Last month, flying over the Atlantic in the throes of an existential crisis brought on by too strong an edible (which I had taken to try to sleep through the flight), I had the following disturbing self-insight, which while stonerish is also true:

Much of the communication for socialist and working class organizing in my context occurs on WhatsApp groups. WhatsApp has an emoji react feature, and I noticed that I had been expectantly checking WhatsApp for “hearts” on my own messages, just as on a typical social-media application.

Given that, I was probably also allowing the incentive of receiving “hearts” to shape the kind of posts I was making. And if I’m doing that, many others probably are as well. What effect this kind of like-seeking behavior has on the overall shape of our organizations' activity I do not as yet have a clear sense.