Staying Sane When the World's Gone Mad: a Comms Perspective

Trying to keep up with the fall of Western democracy is exhausting. Tracing the web of the US's technocratic takeover is like walking a tightrope over a pit of conspiratorial lava. It's easy to feel crazy.

I follow some brilliant tech voices on Bluesky. When the platform first broke through the top crust of platform giants it was, in my eyes, a historical upset within the order of conventional social media. Not just a new platform, but an entirely new model of social media—user-owned data, user-controlled algorithms, freedom from advertisers—it legitimately boggled my mind that the overall reception within my comms circles was as passive as it was. It still does. If immunity to the sedative effects of social media should exist within any profession, it should damn well exist within communications. That communicators and "strategists" are still ho-humming about what open source and decentralized comms could mean for our broader systems, even now, when our comms systems are under existential threat—sends up yet another flag that we might indeed be cooked after all.

There was a time when I was moderately literate in the backends of things, but two decades of single parenting and balancing work with passion projects did not leave much room for keeping up with the lightning-speed evolution of tech. When Bluesky surfaced as a viable social media option, I was energized by the prospect of open source socials and saw the movement as a massive win for what I was lightly terming "the resistance". The tech voices I followed were independent journalists and media philosophy-types—big, fast, well-grounded brains skilled at parsing the rapid movements of the tech world.

That we exist in an online age is undeniable, and the growing disparities in tech literacy are, in my opinion, an urgent, existential threat to the 90% of us who can barely manage privacy settings and two-factor authentication let alone coding, APIs, data science, encryption, etc. So I started my foray into Bluesky with the intention of becoming more tech literate, and I ended up with front row seats to the fall of democracy. 

Reported diligently and tirelessly by people I now view as understated folk-heroes; Mike Masnick, founder of Tech Dirt and author of Protocols, not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech—the paper that would inspire Bluesky, which he now sits on the board of. And Jason Koebler, founder of 404media, an independent tech news site that has broken some of the most significant pieces since the Trump takeover. There are more on my list, including journalists at Wired who've reporting on the past month with more clarity and steadiness than any mainstream news source. 

In my opinion, every responsible communications professional ought to be hotly tuned into this movement. If we as comms folk have no other duty, it must at least include staying aware of the current shifts and threats to our communications systems. Yes, most of what's currently happening re: Musk and DOGE is "American", but borders hardly matter to the moguls demolishing and privatizing the empires of the West. Meta, Amazon and Google are mainstays of a Canadian users' day-to-day online experience, and they are aligned with the technocrats. Peter Thiel, the apparent architect of Trump's entire authoritarian takeover, owns extensive assets in Canada and the Canadian Federal Government is one of his major clients.

In my opinion the profession of "comms" has devolved into posturing and proving you have the slickest presence, the best connections, the tightest content, the cleanest branding, the highest engagement. It mirrors the same individualism broadly corroding our communities. We shouldn't need or want to be public personalities to do our work well. You don't need Substack or a following of thousands. Comms is a craft. Good comms is the unseen nervous system within the greater flow of information. It looks ahead, anticipates, forecasts, adjusts. It piques and connects. It pushes, beckons, and knows when to rest. It's deeply psychological, and requires an intuitive, analytical understanding of the broader social zeitgeist. And when our great river of information is poisoned we should be the first ones to care. To at least care. 

So I have to ask, where is everyone??

This is the point where I start to feel a sense of vertigo. Of urgency and helplessness. Am I crazy? I find comfort in seeing those people closest to the static—those steady and deeply attuned voices in tech—echoing the same feelings (ie: the header image of this post). And I'm trying to be patient. These posts are meant as gentle pushes to my immediate circles. I don't expect them to be shared broadly. I only hope they plant a few simple seeds that grow into understanding and action.

Please. Please allow yourselves to look into the darkness of what's coming. Give your eyes time to adjust and see the shape of it. We can't resist what we can't see. We can't build unless we understand what we're up against.

This is how resistance works. Not in apathetically scrolling and sharing the worst news you can find. Not in pretending everything is fine while passively using the very tools that have been weaponized against us (Meta). It's in learning, seeing the nuance, and equipping yourself with the best tools, skills, and strengths you have to offer. 

And yes, self-care and community-care play vital roles in this. But we're watching an authoritarian takeover that has infected the entire West—self-care cannot include burying your head in the sand, or hiding in bubblebaths, or numbing via Insta reels. Self-care is part of resistance as well, and it might look like connecting with your irl communities, volunteering, protecting those more vulnerable than yourself, immersing yourself in learning, embracing the concept of bravery and shedding your dogmatic aversions to imperfection. Imperfection is okay, this is going to be a messy time and people are typically slow adopters. Resistance isn't about high profile heroism, it's a simple exercise in steady resolve. 

And of course, give Musk/Trump sympathizers no space. Shut them down. Their version of reality includes our destruction. Resist.