It’s About Me Now

When I wrote Why I Don’t Talk About Politics on Social Media Anymore, I had a bit of backlash from people claiming that I can ignore politics because it doesn’t affect me.

Again, I don’t ignore politics entirely. I ignore its presence on social media. I’ll give it a like here or there, but I won’t usually engage in discussion unless it’s about a topic that pertains to my work, my life, etc., and whoever is writing about it is very wrong. A lot of what I do is educate people by writing these blog posts, by making documentaries, by shooting events and whatnot.

If there’s something out there that’s horribly incorrect, like the racist MSG video, I have to engage. Every time it makes me upset. Every time I feel awful. I hate it.

I just can’t add to the echoing chamber of similar comments about whatever politician did whatever in the media. I can’t.

It doesn’t make any sense to me to put in my two cents when others have said the same thing in different words. It doesn’t make sense to me to argue about something we cannot control. It doesn’t make sense to put up “RIP you were so inspiring” when a celebrity I liked dies. It just doesn’t matter. I don’t have to do that and that’s not why I have social media at all.

It’s like the commercials and horribleness of society have entered our homes and our social lives. I remember when Facebook was about writing on people’s walls with graffiti and describing someone with one word, voting on who’s hot or not, and hoping your crush felt the same way.
Now it’s just an extension of the news.

But yeah, I don’t have the ability to ignore something because it doesn’t affect me. Everything affects me. When the trans bathroom crap came out, I thought about my friends who deal with these issues every day. When children were separated from their parents and kept in these jail-like holding facilities, I thought about my friends with immigrant parents, I thought about what those people had to go through. I’m like Emotional Eileen over here. I hate it all.

Here we are on another rape case that was just thrown in the garbage. Here we are, blaming another completely level-headed victim who came out because she didn’t want someone who hurt her so permanently to be in charge of an entire country and potentially have the ability to hurt everyone. Here we are, saying the same things we’ve been saying every time this happens, as we watch rapists get away with everything, infantilized for the good of the White Man, or I don’t know what.

It affects me a bit more directly. She shared her story in front of the world. I can’t even share my story here. Yes, I have a story. Of course! Everyone with ovaries likely has a story. Here I am, still shying away from it.

I did the #WhyIDidntReport hashtag. I hinted at the story, but I didn’t tell it. I did that to help others… but to share my opinion that so many others share? To be just another face in the crowd that says, “Yeah, a rapist should go to prison and definitely not participate in society on the damn Supreme Court?” Maybe in an actual crowd, that would be helpful, but this is social media. What you post doesn’t mean shit, even if you get someone angry and get a hoard of your closest friends to attack you because of the way you worded something.

It affects me. It’s still triggering. Now it’s more triggering and I want to do the Facebook echo chamber thing even less. I guess that theory is incorrect.

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