#I wish I had a real solution to this problem but man. social media doomerism is a plague and it doesn't bode well for the future

[lurantls]

This tweet that somehow has tens of thousands of notes sums up everything wrong with a huge chunk of the leftist rhetoric that gets spread on twitter and tumblr.

Blatant misinformation (US politicians overwhelmingly did not respond to the protests with significant policy changes, police killed the highest number of people on record in the US last year and police departments across the country still get as much funding as ever)

Giving people who feel like we're collectively doomed a free pass by literally saying "there's nothing you can do except let other people take direct action." (lol)

I've been seeing this stuff more and more frequently online as time goes on and it's so endlessly frustrating. Yes, enacting meaningful positive change is a constant uphill battle, especially in a country with an extremely flawed representative system where mega-corporations and the ultra-wealthy have absurd influence over policy. (And of course contrary to this dumb tweet there HAVE been positive policy changes in other areas over the past 4 years, but a lot of people just aren't paying attention to the victories because their social media algorithms overwhelmingly feed them news of the worst things that are happening because that's what gets the most engagement, similarly to how 24/7 news cycles are constantly reporting about violent crime.)

Of course things aren't as simple as "just vote!" and you need a lot of people working collectively to organize movements that put real sustained pressure on the system (a lot of which is behind-the-scenes and goes unacknowledged by the general public). And it takes a lot of people and serious, concerted efforts to get left-wing policy makers elected. But it's really, really bad that a significant number of young people have been convinced that we're completely doomed, that things can't get any worse, that elections are meaningless and don't affect anything, and that all you can do is hope someone else will blow up a building and maybe that'll somehow inspire politicians to collectively be nicer to us. That isn't reality and it DEFINITELY isn't a basis for an effective leftist movement.