Chu 朱<p>Mastodon is my online echo chamber of people who give a crap about what happens to other people. </p><p>My long inaccessible FB account was my glimpse closer to reality of a world where people DGAF about other people. Endless posts about beach vacations, lunch, new purchases. </p><p>I had to leave FB because it got too much. I preferred to believe that more people were like me. But this is also an illusion.</p><p>I finally understand how concentration camps came to be and how life carried on despite it. My own sibling in the US has told me that things are "pretty normal" where he is. </p><p>I don't see how people around you getting arrested, your government literally building a concentration camp and flying people to foreign lands can be classified as "normal". But he just goes about his business. </p><p>All he cared about was paying less taxes and making money. He will soon discover the cost of 'normal' was having scientists keep track of diseases and prevent their outbreaks, educators toiling to maintain an educated workforce, air traffic controllers keeping planes from falling out of the sky.</p><p>All he ever saw were the dollars that things cost him, not the benefits, direct or indirect. </p><p>As things falls apart, he won't care until it affects him personally. It will be too late. As long as he can keep doing his work, running his business, selling his stuff... it's all "normal"</p><p>But he is a better reflection of "normal" than I am. The army of people who care here are outside the norms. </p><p>And it's the inertia of not caring that allows horrors to go on. The gatekeepers of media will make sure the population continues to care as little as possible. They will keep showing us beach photos and handbag purchases. </p><p>Distributed information sharing like Mastodon will be important in any kind of resistance efforts as the information will still be visible. </p><p>Then the next challenge is getting people who don't think any of this is important to care. You don't need everyone, but enough people. You need people who just want to get to work and do their thing to think that the lives of other people are worthy of caring about.</p>