Do you still remember the Internet of last week, just another barrage of all-over-the-place political and cultural events in which millions of people watched, reacted and interacted online? It was the week that social media broke my heart.
On Wednesday afternoon, journalists and activists live-tweeted the suspenseful build-up to the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. Simultaneously, friends ranted about Facebook’s new format changes and music lovers cracked hackneyed jokes about R.E.M. breaking up through puns on their hit “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” Activists and other seasoned politicos were circulating sarcastic observations about the organizational tactics of the protestors occupying Wall Street. Added to this were a steady trickle of tributes to Nirvana’s Nevermind on the occasion of its 20th anniversary and minute-by-minute updates on the in-process liberation of Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer after two years of imprisonment in Iran.
By evening, my various feeds took on a competitive tone. Many on Twitter commented humorously they could feel the attention of white people shifting away from Davis and onto indie rock nostalgia as homages to R.E.M. started making the rounds. Later a graphic went viral on Facebook. It showed Troy Davis’ face next to text that read: “I’m glad everybody’s upset about Facebook changing.”
Point taken – some things are a bigger deal than others and it’s good to have perspective. White people like indie rock and are not frequently killed by our government. I got it. But also … something about the mean-spiritedness of it all didn’t sit right with me. Why are we so invested in judging each other’s real-time filtering of current events online? Of course a rock band breaking up isn’t as important as Troy Davis being killed. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t touched in real and important ways by it.
On Thursday morning, Facebook and Twitter were still full of anger and sadness about Davis, as well as brimming with emotional photos of the hikers arriving in Oman en route to the Bay Area. There were a lot of status updates about the “heartbreak and joy” of these concurrent events. As I shared my own blog post about R.E.M., I wondered if my circle of very political friends would comment sarcastically on my decision to talk about music the morning after the state had killed yet another innocent black man. And in music circles, I began to note a different but equally harsh strain of snark making the rounds as the big critics weighed in:
Robert Smith (of NPR, not of the Cure) sings about R.E.M. in karaoke version of “It’s the end of the world as we know it” and can barely stop himself from chuckling most of the way through.
Rob Sheffield headlines his Rolling Stone article on R.E.M. “Thank You for Running It Into the Ground” and then proceeds to declare Life’s Rich Pageant (1986) the moment R.E.M. jumped the shark.
Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker writes more thoughtfully, but still has an overall tone of condescension about the ’90s, R.E.M., and their popularity: “[With Everybody Hurts…] all of R.E.M.’s luminous oddness and nested beauty is turned into penny taffy.”
In the Chicago Reader, Jessica Hopper voices deep anger about the shameless repackaging of a generation’s spirit and bitterly compares Kurt Cobain’s cultural meaning to Jim Morrison’s — action figures and all — for today’s teenagers.
These are all critics I admire and they all make good points. But after the heightened emotion of the previous day’s mess of media events, I felt overwhelmed. Critics are supposed to be critical, sure, but when they start using the first person, aren’t they also supposed to pay tribute to art’s real impact on their lives, not simply debate who sold out and when? When paying homage to two of the most influential bands of the 1990s, where was the music?
Critics want it both ways: we want something to be pure and essential, but we also tend to retrospectively see events based solely on their context/reaction. Particularly in social media, context develops at an increasing pace: we condense the critical cycle into a series of quick “sharing” actions and move straight from “something happens” into criticizing ourselves and each other for liking things. In our rushed effort to provide the “essential” opinion, we forget the part about why we’re being critical in the first place: because the “something” happened made us feel something, and that made us want to contribute.
Perhaps what we should bring back along with the rest of ’90s culture is sincerity. Forget witty bitterness; show me a critic who believes in music the way that the musicians in Nirvana and R.E.M. believed. Show me shared media that can balance leonine ego with intimate emotional pain like these albums can. Show me a meme that can mix politics with poetry in a way that makes you want to get off your couch and actually do something. And in exchange, I’ll show you a lot of human beings who are able to process, feel, and experience large and small events at the exact same time.
So dear Internet, please stop. Just… stop with the judging.
Stop for a minute, and don’t share this link on Facebook until you finish reading it and have thought about it. Find Nevermind and listen to it without doing anything else at the same time. Then listen to the formerly independent-label band of your choosing without getting defensive and relating that band’s mainstream status to your own personal evolution of coolness. Hear those words? Those songs? They are important. They are sincere.
Yes, the Internet has made us all critics. We are spewing media into the world and we are consuming it in the same breath. Pop does and will continue to eat itself. The Internet, like a person, is complex. But let’s see what happens if we reign it in for a minute, shall we? I’ll start it off by sharing with you, friends real and virtual, my own critical complexity:
I feel weary horror and urgent anger at the continued campaign of violence against people of color that is the American “correctional” system, and because I am continually implicated in it the more I do not actively fight it. I feel wistful about R.E.M. breaking up because they were a truly unique band and I liked them. I am upset about the recent Facebook changes because I know this company is turning me into a product and I’m enabling it. I am disappointed in the activist community for behaving just like the media we criticize and not taking the Wall Street protestors seriously until the police escalated the situation. I am happy the hikers were freed, but I am worried about the callousness with which people blame them for their ordeal, as well as the potential for events like this to reinforce racist and anti-Islamic sentiment in America. I feel sad about the slutification of Nirvana, but I also hope their ubiquity will guarantee that future generations of 15-year-olds hear their music — and that the music itself will guarantee some of those kids feel it in their guts the same way I did when I was 15.
I am able to hold all these feelings inside me at once. Bands like R.E.M. and Nirvana helped me learn how to do that. Venues like Facebook help me express it. People like Troy Davis, who last Wednesday declared his innocence while forgiving his killers and still showing sympathy for Marc MacPhail’s family, help me understand the capacity in humans for boundless love and empathy, even in the face of the most horrible things. And empathy is a necessary preface to action.
Come on, you guys. There’s scarce room for snark in all this. It’s not a competition. People are messy and conflicted. We can be simultaneously egotistical and share profound experiences, or be outraged and still act silly. We can “like” pop culture and still want to fight the power. Now, can we be a bit more genuine with one another? Stop. Think. Be true to your feelings. Be sincere. Can we still do that?
The morning after Troy Davis was killed, I cried at photos of Josh and Shane hugging their parents. I also cried while listening to R.E.M.’s “Fall on Me” and reading the Tumblr We Are the 99 Percent. I smiled at a photo of Howard University students giving the black power salute in unison, their mouths taped shut in silent protest of Davis’ execution. And I put on Smells Like Teen Spirit and jumped up and down in my living room, knowing that we all still have a bit of fight in us.
14 responses
I have to say that while I accept your appeal for “sincerity” in the largely anonymous interactions of social media, the parallel you seem to be creating in this piece between issues of “pop culture” and those of social justice (the 20 anniversary of “Nevermind” and breaking-up of R.E.M., compared to that of state sanctioned murder and the protesting of grotesque economic inequality) strikes me as abhorrent. These issues, while they may assuredly both occupy the space in your brain, do not deserve equal attention. The latter is important, the former, in comparison, is not. Not to say that one cannot fondly commemorate the music and art we love, but the question of importance, is what you are doing to mitigate the damage being done by our country in your name. That is an issue to be sincerely examined by each of us. One that cannot be accomplished on twitter.
Nice piece.
Texas has executed 80 people since Twitter was launched, and the social network world did not come to a screeching halt for all of them. While Bastrop burned, people tweeted about Bridesmaids and The Help. While New Orleans drowned, people blogged about Austin City Limits and missing white girls in Aruba. During the two or three days that a group of people thought that Troy Davis was the most important issue in the universe before they went back to re-posting funny Jon Stewart links, probably about a half million people around the world died of everything from AIDS to war to malnutrition.
It’s a big and complicated world with billions of stories all happening in parallel, and nobody gets to tell you that what you’re feeling is the wrong thing just because it doesn’t match what they think is important at the time.
Brandon, I feel as though you are missing the point – or at least the point that I perceive. It is stated clearly that “some things are a bigger deal than others and it’s good to have perspective”. I don’t think anyone is trying to say that R.E.M. breaking up carries the exact same weight as an innocent man being murdered by the state. Rather, I think what is being communicated is that we carry the innate ability to feel many things at once. Troy Davis being executed is clearly a far more disturbing event than the break-up of a 90’s pop-culture icon – but can’t we be appalled and wistful simultaneously? Or are we only to feel abhorrence at the death of Davis – so strongly and completely that we deny ourselves an emotional reaction to any other worldly happening?
Social media is simply a tool – a means of amplifying any fleeting thought that passes through our heads (unfortunately) – and so yes – some will choose to be furious with the death of Troy Davis – some will be occupied, with nostalgia for the heyday of REM – but they aren’t mutually exclusive, and that has to be okay. Is doesn’t make that nostalgia misplaced, or even mean that the individual choosing to use their digital presence to voice that nostalgia is a rotten individual or unaffected in any way by other heartbreaking events.
Are the events equal – of course not – not even close. Are they both meaningful – yes – albeit in very, very different capacities – but yes, nonetheless.
I would add one word to Neil’s post above:
some will choose to publicly be furious with the death of Troy Davis – some will be publicly occupied with nostalgia for the heyday of REM.
What we say on social media isn’t a representation of the only or the most important of our thoughts at a time: they are the thoughts we choose to express at that particular time via that particular medium for that particular audience. That’s it. The author sums up that fact nicely when she asks, “Why are we so invested in judging each other’s real-time filtering of current events online?” [emphasis mine]. Twitter, Facebook, article comments, forum posts: each is just one of many conversations a person will have (with others or with him-/herself). That I choose to express or discuss something online does not mean that I feel or think any more about a topic than anyone else, nor does my choice not to do so online mean that I feel or think any less.
I indeed missed the point. What I was trying to get across is the what I felt lacked in the piece: a thesis. My apologies Manjula, but I don’t understand what you are trying to say in the above essay.
I suppose the idea is that people should be kind and sincere with each other while engaged in all the various communication streams now at our disposal, just as we are–or at least should be–during face-to-face interaction. To this, I agree, wholeheartedly even.
But I’m baffled by the supposed parallel created in the article. Was the author trying to suggest that the fact that multiple news threads, the division of which (too much coverage or too little of any particular issue) combined with people’s opinions of what constituted appropriate or inappropriate infatuation was unsettling? I guess I just disagree; such opinions–and, to use a stronger word, judgments are acceptable. I suppose, what I was troubled by most was the expression of this topic through a comparison of interest in REM/ Nirvana and state murder. Admittedly, I worked on the NCADP campaign to save Troy Davis and continue to. Perhaps that irrevocably colors my thinking. I don’t know.
Its understandable Brandon – and I agree that this article, while making a valid point, is meandering to say the least. However, just for sake the clarity, I feel I must touch upon one point of contention for you.
The parallel (which might be a strong word – parallel is assuming these issues are on the same level, which, again, we all agree, they are not) being drawn between Nirvana/REM and state murder is not a random one. It was not a comparison born of choosing two topics of historically equal significance – rather it is simply a matter of overlapping timeframes. The article is “The week social media broke my heart” – and these happen to be two events that happened within the same week and drew a lot of attention from social media outlets. I don’t believe the intent was to draw a parallel based on importance, but rather to reference two events that commanded attention within a specific snapshot of time.
Thank you for working for Mr. Davis.
Thank you Neil, Brandon, Kellie, and Ray for your intelligent, sincere comments. Y’all have great critiques, both of the article itself and of the issues I write about. Talking about complexities in this smart, respectful way is part of the “point” of the essay, so keep on talkin’…
This is a bit of a sidetrack, but I want to take a moment to address the question Brandon posed in his earlier comment, because I think it’s really interesting and because everyone could stand to ask themselves this question on a regular basis:
“What you are doing to mitigate the damage being done by our country in your name?”
Good question. I’m asking it of myself right now. I’m literally making a list.
The reality is, in the struggle to change all the messed up shit that’s happening in this world, we probably won’t all be the person who sets himself on fire in protest. Some will be the organizers who back up that protest with solid strategy and grassroots action, some will be the community that loves and mourns the person, some will be critics who extrapolate intellectual meaning from it all, and some will be poets whose work makes readers feel like they’re on fire inside. We need and value all those people. But no matter our roles, we could all be better engaged and hold ourselves more accountable. No useless guilt or egotistical judgment– just ask the question, and then work to make our answers what we want them to be.
So I’ll try harder to do that, and I hope y’all will, too. Thanks for bringing it into the conversation here.
Social networks turn everyone into gossipy old ladies. Who gives a fuck what other people say? Why are you letting it bother you?
People are dying every minute of every day (and are daily being executed the world over), and we still go on with our lives with our small (and medium, and large) pleasures and amusements, and our individual heartbreaks. We still see beautiful things that help us bear the horrors. I get that. Otherwise we’d all go mad.
But do we really need to justify ourselves? And in so doing, to somehow equate these things, even in an essay that acknowledges that an execution is a “bigger deal” than a formatting change on Facebook or REM breaking up. Its not a “bigger deal”, its incommensurable. And of course that doesn’t mean that you can’t be angry that car broke down, or sad that your favorite character in the novel you are reading died, or happy when your football team scores a touchdown, just because Troy Davis got executed. That injustice is just the a drop of water in vast seas of injustice and misery that occurred last week, and that are still occurring now. But we all still need to go about our lives.
Or is your problem not that you find yourself an uncomfortable vessel for these competing emotions but that, instead, that your social media platforms provide your outlet for all of these emotions so that it appears to you, and you worry to others, that you the lead stories on the front page of your life are a mixture of the profound and the (world historically) trivial? This makes more sense to me. Its why newspapers have sections. Some things should be on the front page, some in metro, some in living, some in sports, some in Dear Abby, and Facebook puts everything on A1.
“Come on, you guys. There’s scarce room for snark in all this. It’s not a competition.”
THANK YOU.
Well done.
Thank you. I admit to Tweeting this wonderful piece without first listening to “Nevermind,” but I quit Facebook the day people wasted precious minutes of their life complaining about changes to a site in which they are not required to engage. I’d love to see a follow-up article with you riffing on the fascinating concept of Facebook making us a product.
so beautiful. and when you said to wait til you get through this to post it and all that, it was as if you were reaching out to put a calming hand on my shoulder.
This is exactly how I was feeling last week when my various social media streams were chaotic and conflicting and confounding and yes, heartbreaking. From people foaming at the mouth over the changes on Facebook, to folks preparing for Leather Week and Folsom Street Fair in SF, to the tragedy and trauma of Troy Davis, to the celebration of the repeal of DADT, to the ever constant flow of sexually explicit imagery, it’s just all over and all overwhelming.
Here is one thing that I would like to offer as a suggestion, which was a suggestion made to me by a very wise woman.
Write a letter to a person who is incarcerated. Maybe write a few.
It’s a hell of a way to put the social media onslaught in perspective.
I started doing it this summer after taking a class on women and the global prison industrial complex with Ericka Huggins. The course was so powerful, it shook me. Almost broke me some days. I cried on the train ride home more than once. But this woman was so inspiring and real and calming. She told me what to do, so I did it.
Here is a link to find people to write to you if you’re interested: http://sfbayview.com/2009/pen-pals-find-a-friend-beh ind-enemy-lines/
Thanks again for the great post.
Thank you for this. All so true, and said so beautifully. We are messy and complicated. Everything is messy and complicated, and that is all too easy to forget. I am so sick of snark and irony and apathy. I want heart and guts and bones.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.