Is participating on DU activism? Wrong question.

[Jackpine Radical]

For one thing, it invites pointless discussion about the definition of "activism."

Instead, one should ask if posting here is useful.

My answer is, "Definitely." Here is where we refine our understanding of issues, events and personalities. Here is where we communicate with others who share our general worldview, where we get emotional support when we feel isolated from our physical communities. Here is where we come to battle out the nuances of our beliefs and test our opinions.

Several of the little essays I wrote in these forums ended up becoming letters to the editors and op-eds in various papers. Often I have first "published" these writing efforts here with a request that people review them, and ended up with much stronger letters and articles as a result.

As for many of us, DU is one of my major sources of news & opinion about the world. Whatever political acts I might engage in away from here--be it participating in a demonstration, letting my views be known in discussions, writing letters, articles or comments on various sites, or boycotting some product--all these acts are informed by my participation in the great DU sounding board.

So I really don't care whether posting on DU meets someone's arbitrary definition of "activism."

[upaloopa]

1. Here is where we get into meaningless food fights

This use to be a discussion board. Now it is mostly a place where the OP is the opening salvo to a 300 line thread of insults and innuendo.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. My personal approach is to simply stay out of the food-fight threads.

Well, OK, I dip into one now & then just to keep an ear to the ground & maybe unload a little snark when the urge becomes too much.

[upaloopa]

5. me too sometimes the urge is too difficult to

ignore

[hfojvt]

6. the meaningless food fights

go back as far as I can remember, which is fairly far.

I call it a glory days syndrome. DU always seems better when you first discover it than it does after you have been here for a while. When you first get here you see so many good things, good thoughtful posts and good, thoughtful people that that is mostly what you notice.

After a while, you take the good things for granted, and the bad things stick out more, and you think "this place has changed" even though it really has not.

Here's a thread I keep around showing "the good old days" of DU
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=196554

[upaloopa]

7. I was one of the first persons on DU. I left more than once.

I changed my name each time I came back. The food fights seemed to me to increase with the Dem primaries in 2008.

[hfojvt]

13. well we no longer are united by having a common enemy

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/104

[oberliner]

9. That poster does the same stuff now

Talking about being so shocked about various people's opinions being shared on DU.

Ten years and counting!

[hfojvt]

12. I thought he made a good, solid point

one I have repeated myself. It is not the disagreements, it is the hostility.

"We are just as savage and vicious as the cretins currently running the country,"

It should be possible to disagree, even disagree strongly without being "savage and vicious".

[oberliner]

14. "It has never been this bad. Ever."

That's what the poster wrote.

When the reality is, it's always been the same way.

[hfojvt]

17. I bet it goes through cycles

that post was written during the early stages of the 2004 primary wars.

There probably are some people who "make DU suck" more than other people. So it is not always the same, because people come and go. Some making the place better when they come, and some making the place better when they go.

[oberliner]

18. Possibly

I just don't think it's a new phenomenon - which is, I thought, the point you were making by sharing that older post.

[hfojvt]

19. it was

maybe I forgot, or pulled a Randi Rhodes.

But I did not mean it to be about "that poster".

[SunSeeker]

11. +1

[pscot]

2. K&R

[Wounded Bear]

3. Well said...

[uppityperson]

8. It can be useful, can be activism, can be simply wasting time snarking. Putting things out and

sharing and connecting are all good useful things to do.

[oberliner]

10. Useful for the person posting?

As a sort of catharsis in a sense?

[Le Taz Hot]

15. Activism first requires you educate yourself

and in that DU is a repository for all sorts of stories from all sorts of sources, that makes reading/participating in DU activism. The Turd Way Booster Club has their new marching meme and that is basically, you're not an activist if you're not registering Democratic voters and voting Democrat. Sadly, cluelessness is not a TOS violation on DU.

[bvar22]

16. I find it laughably ironic that some members of DU...

will repeatedly insist that posting at DU is NOT activism...... with a heated, angry, activist's passion.

If posting at DU doesn't matter,
then WHY are you so ANGRY?