Something I see a lot in the Fediverse and left wing spheres is people rejecting, or making enemies of imperfect allies. The video I shared paints a great picture of what it's like.
Here is some examples I've seen, and what reactions they've been met with.
"I ditched Gmail for Proton" is met with "That's terrible the CEO is a Trump boot licker"
"Posts on r/BuyCanadian" is met with "Why are you still using Reddit, it's American?"
"I'm pro trans but, there are some things I'm not 100% onboard with" is met with "Harsh criticism & Ban"
"I sold my diesel SUV for an electric KIA" is met with "You shouldn't support China or drive a SUV, buy European instead"
"I switched to Brave instead of Chrome" is met with "Brave sucks its American and still part of chromium"
etc.
I so often see people harshly criticize and alienate people that are mostly on their side, and might in the near future be fully on their side.
Instead I'd like to see responses like
"Hey fantastic that you switched to Proton away from Gmail, consider moving to Migadu as they're an even better solution"
"Awesome that you're buying Canadian, while you're at it consider checking out Lemmy or PieFed"
"Great job switching to Electric, next time consider buying a smaller European car there are many great reasons why they are better"
"Great that you're pro-trance, what's stopping your from being onboard with XYZ? Maybe I can change your mind?"
"Nice Brave is already a lot better than Chrome, even better would be LibreWolf, also make sure to try out Kagi or Qwant instead of google"
You don't change someone's mind by criticizing them, you need to have a discussion and bring them over, tone matters. How do we stop these criticisms and alienating imperfect allies?
Welcome to the past three hundred years of labor movements, friend. It sucks in here, but it sure is better than the alternative.
I'll say that your proposed alternatives have all the soul crushing artificiality of a customer service call center. I would much rather say nothing at all. I'm not anybody's parent or marketing representative.
I can tell you what I do for each of those things if you want to hear it, but I won't pitch somebody else's product at you and I sure as hell won't take your pitch unless I asked for it. I find people who try to sell you stuff on the street obnoxious and I'm not gonna do that same thing online.
I'm not sure if you get the point I'm trying to make.
Aka. We should stop rejecting/alienating imperfect allies.
Saying nothing is fine
Yes, saying nothing is fine. But at the same time, the above poster is pointing out the other big problem with the left, which is that when they realize that people aren't responding to their negativity/ivory tower/gatekeeping, they say that they need to implement some kind of "strategy" to convince people. But... they talk about using these strategies in public forums, and then are very hamfisted about implementing them, which just makes the whole come off as manipulative.
If the left wants to convince others to join them, the "strategy" shouldn't be to change their verbiage. It should be to recognize their flaws and to individually work on being better people.