Making a difference IRL
‘My activism’ is a bit of a grandiose title. What I really mean is the sort of thing many people of my generation, who grew up alongside the rise of social media and on the political left, do: repost things that make us angry, sad or frustrated. The world is on fire, often literally, and atrocities we thought we could leave in the last have shown themselves to always be here.
I have often felt uncertain how to ‘enact’ my political beliefs in the real world. Climate change, Palestine, First Nations justice, gender justice, trans justice, the seemingly worsening state of racism just about wherever we look, there are just so many things to be truly, deeply sad about. And I see pretty much all of them every time I open Instagram.
On the one hand, I want to add my voice and show people what I care about, to help raise awareness and demonstrate that there is a groundswell of support for justice.
On the other hand, I’m exhausted. There’s just so much of it. Particularly at this stage in my life, sleep-deprived and with a very active pair of children, it’s hard to feel that every time I go online I am confronted by true horror. Holding my children is tinged by utter sadness for what other parents are experiencing elsewhere, and the unfairness of it.
When I first took up social media, it was very much as a recreational activity. Pretty photos of things I liked, and lovely images other people had taken. If you’ve followed me long enough, you’ll remember the long phase where I mostly posted ‘doortraits’ around Oxford. But over the years it has morphed into a more aggrieved space. This isn’t just because I’m more aware or there is more to worry about (I have always been pretty aware online, and while some things are getting worse, others have always been awful). It must also be because this is how social media works. A lot has justly been said about how social media radicalises people through hate. Posts that make us angry get the most engagement. This is particularly troubling for its role in the rise of the far right, but it can’t be absent from the left either. I obviously don’t see people learning more and trying to better the world from a left-wing perspective as a bad thing, but it has fundamentally changed how I personally engage with social media. The left is as hungry for engagement as the right. One particularly striking example that keeps popping up for me is Palestinians posting content and asking you to ‘copy link’ to increase their engagement and visibility. One feels urged to do this, to feel like one is in some way helping these desperate people, being put through hell. But it truly is a drop in the ocean. I fear that actions like this make me both despairing and somehow also make me feel useful, whilst achieving very little.
I also feel that people are posting images to social media that we just shouldn’t be seeing. Images of dead and dying people, often children, perhaps feel necessary to some people, as a way of getting attention and sparking outrage and therefore action. But to me it feels disrespectful and somehow dehumanising. We shouldn’t have to see images to believe what, for example, Palestinians are telling us, and they shouldn’t have to broadcast their most intimately terrifying and heartbreaking moments to be taken seriously.
So I’ve decided to revamp my engagement with social media activism. I don’t want to do nothing, and I don’t want to be silent. But I want my actions to have real meaning, beyond sharing, liking or now reposting posts. So I’m going to experiment. I’m going to aim for one real life activist action a week. Then I will post that action to my Instagram stories. So I can still draw people’s attention to causes I care about, but I’m able to step back a bit from the relentlessness. I have had a go at just using the ‘Following’ and ‘Favourites’ sections, but have now gone as far as to mute certain words, in an attempt to reduce the distressing content I am shown.
It is hard to carve out spaces of peace in this world, and as a stretched parent trying to do my best for the next generation, I don’t want to step out of the action entirely. But I do want to step towards more meaningful action, and attempt to preserve a bit of the joy, whimsy and calm that is sometimes difficult to find.
I will attempt to post about my efforts on here too – a useful way to keep myself accountable and offer some ideas for how you might like to join me. I would love if this post in any way inspires you to get involved directly with causes you care about. There are so many amazing organisations you could support financially or with volunteering, letters you could write, meals you could prepare, lectures you could listen to, etc, etc, etc. One of the most meaningful engagements I’ve been involved in is the Flood the Post actions (pictured at the top of this post), and I’d love to capture some of this same energy going forward.
Part of me feels like a cop out by choosing to step back, but the rest of me feels that my energy and brainspace could be spent far more meaningfully elsewhere. Let’s see how I go.
