Sometimes I feel the need to remind people that there is a pattern of conspicuous consumption to social media that pushes us to think things like, “if they aren’t posting about it, they don’t care about it.”
If you ever have that feeling pop up (and it will, because part of the stimulus-response of social media is that performance/audience aspect of demonstrating concern via posts and engagement), take a breath and remember:
• that blog or poster may have multiple outlets and the one you see as lacking is their self-care distraction account
• that blog or poster may be very active in IRL activist circles and doesn’t want their activity tracked back to their identity via social media
• that blog or poster may have a disability or disorder that makes it overwhelming to engage with these topics at the speed social media demands, and may prefer to engage with them one-on-one in a space no one else can see or comment on
• that blog or poster may be so deeply affected by the topic at hand that they need to process personal feelings about it without displaying those feelings on social media
• that blog or poster may be doing plenty of listening and learning and adapting their IRL behavior but fears the forced permanence of bad-faith screenshots and shares if they do make a mistake in their attempt to be active in a conversation that shouldn’t center them
• any number of other valid reasons that we need to be careful about conflating someone else’s morality or motivations with the way they interact with a highly limited, censored, imbalanced, ad-driven social medium
You’ve seen people who know all the right things to tweet about justice and accountability, then the mask slips and they end up being harmful jerks just exploiting the performance of social justice to get attention. You’ve seen the people who you know in your heart of hearts will unapologetically use at least one slur today, sharing memes about how everyone but them needs to change.
Have faith in the other side — people who are learning and growing and enacting that justice and accountability, just not in an easily shareable format. They’re out there.
(via zephuckyr)
