There’s a lot of people on here who are part of what I’d call losing causes, causes that run counter to the consumerist capitalist mono-culture, I.e. socialism, veganism, FOSS, anti-car urbanism, even lemmy and the fediverse.

I want to know what made you switch from being a sympathizer to an active participant. I believe it’s important for us to understand what methods work in getting people involved in a movement that may not have any immediate wins to motivate people to join.

EDIT: A lot of people objecting to my use of losing so I’ll explain more, all of these causes benefit from popularity and are weakened by there lack of adoption and are thus in direct competition with the capitalist consumerist mono-culture, a competition which they are currently losing.

  • Socialism on a small scale cannot solve the inherent issues of a capitalism that surrounds it.

  • Veganism benefits from more people becoming vegan and restaurants and grocery stores providing vegan options.

  • FOSS, or more specifically desktop Linux, benefits from more people being on it and software developers designing for and maintaining applications for it.

  • The more people that use transit, the more funding it gets and the better it gets.

  • the fediverse benefits from more people veing on it and more diverse communities so those with niche interests besides the above causes can find community here.

On the flip side the capitalist consumerist alternatives to all of these benefit from there popularity and thus offer a better value to most people. The question is about what made you defer that better immediate material value in favor of something else.

  • AnotherUsername@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 days ago

    I’m adopting FOSS because commercial products are inevitably enshitified for profit. Fuck the billionaires, I like my money and my personal data and I am not ok with them putting their grubby, sticky little fingers in my personal shit. I was raised a private person and I like my privacy.

    I’m not vegan but I reduced my red and pork to 0 because it’s unhealthy and I don’t really like eating things for breakfast that are as smart as small children. Ew.

    I fucking hate cars and always have. They smell bad, they’re expensive, they take up huge amounts of time, and idiots on a power trip are always being assholes in them. Coal rolling trucks make me want to puke in disgust. It’s always a guy and he’s always a dropout moron on a power trip who’s gonna die of lung cancer at 56 while complaining about chemtrails.

    Socialism is necessary because capitalism promotes the tragedy of the commons and I like my clean air and drinkable water. I grew up on stories about the wilderness, I lived running around in the woods, I value a healthy ecosystem rich in genetic diversity. I am also an absolutely enormous asshole at heart who is cheap as fuck and who hates litter, and homeless people are untidy, expensive, and dangerous. Sticking them in apartments to keep their shitty decisions out of my view is cheaper than cleaning up their feces all the time and dealing with begging and grabbing and crime, and it makes me able to ignore them more easily. Out of sight, out of mind, I get to live my life in peace knowing they’re not homeless anymore. Also their kids don’t deserve that shit even if their parents are depressed abusive junkie trash who couldn’t keep a job if it was “lay here all day long”.