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Let's get real, if you're popularizing an ideology through Twitch debates in between video game marathons, it's probably ephemeral. Now I'd obviously prefer this to more alt-right e-psychos, but nobody should be bragging as if social media trends are real world movement building. https://twitter.com/VaushV/status/1332156616334929923
I think all the flourishing of left ideas online have primarily been a consequence of Bernie Sanders running for 2016 and later for 2020. But, luckily, so have some real-world victories and shifts in popular thinking. And Bernie did well because conditions are poor for many!
Jordan Peterson has briefly been in the news again recently, I think his case is instructive. That dude was on top of the world for a year and now he's basically a nobody. Sure, he was in a coma, but it still shows the strength & longevity of his MASSIVE e-movement was nil.
In the final analysis, and please excuse my hypocrisy in calling myself an anarchist for these past six or seven years, the 5000 different sub-niches of socialist & liberal ideologies out here on social media are expressions of aesthetic & personality more than political markers.
Part of that is just because we live in a very political age & social media has a ton of young people on it, so the normal maturation process of teenagers trying out different ideas & identities takes the form of mass migrations between different radical political labels.
But I think the other part is that (being completely derivative here) we do live in an age of loneliness & justified discontent across a wide swath of the population, and people are looking for community, escapism, dreams, etc. So this generates all these different niche groups.
So to conclude it's not a bad thing by any means. It's just not particularly something I'm thrilled about. This online stuff is either shadows or mist: one without substance, re-enacting past struggles, the other consisting of millions of tiny separated particles acting alone.
