Space ships and brain tangles

A few weeks ago I got to play Bridge Command in London and I got to be Captain! It was amazing! That picture was taken by my friend Tony, and posted with his permission. You can see me in the middle there, looking a little bit stressed! (If you’re reading this as a newsletter and the picture hasn’t come through, you can see it on my blog at www.enewman.co.uk) If you want to find out more about what it’s like to play the game, it’s the focus of my latest Tea and Sanctuary episode.

Right, before I get stuck into a big long post about… stuff, I want to let you know about a few things coming up.

I will be attending Eastercon in Belfast! Are you going? I will be taking some paintings and pendants for the art show, and have applied to be on programming. Let me know in the comments if I will see you there!

At the time of writing, there are a few days left to nominate for the 2025 Hugo Awards. Many I humbly present my podcast Imagining Tomorrow for your consideration in the Best Related Work category?

Oh, and of course, The Vengeance is out on May 8th and available for pre-order in both ebook and paperback formats (there will also be an audiobook version, that I narrated).

I’m gradually moving over the archive of Tea and Jeopardy episodes to YouTube over the next few months as I streamline my web hosting. You can find the playlist here if you want to listen to the show again (though my goodness, the sound quality is terrible! Podcasting has come a long way since 2013!).

Further to my last post, I’ve taken Instagram off my phone, so won’t see things if you try to contact me there. I’ve also received several friend requests on Facebook lately. Apologies if you have sent one, but I’m not responding to them as I’m spending as little time there as possible (it’s frustratingly difficult to ditch completely due to LARP and other niche groups that just aren’t anywhere else). The only social media site I check semi-regularly now is BlueSky (and I am minimising use of that too). So if you want to connect on social media, that’s the place to do it, but I recommend subscribing to this blog as the best way to keep up to date with what I’m up to.

Brain tangles about social media

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging again was to work out how I feel about things. When I get all tangled up about something in my head, trying to press it into the page in such a way that it makes sense helps me to sort out the mess. Lately, that mess has been bubbling up when navigating life online.

A long time ago, I decided upon a series of social media rules for myself. They were pretty much as follows:

• Maintain a strict privacy line when it comes to my home life, especially my child. If I post anything about him, it is only when I have his enthusiastic permission.
• Be open about suffering from anxiety (and, more recently, receiving a late autism diagnosis), to help other people not feel alone
• If I haven’t enjoyed something, don’t talk about it online. Only talk about stuff I’ve loved.
• Don’t boost stuff that is overtly click-baity, rage-inducing, or seems to be designed to increase polarisation
• Don’t offer commentary on subjects outside of my expertise (especially political ones)
• Try to add warmth and a sense of cosiness, providing something close to respite from the world

The thing is, I made those personal rules for my own online conduct about 16 years ago. It was a different world in so many ways. And now we are living in what feels like the darkest timeline.

On social media (by which I mean, online social spaces that I do not curate, unlike this blog/newsletter) I have not been talking about the techno-fascist coup happening in real time in the United States, and how they’re throwing Ukraine under the bus while they’re at it. I have not shared my rage and grief at the genocide in Palestine. I have not been venting my frustration with watching my government continuing the mistakes of the last forty years in prioritising the interests of capitalists over the fabric of society. Or my rage that my trans friends are suffering the onslaught of hate directed towards them. Or my eternal frustration that disgusting men fail upwards again and again. I am not posting about all of the ways in which billionaires who have more money than they could spend in multiple lifetimes are finding new ways to destroy the lives and livelihoods of people who are already struggling to survive.

I talk about all those things in the real world. But I don’t talk about any of this on wider social media because it breaks several rules. For one thing, if I talked openly online about all of the horrors I mentioned above and more, I’d hardly be providing respite or solace. I don’t offer commentary on political subjects for two reasons: 1) I am not nearly well-educated or qualified or relevant enough to offer anything more than a barely informed opinion, and lord knows there are already FAR TOO MANY of those online and 2) because I fear that I would merely being cranking the handle of the machine made by techbros to keep us all arguing with each other instead of focusing on more important things. You know, like the staggering wealth inequality that is destroying the fabric of society, amongst others.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I have no faith in the ability of social media to do anything except polarise opinion and reduce debate to something so shallow that it is actively dangerous, so I am loathe to use it for anything other than trying to boost non-upsetting things.

That rule was broken a few times lately, when I re-posted some stuff relating to the recent AI consultation being run by the UK government, and boosted a post from someone in the SFF community rightly drawing attention to the appalling intention of the US government in deny visas to trans people and how those of us living outside of the US shouldn’t attend US based Worldcons because of it. I am not able to attend Worldcons outside of the UK and Ireland anyway, so it’s hardly a sacrifice on my part, but I felt it was an important point to make.

And even that feels hard as I know there are people organising the Seattle Worldcon right now, pouring thousands of hours into creating an event for an international community that wants no part of this right wing driven horror.

Does social media even matter?

Who actually cares what I say online or don’t say online, other than me? Nobody, really, but the reason I keep wrestling with all of this is because I know that the hateful views of a tiny minority are being constantly amplified to look like they are the views of the majority, and it feels wrong to let that go unchallenged.

I think about all the times when I pushed back against bigoted comments made at real world gatherings during my son’s childhood, not because it would make any difference to the opinions of the people saying them (in fact, I suspect they delighted in making me angry), but because I wanted my child to know that what they were saying was wrong. I think about the deep conversations I have with friends in which opinions are shifted, in which both of us learn things and are actively engaged. I think about conversations with family who are not as left-leaning as I am, and I gain an understanding of how the way they see the world differs from mine. And sometimes, just sometimes, I manage to help them see things differently too.

But the online world is not the same as having an in-person conversation over cups of tea. The people who follow me online are not my child and I have no responsibility for them. Quote-posting information about awful things and expressing disgust feels like cranking the tech-bros outrage machine. And fundamentally, social media is not the best place to have discussions about complex issues.

At the end of the day, I’m just a tired woman trying to write books, survive under capitalism and help her kid to thrive. I don’t think what I say on social media will ultimately have any real impact. It is ephemeral, distorted by algorithms and not what it used to be. For now, I will save my energy for long form prose, podcasting, and the things I can achieve in the real world.

In fact, here’s a brilliant example of why doing stuff in the real world is important, and why I will always choose to amplify the people doing great things.

One of the amazing people I interviewed while researching the Imagining Tomorrow episode about young people was Destiny Boka-Batesa, one of the co-founders of the Choked Up Campaign, which campaigns for cleaner air in London. She is a remarkable young woman and my interview with her was one of my favourites. You can watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/MzGezpzf7Go

I thought of her again today because a report has just been published by the Greater London Authority about the impact of ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) and this paragraph made my heart leap for joy:

“London’s more deprived communities are seeing greater benefits from the ULEZ; for some of the most deprived communities living near London’s busiest roads, there’s been an estimated 80 per cent reduction in people exposed to illegal levels of pollution”

This is exactly why the Choked Up campaign was founded. Destiny and her friends did fantastic work in engaging with the candidates up for election for mayor, and their work, along with other campaign groups, has achieved this. Their campaigning is very much rooted in real world action, rather than social media, and it worked.

People like Destiny keep me hopeful.

Right, I need to go nurse my broken ankle* so I can get back to writing my current work in progress. That book won’t change the world, but hopefully it will take someone out of this one for a few hours. And sometimes, that rest is just what’s needed to rekindle a little bit of energy to face these times. Hope is so hard to hold onto. Hold fast, my loves, hold fast.

*I wish I could tell you that I broke it doing something really adventurous, but alas, no. I was walking. On a flat pavement. While wearing trainers and sober. I still have no idea how it happened. Oh wait, I do. I'm clumsy as hell. Yup.