Today is Tuesday, May 3, 2022.
6:45 AM. My first alarm goes off. Like I do every morning, I turn it off. There’s another one in seven minutes.
6:52 AM. The second alarm goes off.
6:59 AM. Fine. I’ll get up.
The morning routine starts by unplugging my phone and opening Instagram first. I check my inbox to upvote the funny viral videos my friend in New Mexico sends me late at night when he can’t sleep. I open Tiktok and let my For You Page caress me to the waking world. I give a metaphorical hello to the IT guy who now lives on an off-grid farm, the crime scene clean-up guy, and an NBA highlight reel.
I eventually scroll until I see the ABC News report of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that will soon overturn Roe v Wade. And I’m horrified.
But this post is not going to condemn Republicans for blocking democratic processes and installing Christo-fascism in the United States (they have), nor to directly support women’s rights that are rapidly being eviscerated in spite of popular support (they are), nor to expose the hypocrisy of small government ideologists. I’ll organize those thoughts another day.
Instead, I’ll focus my energy today on considering the efficacy of meme-sharing in my echo-chamber of a social media audience.
It seems that every day there’s a new social-political campaign to support: Occupy Wall Street, Kony 2012, Me Too, Black Lives Matter, Stand with Ukraine, etc. People change their profile pictures, make a post that disappears in 24 hours (wouldn’t wanna kill the vibe of my aesthetic), and wait for the next issue that will temporarily grind their gears.
Now, adding a semi-transparent “I voted” filter over your carefully curated photo of you on Waikiki at sunset in 2019 doesn’t explicitly diminish the authenticity of your love of democracy. And posting a black square doesn’t change your mind about the fact that George Floyd died unnecessarily at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Your feelings are authentic.
But just as we’ve all seen the posts of support, we’ve also seen screen-capped tweets of political pundits denouncing “performative allyship.” A pendulum inevitably swings. A political moment begins on social media and catapults to the top of our collective consciousness and is soon met with a reaction of armchair political theorists telling you it does nothing, or activists begging people to be more involved.
In the same vein is the blowback against those who do not speak up. My Palestinian friends have posted about the need for non-Palestinians to share their cause. My women friends have posted about the need or men to stand up for women’s rights. My black friends have begged for non-black friends to demand black existence.
So I empathize. And I vote. And I occasionally post, but not every time.
In my analysis comes paralysis. Do I re-post a New York Times headline to an article I didn’t read? Do I post a meme that makes light of a political ruling that could mean life or death for my friends? Do I post the articulations of a barely left-of-center celebrity whose popularity makes them influential? Or do I do nothing?
I don’t have answers to those questions today, and it's immensely frustrating. I’ll eventually get around to writing about my feelings on the state of women’s rights, the American political system, the GOP, and social media activism. But this is all I’ve got for now.
Thanks for letting me Overshare.
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