Every so often, something happens somewhere on such a scale that it permeates into our daily scrolling. Not everything takes up the same feed-space— remember the flooding in Pakistan displacing OVER 33 MILLION people? Or Jackson, Mississippi where folks went without water for weeks after their government sent funds, meant for ensuring safe drinking water, away from the predominantly Black capital to white communities instead? Those two catastrophic things occurred within the last 90 days.
Larger conversations and those that become Social Media Movements need a face or a person toward which our emotions get to be directed. We’ve learned nothing since 2020, if we didn’t learn this. In September, we were shown a face via the terrible murder of Jina Emini (though most calls to action are saying her Persian name, a name she was forced to adopt— something that should enrage the poster as much as the thought of her being forced to wear hijab). The events of her arrest and death at the hands of the so-called morality police of the Islamic Republic of Iran have now kicked off protests everywhere and no where more dangerously than Iran itself. Women have taken to the streets to cut off their hair and burn their hijab. Many women have been arrested and killed and many more are in serious looming danger. With the face of a single woman, general consensus is that this movement is about women, not hijab, asking us all to unite under the banner of freedom of choice.
But we don’t all live in Iran. Where we do congregate is the internets and things don’t generally have a long shelf life here. They are purposefully curated to satiate our curiosity and fuel our impotent rage just so until we see enough cat videos to lull us back into our daily schedules. Worst of all, it hooks us just enough to build on to a new kind of universal rumor; a spreading of infographics and memes that don’t always have secure standards of evidence.
And, of course, nothing ever really goes away, but at some point it falls off the cliff of interest, usually because someone else enters the chat. This year, like many years before, it was Kanye. And just like that, folks posting about the Iranian regime were now more focused on antisemitism. (As of this posting, neither topic is as predominant in my feed as it was even 2 weeks ago, which does not mean a conclusion was reached on either).
The ferocity with which information spreads via reposts around both of these stories is both interesting and potentially harmful. Rather than adding to the discourse in productive ways we are in a persistent state of debate over colonial feminism (“is there a Western agenda to these protests? Is the Islamic Republic of Iran performing its own version of colonialism, forcing fundamentalist Islam on a progressive body of people?) and how hard we can stand against the understood definition of “antisemitism” (Where do we draw the line? Is speaking up about Palestine antisemitic? Is it antisemitism if a Black person is stating some truth about the power structure and systemic racism in the United States of America? ).
Historically, racial conflicts have always generated rumors and folklore/contemporary legend (or conspiracy theories, but that’s a whole other post). It’s so easy to point fingers and claim nefarious intentions when you belong to a group that has been consistently targeted and othered. Honestly, it’s 100% understandable to believe that the world (and your place of citizenship, in particular) is against you when it’s been proven time and time again that they are in actual fact engaging in systemic ways to keep your people in a specific space.
“Contemporary legends: unsubstantiated narratives with traditional themes and modern motifs that circulate orally” [or now via Instagram]
This finger pointing is also a survival mechanism resulting from developing neural pathways to keep us safe as early humans living in smaller culture bands. It is a legitimate way we have evolved to make sense of and come to terms with the duress of living human lives. But maybe this evolutionary carry-over has ceased being useful now that we live in extremely large communities online? The reactionary finger pointing has larger implications now that we live in perpetual connectedness with disparate communities. It seems like we might know this by now though, especially when some among us have spent time the last two years buying anti-racism books. I think finger-pointing is probably listed high up on the lists of what not to do when being an anti-racist.
As always and with everything, the harder part becomes stopping and examining. Reflecting on our own trauma responses and engaging in self-regulation or doing further reading on any particular subject before reposting. Chosen ignorance and defaulting to our innate defense mechanisms will always be the easiest choice. If we persistently go that route we can’t complain that things don’t change and we have to at some point admit to ourselves that the allure of rumors is much larger than any push for actual systemic change. And, bottom line, all of this is made so much easier on Instagram (and all social media), which grow more and more into tools of colonialism the more users engage in quick, reactionary misinterpretation of really large and layered ideologies.
Yes! The layers are seemingly interminable, because it serves the colonial capitalist white supremacist delusion for us to remain overwhelmed, dissociated and reactionary rather than connected, organized and discerning. Imagine if more and more of us learned to notice our trauma responses and self-regulate, to research and verify before we share stories we find online? Or if we ask ourselves what purpose it serves to share? What's our intention? Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts!