Recently I've been seeing a lot of people overlaying the French flag over their pictures on Facebook and making all sorts of posts and sharing items declaring their solidarity with the French people. At the same time I've seen a camp of people arguing about how there's been a lack of coverage of the Beirut bombing or the ever increasing risk of a genocide happening in Burundi and saying that we are focusing too much on the suffering of the first world.
A third encampment has been stating their view that all lives matter and that solidarity with one is solidarity with all, and then there's the whole group of people that would rather have nothing to do with any of this via social media. It's kind of exhausting but at the same time interesting.
Do we find ourselves making these posts and altering our images in an effort to comprehend the incomprehensible and to attempt to help those who have suffered, despite their distance? Is there any point to expressing any support or argument against support in such a reactionary period? Has anyone else noticed this recent flare-up, and how it seems to happen every time there's an incident like this?
Edit: Maybe a better question is why do we convince ourselves that the actions we make after these kinds of events matter at all.
I feel like this time around is fast tracked version of what we've seen before. At least on my (American young-adult Facebook Feed) It's been ~24 hours now and we've gone from: - Initial reaction of shock, world leaders make statements. We listened to NPR on our drive home thru rush hour traffic. The numbers were still at 35 confirmed...then 40 confirmed. 7 locations, then 7 shooters...etc. - Shock echoed on social media, numbers go up and down and up again, most people sharing live threads from reputable news sources (BBC, NYTimes, Reuters) and sharing prayers. (When we got home (5pm PST)). Cue misinformation. - Started getting notifications that people I know in Paris were safe. Turns out, a whole crew of flimies I went to school there were on location for a shoot. Luckily, all safe. - "Remember that this is happening everywhere" ... "Beirut" ... "Pray for everyone not just Paris" ... and the first sign of what I take as "too cool for the standard 'my thoughts/prayers are with those in Paris' messages" - Muslims begin preemptively posting "remember these people are Muslim. I pray for Paris." and images about the difference between a Muslim and a terrorist. (No one has taken responsibility yet and no one official has blamed ISIS yet. But it has begun) - People begin changing profile pics to either: Eiffel tower drawing, pictures of them in Paris, or creative Paris/France related other things to show solidarity. - Misinformation, recaps of the idiotic things politicians have said, "guns in the hands of victims would have prevented this." (This morning (3am PST)). - Arguing about refugee crisis. Merkel makes statement. - Analysis on idiotic things people said the previous day. Dems bash GOP, GOP bash Dems. - Misinformation galore (Eiffle tower goes dark!) and personal stories come out, "my phone saved my life", "this american girl was one of the victims", more details emerge about the shooters and passports are found but who knows what is true or not at this point. - Discussions about gun laws, information collection, security, blame game begins. - Everyone changes their Facebook profile photos using Facebook's tool. - Refugee argument ensues again. One of the gunmen (?) supposedly arrived via refugee routes. Predictions and analysis of Merkel's earlier statement. - Preemptive predictions on tonights Dem debate. All we know for sure is it their talking points are being rehashed for Paris. - Analysis on design of the now iconic things we're seeing on our feeds begins. Analysis on Facebooks Safety feature begins. - Full blown confusion of blame, more details, videos, misinformation, grief, solidarity, "we should always be solidarity with everyone!", statements, more blame, more analysis, analysis on the analysis of the analysis. - This upcoming week: Profile pics slowly return to normal, factually accurate details emerge but are quickly swamped by other news stories so only their politicized remnants remain. No one gets nuked, but those calling for nuking make it easy for you to cull your friends list. - Next months: politics / war happens slowly and quietly, policies change, privacy invaded, security beefed up, everything returns to the new "normal".
Alright, so I wanted to update this because it's fairly interesting (to me at least—and it seems to some of you too.) In the past couple days I've seen this trend expand and explode: The backlash has been heavier than I expected, by a lot. So much that Facebook actually had to make a statement on why they turned on safety check for Paris but no where else. I think we will see a lot more backlash and analysis of people, the media (especially in the west), etc. Ugh. - I wasn't entirely surprised by France's bombing retaliation and I understand it, but don't necessarily think it's going to make anything any better. Furthermore, the ongoing shitstorm of arrests, the attackers' names coming out, etc. has kept the newsrooms busy. I see tons of these stories on my RSS feeds and twitter but not as much on my Facebook. My facebook seems generally obsessed with opinion pieces or analysis pieces and "why aren't you talking about XYZ" pieces. Cue outrage of the outrage:- "Remember that this is happening everywhere" ... "Beirut" ... "Pray for everyone not just Paris" ... and the first sign of what I take as "too cool for the standard 'my thoughts/prayers are with those in Paris' messages"
I have noticed that pretty much all of this "what about Beirut?" concern trolling has been carried out by conservatives who avoid participating in these trends of displaying support. They are clearly using this as an opportunity to score political points against what they see as a liberal hegemony in the media.
I'm seeing it on my liberal, young adult Facebook feed by arts students and the like and on sites like HuffPo. I don't know if it's strictly conservatives who are pushing it.
That's exactly where I'm seeing it too...granted that group contains 80% of my Facebook feed. It's still going on too, still noticing people posting articles and all that, but now things are starting to shift back towards Black Lives Matter and internal social issues, as it has been for the past lot of months.
That was a quality post. Thankful I never visit my FB. And now, inevitably, apparent Mizzou and Black Lives Matter protesters are taking to twitter to complain the Paris attacks are stealing their headlines because of.... white privliege I guess? But Mizzou says it all from outside agitators. I am so tired of this "SJW/anti-SJW" culture war stuff.
I was at dinner with a few born again Christians that all suggested, under the guise of "not really though," that an "atomic bomb," is a potential solution. My reply was this: "WWJN" Confused faces. "Who would Jesus nuke?" Silence.
This morning I drove to a supermarket. As I live near the border I listen to a German radio because I didn't want to hear X radio news impromptu broadcast about growing number of victim , and "political" analysis. Once in the mall I listened. Probably people will talk about what happened. Freely, simply. They did not. they mostly talked about food to buy, what not to forget, and grounding their children for being so annoying. I bought some tomato from Morocco to prepare a typical meal from a french island in the Indian ocean where I lived a few years ago. There were lot of people in the supermarket. Didn't heard anyone chatting about the events. At the cash register I was behind 2 typical middle east men with large beard. They did not speak french between them. They help me pass through some baldy arranged shopping carts because I was a bit encumbered with my purchase. The cashier was probably from Indian ethnicity. A very handsome man, and he has the same tiny lump, I have since birth, at the side of my ears. He probably saw mine too, because he was very smiling. I should have asked him if knew other people with that physical particularity (I just met 5 people with that , and 2 of them are from my close family) Bottom line is, social media is about one upping on another with your feelings, and how affected by politics or stuff you are. You know, like this airplane company is the worse, or people in front of you in the train are so loud, or something. The worst part, in the actual case, those media help maintain a sense of fear and push for action. When all you need sometime is a bit of rest and silence. But, hey! Here I am , doing my part of noise and talking. Probably we cant do anything against it.
I remember when /r/worldnews was halfway decent and /r/news wasn't the landfill of opinions. sometimes I don't know if I just changed or if Reddit really was better in 2009.
I think people are playing right into the terrorists hands, and feeling pride as they do it. The terrorists know what these attacks will cause, they saw what happened after 9/11, they know what will happen now. What we need is not a war of guns, but one of culture. We need to obliterate the sense of identity in the middle east, fill it with Christian missionaries, propaganda of the American dream, and build so many factories and so much infrastructure that ISIS couldn't hope to destroy it. We need to replace their way of life with our own, and until that happens, these terrorists will continue to be a problem. ___ As for the reaction based on terrorist bombings elsewhere. France isn't part of the middle east, it's part of the "western world". Paris is an icon, France is a long ally of the US. The reality of the world is that we only care about suffering and death when it is connected to us. France is, Lebanon or wherever else isn't so much. Why do you think we kill and torture pigs, cows, and so on, without a second consideration, while we treat dogs well? Why do we care so much for the suffering of children while the suffering of adults with much more complex lives and emotions get less attention? The suffering of kids matters more, as kids are the future. Adults have lived a part of their potential, and as a result, are more expendable. Why do soldiers of enemy nations not matter? Where is the empathy for the pain and suffering for the terrorists, the circumstances that lead to their desperation? They don't just not matter to us, they hurt us, so their pain and suffering may well be celebrated. It's cold, it's calculated, and it's what we are "programmed" to feel, regardless of if we want to believe otherwise. Lives do not inherently matter, they never have, and our teaching of that they do is leading to a lot of confused and misguided people living lives of guilt, wondering why they can live in such wealth while those in Africa starve to death (and similar examples).
This really isn't the right reaction – fear of this happening is exactly why people join terrorist groups.We need to obliterate the sense of identity in the middle east, fill it with Christian missionaries, propaganda of the American dream, and build so many factories and so much infrastructure that ISIS couldn't hope to destroy it. We need to replace their way of life with our own
Having their family bombed, having no purpose to turn to, being desperate, is what makes people join terrorist groups. That western way of live, that liberalism, that freedom, secularism, is what the terrorists groups fear. Why do you think they fear it? They want attacks, they want war, we shouldn't give it to them. They need a nice big helping of peace, wealth, and education.
There's nothing wrong with peace, wealth and education, but we don't need to force Christianity or all of western culture on anyone.
Do you think peace, wealth, and education are going to appear without them? You don't create the attitudes that exist within a nation without many decades of building up attitudes and readings. You can't just transform a nation's attitudes by sticking in the framwork that already exists, you have to disrupt it. I'd prefer we encourage a secular state, being an atheist myself, or perhaps for a massive push for moderate Islam, but I don't think the US/the west has a great number of moderate islamists who are willing to go into other nations and preach/convert people. Use what we have. The end goal is to take power from ISIS/Terrorists in any way possible, and the only way to do that is to make the people of those nations absolutely hate them, and their goals, in full. The only real way to do that, to my knowledge, is to westernize them, unless you have some other way in mind?
James Michener declared, "The World is my Home," and because he was so well travelled he could lay claim to such a thing. That said, due to technology, more and more of us can lay claim to such things. Still, the world is a pretty big place and for most of us, we tend to empathize more with that which is familiar to us. This is true both individually and geopolitically. So, we help those we are familiar with and those that can help us.A third encampment has been stating their view that all lives matter and that solidarity with one is solidarity with all, and then there's the whole group of people that would rather have nothing to do with any of this via social media. It's kind of exhausting but at the same time interesting.
Social media posts don't do anything. A lot of people are latching onto one side of that coin - they are futile because they have no ramifications. On the other side, which they like to ignore, there's absolutely no reason to get up in arms over a post because the posts don't do anything. To get upset about someone's profile picture or status is to say those do something - they make you upset. As for if we should be up in arms about Beirut, probably, but we're not. We're not really even up in arms about France. We're making more noise, but just like the last terrorist attack, we probably won't do anything. If anything gets done any time soon, it was very likely already in the pipes and rode the coattails of this tragedy to passing. As for your final paragraph, I don't think the messages of social media change with these tragedies, just the language of those messages. People are generally still in character with what they say, but they wrap it in this new common vernacular. Your religious friends still proselytize, your militant friends still call for intervention, you insecure friends still seek attention. It's just a new way for people to tell the old story of who they are. If you want a real challenge on social media, try to see past these topical conversations and into the person who's having them - that's what people are really asking you to do. These conversations don't matter to the people in France, they matter only to the people directly in your life, and in that way they are worth having.
It feels like some attempt for people to feint that they actually care about what goes on. Everyone has to broadcast the loudest that they care and are informed. When in reality in a months time we really won't give too much of a shit what's going on in the world. I mean for the most part we don't even know what goes on. What France endured was tragic, but there are places in this world that people watch that and say "that's what my monday's are like." Another issue with things like this is that everyone thinks they are experts in everything. I've been in discussion with friends and family since the event, and it is hard to hear. No one just stopped with the politics for a moment to take credence to the lives lost. Everyone immediately jumped to destruction of ISIS, Obama's weak foreign policy, or the "muslim threat." I rarely explode, but one of my friends almost pushed me over the top with the constant updates on the death toll. What the fuck are we doing? Is this just some big game?
This is the first time I noticed that Facebook's "put colors over your profile picture" thing is time-limited. People don't even have to remember to change it back anymore when they lose interest, it will just automatically change back when Facebook decides it's time for that. The same people that don't give a shit about real problems in the world and can't talk for even a minute about major issues suddenly want to express their support. And even that pales in comparison to the folks posting nasty attacks against Obama relating to this, or insanely xenophobic anti-Muslim and/or anti-Arab (et al) rants. I think this might be what finally gets me off Facebook.
weren't we just talking about suffering being turned into memes