#which is why organizing is so important

[queen-mabs-revenge]

it really is the worst material-conditions ignorance on bald display.

here in ireland you heard this shit from liberals all the time re: the constitutional 8th amendment total abortion ban. "oh well people can travel to england if they need an abortion"

the people who can travel outside of the borders of a legal oppression are those who are able financially, physically, mentally, and social obligations-wise. in ireland that meant that pregnant people at the most dire intersections of capitalist oppression were denied abortion bodily autonomy. if you didn't have the money, couldn't take off work, couldn't leave behind people in your care or organizing and taking a trip was beyond your physical or mental remit, fuck you i guess?

liberals would often come back with a "we can fund charities that can help" rebuttal — thee most liberal of solutions because it does nothing to challenge the oppressive system, and also reinforces paternalistic ideas of agency conferred by their own philanthropic largesse. that thriving is something to be doled out by their organizations instead of something that should be owned and acted on by people themselves.

every time you leave systems of oppression unchallenged and tell people to make their own way to safety, you reify those systems as valid as you're leaving room for them to exist.

and people who benefit in some way from the structures of capitalism and class society that precipitate these violences will always be invested in doing just that. they might want to make sure that they aren't touched by those specific forms of structural violence (and preserving their wealth is a good way to do that), but truly challenging a capitalist system they benefit from will be always be a worse sin to them than its inherent violence.

that's where the liberal impulse to try these narratives of 'well just move — i'll even help!' comes from. they've got to get people to buy into a seemingly well-intentioned narrative in order to legitimize their methods of preserving class society.

people need to recognize this as a ruling class co-optation of genuine struggles for liberation, because as capitalism convulses in chaos around us, this is only going to get used more and more to try and fracture revolutionary solidarity and preserve the blood-soaked scaffolding that allows them to protect their own living standards.

and yes, history shows that they'll turn to fascism when the working class starts rattling that framework before they let it be dismantled from the goodness of their bleeding hearts.

The thing blue state leftists don’t seem to understand about red states is that telling minorities to “just leave” is really insidious. That is exactly what the republicans want. They want to make their state so miserable and dangerous and scary for everyone who isn’t a conservative cisgender heterosexual white Christian that those people leave. Leave behind their family, their homes, their friends, their jobs, their community, the places they’ve lived their entire life. With every person who leaves it is one less gay person teaching their children, one less person protesting outside the capitol, one less blue voter trying to stop the place they call home from sliding into fascism.

Many of us cannot afford to ‘just leave’ and many of us don’t want to because contrary to popular belief, North Carolina isn’t an irredeemable shithole with nothing to offer and no sense of community. People do leave red states for their safety but that does not fix the underlying problem, that doesn’t even make the problem better.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

my manager: everyone on this team must check in to the group chat on microsoft teams by 8:30am every morning, this is a no-fail task

also my manager: /does not show up to the office until 10am, does not provide notice or an explanation for why

also my manager: /is currently ghosting me on our biweekly check-in call, with no notice provided

i've been on this call by myself for 10 minutes

[delightful-69]

Ugh, maybe this time i will get fired for real

[terrorbirb]

I know I complain about this constantly but it frustrates me whenever I need to edit a template to say "the engineer. She....". Instead of "the engineer. He.....". When it's a female engineer. I don't think anyone else has ever changed the pronouns but IDK! I think we should stop using "he/him" pronouns as the default for engineers on official documents!

Our office is rare in that it's 50% women in engineering so idk why we put up with this.

I know this is a small thing but it frustrates me. I'm really not supposed to edit these letters but I can't help myself with this.

[ruvviks]

🙈, 🙊, 📚, 🧳, 🌠, 💔, and 💤, for nathan?

nathan asks!

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL: What’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen? Do they tend to be a bystander or do they intervene?

answered here!

🙊 SPEAK-NO-EVIL: Are they talkative or quiet? Are they the type of person who talks more the more you get to know them?

nathan is pretty quiet and reserved when it comes to regular conversation. he prefers to hang back and listen to others talk, and generally only speaks when spoken to or when something that's brought up prompts him to jump in. however, when it's something work-related, he tends to talk a lot more, since he's good at strategizing and needs to give his input so people will know what his opinion on the matter is

he definitely starts talking more when you get to know him better, slowly but surely feeling more comfortable to bring things up out of the blue rather than wait for others to start a conversation with him instead. though he still tends to be a man of little words; very short and straightforward answers, doesn't like dancing around the point of his sentence. unless he's talking about tech-related stuff, in which case he can talk for hours about whatever code he's been working on

📚 BOOKS: Do they like to read? What kind of books do they like?

nathan isn't a big reader, mostly because he struggles with it and he doesn't have the attention span or the patience to sit through that much text. if he needs to pass the time somehow, he might end up reading some short stories or articles online or in a magazine. he prefers articles about technology or science, and in fiction, naturally so, likes sci-fi, but also thrillers and mystery books!

🧳 LUGGAGE: Do they like to travel? What’s their favorite place to visit?

nathan hates traveling and generally doesn't leave the krimson city area unless he's being forced to (when he was with mobius he'd occasionally have to go to the east coast for business, which he hated, but at least the pay was good). nowadays there's absolutely nothing that can be done to get him to travel anywhere, though he would really love to visit yellowstone national park one day. it's mostly just a daydream scenario more than anything else, though, he doesn't know if he would actually commit to it if given the opportunity

🌠 SHOOTING STAR: If they had one (or three) wishes, what would they wish for?

nathan would wish for financial stability forever (which he sort of gets when ruben gets his job at the research lab because the pay is very good), a chance to get to kill the administrator with his bare hands, and to make him forget about what went down in STEM (but in such a way where he does remember that it happened, but he just doesn't remember all the traumatic events, and he doesn't get curious about it so he won't go digging for it either)

it'd make sense for him to wish that rosie was still alive, and if he only got one wish then he would consider going with that option, but her death also shaped his whole life and he's too scared to find out how different it would've been if she hadn't died; his parents had still hated him, and he wouldn't have had a pleasant childhood either way. and in addition to that, he also doesn't know how his parents would have changed; maybe they would've started hating rosie too at some point, and he really doesn't want to accidentally expose her to any of that. so he wouldn't wish for that at all, just because there's too many uncertainties that would come with it

💔 BROKEN HEART: What would break their heart? What’s the worst thing a significant other or a close friend could do to them?

nathan's heart breaks very easily over the littlest of things, but he knows it's because he's very sensitive especially to stuff like rejection or disagreement. he generally gets over it pretty quickly, so it's never really an issue. if we're talking about irreparable damage, it'd be permanently walking away from him; whether it's done by ruben or any of his friends. he often worries that it'll happen, especially because of his own tendency to just vanish off the face of the earth sometimes because of his episodes, and if people were to walk away from him forever it'd break him

💤 ZZZ: What are their sleeping habits like? Do they snore, move around a lot, etc.?

nathan is a very light sleeper, but he can also easily fall back asleep when woken up by something. whenever he does slip into deeper sleep he tends to have very bad nightmares or gets sleep paralysis due to the longterm effects STEM has had on his psyche, so he prefers to go to sleep in a room with a light on or some music playing so it won't have to get to that point

he sleeps about five to six hours a night on average, which is not a lot and tends to be even less when he’s working on an important project. all of this generally results into him being out of commission during the weekends which he tends to spend in bed for most of the time, albeit wide awake. later on when he gets some proper medication, he starts sleeping a lot more and ends up with an average of nine hours a night, which is more or less the amount he needs to be able to function properly

[depressedtheatrekiddo]

I found someone in my classroom!!! She's so cool and I've sat next to her last year and she always loves to talk and I loved to listen to school recent gossip and this year she's on my latin classes and we've been getting back in touch and!!! And!!! We discovered we both have similar ideas!! I'm explaining her anarchist theory and she shares acab media she just discovered, we circle the 13/12 date in the classroom blackboard and run, I send her tutorials I've discovered on how to do moss graffiti and she asks for information about world events and if I don't know about them we investigate together and then we exchange opinions!! And this, this is so special to me, because I've been trying to connect with someone in my surroundings, and there wasn't— interest. Like I talk and there's this tight smile on my friends face. And. And sometimes it breaks my heart? But this. This is so fucking cool.

[onelonelystory]

you need to stop thinking your anecdotal experience is a substantive generally applicable argument. you need to stop assuming that being directly impacted means you have a comprehensive understanding of things. and you need to stop feeling like people who say batshit things are correct because they’re speaking from experience and the broad strokes sentiment is something you agree with and support. please.

[themetalvirus]

my art is so bad it makes me want to eat bricks. ngl im really anxious cuz i have an important meeting tomorrow and i wont be rested enough at this point to be fully conscious during it and im sad about it. i have three pages of notes prepared though and i packed note paper for the meeting so hopefully thatll help

[sturnellaneglecta]

no matter how much ppl who work in journalism/the media whine and snivel about "attacks on the media" or "you just don't get it!" or whateverthefuck they're not going to convince me they don't want trump back in office with the way they treat and cover him vs biden or harris or dems in general. i agree with basically everything in this video

[icarus-suraki]

I don't like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.

I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.

An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject is often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say "short of biohazards" but since I know there's a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.

When a collection of materials--which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever--on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive's records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it's all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I'm proud of you).

This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce's loveletters to Nora.

Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.

So now apply this to Ao3--which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.

And the "whether you personally like the materials or not" is important, hence why I mentioned Jim's loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)

If it's made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don't need to lose any more.

The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of "purity culture" and panic over "dangerous" fiction.

The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn't be like the banker's box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.

It's really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I'm not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all--but they're still there. That's the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what's there, to stay "on topic" with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.

The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of "dangerous" fanworks and 2. public access to those "dangerous" fanworks. These are issues of "purity culture" and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.

Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.

[kira-akira]

What I Want You To Know About Long COVID

Well lads, I've been suffering from Long COVID for over a year now. My life is at a complete standstill. I'm 25 years old and I'm too sick to go back to school, I can't work, I had to move back in with my parents and I'm still stuck here.

Here are just a few things I wish people knew about Long COVID, including things I didn't know myself until I got it.

COVID destroys your immune system. Yes, even if you don't have Long COVID. Are you getting sick more often now? When you get sick, does it last longer? There are many studies showing that COVID causes t cell depletion, even in mild COVID cases! T cells are how your body remembers how to fight off infections you've had before so losing those cells? Bad news.

Your initial infection can be mild and you can still get Long COVID. Right from Yale Medicine, "Most people with Long COVID had mild acute COVID." (This is also a good link for a basic Long COVID overview).

There can be a gap of time between when you "get better" from the initial COVID infection to the onset of Long COVID symptoms. Some people get sick with an initial COVID infection and never get better. Some get better and then weeks or months later start developing Long COVID symptoms. Long COVID symptoms can even fluctuate over time, can go away for months and then suddenly come back.

So many people have Long COVID and don't realize it. Do you feel more tired lately but no matter how much you sleep, nothing helps? Is it harder to concentrate at work or school? Can you just not think like you used to? You could have Long COVID and not even know it. Even mild post-COVID symptoms are still Long COVID.

COVID can do anything to your body. Long COVID has over 200 recognized symptoms and can affect basically any part or system of your body. There is no one mechanism or cause of Long COVID which unfortunately also means there's no one cure either.

The effects of COVID are cumulative. Each COVID reinfection increases your chances of developing Long COVID. COVID is also affecting your body in other ways, yes, even if you're otherwise young and healthy! "Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death".

Once you have Long COVID, repeat COVID infections will make your symptoms worse. "80% [of Long COVID patients] saw their symptoms worsen [from reinfection]. In 60% of people who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection caused a recurrence of Long COVID."

There is a lot more I want to say about Long COVID but I want to keep this post at least somewhat manageable to read. Like how when COVID is contracted during pregnancy, those COVID-exposed fetuses have a 6.3-fold increased risk of motor developmental delays, or that another study found 50% of babies exposed to COVID in utero had developmental delays.

You need to keep caring about COVID, for others around you and also for yourself even if you're "healthy". Everyone is at risk. And don't forget 40-60% of COVID infections are asymptomatic, which is why masking even if you feel fine is crucial. The only way right now to not get Long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. It's not too late, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! I know it's easy to get distracted by things in your life that seem more real than the possibility of getting sick some time in the future, and the peer pressure to not mask can be intense. But it only feels less real or less important until your entire life is having Long COVID. Trust me.

I know this is a complicated issue, many people can't afford to stay home when sick even if they want to because of their jobs, there are disgusting policies trying to ban wearing masks, but please if you can. Keep masking. Masking works, masking saves lives.

This post got a bit longer than I wanted so below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of my Long COVID symptoms and some of my experiences as one of the "healthy young people" who got "unlucky". cw brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Welcome to the Thunderdome that is my body with Long COVID. Keep in mind these are just my experiences and symptoms, Long COVID can cause any range of symptoms at varying severities.

Dysautonomia: Exercise intolerance, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), fatigue, and heat intolerance. What do those things mean? Here's some specific examples. Absolutely terrible circulation I am so cold all the time but also, if I get a little too warm I will pass out. Eating hot food makes my heart rate spike, I sweat, my body feels heavy. Blood pooling and pins and needles in my feet when I walk. Don't even think about exercising past walking, it's impossible. I used to work out an hour a day 4 times a week and now walking up one flight of stairs makes my heart pound and I can't breathe. Can't take even just warm showers anymore or I will pass out. Heat rashes from being in the sun for 10 minutes.

Digestive issues: Honestly too many to name but: constant bloating, extreme nausea, constipation, slow motility, lack of appetite, just so much cramping and pain. I lost 18 pounds from Long COVID, as someone who was already considered underweight their entire life, and almost had to get a shunt put into my chest to deliver nutrients because I was nearly completely unable to eat. For the first 6 months of Long COVID, if I could manage 600 calories a day, that was a good day.

Histamine intolerance: Oh boy. My worst symptoms, I don't even know where to start with it. If you know Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) it's very similar. I can only eat 19 foods. If i eat a single bite of something not on that list, it's 48 hours of absolute hell. Coughing, migraines, itchy eyes, such extreme nausea I cannot even describe it, panic/feeling of doom, racing heart rate, derealization, rash, uncontrollable muscle tremors. I only learned about histamine intolerance 5 months into having Long COVID so before that, I was experiencing these symptoms nearly every single day. Terrifying isn't even a strong enough word to describe how it felt to experience all this and have no idea what it was, how to stop it, or if it would ever stop. Really dark times.

Neurological issues: More of that derealization. Inability to concentrate. Anxiety. OCD-like symptoms such as thoughts getting "stuck" in my head, repeating 24/7 completely unable to stop them, genuinely felt like my brain had cracked open and I had lost my mind. Constant dizziness like I'm on a boat.

Sleep issues: I sleep like garbage. I have insomnia, I wake up dozens of times every night and every single time I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams. I can't sleep longer than 7 hours total no matter how exhausted I am. It is exhausting. I'm exhausted, I'm so so tired.

And finally. Just. Really intense suicidal ideation. My body, my health, my entire life has been stolen from me because someone else decided my life was worth less to them than wearing a mask or staying home if they feel sick. Before I got Long COVID, I was preparing to go to South Korea to teach English, then on to a PhD in neurolinguistics, I was supposed to meet my long distance partner and had already booked plane tickets when I got sick. All of that has been destroyed.

Most of us with Long COVID are stuck in a cycle of being extremely sick, then if you're lucky you'll slowly get better over months, just to get reinfected and go right back where you started or worse. Honestly, I'm not scared of dying from COVID. I'm scared of living for a long time, suffering from Long COVID the entire time. This isn't living.

I don't know how to end this now. I'm still fighting, I'm trying experimental treatments, I'm not giving up yet. I hope everyone reading this stays healthy and well.

[crispycreambacon]

Cut Through The Noise

Even as the strike ends, the Palestinian genocide has not.

Now more than ever, there are so many conflicting voices. People with their own self-serving, hateful motivations speak over us, and sometimes our own voices can turn against us. We may feel like our voice isn't enough or we aren't doing enough.

This is why it's so important to learn to shut down that noise. No matter how much people scream that what we're doing is useless or a waste of time, keep talking. Keep talking about Palestine. Keep talking about Palestine for as long as this goes on, both online and in real life. If Israel won't end their genocide, we won't end our protest.

Below is a list of what you can do and the poem transcript.

Check and spread this post which contains a comprehensive list on how to help Palestine.

Learn about the history of Palestine and how the displacement and eventual genocide of Palestinians started in 1948.

Learn more about Palestine, the myths surrounding it and the arguments debunking it.

Boycott companies who are either directly or indirectly supporting and finding Palestine's genocide.

Click a button to raise funds for UNRWA – an organisation aiding Palestinian refugees.

Attend a protest.

Help Gazans stay connected by purchasing eSims for them.

Donate to the following organizations – any amount, no matter how small, goes a long way:

UNWRA

Care for Gaza

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Islamic Relief

Here's another post detailing more charities you can donate to

And most importantly of all: Don't Stop Talking About Palestine! However you interpret it as – creating art, talking to the people in your life, emailing and calling your representatives, even reblogging and making posts – make your voice loud and clear!

— Poem Transcript —

There's a lot of noise right now

Screams dehumanizing poor souls

Groans from those in willful ignorance

People digging deeper and deeper holes

And it's overwhelming, it really is

I do not blame you

Sometimes you feel that your voice is too small

I feel that way too

But despite that, I urge you to keep going

And demand for what's right

Even it sounds like a whimper

You're still joining in the fight

And soon the rest of us will join

We can stand together here

We can cut through the white noise

And make our message clear

[sawyermp3]

I am writing this post for @gazahanan5

Hanan is a mother of three children from Gaza currently raising funds to rebuild her old home. As of February 4th, 2025, her campaign is at 47% of the $100K goal.

Her fundraiser has been verified by @/gazavetters [here, number 140]

This is her message:

"I am sorry, I know I am bothering you and sending you many messages, but I really need your help and donations. I need $100, which will save my children's lives. Why do you ignore me so much? Your donation will do a lot for the better. My children are living in great danger due to the consequences of the war. Your donation will make a difference to me. Please donate to me. Please do not ignore me. The fate of my children depends on your donation of $100, which will contribute to rebuilding my house and building my husband's shop. I hope you do not want to disappoint me. I will be very grateful for your help We are now in need of an urgent, immediate, humanitarian and very important donation to rebuild what was destroyed by the war, rebuild our house and my husband's destroyed shop, and buy furniture for the house.

Requesting a donation is not easy. I am sorry. I feel embarrassed to ask for help

You are my only hope and with your help we will build and rebuild our home

We will rebuild our home and rebuild my family's life again"

Donation link:

tags for reach:

lmk if you don't want to be tagged

@a-shade-of-blue @c-u-c-koo-4-40k @dailyquests

[ms-demeanor]

TBH another thing that irritates the living shit out of me is how many ADHD tools and guides are inaccessibly expensive.

I searched for ADHD organizational videos today and of the seven I opened up, three were ads (one for something QUITE expensive and unfortunately very useful-looking) and the other four were unbearably rigid in their approach to how to help with organization ("the only way to stay organized is to always put things where they belong immediately and never deviate from that" - you sound like my old GP when I introduced him to the concept of delayed sleep phase disorder. No there isn't only one solution, and no a solution that is going to require a high amount of effort for no visible reward forever isn't going to work).

I get that creators with ADHD have to make a living, and being an ADHDinfluencer is probably one of the better gigs someone with ADHD could land. But also.

Like?

Fuck you a little bit? Like at least a little bit. You're making sponcon about expensive tools for people who are like 20% less likely to be able to hold a full time job than a neurotypical.

Which is exactly why my website is free and it and all of my resources will always be 100% free.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: my mom and I had discussed end-of-life planning and pre-death fill-in-the-blanks tools for years before she died, but I never had the money to go out and order the books about it when I was talking to her about it. That's why I made the death book, and that's why the death book will always and forever cost zero dollars.

Same thing here. I've been searching for good ADHD tools for most of a decade and what I get on free sites is mostly a lot of inspiration porn, tools for neurotypical parents to manage their ADHD children, and ADHD adults feeling helpless. And when I wanted to read the book about managing your ADHD that everybody praised, it was thirty bucks that I didn't have and an 18-month waiting list at my library.

So I want to make sure that other people who feel like they're drowning have something to grab onto that I wish I'd had when I was there. You don't have thirty bucks or eighteen months to wait either, you need to figure out how to keep track of your important papers NOW because you're coping with a loss or a separation or a natural disaster.

(Though if I haven't written it yet you may be waiting 18 months sorry it's getting built but it's not moving fast)

[imagopersonal]

Aziraphale was about to confess too before Metatron and his coffee came into the bookshop;

Okay, hear me out. In 2x02, when they’re talking about “how people fall in love”, Crowley talks about sudden rainstorms,

which is an obvious reference to how he fell in love, about 6000 years earlier (poor demon thinks everyone falls in love the way he did)

Aziraphale doesn’t get it and answers “seems a bit unlikely”. He didn’t connect the dots, he doesn’t think Crowley loves him that way. All he knows about falling in love is what he read in books. Of course he fell in love with Crowley too, but I’m pretty sure he did in ‘41 when Crowley saved his books from a bomb, and that’s a bit hard to recreate, so… balls.

That’s his idea, you make two people dance together and they magically fall in love, which is so in-character I want to scream. Now let’s get to 2x05. We know Aziraphale always tried to avoid organizing those meetings, but he’s suddenly so excited about it he is WILLING TO GIVE AWAY HIS BOOKS. Why would he do something like that? There’s no way it’s actually to make Maggie and Nina fall in love. At that point, Muriel doesn’t even care anymore about it, they all know the truth about the miracle is about to be revealed, so there’s no point in being so persistent about Maggie and Nina’s relationship. He’s an angel; of course he cares about humans being happy, but I don’t think he cares so much about two semi-strangers’ love life that he’s willing to give away BOOKS for the off chance that the Jane Austen method will actually work on two humans he knows nothing about. So, my conclusion is, he’s organizing that night for him and Crowley. They are the ones that he hopes realize they’re deeply in love with each other, and that is something worth giving away books for. Which explains why he’s so excited but also a bit scared when he asks Crowley to dance with him.

It explains why he ignores the fact that Crowley is trying to tell him that something important and dangerous is about to happen, just so they can have a little dance. It also explains this reaction when he sees Gabriel and Beelzebub being in love with each other

and the way he looks at Crowley while they’re talking about them.

I mean, I know he always stares lovingly at him, but not like that, right? That’s a face that screams “I’m so going to tell you I love you when all this is over”.

So, my point is:

Fuck Metatron.

That’s my point.

Imago

[mostlysignssomeportents]

MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/05/power-of-positive-thinking/#the-socialism-of-fools

In her unmissable 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein paints a picture of a "mirror world" of right wing and conspiratorial beliefs that are warped, false reflections of real crises:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, Qanon's obsession with "child trafficking" is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about "immigrants stealing jobs" is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-waged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about "decentralization" is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.

Klein is at pains to point out that other political thinkers have described this phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, leftists called antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Socialism – the idea that working people are preyed upon by capital – is reflected in the warped mirror as "working people are preyed upon by international Jewish bankers."

The mirror world is a critical concept, because it shows that far right and conspiratorial beliefs are often uneasy neighbors with real, serious political movements. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, in other words:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Once you understand the mirror world, you start to realize that many right wing conspiracists could have been directed into productive movements, if only they'd understood that their problems were with systems, not sinister individuals (this is why Trump has ordered a purge of any federally funded research that contains the word "systemic"):

https://mamot.fr/@Lazarou@mastodon.social/113943287435897828

This also explains why the "tropes" of right wing conspiratorialism sometimes echo left wing, radical thought. I once had a (genuinely unhinged) dialog with a self-described German "progressive" who told me that criticizing the finance industry as parasitic on the real economy was "structurally antisemitic." Nonsense like this is why Klein's "mirror world" is so important: unless you understand the mirror world, you can end up believing that "progressive" just means "defending anything the right hates."

Historian Erik Baker is the author of a new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, which has some very interesting things to say about the mirror world:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674293601

In a recent edition of the always-excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, the hosts interviewed Baker about the book, and the conversation turned to the subject of pyramid schemes, the "multilevel marketing systems" that are woven into so many religious, right-wing movements:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-the-entrepreneurial-ethic/

MLMs have it all: prosperity gospel ("God rewards virtue with wealth"), atomization ("you are an entrepreneur and everyone in your life is your potential customer"), and rabid anti-Communism ("solidarity is a trick to make you poorer").

The rise of the far right can't be separated from the history of MLMs. The modern MLM starts with Amway, a cultlike national scam that was founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos (father-in-law of Betsy DeVos).

Rank-and-file members of the Amway cult lived in dire poverty, convinced that their financial predicament was their own fault for not faithfully following the "sure-fire" Amway method for building a business. Andrea Pitzer's gripping memoir of growing up in an Amway household offers a glimpse of the human cost of the cult:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/amway-america/681479/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZxYkntna5M_rYEv4707Zqqs

Amway – and MLMs like it – don't just bleed out their members by convincing them to buy mountains of useless crap they're supposed to sell to their families, while enriching the people at the top of the pyramid who sell it to them. The "toxic positivity" of multi-level marketing cults forces members deep into debt to pay for seminars and retreats where they are supposed to learn how to repair the personal defects that keep them from being "successful entrepreneurs." The topline of the cult isn't just getting rich selling stuff – they're making bank by selling false hope, literally, in Hilton ballrooms and convention centers across the country, where hearing an MLM scammer berate you for being a "bad entrepreneur" costs thousands of dollars.

Amway destroyed so many lives that Richard Nixon's FTC decided to investigate it. The investigation wasn't going well for Amway, which was facing an existential crisis that they were rescued from by Nixon's resignation. You see, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, was the former Congressman of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, who was also the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbyist in America.

At Ford's direction, the FTC exonerated Amway of all wrongdoing. But it's even worse than that: Ford's FTC actually crafted a rule that differentiated legal pyramid schemes from illegal ones, based on Amway's destructive business practices. Under this new rule, any pyramid scheme that had the same structure as Amway was presumptively legal. Every MLM operating in America today is built on the Amway model, taking advantage of the FTC's Amway rule to operate in the open, without fear of legal repercussions.

MLMs prey on the poor and desperate: women, people of color, people in dying small towns and decaying rustbelt cities. It's not just that these people are desperate – it's that they only survive through networks of mutual aid. Poor women rely on other poor women to help with child care, marginalized people rely on one another for help with home maintenance, small loans, a place to crash after an eviction, or a place to park the RV you're living out of.

In other words, people who lack monetary capital must rely on social capital for survival. That's why MLMs target these people: an MLM is a system for destructively transforming social capital into monetary capital. MLMs exhort their members to mine their social relationships for "leads" and "customers" and to use the language of social solidarity ("women helping women") to wheedle, guilt, and arm-twist people from your mutual aid network into buying things they don't need and can't afford.

But it's worse, because what MLMs really sell is MLMs. The real purpose of an MLM sales call is to convince the "customer" to become an MLM salesperson, who owes you a share of every sale they make and is incentivized to buy stock they don't need (from you) in order to make quotas. And of course, their real job is to sign up other salespeople to work under them, and so on.

An MLM isn't just a pathogen, in other words – it's a contagion. When someone in your social support network gets the MLM disease, they don't just burn all their social ties with you and the people you rely on – they convince more people in your social group to do the same.

Which brings me back to the mirror world, and Erik Baker's conversation with the Know Your Enemy podcast. Baker starts to talk about who gets big into Amway: "people who already effectively lead by the force of their charisma and personality many other people in their lives. Right? Because you're able to sell to those people, and you're able to recruit those people. What are we talking about? Well, they're effectively recruiting organizers, people who have a natural capacity for organizing and then sending them out in the world to organize on behalf of Christian capitalism."

Listening to this, I was thunderstruck: MLM recruiters are the mirror world version of union organizers. In her memoir of growing up in Amway, Andrea Pitzer talks about how her mom would approach strangers and try to lead them through a kind of structured discussion:

Everywhere we went—the mall, state parks, grocery stores—she’d ask people whether they could use a little more money each month. “I’d love to set up a time to talk to you about an exciting business opportunity.” The words should have seemed suspect. Yet people almost always gave her their number. Her confidence and professionalism were reassuring, and her enthusiasm was electric, even, at first, to me. “What would you do with $1 million?” she’d ask, spinning me around the kitchen.

This kind of person, having this kind of dialog, is exactly how union organizers work. In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey's classic book on labor organizing, she describes how she would seek out the charismatic, outgoing workers in a job-site, the natural leaders, and recruit them to help bring the other workers onboard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Organizer training focuses on how to have a "structured organizing conversation," which McAlevey described in a 2019 Jacobin article:

“If you had a magic wand and could change three things about life in America [or her town or city or school], what would you change?” The rest of your conversation needs to be anchored to her answers to that question.

https://jacobin.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-organizing-activism-friends-family-conversation-presidential-election

The MLM conversation and the union conversation have eerily similar structures, but the former is designed to commodify and destroy solidarity, and the latter is designed to reinforce and mobilize solidarity. Seen in this light, an MLM is a mirror world union, one that converts solidarity into misery and powerlessness instead of joy and strength.

The MLM movement doesn't just make men like Rich De Vos and Jay Van Andel into billionaires. MLM bosses are heavy funders of the right, a blank check for the Heritage Foundation. Trump is the MLM president, a grifter who grew up on the gospel of Norman Vincent Peale – a key figure in MLM cult dynamics – who tells his followers that wealth is a sign of virtue. Trump boasts about all the people he's ripped off, boasting about how getting away with cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The corollary is that being cheated means you're stupid. Caveat emptor, the motto of the cryptocurrency industry ("not your wallet, not your coins") that spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected.

Tech has its own mirror world. The people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and make delightful and wonderful things are mirrored by the people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and call for fascism, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps.

In Picks and Shovels, my next novel (Feb 17), I introduce readers to a fictitious 1980s religious computer sales cult called Fidelity Computing, run by an orthodox rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Mormon rabbi:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Fidelity is a faith scam, a pyramid scheme that is parasitic upon the bonds of faith and fellowship. Martin Hench, the hero of the story – a hard-fighting high tech forensic accountant – goes to work for a competing business, Computing Freedom, run by three Fidelity ex-employees who have left their faiths and their employers to pursue a vision of computers that is about liberation, rather than control.

The women of Computing Freedom – a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family, a Mormon woman who's renounced the LDS over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who's left her order to throw in with the Liberation Theology movement – are all charismatic, energetic, inspirational organizers.

Because of course they are – that's why they were so good at selling computers for the Reverend Sirs who sit at the top of Fidelity Computing's pyramid scheme.

Hearing Baker's interview and reading Pitzer's memoir last week made it all click together for me. Not just that MLMs destroy social bonds, but that within every person who gets sucked into an MLM, there's a community organizer who could be building the bonds that MLMs destroy.