I like this phrase because it helps to remind me why things are the way they are right now.
Doing things in a community centered way is harder than succumbing to capitalist extraction.
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Discussion
I see, over and over again, people (so often myself included) choose convenience or expedience over community or sustainability.
Many modern corporations have entirely monetized the things that should make up community.
We've allowed them to lock up modern folklore behind copyright. We've allowed them to turn "picking up groceries for your sick friend" into "they have doordash, right?"
Community comes at the cost of convenience.
We want a better tomorrow. We want stronger communities, because that's how you get to a better tomorrow.
It will be inconvenient.
@ajroach42 Last fall I took the helm as President of the admittedly moribund local community association. I had already joined the board of directors in 2024 and have been working with thr BoD to figuratively keep the lights on and kinda fell into the position, though I did so willingly. At its peak, over a decade ago, we had nearly 2000 people voluntarily pay for memberships and as I started this term we had dropped below 200.
So yeah, this hits close to home. Building, or rebuilding, a sustainable community is not just inconvenient it is DAMN HARD WORK and the work never ends, but the loss of such a community would be tragic.
It has been a challenge for our CA since its inception in 1994 TBH. City planning here was basically openly hostile to building community since the 1980s and we succeeded for awhile despite that.
But times keep changing and so must we. We can no longer focus so heavily on advocacy for advocacy's sake because honestly nobody really listens to that any more. We must be hands on...
@ajroach42 We’ve got some solid artistic backing for this idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Me_Convenience_or_Give_Me_Death?wprov=sfti1
I like this phrase because it helps to remind me why things are the way they are right now.
Doing things in a community centered way is harder than succumbing to capitalist extraction.
Our newest program is both on our Community Television Network/VOD service *and* on youtube, because there is a portion of our target audience that we can only reach through youtube.
It would be better for our community in the longterm, but much harder in the short term, for me to eschew youtube entirely, so I've made the choice to publish in both places.
It was a hard choice, and one I question regularly, because having my videos on youtube gives other people one fewer excuse to leave youtube (or one more excuse to stay)
But! I didn't and would not make the choice to only publish to youtube. Most of what I produce still only goes on #NewEllijayTelevision, and if it *also* goes to youtube, that's a concession that I'm making to the convenience of others, in order to hopefully, eventually, guide them towards our community centered alternatives.
@ajroach42 do you link to the non-YouTube version in the description on YT? Maaaaaaayyyyybe have some non-YT exclusive content as well to drive folks off of there, but that might feel odd.
>Most of what I produce still only goes on #NewEllijayTelevision, and if it *also* goes to youtube, that's a concession that I'm making to the convenience of others, in order to hopefully, eventually, guide them towards our community centered alternatives.
Youtube downranks videos that have links in the description unless they come from popular platforms, so it's a balancing act to figure out which things get a link and which don't.
Most of what we produce does not go on youtube, except for perhaps as a trailer.
@ajroach42 this is something I think about all the time and it makes me so sad.
That and 2 other things related to community:
1. So many people are just utterly floored by the idea that people will help them for free. They can't wrap their head around it.
2. So many people don't want to actually do anything to build or maintain the community themselves. They just want to show up and let somebody else do it.
I have no answers but I wish I did!
#1 is marxist alienation applied to community. People have become so alienated from their own communities that they can't help but assume that alienation is natural rather than artificial.
#2 is learned helplessness as a result of capitalist alienation. It happens when people either do not understand what actually makes a community function, or do not understand why they need a community.
The closest thing to an answer that exists is work.