If you want to change something, you need to find out how the system works and the levers of power, get involved with activities that make sense, and not waste your time on busy work activism.
I’ve noticed a lot of times people propose campaigns or actions that reveal a profound misunderstanding about how the levers of power work in politics in the U.S. and these people really should familiarize themselves about how these things work before attempting to tell other people to execute pointless campaigns and spend oodles of time on go nowhere activities.
And I’m just going to say it straight out that it’s either they’re simultaneously hopelessly naive and conceited and pushy – or the only other explanation is that the people pushing these campaigns are in fact using decoy activities to sabotage[1] potentially effective activists by giving them pointless and ineffective busy work where they are diverted from allocating their precious time to effective activities. Sometimes people even eschew or pooh-pooh the effective or needed advocacy too,[2] which is doubly problematic.
And sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s naivete when it comes to known operators with an easily discoverable history as being in advocacy and activist circles for years. But I guess who knows, some people never learn. Like people with an acting background using a stage name,[3] and with a reputation for being a suspected saboteur for years.[4] Others may just be successful influencers for many years,[5] who say things that sound compelling that are historically inaccurate to the point of being somewhat racist,[6] who say things that satisfy emotionally but are problematic like fighting ableism with ableism,[7] to play to an audience for paid subscriptions or whatever, and who really shouldn’t be trusted for advice on activism – or social media hygiene for that matter.[8]
Whatever the case may be with various influencers, gurus, and organizations – the bottom line is why waste your time on junk activities that likely won’t advance actual goals?
And yes there is a whole industry of people who get paid to advance the interests of people with money or corporations or industry players. There is a lot of billionaire money sloshing around. It’s been a hot election season in the U.S. and elsewhere. It’s no joke, there is plenty of evidence of inauthentic activity in advocacy spheres.[9] Sometimes it’s interfering with political activism,[10] other times it’s for the purpose of stock market manipulation or financial fraud with a pump & dump scheme,[11] and sometimes people are merely profiteering piggybacked onto a social movement.[12] Sometimes the same contract worker will engage in multiple areas[13] or even across niche interests with multiple bought and sold online identities,[14] maybe just do some straight related online marketing with affiliate links as an influencer, or do message board posting in the form of “personal testimonials” as a contract gig[15] for some extra cash. Even the biggest names sometimes fail to disclose that’s what they’re doing.[16]
And it really doesn’t matter the reason, why someone is egging people to do ineffective actions or waste time, does it?
If anyone’s telling you to contact an elected official in another state, or to call somebody else’s senator, or to email a government official, or mail an agency outside of a public comment period or outside a prescribed application or communication route – they’re wasting your time, and you should not be happy about this.
When public agencies open a public comment period about regulations, it’s typically because they’re required by law to receive public comment, and required to consider it.[17] Another way the public interacts with agencies is through proper forms that are part of the agency’s work. For example, an application for benefits form, a civil rights complaint form. When you show up at the DMV, there are forms to fill out, and a narrow set of things that the public interacts with this office for. You will get nowhere if you ask to speak to the DMV manager and demand they change car registration laws or the rules for drivers licenses. The same is true with other agencies. The people who work at the agency answer up the chain of command. Outside of prescribed interactions, specific forms, and public comment periods, employees at government agencies do not have any obligation to receive or consider public input in other forms. They answer to the department head, who in turn answers to the governor of the state for state agencies, or the presidential administration in regards to federal agencies.
A seeming exception to this might be organization liaisoning. Sometimes there are agencies that have insular meetings with think tanks, non-profit organizations, businesses, advocacy groups, and prominent people who are deemed “stakeholders” in an issue.[18] Lobbying sometimes goes on in invite only conferences and meetings. Does that sound good to you though? Does it sound accessible to the ordinary person? And has clientelism really worked out well for ordinary people and grassroots efforts in the types of situations you care about? In 2016 I remember reading on the blog “Mike the Mad Biologist” which described the clientelism involved with donations from J.B. Pritzker & M.K. Pritzker to help fund businesses to deal with the Flint Michigan water crisis.[19] And 8 years later we’re still reading articles about the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan.[20]
Typically clientelism approaches accomplish mainly networking for the people involved, and maybe fundraising for some non-profit org. People may engage in this work with the genuine motivation and hope of making a difference and representing their own affinity groups, and many of the people involved are genuine volunteers, but often it’s their day job. And as it is a job you have to expect people in those positions will most often put their own job and career path priorities before whatever issues are on the table, genuinely out of financial necessity to survive. People who start out as volunteers are often also looking to network for a paying gig in their field of interest. And operators in these spheres often go through what is called revolving doors between private lobbying groups and government jobs, and back again.[21] So focusing on these liaison opportunities is more likely to result in someone getting a job or some company getting a contract than to lead to real social change. It’s not useless for those involved, it’s just unlikely to fix any systemic problems or result in more broad effects. But worse, sometimes it leads to people involved or whole organizations getting co-opted by other “stakeholders” in a particular issue, which is an excellent way for interested parties to make sure the activism on the particular issue is effectively stymied or limited to parameters set by someone other than the actual grassroots interests.
Historically substantial change has come from rather small groups of knowledgeable people who know what’s happening, who gather up others and start pushing and pressuring lawmakers, there are numerous examples of how this works.[22] Elected representatives are often very sensitive to constituent contact and pressure from would-be voters in their districts.[23] This is where real regular people can pressure for real change, and bring forth material benefits.
And of course the worst form of busy work activism involves shouting into the void of social media where you’re most likely to be dismissed by anyone serious as a paid troll or funded influencer or anonymous foreign agent. Elected representatives respond to people who contact them with a real name and physical address in their district. On social media you could be anyone sadly. At best, it does nothing. Social media can be worse than bad for mental health or a time sink – it can divert people from productive and essential activities with a mirage, and the inaccurate feeling that one has accomplished something, and all it accomplished was keeping people on an app.[24]
References:
Hypernormalisation Documentary, 2016, by Adam Curtis. ”The liberals were outraged at Trump. But they expressed their outrage in cyberspace so it had no effect. Because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead ironically their waves of angry messages and tweets benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. one online analyst put it simply — angry people click. It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead it became a fuel that fed the systems of power making them ever more powerful.”
[2] Don’t take vaccines for granted. There are big money interests attacking vaccines and anyone who promotes them. And they told us at the CDC ACIP meeting that they will continuously consider restricting covid vaccines based on cost. CHLOE HUMBERT JUL 07, 2024 In 2021 Corey Robin had an essay published in The New Yorker magazine arguing that fear of fascism and the overturning of Roe V Wade was overblown and essentially alarmist. All these people said Roe V Wade was settled law, don’t worry. Then a year after that was published, Roe V Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court. Historian Thomas Zimmer pointed out that after that happened apparently The New Yorker magazine quietly changed the wording in Corey Robin’s article,18 apparently to move the goal posts to keep chastising people as overreacting but acknowledging that what they said wouldn’t happen absolutely happened.
[4] WHY DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVE WAS FIRED FROM THE MESSMER CAMPAIGN Bran DeGraff · Jul 27, 2018 As many of you know by now, Don Ford is the individual blowing up campaigns and trying to sabotage campaigns as well as trying to sabotage people in the movement. His actions have helped implode the Stephanie Myers campaign and his behavior got him fired from the Mindi Messmer campaign. His lies about the Stephen Jaffe campaign were most laughable making false claims of contracts that the Stephen Jaffe Campaign said never existed. This is just one of many lies he’s told as he’s made false claims about Jeremy White’s coffee shop, claiming he inspired him to keep it open.
[5] Jessica Burn Notice – Why I don’t subscribe to Doomer Wildfire, and you probably don’t want to either. – Chloe Humbert – Jan 22, 2023 She’s already broken into the influencer business, and she’s so much in the big time that other influencers back in 2018 were pointing to her work as a guide. In 2020, she wrote stuff on Medium like “Please Stop Putting Idiots on The News,” and “The Left Has More in Common With the Right Than You’d Think,” and “How to Please Her Better in Bed,” and “My Husband Will Never Know I Used to Own a Sex Doll,” and by 2021 she was writing stuff on Medium with titles like: “Here’s How It Really Feels to Own an Entire Bitcoin,” and “We Don’t Live in a Democracy, and Maybe We Shouldn’t Try,” and, perhaps ironically, “Anger Porn Is Getting Us Nowhere. It needs to stop.” She has hundreds of paid subscribers to her Substack, and 125,000 followers on Medium. Also 150 Ko-fi supporters. Even the most conservative estimates say she’s making some money at this gig, and her business predates the pandemic.
[6] Jessica Whatever Validates Your DoomScroll – Chloe Humbert · Oct 29, 2023 The most offensive silo perspective assertion someone can make is that messaging incremental change started in the 1990s. And yes, this influencer said that on social media. This is an absurd idea if you have just a pop culture level knowledge of the civil rights movement. Nina Simone sang a scathing critique of pushed incrementalism in her 1964 protest song Mississippi Goddam.
[7] Jessica Where There’s Smoke, and Mirrors – Chloe Humbert · Jun 28, 2023 Any satisfaction from smearing people with the label of “syndrome” will only last a moment. It’ll benefit some influencers and some social media hotshots, make the platforms some revenue, and do the dirty work of helping troll farms who are often just interested in muddying the discourse. We all clicked, got a dopamine hit, but then nothing actually happened — not for public health.
[8] Jessica Misfire – Chloe Humbert · Jul 9, 2024 If the baddies can pay endless money to promote influencers to repeat lies with massive botnets & troll farms. How well can regular folks compete on that landscape? The answer isn’t to stay on social media shouting repeatedly into the void. A more effective instruction would maybe be to have people write elected reps who actually make the laws, regulations, and have to at least somewhat listen to the people who vote for them, or don’t. She mentions how politicians use the mere exposure effect in advertising. But somehow doesn’t mention how civic engagement can change the rules, and sway those same politicians. Instead Jessica suggests you try to beat the billionaires and fossil fuel companies by out-shouting their legions of organized paid operatives on social media
[10] TigerSwan at Standing Rock: Ethics of Private Military Use Against an Environmental-Justice Movement – Kandice Grossman – Case Studies in the Environment (2019) 3 (1): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2019.002139
[11] Judge tosses DOJ suit against social media influencers in alleged pump-and-dump scheme By Brian Fung, CNN Updated 1:01 PM EDT, Fri March 22, 2024 In the indictment, the DOJ had alleged a lucrative “pump and dump” scheme in which the social media influencers used the messaging app Discord to promote certain stocks to their followers before selling their positions after a run-up in the stocks’ prices. The result was an alleged conspiracy by defendants “to unlawfully enrich themselves by pumping and dumping securities … through false and misleading posts and material omissions on Twitter [and Discord].” At least one of the defendants whose account CNN previously reviewed had tweeted about Gamestop and AMC, two so-called “meme stocks” that saw significant public interest and trading in 2021.
[12] MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy – Thinker-Fest: Session 1 – Fireside Chat – How to Fix the “Splinternet” Mar 3, 2023 They are really invested in gaining social capital and reputation for participating in these types of industries. And they also have economic models at play. You can buy flat earth sweatshirts, you can buy anti-vax stickers and notebooks, you can pay subscription fees, you can watch videos that are monetized on YouTube. And this is also very much a reputational economy. We also have a factor that I don’t think is talked about a lot which are intentional antagonists otherwise known as trolls. What’s interesting about them from a digital community perspective is that they too are chasing social currency but the reputation that they’re cultivating within their own communities is one where the more chaos they create, the more reputation credibility that they have. And so these three forces are kind of at play when we look at what’s happening from an individual and community’s perspective. The issue is that if you broaden out, you start to see that all of these dynamics can take place because there are very clear revenue models and businesses. People are making money from this. For example I trace what’s called direct benefits. So these are companies that are selling products and services directly related to the idea that’s circulating. So if you are anti-vax, you are selling supplements right, if you are, you’re selling essential oils, you’re selling products that are directly benefiting from the disinformation or misinformation that is circulating.
[13] The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War by Mark Galeotti – Feb 2023 This may be the age of multinational corporations, mass social movements, and powerful governments, but a coincidence of technological, social, and political change means that it is also the age of the individual, and many of them are for hire. Suddenly the world is full of people who seem to be doing the work of states. Yet not as direct employees, nor even out of ideological commitment or patriotic passion. Journalists hired to write hit pieces. Scholars saying the right things for a grant. Think tanks producing recommendations to order. There may be no geopolitical equivalent of Uber yet, but lobbying, strategic communications – were I a cynic I would suggest this is what we call propaganda when we do it ourselves – and similar consultancy and service companies often act as the middlemen.
[14] TribalGrowth – 7 Best Marketplaces To Buy & Sell Social Media Accounts (Ranked). by John Gordon Social Tradia, Instagram. The Toronto-based firm boasts an easy-to-use website that categorizes accounts for sale based on niche and number of followers. One of the best things about this marketplace is that all transactions are carried out over well-established payment portals.
[15] TNW – Astroturfing Reddit is the future of political campaigning – July 11, 2017 – 1:23 pm Matthew Hughes Right here is where things get a little sketchy, as Hack PR decided to look into gaming Reddit to bring some momentum to their campaign. “I knew that if I could get one of my links to the top of Reddit Politics, I would have a pretty good chance of making the idea spread, so I set that as my goal: Get to the top of Reddit Politics within 24 hours.” What it did next was simple. A Hack PR staffer published a link to a Washington Times article about the campaign, who then purchased every single upvote package on Fiverr.com, for a total cost of $35. The post soon blew up and became the most popular article on r/politics. Hack PR also anonymously spammed over 20,000 media contacts with a link to the Reddit post. Each time a publication covered the news, it would repeat the same process with the Washington Times article.
[16] U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION – Press Release SEC Charges Kim Kardashian for Unlawfully Touting Crypto Security FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2022-183 Washington D.C., Oct. 3, 2022 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Kim Kardashian for touting on social media a crypto asset security offered and sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment she received for the promotion. Kardashian agreed to settle the charges, pay $1.26 million in penalties, disgorgement, and interest, and cooperate with the Commission’s ongoing investigation. The SEC’s order finds that Kardashian failed to disclose that she was paid $250,000 to publish a post on her Instagram account about EMAX tokens, the crypto asset security being offered by EthereumMax. Kardashian’s post contained a link to the EthereumMax website, which provided instructions for potential investors to purchase EMAX tokens. “This case is a reminder that, when celebrities or influencers endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, it doesn’t mean that those investment products are right for all investors,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “We encourage investors to consider an investment’s potential risks and opportunities in light of their own financial goals.”
[17] U.S. General Services Administration – Policy & regulations – Regulations – Managing the federal rulemaking process (eRulemaking) – How members of the public can contribute to the regulatory process Federal law requires that agencies publish a notice of their proposed changes to regulations in the Federal Register [link], and provide time for the public to submit comments. Per the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946, agencies must consider all “relevant matter presented”, and address these concerns and comments in the notice they publish when the change is made final.
[18] Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) – MARCO Stakeholder Liaison Committee: Inaugural Scoping Meeting – March 10, 2014 Since its inception in 2009, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) has engaged stakeholders from ocean industries, commercial fishing, ocean recreation interests, environmental and conservation groups, research institutions, and the public to help inform its activities. Recent stakeholder engagement efforts have focused on the development of the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal and providing opportunities via workshops and meetings to foster dialogue among stakeholders and Federal and State agencies to share ideas on ocean planning. For example, MARCO sponsored the recent Mid-Atlantic Regional Ocean Planning Workshop in April 2013, a gathering of 160 individuals representing industry, federal, state, tribal, and local government, academia, the fishing community, environmental NGOs, and the public.
[19] The Pritzker Family Opens a New Clinton Subsidiary: A Study In Clientelism Posted on March 10, 2016 by mikethemadbiologist I believe that the Clintons and the Pritzkers both think they did the right thing: some people in Flint got jobs, and the Pritzkers, in part due to long-standing enmity with the Trump family, really do want to stop Trump and believe Clinton is the best chance to do so (the House of Trump versus the House of Pritzker). So what’s wrong with doing well by doing good? The problem is that the Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt hotel chain, have had long-standing conflicts with labor: when workers in Boston fought for a living wage, Hyatt fired them and replaced them with lower-paid outsourced workers.
[20] The Guardian – Flint residents grapple with water crisis a decade later: ‘If we had the energy left, we’d cry’ – Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justice – Hilary Beaumont – Thu 25 Apr 2024 07.00 EDT Now, a decade after the crisis began, kids are still sick, the city is not done replacing lead pipes and families like Thomas’s are still awaiting justice. “The people of Flint will never trust that water again,” said Pastor Alfred Harris of Concerned Pastors for Social Action. Harris was part of a group of pastors who organized protests and water-filter giveaways, met with lawmakers to urge them to stop sourcing water from the Flint River and sued, along with other groups, the city and state in 2016. “Flint was a poor community and majority people of color,” Harris said. “If it had been in another community – a majority white or more affluent community – I think actions would have been taken much sooner.” There is no safe level of lead exposure.
[21] Revolving door (politics) – Wikipedia Primarily, it denotes a situation wherein personnel move between roles as legislators or regulators in the public sector, and as employees or lobbyists of industries (affected by state legislation and regulations) in the private sector. It is analogous to the movement of people in a physical revolving door, hence its name. Critics assert that such a relationship between the government and private sector can lead to conflict of interest and regulatory capture, based on the granting of reciprocated privileges between them.
[23] Writing Letters to Elected Representatives, a guide – Letters to politicians are some of the easiest and most effective actions many neglect. CHLOE HUMBERT JAN 24, 2023 When we write to our representatives, we are not just writing for ourselves. Your representative’s office receives your letter and considers your position and interest in the issue as representative of some number of constituents who feel the same as you do, but did not have the inclination to write at present. They often keep tallies in spreadsheets and track issues. So it’s not just your lonely voice, each person who writes really makes a larger difference than you might expect from one person.
[24] Hypernormalisation Documentary, 2016, by Adam Curtis. ”The liberals were outraged at Trump. But they expressed their outrage in cyberspace so it had no effect. Because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead ironically their waves of angry messages and tweets benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. one online analyst put it simply — angry people click. It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead it became a fuel that fed the systems of power making them ever more powerful.”