Thread by @InnuendoStudios

I'm still thinking about @Hbomberguy's stream and what was so special about #ThanksGraham, so here comes another thread.

I'm a little underslept so let's see if I can string sentences together.

I've been getting some CuriousCat questions asking if this proves anger and spite are great motivators and whether the Left should rely on them more.

But what strikes me is how, despite being framed as "let's spite Graham," the tone of the stream was anything but spiteful.

Something I've been thinking about a lot in the last year or so is how anger is, indeed, a very motivating emotion, and how much of the time that motivation is precisely *why* people get angry.

Sadness, fear, and hopelessness are paralytics, in my experience. They make one feel powerless.

The solution to feeling powerless is often to pick someone or something to blame for the feeling and focus your anger on them/it.

Anger serves a number of purposes. It externalizes the feelings, for one. It also makes you want to DO SOMETHING about whatever's pissing you off.

Often enough, you don't have to do anything WITH the feeling, just getting mad feels better than being sad or scared.

But reactionary movements rely heavily on anger to get people to take action. They rarely come out and say it, but most harassment campaigns are just "you feel freaked out by the world, and it's THESE FOLKS' FAULT, LET'S GET EM!"

That's GamerGate, that's ComicsGate, that's Rapid Puppies.

This motivated anger really only goes in two directions: It can be a sputtering, impotent anger that can make a lot of lives miserable can't really address anything, or it can get you recruited into fashier movements.

The former gives you an outlet for your anger, but doesn't address the root feelings of sadness, fear, and powerlessness. This is somewhat by design. Recall that GamerGate forums were forcefully against any kind of organized effort other than email campaigns.

This leaves the only avenue for addressing one's deeper concerns to "go rogue" and harass people (tacitly encouraged by every forum), or to radicalize further and join the proto-Alt-Right.

Far Right groups were the only ones offering any systemic solutions.

These solutions were, of course, nonsense, but they promised to address the feelings of emasculation underneath the anger. This is, again, by design: Tell people to get angry, but refuse to give them anything "constructive" to do with that anger except become a Nazi.

So what's so amazing about Hbomb's stream was how it was basically the polar opposite means of dealing with anger.

Like, out the game, it's "are you mad at Graham Linehan? cool, let's get organized."

Even if spite is the initial motivator, the tone of the stream was incredibly wholesome. The anger was instantly converted into raising money for charity rather than taking it out on Graham himself. The stream was going for hours before Graham even knew it was happening!

Rather than whipping up anger, the stream directly addressed the feelings underneath it.

Do you feel powerless? Here's something you can do.
Do you feel alone? Here's a community.
Do you feel sad? Here's a goofy game and a bunch of new in-jokes. HAIL SOBEK! TEETH GANG!

It's hard to get people motivated to DO SOMETHING by appealing to their sadness and fear, so spite can get their foot in the door. But what was kind of magic is how quickly that spite was turned into joy and mutual support and productive labor.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes anger is just anger. But, with an issue like transphobia, it's kind of impossible to not have a lot of more paralyzing emotions under the surface.

What made the stream special was being more than "something to do with your anger." It addressed *why* you were angry.

So I feel like the lesson here is that, sure, spite is a motivator, and we should use it happily. But what's really successful - not to mention more fun - is to address the feeling holistically. To use the anger, but also convert it into joy and camaraderie.

And a community of mutual support is way better praxis than a community of fuming rage cases.

That is all.

#ThanksGraham