trying to do with Africa (slavery), or in the past with India and China.
The other day I was on old-games.ru, looking at the comment sections of some of my favourite old games, and the crowdsourced files and patches. People from everywhere contributed files. It disgusted me to see all this is being treated as collateral damage by west elites, and western citizens are becoming uncritical parrots.
I have viewed since very long, this ecosystem of old internet, FOSS software and digital piracy as some form of digital communism, and have always wanted to preserve and empower it as much as I can. Its a very untalked topic and I do want to see if I can write something about digital communism that has existed silently within the western capitalist framework this world exists in.
Yeah, I feel the same way about this stuff. I see open source and digital piracy as political efforts first and foremost. Digital communism is a good term for that.