netiquette is dead. long live netiquette.
a long rant about doing things differently - REALLY differently.
as an old nerd i remember - and deeply miss! - early netiquette. the internet and the world wide web were founded by the marginalised - from their original autistic coders and info-nerds to people outside of their local culturenorms, desperately seeking knowledge exchanges and kin wherever they existed on the global map. netiquette meant we trained new users in how our spaces worked, technologically and relationally - much like the community agreements in grassroots group spaces which many are trying to bring back. all communities of all flavours follow the same patterns, whether f2f or online - there will always be n00bs, troublemakers and flame wars. the perceived success of any given space was (and is) how you handle them.
back then, no one bitched about being ‘told what to do’, because everything was still new and untested - everyone was learning and pushing the edges of this thing, and everyone was hungry for new knowledge, explorations, and connection. and, fundamentally, there was a foundational culture of the ‘home page’: ‘you’re coming into our online home, and this is our culture’. it wasn’t dictatorial because it was shaped organically and fluidly. people read the FAQs (RTFM!!), and when new folk arrived and behaved in ways which suggested they hadn’t, they were redirected there, helped along their way to joining in to the flow which preexisted, always with the invitation to add your wisdoms and help shape future flows.
and then facebook leapt into mainstream dominance... and no one taught new users anything. instead they laughed when mistakes were made (someone’s gran trying to send their grandkid a message, with no idea of how fb worked or that they were speaking to your whole feed not just you). if you dared to offer netiquette or advice, you increasingly received negativity instead of gratitude - mainstream anti-education and anti-intellectualism won, for the lolz. no community agreement, no culture, just an onslaught of everything, everywhere, all the time (now with added privacy breaches and algorithmic abuse! yay capitalism!). and while certain pockets of well-tended digital landscapes have existed amidst all that, some even thriving, we’ve never really holistically found our way back to cocreating cultures centred in openness and knowledge sharing... with a guiding hand to ensure everyone’s raised up collectively, with no one left behind.
instead, many who succeeded in their fight for the right to thrive pulled the ladders up behind them, with those who helped their campaigns left behind. and all that pathetic-excuse-for-online-culture became normalised in the physical realm - everyone shouting, no one really listening, or caring - as the media and our leaders modelled, and funded, division.
so why bother reflecting on netiquette when it is such a resoundingly dead parrot? because the current Green Party of England and Wales movement is growing faster than anyone anticipated. and it needs us to do things differently before we end up collapsing under the same old strains of homogenised, hate-centred, power-hungry normativity.
i’ve voted Greens for years, but only joined when Zack stepped in. his fresh leadership - queer, trans inclusive, nature-centred, smart, witty, compassionate, committed, riddled with integrity - hit all my marks; unthinkable given generations of ‘two party, all right-wing’ politic. and dear god i needed a glimpse of hope amidst the endless darkness. my limited capacity meant i couldn’t do much, but i hit the Gorton&Denton trail a few times, surprised to find resourcing in the connection as thousands of people travelled from around the country (and even from overseas!), because we all knew precisely how pivotal this moment could become. the shared elation when we actually won was like nothing i’ve ever experienced before. hope. that precious and unfathomable mythic beast.
my limited capacity is down to my neurodivergence and trauma. being around people, even kind people, exhausts me and regularly retriggers me. i’m not even online anymore because the signal to noise ratio is too out of kilter (that, and my refusal to be held hostage by Meta, now demanding either actual cash or even more access to my decades of data. and my fear of DWP sanctioning me for ‘being well enough to have an online existence, therefore well enough to hold down a fulltime job’ - yes, that’s a thing. especially if your online existence is critical of the hand which [doesn’t] feed).
my access to my people - mostly overseas - has been taken away (further harming my precarious sense of stability, and the wellbeing boosts which come from being heard, seen, connected, with kin). my various special interest and support groups are now locked behind uncaring castle walls. my writing (which of course i have downloaded) is stripped of the rich discussions which flowed from them, even if they were my own posts (comments i’d added to other people’s posts, or posts i’d made in groups, aren’t included in the download). decades of relationships and networks - the hardest thing for my autistic ass to build and maintain, and the things i most need personally (and professionally, if i’m ever to get back to work) - eradicated. the repeated mantra: connection doesn’t matter. we don’t matter. only supremacy matters - which doesn’t include ME or YOU.
i’ve been actively online since 1996, and have run my own servers since 1999. i’ve travelled the world teaching people how to find their inner geek and caretake their own online domains. i created a new genre of literature, designed for the limitations of a technology cynically developed by EU handset manufacturers to restrict creative potential, in order to deter a (far better) Japanese and Chinese tech innovation takeover… and used it to inspire new generations of digital producers 26years ago. i led a 3year strategic initiative which invested AUD$2.4million into artists, arts orgs, educators, researchers, tech developers, and the humans which enabled them to dream, to breathe, to thrive. i live-tweeted my life and taught others how to effectively run backchannels for conferences and festivals. i documented protests and taught others how to do similarly, safely. in my own tiny ways i helped to shape early global digital culture - for the artists, the audiences, the coproducers, the policy makers, the funders, the educators, the marginalised and the silenced.
and then the techdudebro gatekeepers hauled up the drawbridge and my entire, fragile, social universe collapsed. you might imagine that i’d have known this was coming and hopeful we could prevent that… and that i’d be a bit fucking angry about my foolish, hopeful, idealism not going to plan… and you’d be right.
so when i dipped my toes back into digital networks, to find my Greens coconspirators, i couldn’t help but observe both tiny details and their big picture patterns and trends. just like the digital strategy i designed and delivered 17years ago in Australia, i’ve witnessed the gaps and glitches, and pondered what efforts might help fill, fix, and intraconnect them. i even devised a new version of an old model which worked - the Geek in Residence program - and have been doing my best to nudge those new ideas into awareness, to see if i can find new collaborators and coconspirators. all without access to the mechanisms which once enabled my voice to have reach, and without the social, economic, relational, or confidence capacity to stick my head above the parapet… because this time being cut off (as in sanction-land) would literally end me. and i can’t do it alone, but it (or SOMETHING) needs to be done… and so the cycles go.
to share this now means to re-open myself to risk, to hate, to threat… when my nervous system still hasn’t found stable coping mechanisms, or the carescapes i need for my own survival. but i can’t stay silent - not when this movement is so pivotal for our collective future. publishing anonymously doesn’t help, either. networks of trust are built on reputation; if you don’t know who i am, and you can’t see my body of work behind my words: why should you give a damn about what i’m saying, nevermind reach out to add your own ideas to the mix?
so what have i noticed, and what do i think might work better instead?
1. we have a fundamental digital literacy gap, nationally.
despite the UK’s beloved, self-appointed, ‘digital king’ branding, and the billions which have been invested into tech here, the vast majority of that money has gone to techdudebros and consultants living in (or visiting) London, and very little into equipping the national population with the skills and confidence to use it well. when i landed back from Australia in 2016 i was shocked to witness how far behind we were as a nation.
admittedly, creative digital culture is its own niche beast, with its own cultural practices of inclusion, play, visioning, mutual aid, experimentation, changemaking… which are far from mainstream norms. as i stumbled onto my own divergences and shared my findings, i joined the throngs of the Pied Pipers of Autism (ripples of “ohhhhhhhhh, shit that’s me too!” flooding in - obvious, really, that we’d have accidentally found each other). and as artists have always been un/lo-paid social workers, investing our creative care within community development, i had expected that the burgeoning creative digital culture scene i’d left behind in 2008 would have continued - taking their innovative digital literacy around with them. but the impact of austerity had hit too hard, collapsing infrastructure and siloing its remnant networks.
at the time when i was first attempting to re-enter employment and peopling, working and volunteering in grassroots social justice around homelessness, the absence of digital confidence even by salaried staff was a miserable surprise. and then COVID hit, and everyone rushed to provide online experiences (arts being one of the most soaring increases, with nature connections not far behind)… and again we saw how little digital confidence existed. and again we left far too many behind.
2. within the Greens digital networks themselves: there’s a digital literacy gap in management AND members.
…which is obvious, and not even their fault, when its players are borne from this systemic digital divide.
unsurprisingly, social media has been the main focus for promotions and discussions, with floods of WhatsApp groups, Discords, and email lists thrown together in urgency to try to catch the various subgroups and their chaotic energies. the shift from 60k to over 225k members in a matter of months felt exactly like early mainstream facebook adoption all over again - no one facilitating community agreements or teaching how each respective culture could be co-designed to make best use of diverse skills, experience, time and capacity… and everyone riddled with the trauma and disenfranchisement of decades of harm-by-policy.
all noise, little signal, and too many reopened wounds to urgently patch up leaves little brainspace for prefigurative interventions. especially when we’re running on the grassroots smell of an oily rag, against the billions of dollars pouring into Reform pockets from their fascist friends, a media infrastructure fighting to save its own protection rackets, and a Government and Electoral system with its fingers in fascist pies and a legalised love of lying.
aside from the obvious own-goal of organising on Meta (the least protective and most intentionally harmful platform of them all), the onslaught of so many users and so little netiquette has been overwhelming for everyone. for those trying to modmin those spaces (when there are so many different platforms, with far too much duplication/reinvented wheels across all of them), this noise naturally leads to overload, avoidance, and a whole bunch of missed connection potential.
there's SO much noise (from management and members alike) in WhatsApp especially, from people who appear desperate for connection (understandable), but their chatter clogs up channels making them unusable for actual info sharing (i'm afraid i'm not reading several hundred messages everyday just to see if maybe there's one post i might find useful/could offer help toward - like, do i really need to hear about your washing machine installation problems on a Trans Greens feed?!). it's all super-indicative of a wider national isolation problem, which i have compassion for because i live it too...but UGH. i think there’s a place for sidebar chats around groups of shared interest (the equivalent to water cooler convos), but this necessary seeking of rare human connection cannot coexist in the same channel where vital actioning resides. we have to do things differently, this time.
as a taste of my personal experience during my tentative explorations: i've emailed our local NWGreens admin (to ask for more info on roles/responsibilities months ago to see if maybe i might have capacity for any of them. and more recently, after clicking the ‘yes please’ button, for flyers to be sent to me so i could deliver on my own), only to have zero replies and nothing posted out. after a somewhat disastrous NWGreens attempt at a hybrid online/in-person local meeting following the G&D win, i’d chatted to the organisers and some of the trainers about what we could be doing better, offering advice and also hands-on help, and coming up with a Greens Geeks model of my old Geek in Residence program… and again have received zero responses from any of them. and i’ve given our local Greens Councillor hard copies of those ideas so he could mull it over and share with anyone he thought might be interested to discuss it more (before i found the Digital Greens where conversations have been more considered and better managed - where hope is again re-emerging). again, silence.
it’s not been terribly encouraging for someone who’s trying hard to find out where my limited capacities might be useful for the movement! i know everyone’s stretched thin and there’s been a LOT going on, but there’s so many of us who aren’t big social creatures, who have time and want to do something useful with it (instead of feeling useless and powerless… the worst possible thing for trauma). there are plenty of invitations for envelope-stuffing and phone-banking and huge social gatherings, but what about text-banking? where are the places for the quiet folk, the non-phone users, the passionate SpInners who exist outside those extrovert expectations?
ffs, we’re here! we care! harness what we can bring to expand who you are, what you do, and how you do it! LET US DO THIS DIFFERENTLY!
3. our people are understandably unwell. and it shows.
grassroots movements are built upon the ashes of generational, systemic harm. people who have been hurt and have chosen to learn from it and do better (instead of use that as an excuse to harm others). people who are currently being harmed and are desperate to find someone, anyone, who will hear and see them (to be the “empathic witness” as Dr Peter Levine describes within his Somatic Experiencing embodied trauma recovery model), and help them find a path out of their horrors. and of course, wherever there’s vulnerability, you inevitably find predators armed to hunt their prey - the charming and oh so very kind-seeming humans (usually men) who no one would ever suspect of harmful behaviour… whose victims are left unheard.
there’s no mainstream-approved education model for unlearning and rebuilding from those ashes (although there are a multitude of histories from which we can learn and evolve, if we’re prepared and able to dig through them all to find what might work for this one). there are next-to-no trauma services from the NHS (who don’t believe it exists, despite perpetuating it themselves to their own staff, nevermind patients). our collective neural pathways have been conditioned to blame others instead of question ourselves, to hate and mistrust instinctively, instead of step toward each other in curiosity. our ‘safeguarding’ primarily only protects the organisation, not the individual. and it’s always the individual who’s at fault, never the systems which have so resoundingly failed us, generation after generation.
as a broken individual, you’re told “just ask for help - there’s a safety net because we’re a caring society!”… but the systems which allegedly exist to provide that help repeatedly punish you for the audacity of asking, and then brand you with the moniker of “dole bludger - a drain on the public purse” (ignoring the true drains of a dying capitalism). when you're someone with multiple complex needs, you’re already dealing with multiple dismissals of input or requests for support elsewhere, which so easily become retraumatising loops, locked into our bodily responses as micro-aggressions. when the movement which seeks to include and address all of those issues also seemingly ignores you, it's hard to see how we're being made welcome. and that so easily can bring new layers of resentment and disenfranchisement... which we really don't need if this movement is gonna work! and it's GOT to fuckin work!
whatever models we codesign for this movement, they categorically MUST be trauma-informed, and neuro and gender inclusive. they must centre our widest common denominators, not pander to outmoded hierarchical power models. and they must require every single member checking their own damn privilege and being accountable to their own behaviours, handing the mic to those with the least voice and using their own platforms to amplify those less-heard, and doing our own work of recovery and self-adaptation. and yes, i include myself in that - i am doing the work, and that work is endless. i fuck up constantly, and i run and hide when it’s all too damn hard constantly. but i keep coming back, i keep trying, i keep fighting and i keep caring - no matter how much my inner demons want me dead.
and if we’re truly hoping to co-design the movement we need, we’ve got to stop pulling the damn ladders up behind us whenever there’s a win.
4. i don't see GPEW as a solely a political movement; it's a 'rebuild society' movement. or it could be, if we work toward that holistically enough.
after generations of abuse-by-policy, blaming the individual for its own systemic injustices, the far right have done everything possible to destroy health, education, the economy, and the natural environment (for all but themselves). it’s all fundamentally fucked, and all humans are riddled with the traumatic impacts of all that ‘being fucked over-ness’ (whether they’re aware of it, or in the privileged position of doing something about it, or not).
every cause is intraconnected, we can’t fix one without fixing all of them - because we are an ecosystem. and everything’s so deeply broken, that’s a mammoth job of both existential and functional change. everything’s urgent - both sticking plasters and systemic change. and every change - while for the greater good in the long run - will not happen quickly (because change doesn’t happen quickly), and humans are extremely resistant to personal change, and conditioned to believe system change is either impossible or designed to harm them personally - trust isn’t inherent in current society, it’s been promised and dashed far too many times.
my experience of the Westminster and Electoral system (both here and wherever we’ve dragged this failing nonsense overseas via Colonisation) is that every voter makes the effort because they believe their vote will change their cause/situation for the better. that single-mindedness often leads to the unthinking arrogance that their personal issue will come first on the agenda, and will feel abandoned all over again when that doesn’t happen instantly. but we can’t fix everything instantly.
any movement and Government which seeks to get us back to health, restore education, rebuild a meaningful economy, and restore the natural environment and limit further extractivism is effectively going to have to prepare the ground for the long journey of rebuilding trust, the acceptance that we won’t be able to do it all at once, and that while it might appear as though this is yet more abandonment and disappointment, that their time and cause will come.
we therefore need holistic models to bring people with us on that learning curve BEFORE we win the election. or we’ll have one term and be ousted by the far right, all over again. however clumsily, i’m trying to find the people who get where i’m coming from and feel similarly, so we can codesign something to get that holistic learning curve started NOW.
i strongly believe that if ‘this’ (the Green Party as our next Govt, the end of fascism and capitalism and hate, and the inception and intentionality of a cocreated sustainable future for every human and all living beings) have any damn chance of succeeding, we need to bring back netiquette and de-shame learning.
teach people how politics and policy actually work so they can meaningfully participate in it and watch their inputs manifest into impact.
teach them how DEI can work FOR them instead of being viewed as something which benefits others while you’re drowning.
teach them how to deep listen, how to communicate so we can be heard, how to navigate conflict.
teach them how to take care of themselves and their people, how the global trauma pandemic has shaped who they, we all, are - and what to do about that when it shows up.
… because we do not know these things by default, our education systems have been deliberately de-funded to demotivate our resilience and replaced by generational conditioning to believe we don’t matter, by people who benefit from us self-destructing.
this is what i’m trying to shape with my evolving Greens Geeks holistic ideas, whenever my brain is working well enough to poke at them. we so desperately need it, or something like it. or else this movement will only end up swamped by ignorance and shaming, just like facebook taught us.
…
closing note and invitation:
if any of this resonates with you: reach in and say so (because it’s fucking lonely in here). share it (because i fuckin can’t!). infodump at me about what’s going well with whatever inclusive actions and comms you’re involved with (because my rhizomic brain LOVES to absorb systems change models). tell me i’m wrong, if you must - but ONLY if you’ve got other ideas, not to just tear it and me down for the lolz (because that’ll only get you blocked from visiting my home again).