Memes turned me from a liberal into a gay space commie
Admittedly, I wasn't a hard convert. At age 12 I was one of the "communism sounds nice on paper but human nature" people, around 21 I was left-liberal with some abysmally centrist or just poorly researched beliefs (was I the only one who wanted to believe in Ron Paul for exactly one year in high school?). Now at 25 I don't just make memes about fully automated luxury gay space (handicapped accessible, animal friendly) communism, I fight for it.
Where do the memes come in? Around 2014-2015 ironic and not so ironic communist memes were on the rise and I decided maybe it was time to reread the manifesto. I moved onto works of Mao, Lenin, Trotsky, Stirner, Pioget, Rand and of course tons of online articles and leftist infighting, trying to really get a handle on what I believed and who was right. Well it turns out that's all subjective but to me it often came back to corruption rooted in greed, which in many respects I blame on capitalism. Turns out reading one bread book does not mean you've read 'em all.In spring of 2015 after a tumultuous relationship I became pregnant and despite never being much for kids I had decided to keep it. That's when I really identified my political leanings. I wanted a world where you could be a mixed race, pansexual, amputee, transgender sexworker and be treated with respect and given a life worth living. Why those criteria? Besides the mixed race which would be a given, I had no say in what type of human I just pledged my life to. But I knew that whatever kind of human it was, I wanted its life to be free of injustice. From each by ability, to each by need AND I wanted freedom of identity and personality to boot.
Exactly a month before my due date, I lost Delta Michael-Justice due to still unexplained complications resulting in stillbirth. And with them I've lost a lot of parts of myself that probably won't come back. Overnight I was no longer a jaded but forward moving hippie raver, and I lost my ability to care about a lot of things. Interestingly, I became more invested in my political leanings. You don't have to like humanity to dislike how inhumane capitalism is.
Sorry to know about your personal loss. Good to know, though, that loss made you more invested in putting an end to our corrupt economic system. Lots of things aren't worth caring about (nothing, I suppose, if you asked a nihilist), but I think you show an admirable strength in continuing to agitate for a more equitable politics.
Interesting to me, on a sociological level, that the supposedly-ironic communist memes made you inclined to study works of the political system that these memes had pseudo-promoted. An interesting example of how these signs can affect our intellectual dispositions on a mass scale.
oh another leftist on here, nice