Our earth is still dying. The inhumane conflict in Yemen rages on.
India's farmer protests and COVID crisis is still ongoing! Yet these extremely important
issues don't seem to make our headlines anymore. Right now it's all about Israel and Palestine.
I scrolled through every single Instagram Story on my feed last night and counted ELEVEN
that were about socio-political issues unrelated to Palestine-Israel. And this is how many Instagram
stories I encountered that WERE about the Palestine-Israel conflict. I did not count them all--
I lost track. There were just so, so many. What I'm saying is not to delegitimize the huge importance
and relevance of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Right now, obviously, because the Bombing of Gaza
has happened so recently, it's understandably very fresh in our minds and hearts. But because everyone
is expected to care about whatever the hot social issue is, other issues get pushed to the side that
are still ongoing and are still awful. This raises the important question of who gets to decide what
is relevant who gets to decide the popularity of these socio-political issues. This question
itself makes me feel uncomfortable because it feels as though these really important issues
that people's lives and integrity often depend on are part of some trend cycle. I couldn't find an
existing term to describe this so i'm going to call it the social justice trend cycle.
In this video. most awareness nowadays starts on social media and while there are
thousands of posts and tweets every second, it seems that the ones that stand out and
eventually become the popular issue are the ones that are most jarring to us. This relies heavily on
context media and those in power. For instance, last week in Kabul, Afghanistan, 68 schoolgirls
were killed in a bombing and many more injured. This is a tragedy, and like the Palestine bombings,
the Kabul school attack is part of a long, complex history and tension between two groups. Yet when I
searched up Kabul or Afghanistan on Twitter, there was considerably less content compared to tweets
about Palestine or Israel. The top tweets for a hashtag Kabul school attack usually only had a
small number of likes and retweets with a few in the thousands. Whereas for hashtag Palestine,
Hashtag Palestine bleeding, and hashtag Israeli terrorist... There were hundreds and hundreds of
tweets with thousands of likes and engagement. In fact, if you type Afghanistan into the search bar,
one of the top search results is still Palestine related! I'm not trying to say one catastrophe is
more important than the other. I'm trying to point out a clear discrepancy using this example. Like
I mentioned earlier, I think the reasons for this discrepancy are media, context, and those in power.
Because the palestine bombings happened during Ramadan, I think that made this tragedy more
shocking and painful than it would have if it hadn't happened during the holy month. Also,
whether there is live footage of an event affects how hard-hitting that event is.
We have live footage of the Gaza bombings, of Israelis beating up Palestinians,
and so these videos provide disturbing visuals that in a way make these events feel real to us.
I think it's also why the death of George Floyd enraged so many people. Many black men have died
at the hands of police officers before. But when we have this video of a police officer standing
on George Floyd's neck, we become immersed in that scene and start to feel truly connected to what's
going on. There were no live videos of the Kabul school bombing. The most circulated video were
some men placing flowers on the desks of the girls who had died. And while it makes us feel
sad there's nothing graphic or explicitly horrific to spark those intense emotions.
News sources and journalists immediately pick up on which stories are garnering the most
attention and so they start to create more content about those stories, in a race to get
more clicks and beat out their competitors. This creates a self-reinforcing loop where
the media covers one story more and so we the general public hear more about that one story.
The more we hear about that one story the more salient it becomes in our everyday lives and
our own minds. So, people end up posting more about that one story. The media sees that the
public is posting more about it and so they increase their content...even more!
It just goes round and round until something new comes along to horrify us.
Also this is just a theory of mine, but it's based on the observation that news and journalists love
to bash politicians. Because most people have a problem with politicians, so they know that the
public is probably going to like it. And they also like to include the US or China because they're
both perceived as the big bad superpowers. So if news journalists criticize politicians from the US
or China then they probably know that they're going to get more engagement... which means more
cha-ching. Well the US has a history of being pro-Israel and Biden recently said
that he believes Israel has a right to defend themselves, news sources immediately picked up
on this and there are tons of articles about it. Which has understandably, gotten a lot of people
angry at Biden. And thus, has increased the number of social media posts about the palestine bombings.
In comparison, last month Biden actually ordered for all US troops to evacuate Afghanistan by
September, which means for the Kabul school attack the news can't paint the US government as much of
a horrible actor as they could have before. Which in turn, means less opportunities for people to
increase their outrage about it. At least from the American perspective. What all of this results in
is a lot of performative activism. It's a widely known term, but just in case there's someone who's
unaware of what it means, performative activism is acting in support of some cause or movement.
But for the purpose of getting praised for it or just fitting in. People commonly point to social
media activism. For an example, you know things like reposting Instagram infographics, tweeting
hashtags, and Blackout Tuesday. People just click a few buttons and suddenly they're a certified
activist! People aren't invested in these causes once they're off their phones or their laptops.
When we only think about the issues that are getting a lot of news coverage and have graphic
videos to look at. That means as soon as the media industry hops onto the next social justice trend,
and there's less disturbing videos to watch at to make us feel bad about it, the issue becomes
forgotten. But that's so problematic, because issues continue long after you post a black square on
your Instagram. For example during the summer Diane Sims opened the only black owned bookstore
in Minnesota called Black Garnet and since this was during the height of the BLM
movement, she received a lot of monetary support. Over 100k was raised in just a gofundme alone.
But in an article with TPT Originals, Dion Sims talks about how months after BLM had faded people
started to be upset that her three-month-old bookstore couldn't fulfill orders as quickly as
Amazon. They would write emails like "Why is this taking so long we really wanted to support you!"
I also think it's bad to expect everyone to be deeply invested in every single hot issue because
one, it's unrealistic. And two, it negatively impacts the quality of activism. There are
so many socio-political problems in the world, that nobody can approach them all with the same
urgency and care. It's impossible to fight for better environmental laws while also
lobbying for indigenous treaty rights and on top of that learning about the housing market,
the US China tensions, the middle eastern conflicts. The only way that you can care equally
about all of these hot topics is if your care is very surface level. And I'd much rather have
people like Greta Thundberg, who doesn't speak much about stop AAPI Hate or trans rights. But her
devotion to climate change is genuine dedicated and impactful. Quality over Quantity. The pressure
to be woke and post about the current trending social justice problem causes activism to turn
into a shedding of self-guilt, rather than a way to change what's actually going on and to truly
take time to learn about The complexities of each issue. I disagree with people who say things like
"You don't need to know anything to take a stance. Murder is murder there's, clearly an obvious side
to be on." As if there's ever some clear obvious answer to dealing with these types of problems.
I can't remember which city it was in, but during the height of BLM there were some allies who
wanted to protest to show their support for the movement, which seems like an admirable thing to do.
But because they were not carefully educated about the inner workings of the specific community that
they were protesting in. What happened was that their protests with good intentions actually led
to increased police surveillance in the community that they were protesting in. They only harmed the
residents even more even though they were trying to help. There's an extremely interesting article
called "Stop Trying to Save the World" that I highly recommend everyone read. It really illustrates how
many situations may seem to have some obvious, correct answer. But because societies are a
complex ecosystem, a lot of times when we interfere there are lots of unexpected consequences. But
that's the problem with performative activism and treating social justice as a trend cycle.
People don't care about the real consequences, people just want an easy answer and to feel like
they've done something. When people are so eager to jump on the social justice trend of the week and
what they care about is just whatever is popular, we become so prone to consuming misinformation,
because the goal is not to learn anymore. It's to feel like i've done some good and to repost.
Trends come and go, but social justice should be sustained. Find an issue or cause that you truly
care about and so you'll continue to care about it, long after it's stepped out of the limelight.
I don't want social justice to become some trend cycle. I want issues people speak about and post
about to mean something personally I don't repost any infographics unless it's something I genuinely
care about and am educated on. The awareness that social media can bring is amazing, but
social media is not the end point. I hope people including myself are more mindful of the activism
they take on and are aware of how trendy social justice has become. I know this video can be a
bit controversial so please let me know what you thought down below. If you found me bearable you
can like and subscribe, and I hope to hear from you soon! I really want to hear your thoughts. Bye!!
Captions by Julia M.