January 9, 2011
Rooting out the Nets
There’s a glaring logical fallacy at the heart of the rationale behind Saturday’s Netroots UK event, and Jacob knows what it is:
“the ‘new social media’ activist movement has found itself today in Congress House having an old-fashioned face-to-face discussion, with face-to-face networking at the Netroots UK event. The fact that you had to already be connected with these people on twitter, or if you’re lucky facebook, or be a reader of quite specific blogs, to know about this event adds to the irony of a movement that is claiming to be horizontal in a manner that avoids elites.”
If the importance of social media is that it allows people to connect and organise online, why the need for an enormous offline meet up?
With a somewhat relieving touch of realism, we’re reminded that Netroots’s purpose wasn’t to bring down the government, only to share strategy and experience. But again: why not do that online, if the New Technology Revolution is all it’s cracked up to be?
Fine, confession time: I didn’t go to Netroots UK. For various reasons.
Firstly, it was the 3rd Round of the FA Cup. Secondly, the train fare. Thirdly, I have better ways to spend my Saturdays than listening to people declare that we Need A Strategy and must Build Coalition Movements and Mobilise, without any actual concrete resolutions, or practical pay-out, in sight.
What actually happens over the coming year is going to be determined by individuals and groups taking specific, concrete actions to attempt to secure outcomes and goals. Such actions will happen when they happen, but are unlikely to be significantly shaped by large-scale group conversation and rhetorical grandstanding one Saturday in January.
Personally, I’ll turn up when things start actually happening. I have no particular use for big talking shops where people gesture vaguely at the inevitability of some undetermined actions. It may be different for serious organisers and activists (amongst which I do not class myself). But still, why not just do it online, or in the pub?
Of course I could have heard some nice tit-bits from various contributors. But then, I can just find out about them by, er, reading blog summaries. And the added bonus of staying at home is that I avoid interminable panel debates of “experts”, who actually don’t know very much at all. Hopi Sen, on the money:
“Dislike of panel q&a’s is based on fact when I’m in audience panel seem to know less than me, so if on panel, know audience thinking same… Also no-one in history of panel q&a’s has ever said ‘sorry, i don’t know’ then shut up. This would reduce bulls**t quantities tremendously.”
And it doesn’t placate me that apparently audience “experts” were invited to spew forth. At these sorts of events, the few insightful contributions are usually out-weighed by floor-hoggers riding tedious hobby horses until their inner thighs bleed red raw.
So I stayed at home.
You, of course, may have felt otherwise. You may have enjoyed the prospect of meeting up with like-minded lefties. You may have found the panel debates interesting and insightful. You may, in short, have decided that listening to lots of people talk about politics was the way you most preferred to spend your Saturday.
And that’s fine. It takes all sorts. You’re free to get your kicks however you like. But here’s the rub, and where I get on people’s nerves.
Does the enjoyability of Netroots UK retain its sheen if we accept that it was, effectively, just a massive talking shop at which people cold enjoy their Saturday afternoon? I suspect not, because surely the appeal of these events is, precisely, the sense that you didn’t just hang out with your (e-)mates and hear people chat about politics, You Did Something Important With Your Weekend.
Yet if we admit that the political efficacy of Netroots UK was effectively zero, it’s difficult to see how the last bit can be sustained. Correspondingly – and somewhat ironically – if people were a bit more honest about the reasons and motivations for attending these sorts of events, they might in turn see such hootenannies as somewhat less purposeful.
But then, I can only speak for myself. And believe me, the Arsenal-Leeds game was terrific.
Guy Aitchison said,
January 10, 2011 at 12:01 am
This is quite a bizarre response to Netroots UK, if you don’t mind me saying. Sure, the event had its flaws (too centred on Labour-NGO-Guardian nexus, and not enough on grassroots, especially in plenaries) but your post seems to be based on a number of false oppositions:
Talking shop v real concrete actions (discussion informs and leads to action)
Friendship/fun v activism (the two overlap – activism nearly always a social activity)
Online v offline operations (the two interlace and reinforce each other)
You assume there was no “practical pay out” simply because there was no concrete “resolutions”. This is a blinkered view. The conference wasn’t about creating a unified, top-down campaigning structure. The most valuable thing to come out of it will be the countless serendipitous encounters and exchanges between activists which will translate to long-term relationships of co-operation (I know that myself, and other students who went there are now in touch with several TUs and are arranging to go and speak at their meetings etc). It’s about the cross-fertilisation of skills, ideas, tactics etc.
Where I do agree is that the panel model of “experts” being quite dry and stifling. The lunchtime session I helped facilitate with Aaron on the student movement was run along the lines of an un-conference. We just let people speak and tried to facilitate as best we could and I think it worked quite well.
Tim Worstall said,
January 10, 2011 at 7:48 am
To be entirely cynical: how can you get union subsidy unless everyone turns up in person so that the dinosaurs of the unions get to see that everyone is in fact real?
And to continue with the cynicism, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some strategic “subsidy” of “serious organisers and activists” come out of it in the same way that Left Foot Forward gets some.
BTW, nothing at all wrong with such subsidies from either side: my cynicism is just to suggest that Netroots was the application process.
Stuart White said,
January 10, 2011 at 11:21 am
I don’t agree, Paul.
I also didn’t go to netroots (because I had a family commitment), but I wish I had been able to. Not because I wanted to hear any of the big plenary speeches (blah, blah, blah), but because I did want to make direct, 1-to-1 contact with various people, e.g., those involved in disability rights campaigning and have a chat with them about tactics and strategy.
More generally, I don’t think one should understimate the importance of complementing all the twittery, facebooky stuff with good, old-fashioned direct meeting and discussion. As they say in community organizing, ‘Relationships precede action’. And to build proper relationships you need that direct meeting up as well as Facebook friending, etc.
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