as i guess An Online Leftist my complaint about other Online Leftists is they will often say something completely unhinged that clearly relies on an extremely idealistic viewpoint bc they don’t understand that there are material obstacles in the way of that thing. or that one person cannot know about and devote limitless time and energy to Literally Every Issue. like very often I will encounter some statement where i’m like “i agree with the sentiment but this is literally not possible in any set of real-world conditions”

like idk if anyone remembers but the whole thing about slavery and chocolate companies where it was sort of half-heartedly suggested that you boycott all the companies associated with those brands (which, for a lot of people, would probably rule out maybe half of their entire grocery store), and then someone ELSE was like “any so-called leftist who still eats chocolate is a hypocrite who loves slavery” because apparently nobody understands that the only way to “hit them in their wallets” is organized collective action, a few decentralized cries of “boycott everything” on tumblr are not praxis, and like...it’s just such a stretch to try to assign moral and political weight to what types of candy people eat when literally every fucking food has associated issues like this - not necessarily always out and out slavery but dangerous and deadly working conditions for exploitative wages. do you expect people to not eat?

like, it’s just absurdly detached from the material facts, you know? it’s a nice thought, but in reality whether or not i eat a chocolate bar doesn’t make or break anything. even if i convinced every single one of my followers to never purchase chocolate again, it’d be a drop in the bucket. do you get what i’m saying?

also sometimes the shit people soapbox about on here seems kind of like weirdly detached from the reality of being poor like. i can’t think of a good example but sometimes im really left asking myself like “with what money do you expect me to accomplish this, seeing as i have all of seven dollars to my name?”