TOTW: The future of anarchist media

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Topic of the week - How anarchists engage in the sharing of information has long been a critical part of the anarchist project, and as the media landscape of the future changes, perhaps anarchists must too. In this topic of the week, we will discuss the future of anarchist media.

What does the future of anarchist media look like? How do you think about anarchist media as it relates to your anarchist life project? How do we get from here to there?

Drawing from the past, do any anarchist media projects, texts, or events really stand out for noteworthy moments (either good or bad) that set the stage for what is to be done in terms of anarchist media? Why?

Is there a need for a strong anarchist media alliance? How come?

Other anarchist media related tidbits you'd like to share?

There are 84 Comments

i see more future for media than i do for anarchism and anarchists. media will have an important role in destroying anarchism and anarchists. it will destroy anarchism by distorting and diluting it into senselessness through noisy lossy repetition, and it will destroy anarchists by being a huge dragnet that enables and incites self-snitching to previously unfathomable levels of precrime and panopticism. entertainment still serves the old functions of ruling class propaganda, distraction, bread and circus, manufactured consent, spectacle, etc. ongoing derealization will make categories such as jedi and furry have more bearing on people's lives and more impact on the world than "anarchist" ever had or will have.

Yes, media always portrays anarchy and anarchism is riotous, destructive chaos, and that is bad PR. Though ironically some celebrities, for personal gain, like Musk, say they are anarchists, meaning Ancaps, but otherwise no serious debate about the varieties and values of anarchist theory. The beautiful idea can't compete with the bling of the capitalist lure.

Why do you say "yes" in the beginning of your post? Don't quiet get it.

Yes, its a cultural think I picked up in prison, accompanied with the nodding of the head. My dad reckons it makes me look and sound like a weak condescending man. Hope you get it now, thanks.

i fully agree with your statement, although there's always a chance pessimism will be proven wrong end the spectacle be destroyed. Who knows...

of journalists, just as i do for teachers, cops, social workers, etc.
on the other hand, my (our?) hatred doesn't cover all the relevant positions.

or, to start another way, indymedia is also composed of people, from either outside a scene or inside of it, reporting to strangers, friends, and others, about things that we want to know about.

many journalists are also targeted by people who want us to know even less than we already do.

and while media and journalists are not the same thing, the people who report cannot be excised from the reporting... i continue to be irritated by the position that crimethinc seems to insist on having in relationship to anarchists around the world, even though i also appreciate that they are consistent and intentional and are using the international social resources they have in a solid way.
it's easy to say, i just hate corporate media, but that's not even really it, because we all have journalists in our heads that must also be killed.

i'm in no position right now to state conclusions, but these are thoughts i am pondering with this totw.

But Orwell was a journalist. Occasionally they can be informative, honest and empathic.

Their jobs inherently involves lying to people, dumbing them down, preying on them to send them to jail. That's perhaps what the "good cops" within these careers are not fully realizing, and why there's some people who just walk out of the job at some point, coming to terms with the fact they're an active, aggressive part of a mind-crushing machine and that beyond disclosing shit these liberal hopes for "changing the system from within" are just serving the machine's interests.

(I didn't write the comment you were replying to)

canyousaymoreherewithintheconstraintofthistopicoftheweek?

Yeah let me explain…

When new means to the production of media creation become popular because they are affordable, user-friendly, and ubiquitous, failure to adopt said new means indicates a lack of real-world connection to many people. This applies to anarchist media as well. Anarchists were early adopters when it came to audio-only podcasts, perhaps because audio recording was already a big part of anarchist media production. However, anarchists have mostly lagged behind others when it comes to video production with a few exceptions, suchas Submedia.

The past 10 years of popular media have only become more video-centric: YouTube, Snap Chat, TikTok, Twitch, etc. And now after the shared experience of pandemic lockdown, video is even more familiar as a goto form of media for communicating. The barrier to entry is extremely low when it comes to technology and knowledge and media skill for producing content on popular platforms. Every niche seems to have made itself regularly visible because of this. Yet, anarchists haven’t… again, with relatively few exceptions.

I don’t think AR and VR are going to reach the same sort of popular adoption as video has any time soon, so for the next however long until then, it will be video that will measure the viability of media projects. Anarchists will have to adapt to this or remain increasingly marginal.

As someone with this outlook, I have taken my own advice. I have only just begun, but I am already making anarchist media content. So I am that future.

Also… I am very critical of anarchist insularity, which is why my approach is to look outward towards non-anarchist media and non-anarchist media personalities for engagement. I think my critical attitude towards insularity is fairly common and that insularity has come to indicate something like cowardice for many people, or at least irrelevance. I don’t really think there is a viable path towards building “underground” cultures anymore, either.

only the most innocuous anarchists openly lend their face to their words when putting them out there in video format in corporate platforms. only the the type of rhetoric most appealing to masses submerged in hegemonic ideology would get allowed on those sites and recommended by their algorithms.

"I don’t really think there is a viable path towards building “underground” cultures anymore, either."

then there's not a viable path for anarchy. only flavors of consumable mass identities/ideologies within the current technological/ideological framework. media is more that just the plate on which meal is served, media is the kitchen, the restaurant and the main course, "anarchist" is just the name of the main course on the menu.

This sounds much more like it comes form speculation than it comes from experience.

Look comrade... if you are an anarchist, tell me how it feels to be represented by people like Vaush or Michael Malice (whose book The Anarchist Handbook is #1 on Amazon for anarchism).

I'm sick of hearing all this blah-blah about what can fly on popular platforms when:

1) stuff way more offensive than anything anarchist will ever say has and continues to make its way to video platforms
2) this kind of bullshit argument would be made about audio platforms if anarchists didn't already prove it wrong so emphatically
3) anarchists honestly aren't even fucking trying.

The right-wing get cancelled for shit all the time and it isn't stopping them from making video content. Not to mention their militias. Or their storming of the fucking capitol building to try and stop the transfer of power to a new president.

i said the opposite, most anarchists are safe enough for video, which is why those you mention are on there.
show me one anarchist youtuber speaking in favor about bombing anything, then show me a podcast.
form the most part, it's just current events summary, cliff-notes about marxist texts, identity politics. libsoc 101, non-anarchist activist interviews and pandering to liberals.
don't compare anarchists to the far right, you know there's a double standard, and let's not pretend there's not. the far right can get elected, attempt a coup and get a slap in the hand, kyle can kill and go free. anarchists get tortured in prison for having zines at home. if you feel safe, go ahead, don't inhibit yourself. you're an approved product, safe for consumption.

Ok my bad.

I agree that a lot of anarchists are safe, especially safe enough to be on video ...which, by the way, I'm not necessarily trying to limit this to platforms like YouTube... anarchy.tube fits my criteria for the future of media as well.

Anyway - responding to this sentence, "show me one anarchist youtuber speaking in favor about bombing anything, then show me a podcast." I don't think I could show you an anarchist youtuber in favor of that. Podcasters, yes... many. But why? I don't think that facial recognition is actually better than vocal recognition when it comes to identifying someone who is trying to be anonymous. Maybe people think it is? Either way, I don't think there's anything inherently anti-radical about video. And really, ISIS already proved that plenty of violent shit can be advocated for via video. Yeah maybe it will get taken down, but it goes up. Ok and if not ISIS (or the far-right), I've heard tankies on video promoting revolutionary violence as well.

I have a really hard time believing you or anyone else when they say that this is why anarchist video is relatively small compared to other forms of anarchist media and compared to other people's video presence. I'm willing to hear out the argument but in all seriousness I just don't think that the issue is what you're saying it is.

lol kind of a good conversation but I have to agree with anon that you're maybe being a bit naive? by all means, blast your image around the world while advocating for the things and you'll likely have a bad time discovering the 2nd and 3rd layers of reality when it comes to the police state and the reactionaries when they zero in on you. buy the ticket, take the ride!

that said, it's always been a bad idea to discuss certain things publicly while also engaging in them. this is true for everyone, from dealers, to politicians to dime store political extremists. if you're a talker as well as a doer, that blows up in your face pretty quickly unless you're a god damn ninja at covering your ass. Therefore, most talkers are completely full of shit and people who actually do shit don't talk about it much.

look at derrick jensen back when he was a still a darling of the eco radicals, before his other shitty views came to light. he was still just a big whiny dork in a goofy sweater, not particularly credible on the subject of asymmetric warfare, which he would constantly, strongly infer, mostly to sell books and convince other whiny dorks that he had the slightest clue through a garden variety mystification of violence.

tl;dr posers posing to sell books (or podcasts or whatever) to even sadder losers. worth mentioning this happens on the far right at a much greater scale, like that screeching little bitch nick fuentes, or that washout drama geek, steven crowder.

i totally agree, this is why i can't stand anarchist podcasts, they're just a bunch of whiny dorks like you say. same goes for writers and zine makers and tablers, an uninteresting bunch. it's almost like the commitment to become a talking head requires a profound neutering of any subversive action. you even see this in people who live for the twitter clout even if they're not making any anarchist media.

funnily enough, street skateboarders and parkourists break more laws daily and cause more disruptions, get cops and security called on them on a daily basis and make more video content that they sometimes even sell (including merch) in comparison to anarchists. and they're interesting because the content is actually footage of what they're doing, trespassing and climbing and grinding in public and private city spaces. Guntubers can own and shoot an arsenal, they're demonetized, but they have sponsors.

Anarchists limit their media on mainstream platforms to the uninteresting rhetoric and opinions. Sabotage actions and attacks sometimes have video in their communiques on indymedia or actforfree, but maybe not the exciting content people want to consume. these type of action rarely gets comments on anews. whereas any lame piece from c4ss usually gets plenty of comments, complaining usually, but still engagement. so if if this is the crowd you have to appeal to, clickbaiting with cringe for negative reactions, and the mainstream platforms you have to work with, it molds your product into shit.

alternative platforms will simply not get much views. i see cyber dandy's videos so far has like 30 views, and i bet that's just people from close circle or people who clicked by accident or curiosity and didnt watch all the way.

They're probably bots that watched for like 1 second.

But what you're saying isn't an argument against what I'm saying, which is that video is going to be more and more the expected form of communication.

Plus what the hell. Obviously if anarchists limit themselves to print and spoken-word audio shit they're only going to keep getting boring cliques around their content. Those mediums aren't very action-packed as a characteristic of the medium itself. Yeah you can like, get exciting audiobook voice acting shit in there and maybe produce some adrenaline spikes that way, but otherwise they're boring mediums.

I think you just wanna argue at this point. Go spray paint a dick on something already and upload it to anarchy.tube.

"if anarchists limit themselves to print and spoken-word audio shit they're only going to keep getting boring cliques around their content. Those mediums aren't very action-packed as a characteristic of the medium itself"

i agree with this last point and you've held your own in conversation, have a nice day and good luck with your video endeavors

but if print and audio are boring media why are you doing the same tired news coverage from print but in video format, instead of doing the unboxing videos you mention?

Well it turns out that I don't actually care if stuff is boring. I read constantly. I'm cool with it, it's fine. I'm also just starting off making videos and I'm basically practicing with the content I already curate via my site https://cyberdandy.org/news before moving onto more ambitious stuff.

Maybe I will do some unboxing videos! My next step is to do more with other people. I only have one person scheduled to come onto my thing and that isn't until April or so.

In other words, I'm experimenting. I encourage others to experiment. I will even share your experiments with my own experiments! EVEN IF IT IS BORING

Is it true that you're just mad that Immediatism has cornered the market on anarchist audio so you're pivoting to anarchist video as the answer? Do you think you could defeat Cory in single combat?

Uh... I couldn't completely deny that Immediatism has something to do with the reason why I think it's time to move onto video from the podcast stuff I used to do. But the reason is that I think anarchist audio is oversaturated with or without Immediatism's additions, even though those additions are rad as fuck. And even more, anarchist audio has "videos" already so I can't even do that. The "videos" are just some still image with the audio... you know the kind.

But no, I have been making this criticism for 10 years. I know it is 10 years because I really started thinking about this when I was co-hosting Free Radical Radio and thinking of anarchist future stuff for an EBAB event. 10 years, I think, is a long time to whine about something not happening without doing something about it if it still hasn't happened.

Back in the early 00s when I invented anarchist media projects while drafting the St. Paul Principles of Proper Anarchist Engagement, I foretold of an anarchist anchor person to help shepherd in a new day for anarchism. Like, even as a second generation anarchist prodigy, I knew the power of pictures WITH sound and if you put your mind to it with proper ethical anarchist foundations you will have more success. Everybody knows this.

Like come on, don't you think you'd know by now if you were invited? Obviously there is a Minimal Midi-chlorian load required for this kind of thing. Even the youngest C4SS padawan knows this.

I don't understand this conversation. There should be different communication channels for different goals, even if level of risk isn't want makes those goals different. Why would anyone want to listen to a podcast or watch a livestream of someone talking about doing risky shit? That doesn't make sense on either end of the communication: the producer or the consumer. It doesn't make any darn sense!

Look Sir Lumpsalot - no naivety here. I see whats going on meight. I still believe in anarchists doing popular media, especially if they're not doing other risky things.

Fuck I don't know where my screen print key went. My day is lookin dark my friend :(

which part don't you understand? i'm saying there's a lot of empty space between anything that could be defined as reality based and the spectacle of podcasts and youtube reaction videos ... or those weirdos who walk around everywhere, talking to their phone camera like it's their one true friend, personifications of how desperate loneliness leads to parasocial delusion. nothing partisan about it either, every possible political flavour has them.

i'm not disagreeing that "popular media" is a thing you could do from an anarchist perspective, it'll just be a fucking miracle if you manage to rise about the sea of garden variety nosepicking narcissism. best of luck tho! i'm an old submedia fan too. even have several t-shirts!

I don't want to read all of these comments again just because I'm confused.

At this point I'd even be happy to see anarchists making unboxing videos or reading Crimethings anarchist cookbook to fix their bicycles than how totally smothered anarchist discourse is becoming by the other political flavors that learned how to upload video to the internet. The fact that I have been saying this for 10 years and it has become WORSE, what should be done about that besides saying anarchists should make more video? I don't know what the alternative is if anarchist thought is going to be represented by anarchists instead of being represented by Marxist logic bros who are sad that CHOP/CHAZ didn't build the Party or whatever.

ha! ok well ... lets just agree to disagree that that would be helpful or useful or "good" in any way?

apparently your happiness can be added to my long list of nightmares!

look mods .. i agree with other anon, this person should do whatever they want and i wish them luck.

BUT i don't think "anarchist unboxing videos", which they openly admit is an idea born of desperation... is actually going to accomplish much except further accelerating the retreat from reality that a lot of "content" represents, in my opinion. is that civil enough? ffs?

"people like Vaush or Michael Malice" are the new Chumpskys and Book Chins, or the Zoomer attempts to tale on their stinky old armchairs. On mass-media corporate platforms we'll always be shadowed by the super-deceptive attention whores, where most of the legit anarchist authors will hardly represent for anarchism, instead talking about the stuff anarchy means in the contemporary IRL.

When the internet is so dominated by authoritarian capitalist forces, no one can expect radical critiques to spread far and wide, and the moment they become significant their promoters will get taken down (read: some /r/Antiwork mod... 'member?).

THIS IS NOT A POPULARITY CONTEST. Repeat that in your head 100x when going to sleep tonite.

Coz mass-based relations are part of the problem in the first place.

Anarchy is for those who seek to live it. Period. I don't give a fuck about the billions of idiots who wanna stick to their enslavement as the best solution there is.

"Anarchy is for those who seek to live it. Period. I don't give a fuck about the billions of idiots who wanna stick to their enslavement as the best solution there is."

How impressed are you with yourself that you're one among "billions" that have somehow managed to ascend beyond their idiotness and enslavement. Whoa. Do you know kung-fu?

What does it mean that you know the way to be free from enslavement yet choose to not share it with the "billions of idiots"? It's a good thing CyberDandy chooses to share the way to freedom. They are nicer to have around and will receive more subscribers.

#blessed #theone

more charming than us @news trolls?! WHAT?! how does he do it... it's the hat isn't it?

there must have been some magic in that old trilby he found! cuz when he placed it on his HEAD -

something something unboxing video!

But on a serious note, because this is not a fucking game, I do wonder if the level of narcissism has become greater in anarchyland than ever before?

Fade in:

Christmas morning.

CyberDandy in pajamas and side-tilted trilby unboxes a giant box on livestream to scores of excited subscribers only to discover El-Fauv inside holding another box.

El-fauv refuses to reveal how to unbox the second box.

Billions of idiots everywhere suddenly perish.

Sandstorm blasts out from nowhere and echoes throughout the void.

"ANARCHY" appears on screen in 69pt Comic-sans.

Fade out.

"ReadDesert.org"

Srsly, tho!

Anarchy is not a popularity contest, 100% agree. Otoh, because someone is not anarchist does not mean they want to stick to their enslavement.
These are not the only 2 options.

But what matters is that to me anarchy is the golden existential path of liberation.

If other people have found other paths, good for them, but I just ain't interested in those that I've found, or are just too demanding for the personal benefits. Especially those that still include the same-old running-after-the-sausage of capital, family/clan-building, etc. I expressed my Epicurian take on the matter a little while back.

Wealthiest dude on the planet, to me, is the one I seen sitting on the sidewalk downtown and getting money and good meals thrown at him, and can even afford to insult & laugh at people while reading stuff. Any yuppie or industrious libcap hipster still has gotta to beat that, including PewDiePie or something.

...which brings us back to this TOTW!

Marketing ploy ftw

video streaming platform.

Anarchists: the Media is horrible and is the up there with the State, Capitalism, the Church, the authority we oppose!

Also anarchists: so what we need is.. Anarchist Media to put on these evil platforms to consume consume consume! Must make content! Must make more content to feed mainstream platform algorithm gods! Must adapt and make content for consume or be marginal.

I don't think in terms of capital-letter The Media, The State, The Capitalism, The Church, The Authority. I think that is an inaccurate way to map the structures of power in the world.

Again, the results speak volumes about what an effective media strategy is in 2022. If we went back to pre-podcast and pre-streaming video times on the internet, when anarchists were at the cutting edge of content creation and not being dragged along by technological developments, anarchist ideas propagated effectively through music and alternative print. You can growl at reality all you want but reality doesn't give a shit.

well keep growling at reality in comment sections and in your videos

does your vanity project need such grand justifications as "effective strategy"? that makes it more laughable and pitiful.

at least most clickbait youtubers in it for the hustle don't have delusions of grandeur and are just trying to make a living.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmtvbn94hco

You're like... just jumbling up shit I said. My vanity project is not does not represent the full maturation of anarchist video media that I envision as the future of anarchist media. Stop jumbling my shit up.

Why is it important for you that anarchists be at the cutting edge of content creation? What is you plan here? Make more anarchists with glorious propaganda? Inspire a great anarchist force via TikTok to do something? North American Anarcho Subcultural Sex cult? What?

No. None of those sound like my plan.

What are you really asking me here? When I was a baby anarchist, it was Infoshop's youth section that connected with me because it had a ton of shit about how to fuck with your school, why it was worth fucking with it, and what the broader implications of all that stuff was. It talked about why youth should feel entitled to a voice in the decisions that effect them, etc. etc. I don't think anything like a websites youth section would have that ability today. I think it would have to be done in some form of video on some platform... again, the platform could be something like anarchy.tube. I don't think there is a viable anarchist media that doesn't in some sense embrace video. What is the argument against what I'm saying here?

I benefit from more anarchists in the world. That's why it is important to me. Like fucking duh.

So we have Infoshop to blame... fucking Chuck0!

Facial recognition is extremely advanced. Ever been to the DMV? Ever see those cameras all around the city? Well they see you and they know exactly who you are. Have fun trying to say anything dangerous on YouTube.

Even though I think your media conquest is delusional and #notanarchist, I do hope you make a series for the children starring your alter-ego entitled The Anarchist Adventures of Cumlord!

Play your cards right and you can become an influencer for Athletic Greens or Skillshare.

In a very straightforward sense you seem to have no fucking clue what the words I put here mean in context. You're practically hallucinating.

- I compared facial recognition to voice recognition. How the fuck do you take that and swish it around in your mouth and spit out that I said facial recognition isn't advanced? Why the fuck do you think that voice recognition wouldn't ALSO be advanced? You know there is WAY MORE vocal data on people than there is visual data. Why would you even begin to think there is something more safe about podcasts? Which are also on corporate platforms, btw.

- Again, there is a distinction here between my own personal content that I am making and my overall observation that video is the future of anarchist media. Personally, I have been making this criticism for 10 years. It isn't until now that I decided it's time to stop merely making the criticism and to try to do something about it on my own. For dingbats like yourself, that computes to some kind of crazy quest to become the face of anarchy or some other such wackiness. Comrade, The Anarchist Adventures of Cumlord is not the be all and end all of anarchist video media. It is just one frustrated start that I hope to be one of many.

- Have you even tried athletic greens? Didn't think so pencil neck.

Listen here, comrade. I said, "Facial recognition is extremely advanced" and made brief points on it.

So how the fuck did YOU take that and swish it around in your mouth and spit out (very uncharacteristic of a cumlord) that I was saying you said it wasn't advanced?

It seems someone has a persecution complex. Maybe an episode of TAAoC can address this pent up frustration?

How much you bench, bro?

You ever see the Neverending Story? I am the fucking ROCK BITER. Bench press that.

I’m done with this smegging conversation.

Goodnight Comrade.
Please no more spitting.

how come all your references are from the 90s? "smegging"? you're just an old fart of a troll like me!

J'ACCUSE!

I got smegging from red dwarf. It's pre 90s!

I'll consider your invitation but don't hold your breath. What are the outcome for taking part in a Youtube live chat... like once the chat is done and I leave the internet hot spot?

Yes.

I miss magazines. Long form essays, letters sections debating back and forth the various nuances of uh stuff, shorter news items, all of that. And before someone points out one can "debate" on this here interwebbing, let me say I feel there is a world of difference in one's communication when you have to pause, go get paper, a pen or pencil or crayon, an envelope, a stamp, write your reply, check for grammar and spelling, stuff the envelope, put on the stamp & walk to the post office to mail it. Then, you have to wait —perhaps several weeks— for a reply, only to start the process over.

I mean, I miss media from before the internet. Sigh.

Can this conversation be about like idk 325 or something interesting instead of the usual “waahhh I don’t like crimethinc” shit please

325 doesn't exist anymore except for one unaffiliated scammer trying to get donations

That'd be totally awesome if 325 had a bigger North American presence, tho I think unlike our usual anarcho-left (or worse, anarcho-transhumanist, ahem!) outlets, they are the target of anti-terrorist policy in the US and maybe Canada.

what the hell does "a bigger North American presence" even mean in the context of a taken down anarchist website? presence?? why would that be awesome? most na folks interested in black anarchy know what 325 was.

dark nights (darknights.noblogs.orgdar) is a thing that has filled some of that void. anyone can send stuff in if that's the tendency they want to see, send them your writings and actions, tell people in north america about it.

Send crypto we promise it will go to anarchist prisoners

you seem to be the only one saying "i don't like crimethinc, waaaah"...

Considering in the past that anarchists have had films made about them (Sacco and Vanzetti, a film I can only suggest because it's songs were made by Ennio Morricone) they'll likely have a couple films in the future as anarchism becomes more open to people. However, as far as news, the internet is where anarchy belongs and will stay, a whole news show that has to follow guidelines set by the state it's based in doesn't seem like a very anarchist thing anyway.

if we look at the term “propaganda by the deed”, you will find anarchists who lean more to one side or the other. those who evaluate deeds by the merit of how well does it serve as propaganda might prefer to do propaganda for its own sake, vs those who would prefer to do deeds for their own sake, and evaluate attacks for the merit of the destruction of their targets.

anarchist media often serves as a way to communicate deeds. Bonanno says in “Litanies”:

“But why are you talking about litanies in an anarchist journal, one might ask.

I’ll explain right away.

Anarchist comrades do not recite litanies together, at least not yet, but some of them draw up lists, which are devoutly sought, read, solicited, identified, discussed; they are applauded and used as tools to promote the anarchists’ self-satisfaction. So, not litanies but lists.

But lists of what?

Lists of attacks that have already been carried out or could be carried out in the future. And this is just the best case scenario.

Even the writer of these lines, presumptuous as a scowling Cerberus with three heads, committed this sin from the mid-seventies onwards by drawing up the Proletarian Chronicle, a list of all the attacks on manifestations of power in the bimonthly journal Anarchismo. Along with the two comrades with whom I began the undertaking (note to the reader and also for my wounded heart: in actual fact my comrades were not two but only one, Tito Pulsinelli, as the other, Vito Messana, was a man of the secret services under the name of agent “Meta”, as we discovered forty years later), we thought that this list could be helpful to spread both the action and the model employed in the operation, etc. This might have made sense at a time when there were so many comrades disposed to act, so many things being done, such great confusion and lack of clarity. Which is not an excuse, I just want to say that I wouldn’t do the same today.

[…]

Let’s leave litanies to the priests of every kind.“

i recommend reading the full text for the full nuance and context of why.

an aside: ironic how that secret service agent was named “Meta”, like the company the owns facebook, instagram, whatsapp, metaverse etc

While not explicity anarchist, the Indymedias were activist run, outside of corporate control, and not supportee by ads in any way.

Since I am about to be exiting DC due ro loss of housing and going nomadic, the old DC Indymedia I have kept going with local coverage will probably be archived or shut down by the rest of the collective.

Most likely I will set up a new and again noncorporate sire wirh no ada, possibly promoting the "Iron Snowflake video" line to the site name. Current security practices of not embedding 3ed party tools other than noncorporate archive.org, masking out faces in public actions that risk harassment, and not filming some things at all for security reasons will be kept.

Hopefully there will be more autonomous anarchist media where anarchists own our own infrastructure rather than relying on corporate platforms like Twitter, FB, Instagram, and the like.

Even though it is probably less of how people are encountering news, I'd like to continue to see an emphasis on the physical world (zines, publications, posts, etc) rather than just a focus on the digital.

Fair-trade rare earth mineral mines, worker owned open hardware factories, artisanal microprocessors, and organic power plants too!

Ideally, and sustainable, carrier pigeons and town crier and pony express type mailing will be pure and self creative, and independent of the industrial capitalist hegemony.

Also, as a service to an outpost of anarchs living independently, the animal (pigeon and pony) owners, carers and riders can follow a laissez faire exchange/bartering system. Like for instance, a person wants a letter delivered by carrier pigeon to the sister anarch commune 50 km away. It just so happens he grows potatoes and carrots, and so the carrier pigeon owner charges him in potatoes and carrots at a mutually agreed quantity. Newspapers, zines and anarch media are heavier and cannot go by airmail, and must go by land freight on ponies.

I don't see the media landscape changing very much. We still have podcasts, news sites, videographers, etc., and I can't think of factors that will significantly impact the *form* of anarchist media. Perhaps the focus of this question is on the structure and ecosystem. The issue of mainstream media consuming all forms of independent media definitely persists. I just read a good article in the latest edition of Halcyon.txt (https://www.halcyon.ooo/ if anyone is curious) that speaks on the desire for online communities to break away from the structure of mainstream media organization and return to community built and maintained spaces. While reading that article, I thought of anarchistnews.org as being one of those spaces. I've never spent much time on this site before, but it seems to benefit from being its own entity, separate from the internet megaliths.

I'd like to see more communities with similar structures to A News, dedicated to the production and sharing of anarchist media. In terms of the need for a "strong anarchist media alliance", I don't think that's necessary as long as each individual space feels that it can draw enough people in to form a satisfying community.

"I don't see the media landscape changing very much."
That is just outright anthropocentric presumption. In fact, to say anything is certain in the future is arrogant. A comet or asteroid could just whip around the corner and end life on Earth next weak, or a 50% lethal covid variant could emerge out of the Calcutta ghetto, we just never really know what tomorrow brings.

hopefully the comet one cuz otherwise i'll have to read all the troll comments about calcutta before I mercifully die of the plague

"The Future of Anarchist Media", a video that Cyber Dandy just posted, says a couple of things i'd like to question:

why do they think that creating anarchist celebrities is an acceptable solution?

why do they look down on podcasts when there are many popular podcasts, even on the left, which even have podcast content behind paywals (patreon)?

why is this discussion of format so much in the forefront, framed as blog vs video, instead of the content, specially seem a lot of people do the same thing on video than they do in writing or audio? isn't twitter text and the most popular form of "anarchist media" these days? if it's reduced to "the medium is the message" it's all pixels on a screen anyways, same medium as a lightbulb.

instead of this false dichotomy between text vs video (i'm reminded of videos from the trash dimesion's video zine which was mostly a text read by a text-to-speech program), what about the old dichotomy of directly lived vs mediated, "kill your TV"?

I'm going to save your first question for last.

To get some easy points out of the way here. I don't look down on podcasts, nor blogs; both of which I have and continue to do myself. I don't think those formats will disappear. Rather, much like my take on the appeal of anarchism in the 21st century, I think it's relative. I think video will continue to grow in popularity while blogs and podcasts will plateau. There are several reasons why I think this, at least half of which follow from the "appeal" analysis I discuss in the video.

I don't know a simple way to put it, but I basically think there are two major players in the way that media is produced and consumed: the costs of production and the way that a given form of media fits into someone's everyday life, which in some sense is a cost of consumption but it is more than just that.

Twitter, for example, gained an edge as a platform for text because of SMS technology that became widely available at a relatively affordable price. It is no longer based on SMS, but by the time they increased the character count their platform had already established itself in popular culture. One way to describe this is to say that Twitter "democratized" a communications platform.

So, ok. There have been numerous other attempts to democratize communications. There are even alternative DNS services that were created as an attempt to democratize the very centralized DNS infrastructure. If you're interested, look at the mostly dead OpenNIC. A much more successful example of democratizing communications is IndyMedia and listservs. Those were once the choice platforms for anarchist discourse. But this is where that second part of my take comes in: how does the technology fit into someone's everyday life?

There's limits to text. One of the big ones is that text is basically a private affair. You can read in groups, but it isn't a spontaneous effort. Another limit to text is that today, it is so cheap to create that it loses its value as a metric for high-effort projects. And there is also the bigger issue of functional illiteracy. I'll leave you to think about those things...

Audio on the other hand has a bit more of a buy-in cost to be a producer, but audio has also been very democratized. As I said above regarding Immediatism, one of the consequences of that democratization is that the audio landscape is oversaturated. It isn't that people stopped listening to podcasts (or music), it's that there is so much of it around to listen to and the cost to create it and distribute it is so low that like text, there isn't a lot of perceived "high effort" that comes with appreciating it. This also means that there is are a lot of choices to make, which has the tendency to make it more difficult to choose than making it easy to choose. On the other hand, you can listen to something while you do other things... that is a big advantage for audio over both text and video.

Video has much more recently become democratized and definitely not to the extent that text and audio have been. However, I think video still indicates high-effort production. People tend to associate high-effort with high-importance. There is also just a lot more you can do with video. When I look around at present-day marketing, video ranks very high on the list of must haves.

(running out of characters) Finally, celebrity. I think it is acceptable for anarchists to be celebrated. I think it is more than acceptable. I think there are many reasons why anarchists should be celebrated. But more than that, in relation to everything above and what I discuss about appeal, I think that the individualistic bias of Americans (which is only increasing) makes celebrities and personas one of the most effective branding strategies. And this is indeed about branding, UNFORTUNATELY. There's a reason why you don't see a lot of advertising with a "join us" message. It's all about appealing to individual virtues. etc.

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