Thinkpieces

or: Never not time to start petty beef with someone I fundamentally agree with about basically everything

Abstract: The social preconditions for good thinkpieces do not exist, and creating them takes priority over and does not include writing thinkpieces (excluding this one ofc).

Disclaimer: This article as at best the pot calling the kettle black, and at worst my making petty assumptions about someone based on the fact that they are too busy (quite possibly doing what I am telling them to do with this essay) to text me back, an unforgivable sin for which thier joy must be harshed. Nonetheless:

There is a chronic oversupply of content about politics focused on accurately representing the political system and synthesizing theoretical perspectives (thinkpieces) that is fuled by the social media companies drive for profit (exercise for reader), a misunderstanding about what politics actually is (exercise; hint: power, not ideas), and a deep emotional attatchment to the familiar among us writers. Thinkpieces are written mainly by and for those of us radicalized by thinkpieces for obvious reasons, but in this case doing what worked for us is innefective: The thinkpieces we were radicalized by still exist, and likely have not lost very much of thier punch. Additionally, even if one can do better then those prior successes there is no gaurentee that will help grow the lefty thinkpiece sector in the broader idea economy, which is austensibly the goal here.

Fundamentally, supplying more thinkpieces will neither create demand for or supply of more thinkpieces; we must make change outside this market to affect its share. In other words, it is a social process that makes people read, enjoy and act upon thinkpieces that is absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity thereof; and we should engage in this social process rather then just writing more even if writing is what we know (or because "writer" is the only type of successfull leftist we can concieve of anymore). In still other words we need to get people to reallocate thier attention from whateverthefuck to our thinkpieces, which is essentially a marketing question.

I do not believe it is possible to compete in the dark forest web and out-market Mr Beast, but we can take advantage of geographic and social heterogenaity to differentiate our product (get all of our usually non-political friends to read it instead of fighting over internet strangers and form a pysical community of ). This has the added benefit of being a community that can critique and improve your political game in a way internet people cannot, and being something imminant, trackable, and correlated with effort rather then just gambling on algorithims. This is partially evidenced by the fact that this here thinkpiece would not exist but for a meatspace interaction with the person I disclaimered about.

I would like to finsih up by narrativising the "evidence" I have for this theory: In the fall I cooked up some banger thinkpieces. like 4 months on 4 2-page punchy, theory-in-everyday-language, call-to-action-heavy pieces of writing. Like I almost lost a couple friends over this shit, but everyone who read them called them "good" at minimum. However, when I tried to share them noone gave a single flying fuck. Fast forward a month and a ridiculous poster drunkenly made in 2 hours with 0 substantive commentary hung up for at most like a day in 10 out of the way spots on campus generated more buzz then any of the writing I have poured my heart into, and I have had interesting political convorsations stemming from it, despite no overt political content on the posters. This to me says that people are desperate for community and change, just as long as it is not the same sort of change that they have seen fail before (ie blogging). Thus my project (and thus my best reccomendation for anyone else's) is to normalize and streamline gathering in a politcal context, rather then focusing on the litteral political content of any meeting.

801 664 5241, or Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Salt Lake Coffee Break. Be there or be Square (c. 2/2/25)