Since the invention of shares and retweets, social media has been the world’s grandest stage. Between videos of teenagers eating laundry pods and Yo-Yo Ma covering Bach’s Prelude in G Major on a terrace in Manhattan, everyone gets an audience. In our already performative, low-attention-span lives, it is like heroin. Likes dictate our moods and we barter the most sacred of relationships for comments on Instagram.
With everything else out of access, social media is now the world’s only stage. Within a week of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, our performance has reached such dizzying heights, we ended up muting the very cause we were fighting for; or at least claiming to. It has been a day since a gruesome incident in Kerala, where a pregnant elephant died because she consumed a firecracker-stuffed pineapple and it exploded in her mouth. For the record, the religion and community of the farmer who placed that pineapple (reportedly as a bear trap) is already dominating relevant social campaigns. Last month, India saw many, many cases of migrant workers dying in transit to their hometowns. Today, if you look up social media to find out the detailed analysis of a situation that threatens to destabilise an entire economy, it will take you longer to find an article by an actual field journalist than to make your own Dalgona Coffee.
We routinely end up hijacking movements where most of us should be allies. It cannot be all that difficult to, for once, read the room and amplify voices that need to be heard rather than loudly declaring attendance in an overcrowded class. I understand silent work may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but is there a line beyond which our thirst for likes and retweets stops?
In a way, we are all marketers, working around the clock to make us look slicker and in tune with the times. Social issues that are currently in the news are the easiest waves to ride. Americus Reed, a Wharton School marketing professor, called it: “a form of values and identity-driven marketing”. It makes complete sense. You get brownie points for talking about something out of the mundane, but you neither have to work for it nor face the consequences if something goes southwards. At best and at worst, you were one of many Facebook posts. A dear friend of mine put it best when he said - “The logo needs to be bigger than the cause.”
This isn’t to say outrage isn't necessary; it absolutely is. In the age of lies and discrimination, outrage is a vehicle for change. Every protest on the streets of America today is important. The George Floyd murder isn’t a one-off case, and neither is the systematic oppression of the underprivileged. Even on the very platform that I have been dissing for the last three minutes, every positive message is important in the fight against discrimination and inequality, but maybe it is time to introspect and evaluate the motive and consequence of our actions. Beyond all the noise, what percentage of us will stretch and contribute - in money or time - towards the causes we sound so passionate about? How many of us privileged folk will not scoff the next time a domestic help asks for an extra holiday? How many of us will not stare for a second longer than we should, every time a black man passes us by?
Brands and organisations are quick to put out sympathetic posts, but how many of them will pull out all stops to ensure there isn’t a single case of inequality or discrimination inside their workplaces? We need to demand better - from ourselves, first; and from those who are influential in any way. If we care, we must fight with sincerity and honesty, and neither depends on external validation.
I write this more like a diary than a blog post, and as a reminder to myself to never steal someone else’s moment; to never let my outrage become disposable; and more importantly, to never be that person who is so hungry for validation that even a mass uprising doesn’t stop his craving.
If you’ve read this far, consider these 700 words a rant from a privileged nobody.