An ode to silliness and shitposting in the climate fight
Why humor, memes and preaching to the choir are important.
Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.
A year and a half ago I got hold of an invite to Bluesky, a platform that started as an internal project at Twitter (after Elon Musk’s overtake known as X), and frequently is described as “the new Twitter”. Over at X climate people have experienced a shift from a platform that once allowed discussion, networking and easy access to new and interesting research, often from the researchers themselves, to being an increasingly hostile place. More and more time and effort goes towards blocking out trolls and hate slur. I’ve previously written about how the far-right use troll factories that are helped by algoritms that amplify hateful language and rage baits - needless to say that the way the far-right is using social media is a real problem.
Over the past year I’ve heard many people express a sense of being lost on the internet, when the people they’ve been following, sometimes for many years, started scattering across various platforms. But also being lost in a more emotional sense: What is social media for? Did we really use to love it? Does it serve a purpose for the climate movement, or are we just fooling ourselves?
The thing that’s been most surprising for me about spending time at Bluesky has been that it’s reminded me of what it’s like to be a human on the internet. Human as in a whole person, rather than merely an instrument for the cause, constantly hypervigilant that trolls or climate obstructors find your posts and start flooding them with rage. So far, people are generally nice and polite, funny and curious - not always agreeing, but disagreeing in a sensible way. It probably won’t last forever, and this platform too will probably at some point become another enshittified product, but I’m enjoying it for the time being.
It may sound cheesy, but it’s just been nice to be able to exist in a place online where it’s possible to have interesting conversations about small and big stuff, to get tips about research and recipes, restaurants and climate texts. And not gradually relax from constantly being on edge. To be reminded that engagement and motivation is also about strengthening ties with your allies and to mix reading and talking about heavy issues, with the laughter and lightness of shitposting.
This month’s post is about the importance for the climate movement of finding allies online, using humor and shitposting.
Situation
Over the past year more and more people have left X for other platforms. After the US election at the beginning of November especially Bluesky has seen a surge of new users. With the platform imposing a stricter blocking feature, and its users encouraging people to block rather than react to trolls, the platform is so far experienced as a nicer place. One where it’s possible to engage in conversation, connect with others and just plain have a good time. Contrary to X, Bluesky don’t use algoritms and don’t suppress links to external sites, which is a big difference for media outlets, journalists and other creators.
But the possibility for users to create their own feeds rather than relying on external algoritms, and the active blocking culture has led to criticism of the platform being an echo chamber, filled with people who’re preaching to their own choir and rejecting anyone with opposing opinions. Which in turn raises the question of whether it’s a wise use of time and resources for the broad climate movement to spend their times arguing with people (or bots) that hold completely opposite opinions, on a platform that intentionally amplify the owner’s own agenda? In fact, can preaching to the choir and spending online time in a community that’s friendly and supportive offer something else?
Explanation
Rebecca Solnit puts it well in this beautiful essay about why preaching to the choir serves an important purpose, and why we should reject the idea that a movement’s proper audience is their enemies, not their allies:
In an intellectual exchange, disagreement doesn’t mean tearing down a rival but testing and strengthening the structure of a proposal, an analysis. It is what you do when you agree with people in general but have specifics to work out; and that work can be a joy. It’s an arrangement in which no one is the preacher or the choir, in which everything is open to question, in which ideas are beautiful and precision is holy.
Those arguing that we, as part of a democratic conversation or a larger movement, need to stay at places where our time gets eaten up by trolls and fascists, have misunderstood a very important part of sustainable engagement. Solnit uses the actual church and preachers to explain:
What’s more, to suggest that you shouldn’t preach to the choir is to misunderstand the nature of preaching. Conversion or the transmission of new information is not the primary aim; the preacher has other work to do. Classically, the sermon is a kind of literary criticism that regards the key sacred texts and their meanings as inexhaustible. Adults, like children, love hearing the great stories more than once, and most religions have prayers and narratives, hymns and songs that are seen as wells of meaning that never run dry. You can go lay down your sword and shield by the riverside one more time; there are always more ways to say how once you were blind and now can see.
Preaching to the choir doesn’t have to be a serious matter. In fact, using humor, in the form of memes, shitposting and riffing (that Merriam-Webster describes as: “to talk about a particular subject in usually a quick and lively way”), can benefit the feeling of social community, as well as play an important role in activist communication.
Nonsense and silliness has had an important place in political communication, art and poetry for centuries. Using absurdity in texts or visuals can often convey a message with clarity and create stronger emotional reactions than a matter-of-factly seriousness can. As comedian John Oliver does here when he uses humor and satire to explain carbon offsets. Climate is a serious matter, but that doesn’t mean that all climate work needs to be. On the contrary, silliness and shitposts might be essential to offer some emotional relief amidst people’s climate anxiety.
Shitposting is sometimes regarded as a practice primarily used by racists and trolls to derail serious discussions through aggressive or trollish content. Aiming to cause large reactions with little effort. Shitposting is however more widely used, by many different groups, and often in a way that strengthens rather than tears apart social bonds. For example, Krogh and colleagues have explored how teenage girls use shitposting in small snapchat groups, as a way of displaying imperfect, non-conforming femininities, in stark contrast to the “perfection ideals” often imposed on girls and young women. In that way shitposting can be viewed as a form of resistance towards a femininity associated with individual success and flawlessness.
Scholar Peter Woods proposes that shitposting also serve a purpose of public pedagogy, and that the process of making and distributing new media such as memes contributes to the development of identity and agency not only within the creator but within the audience that reads, watches and circulates it forward. With their reliance on absurdity, disruption of online discourses and use of meta-languaging, memes and shitposts can often be more powerful ways of communicating than heavy research reports, as they spotlight the absurdity of the current hegemony and business as usual - which in a comforting way can decrease the dissonance many of us carry in our daily lives.
Like these two memes below intelligently show the absurdity of postponing emission reductions to future years.
I would also propose that reading and sharing memes, shitposting and riffing offers moments of lightness, emotional nourishment and reminder that people are fun, social, creative creatures.
The use of silliness and humor is far from an online only practice. Mayes and Center mean that young climate activists often use their cardboard signs during climate strikes to mobilize humor as public pedagogy, to engage others both emotionally and politically. This creative practice, according to Mayes and Center, demonstrates a critical affective climate justice literacy, which combines critique of something with the creation of other possibilities, such as using humor, puns, references to absurd political statements to critique climate injustices. Humor, and the creative process it enables, holds a significant place in social movements.
The question of not only who we engage with online, but also how we engage with each other online deserves attention, but also some reflection. Especially in light of the amount of work that needs to be done in the world and the limited amount of time and energy each of us has. We should use that time and energy wisely - which includes making space to engage in that which nourishes us.
That which nourishes us might for some not be the internet at all. There are a lot of valid reasons to limit social media use, and there’s an ongoing debate on how social media affects our society, not the least young people. From a psychological perspective it’s important to consider not only whether to use or not use social media, but also how to use it, for what purpose, and consider how it makes you feel, and whether it makes you pay less attention to other important things in your life.
One thing that, however, often gets overlooked in the argument of “put away your phone and go out in the real world” is that not everyone lives in a place where there are good groups to join, not everyone lives with family or has close friends, not everyone has the courage to solo it to a protest or town hall meeting or public lecture or whatever. Some people live with chronic pain or other illness that makes it harder to physically transport. But each and everyone of us needs community, needs laughter and lightness and the feeling of not being alone and sometimes doing that online is the only feasible option. Connecting with others online can also lower the threshold to join a group or meeting IRL, knowing that there will be someone there you’ve already interacted with. For example, in the growing movement of Mothers’ Rebellion, many people first join their online groups and start connecting with others, before building up the courage to join a physical manifestation.
Remember the bowl in our ice cream model, developed to help with long term coping of climate emotions. We need a multitude of ways to keep growing the bowl and make it more stable: by talking, joking, laughing, connecting and shitposting with each other, instead of spending our limited energy on constantly reacting to those obstructing our work.
Action
Community activist Chad Loder wrote, yes on Bluesky that one of fascism’s main tactics is to physically and mentally exhaust you. Flooding everyone’s feeds, and the media debate with bullshit that keeps us constantly reacting, to the point where we get mentally exhausted and don’t have energy left to fight for the things we truly care about. It’s time to be less reactive to the madness of the world and give more space to the creativity, humor and strength that a collective of people - be it online or offline - are able to create.
Allow yourself to be a full human, with all its seriousness and silliness. Connecting with others that allows you to be a full human is a way of growing resistance and resilience towards fascistic, anti democratic and climate obstructing forces.
Because climate work is heavy, it requires laughter, connection and shitposting - it’s just another way of communicating, and one that’s able to reach others who might not read complicated science reports.
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