Aatube

there’s a difference between virtue signaling and just expressing ideas/opinion. the one that matters the most to me is that the latter isn’t hostile

the flippancy you find especially across threads on political news across the fediverse is awful because it drives people away without accomplishing things other than virtue signaling

there’s some distance between just having a (transactional) relationship and a true-love relationship where “I like you for who you are and the comfort of being around you, and you feel the same” fits in, though

The Great Gatsby. Its last page makes a killing, pun intended.

I fuzzily remember that it had happened

Only if you do separate them and do not distribute the copyrighted image.

Thus it doesn’t apply to OP’s examples, that is my point.

(FWIW you can make a copy of a copyrighted image to extensively critique it as long as the copy is not unreasonably detailed.)

Then your criteria isn’t "noncommercial but “noncommercial and transformative” (“the first factor, the purpose and character of the use, disfavored fair use because although the use was noncommercial, it was also not transformative”), which OP’s examples aren’t. Using film music for your videos isn’t transformative. Law doesn’t have a “I didn’t distribute my video” exception either unless that’s how the music was licensed to you.

Your phrasing sounds like fair use is the default case for non-commercial when really it just makes it “more likely” legal. The most obvious example is Hachette v. Internet Archive. US copyright is so pro-business that you never know until the gavel is down.

https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/#%3A~%3Atext=Courts+look+at+how+the+party+claiming+fair+use+is+using+the+copyrighted+work%2C+and+are+more+likely+to+find+that+nonprofit+educational+and+noncommercial+uses+are+fair :

This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair;

Edit:

Until the judge says otherwise

Well, yeah, according to the criteria I’ve detailed with sources above.

As @finitebanjo@feddit.online quoted, fair use only applies

for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research

Of the four criteria for fair use, the first one is pretty much that it should be one of those purposes. (https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/#%3A~%3Atext=Courts+look+at+how+the+party+claiming+fair+use+is+using+the+copyrighted+work%2C+and+are+more+likely+to+find+that+nonprofit+educational+and+noncommercial+uses+are+fair. details these criteria. The first criterion also includes favoring saying that really transformative and creative use is fair use hence sometimes sampling doesn’t need permission.) IANAL but this is what we see in case law and case law doesn’t seem to support a noncommercial personal use exemption, even if undistributed. (to answer OP’s question, it’s technically illegal but nobody gets sued for it because 1. nobody knows if you don’t punish your crime 2. lawyers cost money so why bother such a PR scandal)

Here’s a good Tom Scott video covering the allowed purposes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

Ringtones and notifications are different because they are legal public performance of something still copyrighted: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/10/court-rules-phones-ringing-public-dont-infringe-co

The examples mentioned are definitely not fair use

it’s what it can be that motivates us

anti-electoralism is fully compatible with harm reduction, meaning it’s not that you shouldn’t vote but you shouldn’t rely on it, shouldn’t think it’s the only way forward, shouldn’t stop you from mutual aid and organizing instead of campaigning for some person

there are anti-electoralists plenty who don’t believe in harm reduction though, of course, and I agree with you on that