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.

  • kidney_stone@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 hours ago

    I kinda agree with you. Very often people with strong moral convictions (a good thing, in my opinion) believe that evangelizing alone is the only ‘valid’ approach, while popularity and convenience are seen as somehow ‘dirty’. But it is impossible to ignore the reality of how much people in their everyday lives want and need convenience. And when it comes to social media, popularity is inherently important, because people want to hang out where their real life friends hang out too. So convenience and popularity are a material necessity if a cause is not to be a losing cause.