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“The endless, meaningless talk that we pass back and forth all day long is no more than the noise of the marketplace. … The quest to rid ourselves of complete colonization by noise and to recover our sense of quiet goodness should be as necessary and perpetual as our quest to rid ourselves of air pollution.” —Beopjeong 

There’s no doubt that there are many bad things happening around us. Perhaps some of us are depressed and losing the will to fight. Others might be working hard to resist defeat, but questioning if their actions mean anything. Some might be optimistic and inspired, but no matter where we stand, we have to make important decisions about where to place our focus. This is especially hard for people who have to wade through the noise of mass media, especially social media, and the like. It seems as if everywhere we turn, there’s someone telling us what to do or how to think. Unverified information, conspiracy theories, and a culture of anti-intellectualism are thriving amid the fascist upsurge in the U.S. Politicians, celebrities, and influencers post rage-bait, fanning the flames of a culture that encourages the rush to comment first without thinking or being careful first. This is arguably a limitation that keeps us from fulfilling our most rebellious potential. Therefore, to be an effective counterforce against oppression, we have to become skilled at listening so we can hear where to intervene. 

If you want to understand the gravity of how valuable it is to manipulate social currents, look no further than X (formerly known as Twitter). Throughout the uprisings between 2014 and 2020, many activists, writers, and scholars (including myself) benefited from building followings on social media platforms. In addition to people producing work, having space to amplify one’s output was helpful. This became troublesome for several reasons. Among the reasons was the resentment of powerful elites like Elon Musk, who acquired the site and grew increasingly frustrated with the idea of a space where users with oppositional politics could influence national conversations. Meanwhile, there was damage being done to the collective psyche of young progressives, radicals, and well-meaning onlookers. We spent years training ourselves to benefit, albeit in our imagination or in reality, by becoming the sentient products of large tech companies. 

Co-founder of Twitter Inc., Jack Dorsey, put this into explicit terms. Speaking at the Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024, Dorsey said, “If you actually think about what you’re doing when you’re posting, it’s not just reaching your audience. You’re actually doing work for that company for free.” He went on to explain that we become uncompensated employees by training algorithms. He said, “All of these algorithms predominantly are only focused on increasing the number of impressions, and the reason why is, that increases the number of advertising revenue.” This, he admitted, was especially dangerous now, given the way the algorithm can be changed by those in power to influence, program, and control our thinking. Now, his former site is about to do just that. Musk announced that X is scrapping the heuristics that dictate what users see on their timelines. An AI-driven system will replace it, “processing more than 100 million pieces of content daily to determine what users are most likely to engage with.”

This is all relevant because it’s a part of our current predicament. I’ve lamented and been bothered by a culture of what I’ve described before as “content creator radicalism.” This is the nature of the online leftism defined by armchair proselytizing, goofy sectarianism, and influencers who may or may not know what they’re actually talking about as millions take in their posts. Fame and visibility often determine whether someone is taken seriously in this society, and the result has affected activist and radical spaces, too, where the same logics dictate who gets listened to and who does not. Race, class, economic, gender, and disability hierarchies prioritize who is most deserving of attention. So, listening and hearing the most pertinent perspectives is already a maze of discriminatory obstacles. One way to determine what should be prioritized is to identify the everyday impact of the actions we’re being instructed to take. 

A question I’ve long asked helps me frame my thinking here: “Who is fed, housed, given health care, safety, and security by what we’re fighting about? Does the fight we’re in lead to a change that can alter people’s lives for the better or advance us toward a revolutionary shift?” My focus then was on what fights we choose to give our attention and choosing wisely what to listen to is very much a part of that. If we remain susceptible to manipulation via forums that are explicitly being used to manipulate, surveil, and exploit, then what’s the point? Keeping tabs on ourselves for the authorities and doing free work for our adversaries is not serving people. The payoff of engagement for important causes that surely deserve public attention certainly comes at costs both seen and unseen. This is because if we cannot hear, see, feel, and understand where to intervene undisturbed, then we’re asking to be sabotaged. No one can make crucial interventions by constantly handing prospects over to their enemies. 

This inability to hear themselves outside of compromised online spaces, biased media, and a controlled political climate might be why some look longingly at past revolutionary periods. Even looking there for guidance is faulty because the inhabitants of long ago couldn’t always fathom the problems we face now. The romance and nostalgia about “back then” sometimes disconnects people from the present, leading to delusions about what’s necessary to meet our needs in current conditions. In their “Critical Reminiscence” on C.L.R. James, both James and Grace Lee Boggs left us with an important instruction in this regard: 

When most American radicals think about a revolution in the United States, they visualize the oppressed masses, workers, Blacks, women, rising up to sweep away the bourgeoisie and institute a new socialist society. So preoccupied are they with the social forces — which are necessary for any revolution — that they lose sight of the role which revolutionary theoreticians must play in creating the new, different, and challenging ideas without which no mass uprising can go beyond rebellion to revolution. Or they believe that the last word on revolution was written by Marx and Engels in 19th-century Europe or Lenin and Trotsky in 20th-century Russia.

We need clarity about what our predicament demands of us in order to determine which radical actions will serve everyone best. The last word about revolution was not already written, nor will it be written if we willingly hand ourselves over to forces working to make sure they control what we think. Our new ideas about addressing the dwindling resources and structuring the society we want have to be protected at all costs. We have to listen to one another through clear channels. The suffering all around us is crying out, but what can we create to communicate clearly so we can effectively create what will make a difference? The mandate of these times is outside, waiting for more of us to take it up without hesitation, distraction, or interference. 

Editorial Team:
Lara Witt, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor