I never get tired of 'em. I know we've discussed this before. I know the process is ongoing, not necessarily based on a single event, and depends a lot on your position in society. If discussing the radicalization of others, don't mention any methods unless people specifically told you that certain things radicalized them.

For me, I was a left-liberal for most of my life. Long story short, I ran in a state senate election trying to be as friendly to everyone as possible. The one thing I really wouldn't budge on was universal health care, since I knew from experience that it worked. I lost my election BADLY to a guy who ran on no platform at all, although he had much better name recognition. I worked so hard on that campaign and really was devastated and had to look for answers. Stupid as it sounds, at around that time I found the r/chapotraphouse subreddit and started listening to the podcast. That led to me listening to much better podcasts (like Revleft Radio), reading actual theory, and giving up on the Chapo podcast entirely once Bernie lost the last primary.

I'm always trying to radicalize others but I just usually get nowhere. George Floyd's death plus coronavirus I think resulted in a lot of people reconsidering things, but it seems like many of them have kind of swung back in the other direction now, at least as far as I can tell from watching my friends on Facebook. I've been arguing with my lib dad for months about all of this shit, with the result that he has actually gotten much better at deflecting Marxist points than the average lib lol. Sometimes I can get him to admit that everything is fucked and that Marxism is the only answer, at other times he'll say that we need to make friends with local business owners (some of the worst fucking people in the universe) and not alienate them.

Anyway, if you feel like writing your radicalization story or the radicalization stories of others, I'm happy to read.

    • Baron [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Mine is pretty similar. I doubt I would have fallen down the gamergate pit because of the internal contradictions but reactionary bullshit was definitely a vector to be worried about until more diverse viewpoints on the left became visible.

    • BattlemechPotemkin [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I had socialist sympathies before Gamergate, but fell hard for the anti-sjw bait. I got addicted to being angry and starting slipping down the alt-right pipeline. Gamergate started to stall out so I tried focusing on school and fun stuff. When I came back to KotakuInAction I noticed how many fucking Nazis there were.

      Lindsay Ellis got me started on Breadtube. Three Arrows, InnuendoStudios and Contrapoints helped me grow out of some chud opinions I retained. I started radicalizing when I saw how dirty the Democrats did Bernie in 2016. Podcasts helped even more. Citations Needed helped me to wade through bullshit and SRSLY Wrong to start thinking about how things could be instead.

      Every time I think I am radical some new experience seems to push it further along. The latest big bump was working for a state unemployment agency. So much suffering is avoidable, so much of it is by design. I'm getting better about handling anger addiction, but at least it's about important things and not stupid video game shit.