TOTW: Enticing Anarchist Lifestyles

If you curated a social media profile with photos of your anarchist lifestyle, with the intention of enticing others to join you, and giving normies FOMO, what would it look like? Maybe you're already doing this.

If so, how closely does your daily life resemble what is portrayed? Are the enticing aspects distinctly anarchist, or are they the same things mainstream culture finds desirable? Is the promise a different lifestyle than what's usually portrayed as desirable, or truly delivering on the promise of the usual things people currently desire? Tell us how it's obviously both, and how you disagree with the premise.

If not, what do you find unappealing about portraying your anarchist lifestyle online? Do you oppose social media on principle? Do you find it tedious and can't find the time in your busy schedule? Is your anarchist lifestyle less than photogenic?

Photogenic or not, online or not, this topic of the week invites everyone to describe the beautiful lifestyles the beautiful idea inspires, underlining a plural and diverse notion of beauty in which there is room for everyone. Even you.

There are 60 Comments

I shit in parks, smoke cug butts, get drunk in public, hope snakes don't slither on me while sleeping, flip off cops for fun and get pissed off after rent a cops give me orders.

This is joke entry but I absolutely do all these things

Uhh, my shit is filled with seeds I swallow so I'm actually doing a rewilding. And if u don't like smelling my shit in the park u are probably an oil Barron.

Only real solution I can think of.

totally. this is what oil barrons are doing with their time. called out. you win.

My genuine answer is it's complicated. Many aspects of my life are desirable, many are frankly undesirable. Though the undesirable bits are not that undesirable due to changing how I view things.

I find anarchy so interesting and important regardless because my life is vastly more richer, deep, interesting and enjoyable without it. Even when in the depths of shitty times, wondering if the cops on ur block are for u or someone else, being financially insecure, worrying about people I care about being sent to prison, and just in general the emotional fatigue of being in spaces filled with those struggling the most under the social system. I wouldn't do it any different as things are much more painful due to much richer relationships.

For one my relationships with others are much more deep profound and meaningfull than before. Anarchists ways of relating are so much more profoundly better. Thoughts of having regular friendships with the people I was as a teenager is unthinkable as most have a deeply judgmental view of living how u want being free. Shame u for stealing, drug use, queer shit or just being unhappy with society ect. Idk it's a profound richness that I can't explain with words.

While the freedom of living a life that is completely yours is anxiety inducing at time. once u get over the anxiety of unlimited choices being able to do what u want when u want is profoundly amazing. I have done so many interesting things and tried so many near things. Life is my sandbox where what I do is limited by other factors but a major limiting factor is my imagination.

It's like being told u are playing a linear story game so u hack it so it becomes an open world sandbox one. It's amazing. But also scary AF bc when u throw off the leash of society u start to realize it was also a retention harness. But fuck the retension harness, u can make a better one by making a ton of friends.

I guess I could be depressed struggling to not kill myself through drug use, being a foot soldier of the industrial death machine so I can be all alone in an apartment of strangers while I will the void with video games. And struggle to make ends meet. As the days all melt together into one weird blob until u die or get fired.

Or idk I could be fucking around in tbe woods all day listening and watching lors of animals which is quite fun but deeply make it apartment the awful violence and what was lost of industrialization. I could be fucking arround with friends talking shit, getting high and fucking arround. Pursuinf projects of whatever I want. Writing and reading all day. Devising ideas and trying stuff out to make more spaces that serve me rather than social phantasms. Fucking wit cops with friends, going to a libshit event and causing a ruckus. Think and ennact projects so I can have mutually beneficial relationships with friend where we care for each other deeply. Idk qne just s bunch of other find stuff.

It's stressful it's depressing, it's sad, it make some mad, it makes me jaded. But life is so much better and I view things differently so the bad parts are much easier to cope with.

God idk it's infinite possibilities and freedom to live for yourself rather than society. Where question if restrictions and problems are solved by figuring out how u can trick, overpowe, subvert, menuver arround or stealth arround society to get what u want for yourself fand those u care about.

It's like that crimethic text, why watch TV when u can live the TV show.

"being a foot soldier of the industrial death machine so I can be all alone in an apartment of strangers while I will the void with video games. And struggle to make ends meet. "
=being a hunter of an indigenous hunting posse so I can be all alone in a cave of strangers while I fill the void with pebble games. And struggle to make ends meet.

== being a member of the intelligentia of an ideological based revolutionary cult so I can be all alone in a comment section thread of strangers while I fill the void with complex humanist opinions. And struggle to make ends meet,,,;)

message heard and received. I saw a cool video game boss name recently-- "Astel, Naturalborn of the Void." And I thought that was a pretty cool title as far as titles go. #goals

I find it hard to find the proper balance between getting lazy up against "society!" while reaching out and connecting with similar-minded lazydays enthusiasts (or lazydays radicals) AND doing cool shit together, maybe.

I mean if you're the type being represented in this rollover pic, it's kinda hard to reach out to people laying back, unless you don't mind being seen as some privacy-invader or creep, or some other whack job. But there's also the issue of why reaching out at all... Like if you're satisfying yourself with living for yourself, why do you even need others?

wow, your reading comprehension is beneath the level of simply looking at the picture. your thought process “hammock = lazy”. the topic has nothing to do with that. you literally inferred all that from using the picture as a rosarch test.

What if my anarchist lifestyle has to do with getting lazy time in a hammock? Ah there ya go... now you're lighting up, COMRAAAAADE. A few hours later.

For me, the enticing part that keeps getting more sophisticated with time is mostly about my relationships and how I do unto others. As I learned more about trauma and psychology, mental health and nonhierarchical relationships, I kept finding new shitty power dynamics that I thought were "normal", in myself and others. Every time I find myself miserable and not sure why, dump some more anarchist analysis on that dumpster fire you call a life, amirite?! Smells like delicious smoky garbage!

A wise person once said "get better friends". That shit rings in my ears like big creepy church bells.

^oh and none of that applies to social media at all, which I of course, despise and i'm deeply, deeply disappointed in all of you for suckling from the techbro psychopath teet. for shame.

nice orderly marching, plenty of polished signs and shiny flags, copy and paste commercial music venue with tatted rock and rollers, and a Ukrainian flag solidarity waving!

enticing? anarchist? lifestyle?

In fairness lots of anarchists drool when they see anarchists as a collective army marching or holding a shield in unison. Also many in this group love to IRON their flag.

I mean more power to u and some in this group are chill. But I'll be real it isn't super enticing to me. Tho is absolutely more enticing than my shit in the park, drink and yell at cops.

fair point! much easier to criticize than to offer alternatives.

over political activist culture of marching and flag waving (legibility-oriented), I would think there's more preferable experiences to be found from various drop out cultures (illegibility-oriented): from urban salvage punks to extreme diy back-to-landers, squatters and low-cost travelers, hermits, witches, contemporary pirates, tricksters and artists of the con, disorganized and gray market criminals, temporary-autonomous-zoners, lay-flatters, tinkers, scrappers, , and any other unpredictable hybrids and offshoots one can imagine - bonus if they actualize.

it would show my beautiful house, my beautiful wife, and my large automobile, none of which confuse me or cause me any existential angst in the slightest, even if taken at surface level the picture appears not just normal but approaching traditional--besides our clothes (black). this is because rather than passively and half-wakingly drifting through social life and expectations and only periodically confronting my own life and circumstances, i spend 5-7 hours every night engaging with, consuming, reflecting upon, talking about, or otherwise moving alongside anarchist and adjacent theory while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. ever since giving up on political organization and quitting my service job, this has become the scope of my apparent anarchism and, to whatever extent there may be anything beneath that surface, it is beyond the scope of this prompt

so beyond these little sarcastic portraits of characters you despise that you paint in the comments every day, what does your day to day look like?

idk who you're referring to that does that but maybe my joke missed the mark here, it's directed at myself and partly at the prompt. i do think my lifestyle is in a sense "truly delivering on the promise of the usual things people currently desire" but i dont know that there's any way to portray that imagistically in the way the prompt seems to be interested in. i do actually own a house and a mid-size suv and currently work in an office, all of which i see as serious compromises. and my family life does look almost traditionalist from the outside, except for aesthetics, which i view as not a compromise so much as a kind of ironic misdirection i.e. the inverse of the talking heads song. we got here deliberately, eyes open, together, through very weird channels. how would i put that on instagram? or convince anyone here, where people would apparently invent me as a character to despise? i read that much on most nights because i want to stay critical and focused, and keep learning, in large part because i really do believe in everyday life and particularly the obliteration of the social/family/merely reproductive home from the inside. but i also recognize how silly it might look to use the words i use and do the things i do, and that's what i was trying to point and laugh at myself about initially.

ah ok nevermind, i thought it was another variation of Kevin Keating’s schtick, thanks for sharing

fertile grounds for the petit-booj anarchist novel i have talked about writing for years and have never written. at least you found an appropriate place to share. thank you

you're welcome! good luck with your novel. im imagining a story of an unsuccessful nut milk distributor in one of the more bohemian american cities who wonders where his values have gone as he threads the needle of his various loans and family obligations and then gets stung by a mosquito and dies. or is that too derivative

Quitting work whenever there's some money saved up, living in a shitty apartment with friends, hanging out in dumpsters, food not bombs, reading, infoshop, letter writing, a little [redacted] sometimes as a treat

I don't think I'd call it that enticing to most people at least compared to my shitty (but decent paying) office job, stoned all day, drunk all night, always smoking cigs life that I dropped out of.

I like it better though. I'm having more fun, doing way less drugs, making more genuine connections with others, and feeling like I'm being truer to myself. But I think most people are just trying to get paid, so they can't really understand why I'd give that up to do like "volunteer" shit and eat trash

I hunt domesticated pets for my protein requirements. I WILL NEVER BE A WORKERIST, NEVER PAY RENT, NEVER ACCEPT CHARITY OR DUMPSTER DIVE!

U joke but the only thing I regret about being vegan is that it would be really cool to steal kids pets and cook them at the park. Pets are an extremely accessible food source almost everywhere.

But alas I have problems with eating the dog. The only real compromise is eating people is incredibly illegal. Prob cuz the government is filled with bookchinites who hate lifestylism.

Quality conversation threads. Very representative of the "anarchy you want to see in the world". Important stuff. Good job, Anews.

U joke but I complain about this very seriously in person. I take out my angst of not owning the libs by eating their pets via at protests trying to piss off cops then hide behind nonviolent liberals. My goal is to great the law in order for the cop to attack liberals. It's a double win 4 me.

No U joke

I dream of sustainable meat BBQs with punks. Funniest highlight would be the moment they wonder where all their dogs have went...

I have an art project on social media and my faith in its ability to never move the needle on anything is absolute. It's weird to be trapped in a box of a platform you don't respect with people who you can't connect to in the way you want, and yet STILL feel the desire to post something or even (to use a difficult world) "promote" a radical idea. It's like being stuck in a dead end and tagging it with spray paint about the road ahead.

Not around promote, but around radical.

Dead end's only yours, dawg. As a matter of fact... a dead end is what awaits us all!

Wut?

Comment suggested changing "and yet STILL feel the desire to post something or even (to use a difficult world) "promote" a radical idea."

to

"and yet STILL feel the desire to post something or even (to use a difficult world) promote a "radical" idea."

Makes more sense now? To me it makes a lot more.

End of today's lesson.

so, not hyphens but scare quotes in the wrong place then ??

they are full quotation marks

"these are full"
'these are scary'

woof woof

SO WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE HYPHENS OR SCARE QUOTES IN THE COMMENT THIS SPECIAL PERSON WAS REPLYING TO????

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?

There never were any hyphens or scare quotes to begin with. Just a fig newton of your vivid imagination.

as per Webster scare quotes are-

-quotation marks used around a word or phrase when they are not required, thereby eliciting attention or doubts.

"putting the term “global warming” in scare quotes serves to subtly cast doubt on the reality of such a phenomenon"

pfffftb

Dude's mind was playing tricks on him. Imagining there were hyphens and scare quotes when there was really nothing there at all!

AMEN! And AWOMAN!

(I have an art project on social media and my faith in its ability to never move the needle on anything is absolute. It's weird to be trapped in a box of a platform you don't respect with people who you can't connect to in the way you want, and yet STILL feel the desire to post something or even (to use a difficult world) "promote" a radical idea. It's like being stuck in a dead end and tagging it with spray paint about the road ahead.)

the word promote has scare quotes around it. this is the comment in question, my dude.

SO WHERE ARE THE HYPHENS AT?!?

Also, we adult anarchs, who live without fear, simply call those…quotes, “my dude”.

The Hyphen Nation was wiped outline ago by the "settlers" (see what I did there?) who stole their land.

The Hyphen Nation was wiped out years ago by the "settlers" (see what I did there?) who stole their land and planted scare quotes upon it.

I THINK... the other commenter has just confused "hyphens' for quotation marks or scare quotes and all this confusing and pointless comment cascade FLOWED out of this magical place-being.

op here, and that's really great and all I feel like we've all learned so much about radicalism and promotion at the end of the road, but really it's about the radical promoters we met along the way, you know?

I have no schedules and lots of projects,on a community level I try to clean the streets a couple times every month and every now and then I make workshops, I used to feed the hungry but the movement faded and I'm trying to bring it back, I try to donate money, time and stuff every month. I also participate in anarchist spaces, mostly online, I'll start one in my city when I get around to it.
on a personal level, I study for university, I make arts & crafts (not so much these days, but I try) and gift them to friends and lovers, I take on house chores, read books (I try to read one every month) and play games on my spare time. I do my best to spread anarchy awareness every chance I get.

Definitely photogenic. We live on a fairly large piece of land, two thirds woods and a third pasture, in a 200 year old former boarding house. There’s a barn, barn cats, a flock of sheep and goats, a tractor, apple trees, all that pastoral shit. Our closest towns are only a few hundred people each but there’s lots of weekenders and now lots of well to do telecommuters from the major city about 120 miles away. We confuse the shit out of everyone.

You could describe the scene as incongruous. There’s some of the nice normie stuff, and then there’s lots of random shit in disrepair that I don’t feel like dealing with. Depending on the day people take us for weekenders, or locals, or good old fashioned white trash. Our boys like to play in the front yard in their underwear so that helps.

There’s definitely an anarchic thread running through our lifestyle. We’ve basically just gotten really lucky the past few years after a stretch of just the opposite so we’re playing it out as long as we can and trying to have as much fun with the kiddos as possible before they’re grown. Our oldest will start moving on in the next couple years so we can start contemplating bankruptcy (if we have to) and living like we did when we were in our twenties again.

They’re all pets at this point. We do have a couple dogs though. The older one used to be a working dog, would guard the birds (we used to have around 200 head of assorted poultry at any given time for eggs and meat) from foxes and sleep outside. He’s got bad dysplasia so can’t run anymore so we got him a friend to hang out with.

I used an old baby pram to carry my immobilized pets around in, but a shopping trolley lined with a blanket does the job. Good luck with your individualist lifestyle ;)

I have a lot to learn from the trailer park boys and my name is earl

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