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Both thinking and communicating that individual actions are futile is counterproductive. Close to zero is still non-zero. Be the change you want to see.
I disagree. I think that thinking and communicating that individual consumptive action is effective is harmful. I highlighted "consumptive" because it is a key term that you omitted.
The fossil fuel industry pioneered it as their "carbon footprint" propaganda in a deliberate attempt to distract our attention away from their responsibility and away from collective action against them. They want to individualise our efforts so we won't unite against them, and this idea was effective in achieving that.
The collective action alternative to an absolute boycot of reddit is... right here. It's lemmy. I'm not there on reddit making contributions and comments and voting, I'm here, and I'm also not making links to reddit. If I had to I'd either copy the relevant info or link to an archive. Together we are collectively building the alternative. It is not the same thing as setting a complete "don't visit reddit" embargo. Visiting reddit once or twice a week because it has answers to technical problems that I can't find elsewhere is my individual consumptive action, and it isn't a blip on that.
If you're on the deck of the Lusitania rearranging chairs, you're not spending the limited time you have in finding a way off the ship. Your actions didn't sink the ship and they won't save it. It's not almost nothing, it is less than nothing because energy spent on it is wasted energy.
Now I'm interested in why you think individualised action is so important - but remember I am highlighting the concept of individualised action to separate it from collective action. I just wrote a lot of words on what I think is the theoretical basis of this kind of thing but I decided to spare you from it unless you asked.