One of the internet’s lesser-known sins is making uncool people appear cool.
- FOSS advocates preach freedom and independence. But can these revolutionaries pry themselves away from their slavemaster screens?
- Nationalistic defenders of Tradition and Le Evropa bring to mind images of hard, determined cyber-soldiers over their chan-posts. It’s probably just socially-awkward Chud warrior-ing behind his keyboard. Even if he drags himself to the gym (unlikely), he’s still an uninspiring grump prone to ugly racist comments.
- Online, Ethical Vegans can appear as knights upholding a higher, consistent ethical standard that normies shy away from. The reality of dogmatic veganism is refusing to try a dessert that was lovingly baked for the family, or a kindly-offered slice of birthday cake. Offline, people see strict veganism like a self-inflicted coeliac disease.
- Anarcho-communists of Twitter, the black flags are exciting, but their offline behaviour disappoints. For anti-capitalists they are shockingly consumeristic. For anarchists they’re rather slavish and oversocialised, from what I’ve seen.
- Behind cute androgynous avatars the TRAs and gender-abolitionists give the illusion of masterfully juggling the masculine and feminine, transcending the limitations of “cisheteronormativity”. The reality… well, it falls a tad flat.
- Antinatalists seem really edgy, until you see the sterile distractions they fill their loveless lives with, that is.
Yeah, we stereotyping. Sometimes these stereotypes won’t hold, but the real point is that what makes ideas cool online does not necessarily transfer into the real world. You may see still see yourself as cool for adopting cool ideas, in the same way you see other onliners as cool. But that doesn’t make you so.
Even after spending plenty of time offline, it is important to double check, ask yourself how your behaviour appears to people, in real life, who can’t directly experience all the awesome-feeling ideas floating around in your mind. Some ideals may still be correct while manifesting in uncool-ways in your behaviour, in which case you should adapt your behaviours to be inspiring rather than ideologically masturbatory. Online circles, with their groupthinking tendencies, tend to lead people to the latter behaviours.
If you want to make an impact, then you need people to want to be like you - in real life. Stop being a loser.