I wanted to share my experience as a zoomer becoming a communist in a deeply red state and the surprises that came with it. Especially bevause it seems hexbear swings a bit older than me. After deciding that communism was the path forward I literally could not shut up about it. The close friends I had at the time were liberals but not strongly ideologically taken by liberalism. My long term partner and two closest friends are now comrades. Despite being initially very hesitant they were intellectually curious and wanting to hear my perspective. This was not so surprising to me, I became close with them because of those qualities and I expected to convince them eventually.

What did shock me was my friends from highschool who I still keep in contact with and play dnd with over discord every week. One of them is the whitest guy imaginable with parents who listen to fox news all day. The other lives with his family who are diehard MAGA. The former I told about my politics a year ago I was shocked by how unconcerned this made him. His reaction was along the lines of, "ah yeah you would be a commie huh, that's cool, why?" and then "that all seems pretty reasonable but i don't really want to think about poltics too much". Not ideal but shockingly good. The latter I was genuinely concerned was a fascist at times. He really enjoys nordic aesthetics and it set off a lot of red flags for me. I got drunk this weekend and after some conversation about his politics (found out his long term partner is some brand of anarchist) i felt comfortable spilling. He was super curious? Like he asked for reading recommendations? Before I even mentioned books? I need to stress that this man works a trade and hasn't read a book in years but he was fascinated by what I had to say. He very clearly articulated how capitalism is failing but said he felt like a solution simply did not exist. This is the last person I would ever expect to not have severe anticommunist brainworms.

Anyway I have seen a decent amount of doomerism about gen Z recently and I wanted to give my perspectice as someone who is experiencing the growing social consciousness of that generation as it changes. We aren't blindly led by our algorithms, many of us have taken drastic measures to get the fuck away from algorithms in general. There is hope friends. Yes, the amount of us doing praxis is low but as our material conditions degrade I genuinely believe there will be an explosion of political action.