Central inquiry: how do we use online apparatuses to organize?

METACOGNITION = THINKING ABOUT THINKING.

Purpose in writing upfront: this letter seeks to reorient my masses towards our shared values, objectives, and outcomes for our time in shared cyberspace.

Metacognition threadings edited read through

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What does it mean to participate in revolutionary movement?

The warfront is political, cultural, economic and militaristic. Revolution will never happen as some randomly occurring event one day. It is highly unlikely that you will get a knock at your door, saying “the revolution begun today!” and then you and all your loved ones magically spring into action. Remember: revolution means to seize power from the state for the good of the collective. Revolution fundamentally flips our relationship to property, class, race, gender, nationality, ability… the list goes on. Fundamental changes to society require fundamental departures from the systems we have in place, and those changes happen step by step. The steps we take to figure out something new can use the common tools we have available to us for uncommon purposes. My personal stake for my participation on the social internet focuses on creating useful, replicable blueprints for cultural and the economic warfronts. Namely: how might we raise up public figures in a way where they are directly accountable to their constituency? both in the culture they create and maintain and the way this encapsulated community handles resources?

What is metacognition? How do I do it?

With that being said: a significant portion of what I do on the internet is metacognition, in which I think in public about what I am thinking. You can see this in texts like Notes on the Moment (Feb 2025), where I talk about what I observe the game of nation states and tell you all what I am thinking about. While the finished product you all receive in your inbox might look or feel like I am intuitively, easily good at taking notes on current events, the process of creating resources on my side involves a fair amount of metacognition. I have to:

• read,
• research,
• write out initial thoughts,
• talk through the ideas to make the writing easier to digest and more conversational
• write it again
• record an audio draft
• change the written draft to compliment the audio (t0 make things as conversational as possible, even when you’re reading it. [Even this sentiment was added into the written text from the audio read!]).

The process of creation is not where metacognition occurs; creating a written resource is just simple thought and action. I think about the way that I think when I convert my thoughts into a vehicle that will make sense to a global, working class audience. I was trained to write in academia. I spent seven years straight in post-secondary education (meaning I began writing for formal, elite, colonial universities from when I was seventeen years old until I was twenty-four). I don’t naturally sound conversational on paper anymore! It took a lot of metacognition to figure out how to be easily and widely read to a global readership, especially with so many of you learning English as a second language. I intentionally shape my thoughts around what I have learned to be most effective for your learning (and that process was intentional).

You can also see metacognition occurring in analysis like the @ismatu.gwendolyn experiment, in which I think about the thoughts, stories, and experiences I’ve shared with you all over time and make sense of them. This is an example of teaching by doing; performing metacognition is one of my favorite teaching tools. Every time I publish something that reads like a journal entry, I am performing the act of thinking for you all. Whether you realize it or not, you allow me to shape the way you learn to take note of the world and draw narratives and conclusions out of individual elements and events. I am very cognizant of the fact of this matter, and so I research, lesson plan, trial, error, and course correct repeatedly. Habitually. I think about the way I shape my thought and yours all the time. Not a week goes by where I do not sit down and consider what we need to learn from one another and how best to go about that.

Recent days on short-form videoland have caused me to delay my syllabus (where I actively teach) and show you how I plan for political education online. Instead of wearing the teacher costume for you all and giving you a lecture essay, I want to engage in metacognition about what I/we do here and what our trajectory is given our current actions.

• First of all: apologies for yelling. For those that watch Abbott Elementary– you know when Melissa, seasoned second grade teacher, gets a combined second and third grade class and has to punch the head off a cardboard cutout to keep her cool?

• Word. I’m not a regular person on the internet; I am an educator. Previous to 2024, I was not intentionally stepping into the role of teacher. I was sharing whatever I thought about and wanted to share, hoping it would be helpful and useful to anyone watching. In February of 2024, I was very close to quitting social media as a whole. I was bereaved, I was exhausted, and I was seeing huge gains in visibility on my short-form video platforms but few folks engaging in the essays-- highly discouraging because my writing is the best thing I do on and for the internet. After feeling through all that grief (on and off camera), I disciplined myself in study.Okay, I thought to myself. The people struggle to read. How do I make resources for a populace that struggles to read? I wrote an essay called, “you’ve been traumatized into hating reading (and it’s making you easier to oppress.” That’s one of my best read, widely circulated essays to date. Writing it (and witnessing the essays proliferation) also fundamentally changed the way I engage with social media. I take teaching really seriously.
  • Also, to be extra crystal clear: I absolutely would have quit short form video, then and there, if you all did not insist short form video was helpful. Many people online converted from passive online viewership to actively engaging in the essays and really stuck around. There are many comments from those videos I still think about. I would have quit if not for you.
• All the materials I have circulated post this video (January 29, 2024) see me in my teacher costume. When I say costume, I don’t want you to think I’m doing something fake or foreign to me. I am a teacher on and offline. I am good at teaching and I see a need for it, so I engage in sharing the knowledge I have with whatever tools I have available. The teacher role simply means that I am at the front of the room and I knowingly use that place to shape the minds in front of me. In real life, I don’t yell at students (even when they tap-dancing on my last nerve). In real life, I don’t think I’ve ever cried in front of a classroom. It doesn’t really behoove me to show those kinds of spikes in emotion when I am teaching because it makes everyone else around me upset– even if it’s a room of your peers! It’s really frightening to see the leader break down. I apologize for losing my cool. I won’t do that anymore.
  • To anticipate a rebuttal: a great many of you expressed how helpful it was to see me be real and raw about how frustrated I am at our collective learning progress. I’m not saying that witnessing teacher lose their cool can’t be impactful; I remember the few times in life I’ve had an educator show real, raw, uncurated emotion in front of me as student in their class. There’s definitely breaks and space to be human. It’s just that:
    • there is incentive, on my side, to display extreme emotion on the internet because it usually comes with a noticeable uptick in resources. I know that and I want to be wary of that. And,
    • If my truest goal is to teach people why I might deviate from what we expect of public figures, then I have to either explain or demonstrate (ideally both). My primary goal is to cultivate learning on the internet. Pretty much no one has their listening ears on when I am yelling; it does not behoove me, in the long term, to yell. Simple.
  • In regards to education, the methodology matters as much as, if not more than, the output does. I am not garnering resources for the sake of having money. I want you to learn how I translate resources into systems and why investing in our apparatuses of learning and re-education are a worthwhile public good to support. If you throw me money because you saw me cry… does that promote learning? Does it promote critical media analysis? Does joining an online community or donating to a fundraiser because I drew forth big emotions promote sticking around for the long term? You see why I can’t be movin’ like that? The means do not justify the outcome; they are the outcome.

Here’s where I make my role clear.

I got on the social internet in 2022. I’ve spent the last three years feeling out, by trial and error, how best to be of service to everyone I am lovingly obligated to. This asks a few (grandiose, existential) questions: what do I owe? To who? How do I fulfill my obligations (or inheritances) in this life? For this, I revisit the manifesto I wrote in 2022; I’ve pasted it below with no edits.

Hello, my name is Ismatu Gwendolyn and I believe a couple of things.

Because I am African, I believe in a free and fed motherland. I believe in an Africa that gives freely and easily because abundance is boundless. I believe in an Africa that is bound by nothing and in want of nothing. An Africa that soaks and rejoices in her own riches.

Because I am Black American, I believe in self-proclaimed freedom. I believe in snatching my body back from the empire and resting in it. I believe in communal sovereignty and indigenous solidarity. I believe there is no justice in the carceral state and that all must come down in fire and brimstone. I believe a just world is one where the least of us are the people that lead us with kindness: our elders, our children, our disabled, our fat, our queer. They must go first— the power they have to share could part the seas before us.

Because I am a sex worker, I believe all power and all of the sting belongs rightfully to the worker bee. Blessed are the laborers because we make and steward the earth. I believe that economic justice is one of the highest forms of love. I believe that queerness is the future and that the future is freedom.

Because I am the child of farmers, of chiefs, and of food scarcity, I believe that food sovereignty is the keystone of collective success. I believe we must sow the earth with diligence and love instead of profit-driven greed. I believe that Mother Earth will shine her face upon us if we treat her soils and her spoils like they are our most precious jewels, because they are. I believe the indigenous of the world lead us out of climate disaster and towards reconciliation with the earth and sky.

Because I am young, I believe a better world is en route. Not just that better days are possible, but that they are en route. A reborn world is exploding like the rising sun— soft at first, small, just a glimmer, then awash with color and clouds and glory. I believe I will see a worldwide end to apartheid and colonization. Palestine will be free in our lifetimes. Iran will be free in our lifetimes. Sierra Leone will be free in our lifetimes. The United States and everyone laboring under its economic exploitation will be free and fed and full. Oppressed people will eat until they are full. This world is coming like the dawn.

It’s been three years since I wrote this. I’d change a few phrases and add more specificities now, but overall: word!

My obligations to you all (reading this, wherever you are) hinge on strengthen our literacy skills, strengthen our global bond as humans together in the tapestry, and create means of relating to one another in physical life. This means that we all benefit from building infrastructure, wherever we might manage.

What do I do to act on what I owe you?

• I have two major jobs: to educate and to build. These are the same obligations (inheritances) I have to my family at home. I inherited the role to build and to educate through the chieftancy. I inherited the role to educate and to build from the revolutionaries that have come before me and those that have personally trained me.
  • In order to educate: I construct digital and physical infrastructures designed to increase literacy skills accessibly.
  • In order to build: I construct and facilitate physical apparatuses which promote communal sovereignty (beginning with first food, water, and medical care).

This is just a brief overview in order to orient us to the work I actually do. As of the time of writing (late August 2025), I am central to the development and implementation of these projects. My inheritances in Sierra Leone follow my blood and bones. That is my life’s work. My inheritances for the English-speaking world, most particularly the internal black and indigenous colonies across the globe, were gifted to me by my educators and assigned by my place of birth. I will never outwork my roles for my homelands (Sierra Leone and New Afrika). However! I myself prefer a lack of hierarchy, and I think the best way to resist celebrity culture is to retire and acquiesce power. So, for you all here on threadings, learning with me/for me/ alongside me: a central part of my job is to work myself out of a job.

What is your job?

I am leaving social media in 2028. Your job, at that point, will to be to handle the resources and institutions I (among others) will have built. My job is to prepare you well for that. The closest thing I can compare this to is a transitional government.

• Transitional governments, by the way, ARE HARD! This is often where revolutionary movements fail!
  • Note to self: come back to the formula for quelling revolutionary governments in the money-as-seeds essay. Revolution is a technology [technology = skill + tool]. where does the technology of revolution get hijacked, infiltrated, or sold off to the highest bidder?

Right now, at this very moment, your primary job is active participation. This includes:

• Reading: do your best to read the essay and the sources in an essay. Reading and writing notes (just a cute four sentence reflection!) in the comment section and for yourself, with a pen and paper, are the best ways you can interact with the written materials.
• Listening: I provide audios because I know they are necessary tool for learning.
• Watching: wherever possible, visual essays have components that increase the level of comprehension. Words and definitions, diagrams and pictures, notes, on screen sources… etc. I make visual essays because I know can act as a stepping stone for increasing one’s ability to concentrate. Please do your best to use them as a stepping stone. Practice your reading, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day. A week! Anything is better than nothing.
• Investing time: Allow ideas circulated and cited here to germinate for longer than a few minutes. You learn so much more reading/listening/investigating something twice or three times! Give your time over to liberatory forms of thought. What do you agree with? What’s a hard sell? What do you think is unrealistic? Why?
• Investing money: Money is an important tool of liberation! As Thomas “Blood” McCreary said, “It costs money to fund a revolution.” Building structures that siphon power from the state means we have to survive them. I choose to work for free; most folks don’t!
• Asking questions: Please challenge me. And encourage others to assume that I am not always right. I did not begin teaching because I thought I was right. I began because I thought I would be helpful. Failure and correction is so much more helpful than being right all the time anyways! We will all learn from this endeavor. What questions do you have for me and for each other?
• Strengthening your belief via action: Learning! happens! by! doing! The more you take action that concretizes your beliefs, the easier it is to believe.
• Strengthening your action via belief: Action is best applied from study. The more you read theory and books of praxis, the more precise your action. Do not get trapped in the belief that you need to know more before you act. As stated above, learning happens by doing. Rather: focus your mind on making sure you do not repeat mistakes other people learned for you. Read enough to take action that will produce different, more helpful failures.

The best way to learn is to teach. (ft. a social experiment)

I want us to experiment a bit— you, who got to the end of this essay. When you read, watch, or listen to my work, head to the discussion board (also known as the comment section). I want you to notice the difference between comments left on long-form media and the comments on short form work. Look at how much the vehicle of information shapes people’s thoughts. Go into the comments and interact with folks; answer questions and expand on arguments. Do not go and be combative! I am not asking you to go “correct” people, whatever that means. For a moment, for as long as you do this exercise, suspend your disbelief that there are incorrect thoughts. I am asking you to participate in the shaping of the mind’s associations. Go and comment with the express purpose of inviting more discussion and then come back to this post and tell me what you learned about that process. Did anything surprise you? What didn’t you know? How do people engage with you on short form vs long form materials?

Finally: what else do you need to know about me and my work? Keep in mind: a lot of the things you all ask for are in motion! They just take time, especially in seasons where I am working with smaller amounts of money (like this season). Still: let me know what you think! What’s missing?

I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.

Or, simpler said: Peace.

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