LogFAQs > #934391539

That blurb sounds like she's swinging between extremes. I only started posting on GameFAQs after I fell out of social justice posting on Tumblr, I couldn't keep up with all the new hashtags and victims of police violence that were popping up every day in the wake of Michael Brown's death. Even as I walked away, I felt bad for the people being killed, but I couldn't memorise all of these different hashtags, names and faces a month for every bad thing that happens. There were weeks where like 3 people would be given the hashtag treatment, and it led to fatigue.

Every time someone was killed, someone was impassioned. That's good, I understand the fight to expose police brutality and discuss the disproportionate amount of minority deaths at the hands of police compared to arrests and sentencing. But how can I move on from one #Remember[Name] post to another two of them in the span of a week? Even if reblogging shit on Tumblr was all I could do, how could I keep going on like that when the posts move on so fast from the last victim? For the sake of my sanity, I couldn't treat every post-BLM victim as the face of a movement. Everyone was getting 15 seconds of fame in their death, and I didn't feel right reblogging every last post for the sake of appearing woke. I couldn't keep up, so I walked away for a while.

I'm still pretty far left, but I had to clear my palate and take some time to really figure myself out. GameFAQs was the alternative I chose for the topics that weren't all squeaky clean. Eventually I made friends with Bok Choi and started chatting on Discords and stuff.

Then I freaked the fuck out on CE and left - again, I swung between extremes. I stayed off here for months because I didn't like the sort of person I was becoming on this platform. Nowadays I can balance myself better, I know what my values are and they're not going to get skewed so easily.

Going from a lefty Democrat to a Trump supporter is a pretty extreme swing. The thing about ideological movements is that once you're in, it's going to be emotionally taxing to break away from it again. You'll feel like you're doing the wrong thing or being selfish, all the negativity levelled against the movement's enemies may get levelled at you for going against the group, and overall it's a bad time. A lot of the guilt I felt walking away from social justice posting was ultimately me putting that weight on my own shoulders, I never had any clout and my Tumblr followers and followed blogs weren't the virulent, witch-hunt types. But those types of callout blogs were out there, and people were cancelled for not stepping into line - even if it meant digging 5+ years into someone's internet history to get buttmad about.

Trump's base is far-right, and they're locked-in to the point of delusion. You have people who loved celebrities like Robert de Niro for years, who collected memorabilia, and the second that celebrity goes against Trump these people are breaking their shit on social media to "send a message". Even the most moderate Trump support serves as a gateway to hate groups and other loony far-right shit, because so many other Trump fans are fanning those flames of division and hate that you're bound to slip into worse and worse habits as you go deeper down the rabbit hole. It feels like a wake-up call to see the really shitty, militant lefty keyboard warriors fucking people over, and that can lead to a justified swing towards topics and places you've typically avoided. But by swinging hard into Trump, you're only going to go through the same process again.

Yeah, those militant lefty dipshits are assholes and what they did isn't excusable, but swinging into Trump will almost certainly see you allying with much, much worse people and the potential for radicalisation is that much higher. The trick in finding a middle ground that's right for you, at the end of the day, is to resist the signs of radicalisation once you feel them set in, and live by your own values separate from the people who would force you into a box. Swinging from super-lefty into Trump supporter is like jumping out of the frying pan and off a cliff - at the end of the day, it's better to set boundaries on shit to keep you on the right track with wiggle room to explore ideas and concepts that the most extreme side of any political compass will disincentivise you from exploring.

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