Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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Inevitably, posters started to make direct comparisons with how prepping was generally discussed on the other, larger board. “It gets a bit boring when it’s all about mres, guns and building a fortress. I’m about making from scratch, making do with less, and building community,” one user said. “I will never, ever, shoot my neighbor for stealing a cabbage. I’ll invite them over for cabbage soup and show them how to dig/mulch/weed next months cabbage. And I’ll do that today, before it gets to the stage that my neighbors need to steal my cabbage.” It’s a fair distinction: On r/preppers, you’re more likely to find members warning one another never to show their stash of supplies and weapons to neighbors or acquaintances for fear of becoming targets. In response to an article about what Ukrainians took with them while fleeing, some r/preppers found fault with those who carried “nonessential” items. The discussions on r/TwoXPreppers drift, however, toward a conception of “survival” that includes community and entertainment and pleasure. Even when it comes to shared interests like stockpiling food, the focus is less on brute calories (or Spam and cans of beans) than on how to maintain the ability to eat meals that you’d actually want to eat. Another topic of comparison was child care, which one poster said “seems to be totally dismissed in most prepping conversations,” even though one lesson of the pandemic should be otherwise.
✏️ Good comparison of how women vs men see things. It happens time and time again that men veer more violent, pragmatic, practical to the point of uncomfortable, and extremely judgemental. Women seek to build community, to be inclusive and to figure out how to not just survive but also thrive.
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“prepping” starts to drift awfully close to “living.”
✏️ Exactly.. not surviving but thriving. not prepping but living
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It’s a fascinating question: Is the objective of prepping to create some kind of continuity with life as it is ordinarily lived, or to adjust (violently, if necessary) to a jagged new reality characterized via pared-down survival measures?
✏️ This is the crux of the dispute and varied outlooks. Also a good conflict question. Is the goal to survive and adapt to a harsh new reality? Or is it to find a way to live an ordinary/normal life (albeit modified as needed) “For many men, prepping is a fantasy of stepping up to occupy a role which has been all but erased from the modern world.” “For women, on the other hand, prepping is a fantasy of not being badly inconvenienced by disasters as we continue in the roles that we’re already occupying.”