By Felisha Nguyen
I’ve been on a bit of a social media hiatus. Rather, let me rephrase that: I’ve been hiding from Facebook because my newsfeed terrifies me. I’m doing the ostrich in the sand thing, shoving my head so deep into Instagram to get my social media fix without engaging with the tougher questions that Facebook brings up. My newsfeed is fraught with warnings about Trump, Hillary, the upcoming election, black people getting shot, refugees starving and washing up on shores, riots in the street, trans people being killed, bathrooms being bombed... Overall, it’s not a great place to be. As someone who has recently suffered a great personal tragedy, I’m not in the headspace for this kind of place. This social media onslaught of terrible things that happen in the world, even if I’m mostly in an echo chamber of my friends (problematic in it’s own way, I know, I know), is just too much for me. So I hide. I know it’s not the right thing, and I know that come election time, it’s not going to be helpful. But I’m Team #AnyoneButTrump, for good or for bad, and that means that no amount of social media is going to change my mind. If I choose to engage with it, which I do, in spurts, I can certainly seek out news sources for myself. Am I falling into the trope of the uninformed millennial? Or am I reserving my energy for these kinds of conversations when they truly matter, when I see a picture of one of my friends waiting in line for the Trump rally and then see him, standing in front of me? What do I say? I walk away. Too often, the people around me seem ready to take the dec incredibly seriously, to abolish the government that they find is unfit simply because it disagrees with their stances. At this point, we’re running into so many brick walls emblazoned with the words “I hate both candidates,” or “the lesser of two evils” and I wonder what we’ll do in the face of actual rebellion. I doubt it will come to that, though, and maybe I’m naive, but personally, I think that social media has made it all too easy to tout our words without acting on them. Maybe one day, I’ll act. Maybe one day, I’ll take up arms against The Newsfeed and The People Behind It and battle back. Ideally, it’ll be face-to-face because a keyboard is both an excellent shield and sword. Until then, call me an ostrich.
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