I often run into really cool but reclusive people in the fediverse, particularly in queer/leftist instances, whom I'm always too afraid to follow out of fear that I don't come off as enough of a "queer/leftist" person, since my socially conservative family drilled it into my head from a young age that talking politics online will irreparably damage your social credibility or something. I suppose that's what they call internalized oppression.
Mention of the really bad kind of social conservatism & queerphobia
Always having to ask what Karl Popper would think about me blocking self-identified nazis is exhausting. I always wanted to join a safe space instance like eldritch.cafe, but since my fediverse identity is tied to my "professional" identity, the internalized transphobia reminds me that if I show myself as being "too queer" for Captial (which I already am) then I'm shooting myself in the foot somehow.
I think this is a big part of why I like social.coop. Cooperativism, which my younger self thought was just some boring employment thing, can be a convenient way to introduce radical ideas in a way that's palatable to centre-left folks.
