Tag: Technology

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 10972 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2026-08-20 18:06:07 [post_date_gmt] => 2026-08-20 18:06:07 [post_content] =>

Why women around the world are building their own DIY computers.

In March of this year, TikTok creator Annike Tan started learning about cyberdecks from YouTube. Usually designed for a specific purpose, a cyberdeck is a custom-built mini computer, often in a maximalist, cyberpunk aesthetic that contrasts with the factory-made, minimalist look of traditional, mass-produced technology. For Tan, this was appealing: She and her partner had been trying to be less online, even switching to dumbphones for a few months in 2025. But both quickly realized many things still required use of the internet—QR codes to open digital menus, apps to navigate public transport—and eventually decided to switch back.

Frustrated with her overreliance on being so plugged in, Tan was inspired to build a device that could blend her need to disconnect with at least some of the technological advances she’d grown accustomed to. Originally a music business major at the SAE Institute in London, she says that while she doesn’t have formal training in engineering or coding, the knowledge she obtained from watching video tutorials online gave her the confidence to build a DIY, mermaid-themed computer out of a vintage clutch bag with a Raspberry Pi computing system, a tiny keyboard, and a mini screen.

“I thought, ‘That looks really fun,’” she says over a video call. “So I made my first cyberdeck and I loved it; I thought it was the cutest thing in the world. At the time I felt like a kid who had just built their first LEGO house.”

On the outside, Tan’s cyberdeck looks like a caramel-colored clutch, but inside, the tiny screen is framed by a faux stone border and decorated with gold trim, meant to evoke the feeling of being a “mermaid in Southeast Asia.” (This is a modification from her original design, which featured more wood and rattan, but which Tan felt represented too "Western" an interpretation of a mermaid.) The keyboard sits atop a clear acrylic sheet painted with nail polish to look like murky water, allowing Tan to easily access its computing system. Next to it is a broken compass in a bed of fake foliage, which also camouflages the on and off switch. During a more recent refurbishing, she also added a little shell next to the keyboard for SD card storage, and made adjustments to the design to allow the clutch to close with the keyboard and mouse tucked comfortably inside.

Known as Ube Boobey on social media, Tan posted a video of her cyberdeck to TikTok, where it went viral earlier this year. Some even credit her with kicking off the recent wave of cyberdeck content on TikTok, with an emphasis on videos spotlighting “girlier” builds. She is now one of hundreds of people, according to the very active cyberdeck community on Reddit, learning how to make their own tiny computers and posting about it online. Many of them are other women just getting started in electronics and coding.

Tan’s mermaid cyberdeck was designed to be an off-grid piece of technology—which means it doesn’t rely on having an internet connection. While it can’t read a QR code, the tiny computer is loaded with the top most searched Wikipedia articles; books on gardening, agriculture, health, education, and philosophy; an offline version of Google Maps; a few TED Talks; and Tan’s favorite music, including Thundercat and Erykah Badu. For Tan, it was trial and error using materials she had—a clutch bag from her closet, gold jewelry she already owned—and others she bought herself, including the Raspberry Pi system, keyboard, and screen. But ultimately, she feels that the process of building her mermaid cyberdeck was an “act of rebellion,” as she has made a piece of technology that is also a piece of art.

“From the moment you wake up to the minute you go to bed, you're always accessible to anyone who has your contact,” she says. “People yearn for freedom. Building this cyberdeck was a fun way to have something be off-grid. It’s still technologically advanced enough where it can fill a lot of holes if you were to get rid of all of your other technology, but not down to the point where you're completely analog.”

This is just one way that building cyberdecks is challenging mass-produced, Big Tech advances that, more often than not, feel imposed onto people without consent or consultation. In a world where artificial intelligence is being pushed in every industry, and data centers are being built without the knowledge or input of their neighbors, creating a device for under the radar, specific offline use—rather than one designed for overreliance, addiction, and overconsumption—is a clever way to fight back.

For many builders, cyberdecks are also an opportunity to repurpose electronic waste. According to the World Health Organization, there was an estimated 62 million tons of e-waste produced globally in 2022 alone, and only 22% of that waste was formally collected and recycled. Experts argue that much of this electronic waste can be repurposed into new builds—though there isn’t much data on the subject since currently, very little e-waste is collected for recycling, thus impeding proper disposal. Learning how to build a cyberdeck from old devices can teach people about the value of each of its parts, what makes a device run, and which parts can still be functional rather than thrown into a landfill.

“Making cyberdecks educates people’s minds about technology,” says Giovanna Aguiar, a cyberdeck builder based in São Paulo, Brazil, known as @gio.yaml on TikTok and Instagram. In May, Aguiar, a trained programmer, noticed a gap in the digital cyberdeck community: most tutorials were in English and many of the necessary components were cost-prohibitive for people living in Brazil. Now, Aguiar makes content in Portuguese that teaches people how to refurbish their electronic waste instead of buying new parts, in order to create something completely new. “From the moment you create a cyberdeck with an old laptop that isn’t turning on, for example, you start to understand that that laptop is just a group of parts,” she says. An old device’s webcam can be disconnected and used separately, as can its screen. “You start seeing old electronics as objects with potential, and long-term, I think that can change the world,” she continues. “For me, sustainability is very connected to cyberdecks.”

Electronic waste is growing every day, with the United Nations estimating that by 2030, the volume of e-waste will rise by 32%, to 82 million tons. As a result of non-compliant waste management, e-waste continues releasing toxic and persistent substances into the environment every year. Hazardous materials like lead, mercury, and cadmium leak when discarded in landfills, poisoning water supplies. And even properly recycled e-waste often still harms the environment and the people in it: Around 75% of collected e-waste is shipped to “backyard recyclers” in the Global South where people and landscapes bear the brunt, according to EcoWatch.

For Matthew Lubari, co-founder and executive director of Community Creativity for Development, a youth-led organization that teaches young people in South Sudan how to reuse and recycle electronic waste, learning how to repair a device or reuse its parts for a new build is a great way to reduce e-waste.

“Recycling electronic waste is a way of fighting back against Big Tech, because every time they develop new technologies, consumers are abandoning old stuff,” Lubari says. He points to how Big Tech companies like Microsoft intentionally discontinue software updates, forcing consumers to buy newer devices. “There is a need for more awareness regarding that, so waste can be reduced. There's a need for more promotion of repair, reuse, and upcycling. We shouldn't jump into recycling before repairing, reusing, and upcycling.”

More generally, the tradition of repairing devices and electronics is making a comeback in industrialized countries where, for the last twenty years, the custom has been to throw away devices after they’ve broken. For many years, buying a new piece of technology was the cheapest, easiest option. But now, counter to the tech industry’s profit-driven approach, consumers are seeking repair cafes, organizers are lobbying for right to repair legislation—and the girls are making cyberdecks.

In addition to environmental impact, cyberdeck builders also cite growing concerns over online mass surveillance and sexual violence, as people—mostly men—increasingly use AI tools to create nonconsensual sexual images; join harmful, misogynistic communities where they teach each other abuse tactics; and utilize AI-powered surveillance to stalk women. For Aguiar, who got into tech as a child by taking apart any piece of technology she could find, this alarming trend is also why it’s so important that cyberdecks are getting more women interested in tech.

“Maybe if women had been in the tech field since the beginning, issues like surveillance and digital stalking could’ve been avoided,” Aguiar says. “When you have a more diverse team, there’s a higher chance someone will raise a problem that would probably go unnoticed by a more homogenous group.”

This is starting to happen in the rebuilding and repurposing space. Building cyberdecks, many off-grid, can allow women and girls to feel safe, because it allows them to disconnect from the online spaces where abusers most often reach them. For Afsaneh Rigot, founder and researcher at De|Center, an organization based across the US and Africa that works to reduce the mass-scale harms of existing and emerging technologies, creating access to technological tools—away from surveillance and gendered violence—makes a lot of sense as a path of resistance.

“For women and girls, it can be such a liberating feeling to be able to create your own modes of technology and communication,” Rigot says. “We’re seeing it with cyberdecks, but even with general tools, technologies, and devices, people are now navigating these systems of control and surveillance in their own ways.” Rigot teaches young people in marginalized communities how to protect themselves through workarounds and tools that increase privacy. For her, cyberdecks are a natural expansion and continuation of strategies people have used to “try and maintain their autonomy and privacy.” It’s about seeking less dependence on technology made to maximize the profits of Big Tech companies, instead of benefitting the people who use it. The easier it is to build the technology, Rigot says, the bigger the threat to these corporate models.

Unlike mass-produced technology, cyberdecks also have an element of exaggerated aesthetics that stand in stark contrast with the greys and blacks of laptops and cellphones most people use. Tan’s mermaid cyberdeck is only one example of how these homemade computers are aesthetically defying the boring, non-technicolor devices of Big Tech. There are cyberdecks made out of jewelry boxes, eyeshadow palettes, and clutch bags, bringing a camp-y, feminine vibe to technology that has been aesthetically sober and functionally masculine for decades.

“Because technology has been so minimalist and so sad in the recent decades, the pendulum's slowly swinging the other way,” Tan says. “And this is being pioneered by women. People want something that represents them. The physical things, the tangible things that we own should be a reflection of the user, and how can that happen when everything is made in a factory?”

Aguiar believes this particular aspect of building cyberdecks can motivate women to learn skills they’re not usually encouraged to learn in a male-dominated field—something that can change tech in the long term. And she’s right: Tan’s decision to build a cyberdeck became a gateway to building other projects without any formal coding experience or education.

“Through cyberdecks, you can motivate girls to understand a little more about building technology without them necessarily working in the field, because the point is that it’s fun,” Aguiar says. “It is something you can decorate with your personality, it becomes a hobby, and oftentimes you discover this is what you want to do. It’s about looking at this and being like, ‘I can do this.’”

The popularity of cyberdecks on TikTok and Instagram, particularly through content created by women, reveals a hunger for technology that serves our daily lives, but doesn’t dominate every single second of them, nor threaten our safety, our privacy, or our environment. Technology doesn’t have to enhance patriarchal rule or even create more profit for corporations—and in the right hands, it can even make cute, functional devices out of upcycled clutch bags.

[post_title] => The Politics of Cyberdecks [post_excerpt] => Why women around the world are building their own DIY computers. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => cyberdecks-politics-diy-computers-technology-tiktok-annike-tan-big-tech-electronics-waste-upcycling [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2026-08-20 18:06:08 [post_modified_gmt] => 2026-08-20 18:06:08 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=10972 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

August 20, 2026August 20, 2026

The Politics of Cyberdecks

by Nicole Froio

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 10702 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2026-07-03 01:59:26 [post_date_gmt] => 2026-07-03 01:59:26 [post_content] =>

Across the United States, activists and organizers are 3D printing one of the most surprisingly effective weapons against ICE.

So far, they've distributed over 1.5 million of them.

Before I even get a chance to ask my first question, Heidi DiJulio, Operations Manager at Protoplant, Inc., is off and running. A Vancouver, WA-based producer of filament for 3D printers, the company has become a part of a growing grassroots movement in the United States, whose organizers need what they sell in order to make one of their most effective weapons: 3D-printed whistles.

Across the country, whistling has become an ever-present background noise in communities invaded by ICE, a low-cost, instant-alert system that anyone can participate in. Everyone from crusty gutter punks to activist grandparents have been blowing whistles to alert people to immigration raids; as well as gathering outside hotels and other spaces used by immigration enforcement to ensure they cannot rest, eat, or move without being accompanied by a cacophony. It prevents abductions, saves lives, and makes ICE agents absolutely miserable. And, as noise protests have continued to grow, 3D printing has proven to be one of the most effective and affordable ways to get more whistles into more hands, fast.

“Protoplant is very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish,” DiJulio says. “We’re very proud to bring it into our workspace, and figure out how to be part of a better future.”

While the ICE occupation—and noise protests—aren’t as visible as they were on social media in February and March of 2026, the demand for whistles is going strong. Over the last six months, Protoplant alone has shipped out over 500 kilograms and counting of their filament at a specially discounted price, and an additional 100 kilograms in gifted spools, enough to make approximately 300,000 whistles.

This steady supply of filament is essential for the activists and organizers—many working invisibly and unheralded—who continue printing and distributing thousands of whistles a week.

It’s also just one piece of a much larger movement still fighting back against ICE and showing no signs of slowing down.

Sounding the Alarm

When ICE first occupied Chicago, mutual aid organizers Emily Hilleren and Lauren Vega were quick to spring into action. They started distributing whistles at mass scale, among other supplies and support, and put out a call asking people with 3D printers for help meeting demand.

“I saw a neighbor in Chicago posting about leaving whistles in little free libraries and I was like ‘ooh I can probably do that,’” Hilleren wrote on Bluesky. “[S]uddenly I had tens of thousands of whistles passing through my condo.”

Chicago-based journalist Mo Ryan was early to join these efforts, and shared a few of the whistle calls with her friends, romance authors Kit Rocha and Courtney Milan. Though not local, the two were eager to help: both have large social media platforms, extensive networks, a love for 3D printing, and experience organizing under fascism. They began sharing information, boosting tips, and gathering resources and support, helping to raise awareness for what was quickly becoming a nationwide effort. As more and more people joined in, others were encouraged to contribute in whatever ways they could.

Before long, the group—alongside a rapidly growing collective of printers, activists, and organizers—became known as the Whistle Crew. Today, they’re one among many distribution groups across the United States rising up for community defense against ICE.

"Everything is very grassroots, driven by ways to put information in front of the people who need it."

They’re also still growing: As ICE has invaded more and more cities across the country, Hilleren and Vega have applied their experience in Chicago to supporting efforts in Minneapolis and beyond. So have Milan and Rocha, alongside the rest of the Whistle Crew, in an ongoing mass-distribution effort made possible through collaboration, skill-sharing, and organizing that is responsive to the needs of individual communities—rather than a top-down approach, one rooted in principles of mutuality and care.

The origins of this incredible mutual aid effort reflect a lengthy history of feminist organizing, drawing upon decades of lived experiences that value collectives over individual work. It also taps into the glorious side of human ingenuity that utilizes tech for good—a welcome disruption to our current tech dystopia.

Mary Sturgeon, who runs Solder and Bubblegum—a Seattle-based makerspace where visitors can use equipment (including 3D printers), learn technical skills, and connect with fellow nerds—was quick to get involved with the group after she saw Rocha posting about it. “Something I studied very heavily before I opened my space is the riot grrl movement and women in making,” she tells The Conversationalist. “What fascinated me was how underground it was, how record companies, everyone official said, ‘We’re not interested,’ so women just said, ‘We’ll figure this out ourselves.’”

A similar ethos, she believes, is core to how the Whistle Crew operates. “Everything is very grassroots, driven by ways to put information in front of the people who need it,” she says. “That’s it, that’s all we need to do.”

In the case of the Whistle Crew, as their work has expanded, so has their need for structure: to track who needs whistles, who can print them, and how to get whistles where they need to go. Both Milan and Rocha stress that while they are very public faces for the group, they are far from the only organizers in a leaderful movement—adding that some core contributors to the Whistle Crew remain invisible for safety reasons. Today, their network includes a distributed and diverse collective contributing logistical experience, tech expertise, and other critical moving pieces. They also resist hierarchical structures, rooting their work in the “we,” as Milan puts it, which is essential for effective, sustainable, and anti-patriarchal community organizing.

So far, the Whistle Crew has produced and shipped over 1.5 million whistles.

To continue this work, the group practices both conscious security practices and redundancy, calculated to avoid burnout and to avoid creating bottlenecks. Coordinating over Signal, they get supplies where they need to go as quickly as possible. If you’re a person who needs whistles, you email whistlerequests@proton.me. The person wrangling the inbox adds it to a list of requests for individual printers to claim, print, and ship directly to the requester. The group has been so overwhelmed with support that they’re not currently accepting new volunteer printers, but they have published a Wiki with information on printing and distribution so anyone can pick up this work in their own community. People who can’t print or be involved in logistics can also donate funds or purchase filament directly via Protoplant or Amazon wishlists, to ensure their printers have a steady supply.

“The goal,” says Zoe Quinn, one of the printers involved in the effort, “is obsolescence. I would love to not be doing this.”

Anti-Patriarchal Organizing for Fascist Times

There’s an interesting undercurrent to this incredibly rapid mobilization: It’s rising to meet a need, but has also at times been surprisingly whimsical. There are sparkly whistles. Transparent ones in a range of hues. Whistles in metallic rainbow tones. Fun shapes like fish and cats, and designs intended to be beautiful and sometimes silly as well as functional. A whistle is a whistle is a whistle, but there are more unconventional ways to get one, too. You can go to https://linktr.ee/3Dwhistles if you want, but toottootmotherfucker.com, whistlegoblins.fun, and whistlecoven.com will all get you to the same place.

One reason for that playful approach amongst the Whistle Crew? Many of the people doing the work are linked to Romancelandia, the community of romance readers and writers that moves mountains, and rarely shies away from hard work and fighting on the right side of history.

"Political resistance is women’s work and always has been."

As a historically gendered genre read predominantly by women, romance readers and writers are frequently derided and discounted, even though romance is consistently one of the best-selling fiction genres. (According to industry group BookScan, 51 million units sold between May 2024 and June 2025.) Unlike many other genres, romance also isn’t dominated by traditional publishing, and many authors choose to self-publish or engage in a mix of both. Romance writers often have incredible business acumen as a result, acting not just as authors, but editors, publicists, web developers, designers, and more, with incredibly diverse backgrounds and skillsets. (Milan, for example, is an attorney who clerked at the Supreme Court—and far from the only lawyer-romance writer.)

Milan and Rocha are also no strangers to political organizing: Their Romancing the Vote project, which started with 2020’s Romancing the Runoff in collaboration with fellow romance author Alyssa Cole, has raised more than a million dollars to support nonpartisan voting rights organizations, and the 2026 edition just launched, with auctions running through July 5. That experience—with promotion, logistics, and coordinating—has been critical for the whistle distribution effort.

Political resistance is women’s work and always has been. Even as people dismiss romance as unimportant and inherently less valuable because it is feminized, romance writers are engaging in an ancient form of unappreciated work traditionally performed by people who are not cis men: getting things done, cooperatively. “We have seven admins, zero are masculine,” Sturgeon says. Not everyone involved in the Whistle Crew is a romance writer or reader, of course; but feminist mutual aid and support principles are core to their work.

Fundamentally, it is also important not to mistake the Whistle Crew’s whimsy for unseriousness. The reason people are printing whistles is not fun. The way some are building sustainable networks for printing and distribution, though, is joyful, kind, and spacious—all necessary in the inclusivity and sustainability of this essential work. It's an approach that makes room for both people who are new to activism as well as old hands, for people who want to print no-nonsense, matte black whistles right alongside Quinn’s glow-in-the-dark ones.

"People of minoritized genders are used to working collectively for survival."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some people are not happy about this “rainbow sparkle agenda,” as Rocha puts it, noting that a very small but sometimes loud group of people—mostly cis men—seem to be very upset about women making 3D printing cute. (Though everyone is quick to state that the positive responses far outweigh the negatives.) The response reflects a larger history of pushing women out of tech spaces, hearkening back to the treatment of women’s creative work as that of hobbyists and crafters, in contrast to men’s.

It's also a theme that long predates 3D printing, or for that matter, whistles.

The devaluation of women’s work replicates itself everywhere, including in online conversations as well as offline makerspaces, which are often where people curious about 3D printing are first introduced to it. These sites provide access to equipment, training, and space for a wide variety of projects, but are often heavily male-dominated. This is despite the fact that the original makerspaces were sites of women’s “craft” and housework, such as sewing circles and other resource-sharing activities, enabling women to teach each other skills, perform tasks together, and access equipment and other resources too expensive to afford individually—all of which is echoed in how the Whistle Crew operates today.

Women are consistently early adopters and creators across tech, from Ada Lovelace to Katherine Johnson to Reshma Saujani. They also currently lead several high-profile 3D printing companies, including Cinderwing. Still, men enjoy being loud and wrong, convinced that they are the original innovators and that work only becomes serious when they’re involved.

The whistle goblins are having none of it. Among other things, Sturgeon notes, mansplainers who complain it’s wasteful to use sparkly or rainbow filaments for 3D printing seem to have a skill issue.

“It’s not inefficient,” she tells me, “when you know what you’re doing.”

These derisive comments about colorful, playful whistles have often been accompanied with equal surprise that women can be such effective organizers. In January, one Twitter user complained, “The ‘No-Go-Zone’ in Minneapolis is getting fully stocked like a pop-up leftist supply depot, free hand warmers, winter gear, coffee, food, milk, you name it. This is PROFESSIONAL-grade logistics. Someone is BANKROLLING this autonomous zone.”

For organizers, though, it was just another day ending in "Y." People who are not cis men are often accustomed to being the logisticians both at home and at work, expected to make sure everything runs smoothly, with labor that remains largely invisible. The ones who cook the meals and wash the dishes, who shop for school supplies, who manage all the appointments, make the office coffee, and become the de facto note takers at meetings.

If you want distributed logistics to run smoothly, you need people who can work cooperatively and efficiently together—and people of minoritized genders are used to working collectively for survival.

They’re also the ones physically showing up for their communities to push back against ICE.

“The bravest and fiercest defenders of their neighbors,” shares one supply runner, who asked to remain anonymous, “have been women and especially teenage girls in Chicago.”

Making Organizing Sustainable with Play

For Quinn, who has been outspoken about their experience with depression and anxiety, finding a fun thread for their brain to focus on, like experimenting with a new filament or whistle design, has helped them build community. It has also helped them cultivate sustainability for themselves, something that has not only been critical for avoiding burnout so they can continue doing this work, but also, for their mental health.

Sometimes, Quinn says, a person just wants to “have a better day. I like having better days.”

“We’re printing whistles to fight back against people with guns and immunity,” an activity that can feel incredibly existential, depressing, and enraging, says Quinn. “If that’s all you have, it’s going to be really hard to sustain that. Play matters. It allows people to engage in ways they wouldn’t otherwise. It allows us to get through the shitshow.”

This is not just about finding joy for those involved in the herculean whistle distribution effort, but also making whistle use more accessible for people who are new to mutual aid and direct action. Anyone can carry and blow a whistle. But whistles are only effective if you wear them, and if you’re a person who loves fun and whimsy, you may be more likely to consistently carry a purple sparkly whistle than a plain one. That approachability is very much by design, allowing people to be more comfortable getting involved. For some, this might start and end with whistles, but it can also turn into more engagement with community organizing.

"An expansive approach to activism makes room for everyone and builds long-term sustainability."

This doesn’t mean the Whistle Crew doesn’t have room for those who prefer the plain and understated. As a marginalized person who has been treated like political fodder, Quinn stresses that they “don’t fault anybody who’s in a space where they can’t engage with [whimsy],” recognizing the essential value of diversity in organizing tactics. An expansive approach to activism makes room for everyone and builds long-term sustainability. Both whimsical and deeply serious people are essential to the ultimate cause of fighting fascism and protecting our neighbors. So is letting go of the ego behind wanting to be right, to fix what isn’t broken, to tell people who have been engaged in this work for a very long time that they’re doing it incorrectly. Feminist organizing, like the Whistle Crew has practiced, highlights how important this is, and provides a model for doing it.

A whistle a day—whether printed in army drab or trans pride stripes—keeps the jackboots away.

“I’d rather be printing swords,” Quinn says at the end of our conversation, returning to what got them interested in 3D printing in the first place. “Swords are cool, swords are fun. But we have to do what we’re doing because our country is setting up concentration camps, they’re kidnapping our neighbors, they’re scaling up at an alarming rate.”

“Hear me out,” I reply. “Whistle sword.”

“Hold on,” they say, as their eyes light up. “I gotta write this down.”

[post_title] => Welcome to the Whistle Rebellion [post_excerpt] => Across the United States, activists and organizers are 3D printing one of the most surprisingly effective weapons against ICE. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => whistle-rebellion-crew-mutual-aid-ice-immigration-raids-romancelandia-activism-3d-printing-technology-noise-protests [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2026-07-03 01:59:28 [post_modified_gmt] => 2026-07-03 01:59:28 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=10702 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

July 3, 2026July 3, 2026

Welcome to the Whistle Rebellion

by s.e. smith

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 10649 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2026-06-11 16:53:52 [post_date_gmt] => 2026-06-11 16:53:52 [post_content] =>

Looking back at the courage of activists in decades past can help keep you from falling into hopelessness today.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to quit “doomscrolling” at night.

It was going okay, until the Minnesota ICE raids accelerated in late January, and staying glued to my phone felt like all I could do to help from an ocean away. A few days later, there was news of yet another anti-trans bathroom bill passing, this time in Kansas, after over 600 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills were introduced across the United States last year. That same week, the Epstein files were released.

Previously ongoing for several years, my doomscrolling had instilled in me a sense of hopelessness that didn’t allow for any light to shine in. After I relapsed, I began to make nihilistic jokes about how dire everything felt, heavy bags under my eyes amidst my renewed nighttime habit. Instead of transphobic laws, anti-immigration sentiment, and sky-high rent existing as separate issues to be tackled with careful activism, all of the “bad” in the world morphed into one large, unintelligible blob, entitled “the horrors.”

Concerned about the possible damage I was doing to my brain, I sought advice from Melody Li, therapist and founder of Inclusive Therapists and Mental Health Liberation. They confirmed my fears were legitimate: According to Li, a “sense of despair” is one of the primary mental health impacts of doomscrolling.

“Social media feeds and the algorithm are designed to be addictive and to keep us scrolling to generate profit,” Li says. “[This] may manifest as feelings of depression, anxiety and hopelessness. When combined with loneliness—as these apps are designed to keep us isolated from community and real-world interactions—the despair may even heighten.”

I knew my anxiety and sense of hopelessness were increasing due to what was going on in the world around me. Unsure of how to stop it, however, I decided to turn to my work and community for guidance.

I am a queer journalist working on a long-term assignment about historic LGBTQIA+ activism, which includes researching movements led by queer British women. On one of my most fun work days, I read about a group of British women known as the Lesbian Avengers, who staged demonstrations against an infamous Thatcher-era law which banned discussion of LGBTQIA+ topics in schools. In 1988, as the law was debated in Parliament, the Avengers threw lengths of washing line over the House of Lords balcony, and abseiled into the chamber. They were immediately thrown out of the building, though some of the group were arrested and put in a “cell by Big Ben,” released several hours later. Despite their efforts, the law passed anyway, and was in place for 15 years until its repeal in 2003, but learning of the Avengers’ bravery and creativity in standing against it was galvanizing.

It also sparked a realization that I wasn’t achieving much by doomscrolling except augmenting my anxiety: If just one story could stir a hope I hadn’t experienced in years, what might learning about others do?

I began with two of the best-known examples of LGBTQIA+ resistance: the 1960s Stonewall Riots and Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in New York and California, respectively. Both were led by trans women and drag queens resisting police harassment and violence, inspiring Pride protests as we know them today. Wanting to better understand the wider movement, I decided to dig further into past and ongoing LGBTQIA+ demonstrations across the globe, and was astonished by the rich history that rarely ever makes it to the mainstream.

I learned, for example, about the prolonged fight for India’s Hijra (transgender and intersex, otherwise known as “third gender”) community to achieve voting rights in 1994. The campaign group, All India Hijra Kalyan Sabha, had already secured their right to vote after a decade of organizing, but in the 90s, “third gender” was still not an option on electoral rolls, forcing voters to choose between “male” and “female”. After years of further activism, the Supreme Court of India finally recognized “third gender” on official documents in 2014.

Today, Hijra people are still deeply marginalized, often facing “invasive” medical exams, difficulty accessing gender-affirming care, and roll-backs to existing rights, but the community continues to fight via widespread protests, community organizing, and online campaigns. Representation in politics, activism, and culture is also improving; in 2015, Madhu Bai made history as the first trans mayor in India, hijra people were represented as “kick ass” warriors in the Dev Patel film Monkey Man, while the community magazine Trans News launched in 2020, increasing global awareness of Hijra people and their struggles. Hijra activists are also reaching a wider global audience in news media across the world, highlighting the need to safeguard and expand their human and civil rights.

In Argentina, legal safeguards for LGBTQIA+ people were propelled by a group of twenty activists who stormed the Buenos Aires Constituent Assembly on August 27, 1996. The group carried large photos of Carlos Jáuregui, a gay activist who died of AIDS-related causes the week prior. Jáuregui was widely known for his HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns, for creating the LGBTQIA+ group Gays por los Derechos Civiles in 1991, and for attempting to sue the Archbishop of Buenos Aires for discrimination. He also organized the first ever Pride March in the city in 1992, which was made up of around 300 people, many of whom wore masks to avoid being recognized. (Buenos Aires Pride now attracts around a million people.)

During the August 27 demonstration, activists tracked down members of the commission, refusing to leave until they signed a statement of support for outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Days later, on August 30, the anti-discrimination clause was approved into the Constitution of the city of Buenos Aires, which became the first city in Spanish-speaking Latin America to legally protect LGBTQIA+ people from discrimination. Today, Argentina’s LGBTQIA+ rights are rated higher than the UK and the US due to their strong protections against hate crimes.

In Uganda, the LGBTQIA+ community continues to stand up against mounting discrimination with joy and courage, throwing “guerrilla-style” Pride celebrations despite some of the strictest anti-LGBTQIA+ laws in the world. At great personal risk, activists and allies alike have fought through several channels, including legally challenging the country’s anti-LGBTQIA+ laws. A group of Ugandan mothers of LGBTQIA+ people even took on the President in an open letter criticizing homophobic legislation, writing that it has been “horrific” to see their children “verbally threatened, physically targeted and abused for who they are and for whom they love.”

Especially touching to me while investigating these brave, public feats of political activism was the knowledge that they were so often preceded by decades of quieter community-based activism—like the lesbians in San Diego who stepped up to donate blood during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the “buddy systems” which paired people living with HIV with an ally who “provided care, support and friendship when many people turned their backs,” the communities who fundraised for their vulnerable neighbors, and the friends who acted as each other’s chosen families. Many of these past activists’ strategies mirrored anti-ICE action in Minnesota, like noise protests, sit-ins, and mutual aid, demonstrating that in-person organization and community continue to be effective and powerful.

Still, old habits die hard, and despite my renewed hopefulness and resolve, the magnet of my phone nonetheless persisted in drawing my attention during those early-morning hours, the feeling that I had to know all the horrors difficult to expunge. I’m hardly alone: Over half of Gen Z (53%) have reported engaging in doomscrolling, compared to a third of US adults (31%) as a whole. It’s also not the same as ordinary online activity, as studies found LGBTQIA+ youth actually benefit from healthy social media use—while doomscrolling does the opposite, increasing users’ anxiety and emotional exhaustion.

To curb some of these negative consequences, Li suggests allocating time limits on certain apps, turning off notifications, and setting boundaries with friends who might send you “doom” content. They also emphasize engaging with our communities—offline.

“Being in community helps us build collective power and systems of care that center our voices and needs,” they explain. “Doomscrolling will spiral us into isolation and a sense of helplessness… We must resist these tactics by taking part in community, where we can share resources, organize, strategize, and make change together.”

Li’s advice on harnessing our collective power has been especially meaningful to me, though I do still find myself doomscrolling on nights I can’t sleep. But more than before, I’m able to ease the urge to give into hopelessness by gaining strength from the past. I remember the women who abseiled into Parliament, the people who risked their lives dancing in the streets for Pride, the community protesting for trans rights today, and those who have bravely faced, and continue to face, the “doom” head-on. They remind me that the opposite of doomscrolling is action, and I have begun to act—to volunteer with my local LGBTQIA+ community, to amplify marginalized voices, to join local protest groups. Because of their example, I am able to turn away from the cold blue light of the screen, and instead find the light in the community around me.

[post_title] => How To Quit Doomscrolling When the World Is on Fire [post_excerpt] => Looking back at the courage of activists in decades past can help keep you from falling into hopelessness today. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => quit-doomscrolling-lgbtqia-activism-activists-history-marsha-p-johnson-stonewall-compton-cafeterio-riots-pride-hijra-carlos-jauregui-community-politics [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2026-06-11 16:59:47 [post_modified_gmt] => 2026-06-11 16:59:47 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=10649 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

June 11, 2026June 11, 2026

How To Quit Doomscrolling When the World Is on Fire

by Emily Chudy

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 9787 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2026-02-03 20:58:23 [post_date_gmt] => 2026-02-03 20:58:23 [post_content] =>

While at surface level, #WeirdTok is all fun and games, it also cuts to something deeper about being human.

Soapbox is a series where people make the case for the sometimes surprising things they feel strongly about.

The user who makes delightful felt animations. Wild, dramatically narrated video montages about horses at Costco and skeletons at Subway. A creator building a sprawling fortified terracotta city in a forest, an armored hand periodically creeping into frame to demonstrate the latest structure. Programming cards to play Coldplay’s “Clocks” on an antique mechanical organ. Witches in unsettling paper maché masks. A man who goes in deep on the technicalities of the musculoskeletal anatomy of mythical creatures. A tractor set to EDM.

“This is a hilarious and brilliant way to use your weed zapper technology LMAO how do you always find the best TikToks??? My FYP is never this obscure,” my friend and colleague Erin Biba replied when I shared the tractor video to Bluesky. I took her question as a challenge: How weird could my For You Page get? With a bit of effort, as it turns out: very, very weird.

#WeirdTok is a magical, fascinating, bizarre, wonderful, confusing, sometimes horrifying place filled with myriad wonders, delights, and, unfortunately, the inevitable incursion of AI slop. It is also art I genuinely, unironically love. It’s fucking great. And thanks to TikTok’s highly powerful algorithm, the app has learned what I like—and what I do not—with uncanny alacrity. If the FYP throws most people a hodge-podge of content it thinks is popular—horses for the horse girls, tradwives in beige kitchens cooking cereal from scratch, political commentators weighing in on the minutia of the Trump administration—for me, it has been forced to come up with the unpopular. The artisanal videos made by fellow strangeness enthusiasts, with 200 views and three baffled comments from normies wondering how they got there.

Delightfully, the more #WeirdTok I interact with, and the more extensive those interactions—watching all the way through, saving, liking, commenting—the more the weird juice flows. And flow it does. Surrealist skits in a Japanese restaurant. An artist projecting an animation of a horse onto a cityscape from the back of a bicycle. Musical stylings. A heavy equipment operator riding in the bucket of an excavator to the tune of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Elaborate frame-by-frame stereoscopic graffiti. Cats playing theremins. Dizzying animations of skeletal anatomy. More musical stylings: Suited brass bands chasing runners in a park while playing the “Mission Impossible” theme. Dazzling woodcock fancams. People wearing cardboard bug costumes with cutouts for their faces and writhing around in a parking lot.

Refusing to keep these gems to myself, several nights a week, I select a carefully curated #WeirdTok to share on Bluesky. I always tag Erin, who replies with a different weird video SHE has found. Over the months, our interactions have attracted a small band of loyal followers akin to those who wait to see how many eels show up under a bridge every morning; a small, fun, silly bright spot in dark times.

This shouldn’t be mistaken for escapism—delightful as it may be to watch remote control cars carrying a payload of pastel plushies while crushing autumn leaves, or a man’s surreal video series about his sleep paralysis demon, or a woeful potato taking a shower. Rather, the utter randomness of #WeirdTok—and the community that has formed around it—feels inherently strange and ungovernable, a necessary connection to humanity during a fucking scary time to be alive. We cannot survive if we cannot find joy: Surrounded by the fall of empire and the rise of fascism, I DO want to watch a whimsical video of wizard puppets jerkily animated in outdoor locations, thank you—and as it turns out, other people do, too.

While at surface level, #WeirdTok is all fun and games, it also cuts to something deeper about being human and the way art can transcend linguistic and social boundaries. I’m a long-time fan of so-called “outsider art.” Strange performance pieces. Unsettling musical compositions. Surreal found object exhibitions. Art cars and bohemian silliness. Whole communities centered around radical living, such as Bombay Beach along the Salton Sea.

These spaces feed my deep and abiding affection for weirdness, but also for making a place for art that is unconventional, highly specific, challenging. #WeirdTok, too, is often produced by self-taught, working-class artists exploring the world without feeling bound to whatever the rules of art are supposed to be. Art that is increasingly difficult to make in the modern era because of how expensive it has become to simply live. Gone are the days of the WPA and its serious investment in arts and creativity in the United States, or the arts grants that contributed to a flowering of culture in the U.K. in the 1960s and ‘70s. Instead, our cities are filled with creeping homogeneity, Airbnbs, and flipper homes trying to cash in on reputations of countercultures that now can’t actually afford to exist in those same places, while the true radicals are forced to the margins, such as the Ghost Ship collective in Oakland, destroyed by a fire in 2016 that killed 36 people. In the face of this, supporting weird art is essential.

It's also a surprisingly human thing to do. The cream of the #WeirdTok crop doesn’t use artificial intelligence, and in fact, actively defies even the most feverish robot hallucinations. Human weirdness is original. It comes from somewhere deep in the heart, not a blender filled with other people’s creativity and run on high for 30 seconds before being blorped out and shoved in your face. It is produced for the love of the game.

To discover a truly unhinged video feels hard-earned, a sort of reverse algorithmic manipulation. It is also, fundamentally, a rejection of technofascism and the bland hegemony tech companies want to force upon all of us, to turn us into passive consumers gobbling up slop and rolling in garbage while the world burns. As a very specific niche, #WeirdTok often only makes it way to the right viewers, often without captions, hashtags, or explanations. It simply is, waiting to be discovered as you scroll. Some nights I am hit with banger after banger, saving every other video for future enjoyment and sharing, the FYP and I in a groove, unstoppable. It is like wandering the streets of a new city with no destination in mind, my favorite way to travel, finding new, intriguing things around every corner. It’s an experience that reminds me of the “old internet,” a long-gone place that we all once inhabited and loved, where it was possible to randomly stumble upon a painstakingly hand-coded website, human-made, then never see it again.

The ephemerality of TikTok is also an important element of #WeirdTok, and not just because the videos can vanish at the click of a button. At times, it feels like a fever dream, one that is frustratingly elusive to explain to people outside this liminal space. From an entirely practical perspective, there is also a “you had to be there” sense that is escalating as the app’s future in the U.S. grows increasingly uncertain. After a forced deal with Oracle, it appears ByteDance will be licensing its algorithm, but TikTok’s future overall is a big unknown as its new parent company brings its own biases and priorities to the table, all under the looming hand of the Trump administration. Will this change squeeze the joy from the FYP, as weird art serves no purpose under capitalism? If so, where will the weird art go next?

There is a sense of being on the rooftop at a wild party, watching the grey fingers of dawn slowly creep over the horizon, knowing that in daylight, everything will look very different. Yet, #WeirdTok is a reminder that even if this party ends and people trickle home, shedding feathers and sequins on transit, weird art, human ingenuity, joyous creativity, will endure. There will always be another party, and no matter where it shows up and who will be there, it will exist.

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February 3, 2026February 3, 2026

How Weird Can Your For You Page Get?

by s.e. smith

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