“The establishment does everything in its power to ensure that revolutionary rage is redirected into empty outlets which provide pressure releases for desires that could become dangerous if allowed to progress.”
Source: George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye — Wiki
In other words, the system, its tools and institutions do everything in their power to ensure that the threat (us) is redirected into empty outlets, to provide a pressure release for desires that could become threatening and dangerous to them (the ruling class) if allowed to progress. They’ve intentionally provided us with harmless ways, Instagram being a prime example, to express our anger, so that collective energy doesn’t turn into real action that could veritably challenge the status quo.
We live in a world where revolutionary thoughts and actions are often neutralized, first by redirection, and if necessary, by force. Personally, I don’t believe venting on social media disrupts the agenda; I think it cements it. We’re given the tools to speak, but denied the power to change.
I’ve seen so much digital activism dissolve into performance — likes, shares, comments, guilt-clearing gestures. But all of it cycles back into the same system. Never challenging it. Just pissing into the wind.
Social media was once sold as the great equalizer, a space where anyone could speak truth to power. But what we’ve seen, especially in times of genocide, hypernormalisation, fascism, and mass injustice, is the opposite. Social media and the internet as a whole have become extensions of dominant power, muting and banning voices that challenge propaganda, especially from the Global South or historically marginalized peoples. All under the label of “community guidelines.”
But whose community? Whose guidelines? When the truth offends, it becomes “hate speech.” When suffering is too graphic, it’s flagged as “against policy.”
The algorithms are eating us alive.