The Guardian undeniably contributed to creating such a climate with its obsession with platforming anti-trans ideology

If it’s any consolation, I’ve got you lot.

But I dunno, it just feels like a bunch of us just want to be told what to think, what to be happy about and what to be angry about, while ignoring the real harms and injustices being perpetuated.

The one thing I hope people will come to realize is that to overcome the giants, we must stop relying on them. Rebuilding the functions they controlled from the ground up, starting from the common folk around you.

Bleak as the world may be, Stewart’s writing always gets a smile and a laugh out of me. He’s got a remarkable ability to put the absurdity of our moment into simple and funny English, his famous “thrown in jail” sketch being perhaps the best example.

He’s absolutely right, too. We’re all here so on some level we already know that. This is no time to dilly-dally, we need to cultivate our alternative online spaces and cooperate and work together and put harsh barriers on entry if there must be to keep the riff-raff out, even in the age of monsters, those few of us who don’t see the enlightenment as a mistake and may even view themselves as having an allegiance to the truth could find some peace here.

So sit your kids, and their grandparents, down. Tell them not to believe anything they see on Facebook, Twitter, Threads or Amazon TV without checking it somewhere reliable. Make your family into a little Lindisfarne for this era of lies, somewhere we can wait out the information dark age, like monks poring over illuminated manuscripts as the black dragon sails of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos flutter on the horizon, until the future fascists either tear themselves apart, or slaughter objective truth wholesale.

So keep our heads down and hope it will all blow over? Classic British response but I’m not sure it’s good enough. A boycott is wise as it looks like all the large social media sites are bending the knee to Trump but that also doesn’t bode well for the future as they can distort the political landscape because a lot of people only get their news from them. Unfortunately, abandoning all social media means they can get organised while everyone else bunkers down. Does that make us the resistance? Now there’s a responsibility and a half!