I Don't Have Anything To Share: A Social Media Crime

A New Yorker vs. The Internet

Hello friends, frenemies, and lurkers. Yeah, I’m getting straight to it. New York Style bam! Straight out the gate and unfortunately still, on my colonial high, stuffed from the murderous holiday, you know the one we water down with dry turkey and holiday deals from our favorite brands that the influencers we love to hate, have sponsorships with.

Despite my spicy intro, I hope everyone is safe and shared that viral thanksgiving photo we all do to make ourselves feel better and show solidarity with Indigenous People. Okay sorry, wait! Please don’t go! Please like me. My anger is misdirected my apologies, let’s shift it to our South African King elon musk who isn’t rebranding Twitter, he’s actually embracing the unethical guidelines that all social media networks are run on. He’s just doing it out loud. I’m seeing think pieces on why people are quitting Twitter as Elon runs it. So let’s ask ourselves who were the great and safe people running it before?

Before elon and his fun polls on Twitter, I remember how much I loved the internet. How much I still love it but it’s with force, a force that pushes me to be in love with it. It isn’t genuine any longer.

I remember the first time I became a devoted user of the internet.

“ How do I set this thing up?” My mother wrestled with instructions and my brother snickered at my mom who refused a techy teenager’s help. There were cords everywhere on the floor and all I could think of was I finally have a computer.

“ I cleaned more houses than any of the other girls this month” That was my mother’s way of letting me know you better appreciate this dinosaur that’s in our living room.

My brother rushed to set up his AOL account, I was up next, and we both felt like a million bucks, the internet gave us status and gave us access to something new and escapism from being poor.

I could spend all day on the internet, it became embedded in my muscle memory with each click and every sound, it gave me a thrill, that was something I didn’t feel playing my Nintendo or GameBoy. This feeling was indescribable, a spark of an unusual comfort that I was waiting for. Before I knew it, it was branded and constructed so effortlessly in my DNA.

My brother and I loved the internet so much that our Instant messenger screen names followed us to other social media outlets such as BlackPlanet and decades later platforms; Twitter and Instagram. My older brother now works in tech/coding & digital art, he’s currently the lead and main developer on an art project at the Smithsonian and National Gallery of Art. Me? I went viral in 2016 as a culture writer for the HuffPost which led me to countless producing and writing opportunities. We are the internet.

Yet, fast forward to the present, and my social media threshold is weakening. I’m between this phase of natural confidence and this new insecurity that the internet has gifted me right on time for the holidays.

What I believe was once about connecting and sending A/S/L to a forty-year-old in a teen chat room who probably lives in Boca Rotan Florida, is now centered on disrupting entertainment, and comfort, and telling users that they aren’t good enough.

I’m Not Doing Anything:

Is it possible that I can post doing nothing, absolutely nothing? I’ve thought about putting a camera in front of me while I write, so everyone knows that I am writing thousands of words constantly. That you see the grind the hustle. Just so YOU know I’m doing something. I thought about taking group photos when I’m out just so you know I got friends. I thought about posting my kids doing some cool stuff in their young life just so you know I’m parenting. I thought of posting me and my partner on a date just so you know the love we have for each other is still there.

I’m not doing any of that, writing is something I’m good at but it sucks. My friends are amazing people but I’m not with them all the time, my kids are incredible but they have homework and stay in their pajamas, my partner and I are always boo’d up but we haven’t been on a date in a while.

I’m not doing anything. But I see that everyone else is. Which cool-cool, I’m not hating… not yet.

I just want you to know, I’m not doing anything, but I feel this urge to show you that I am even when I’m not. I pride myself on being a New York gangsta with confidence that at times turns into a self-inflating ego thanks to my immigrant parents that told me I can touch the sky without a plane. They failed to tell me I would need a parachute because things fall.

I have nothing to show you right now, I’m not doing anything. And I realize that my not doing anything will be drowned out by an ad for a blanket company. So I stay away. Because if I’m gonna get validation from strangers for doing nothing then I’d prefer my post NOT be in between a girl boss who is hanging out with the owner of a famous Jamaican restaurant during Caribbean Heritage month and an influencer who gets to hashtag HBO partner. ( Ok now I’m hating!)

I want to live and experience adventure. And I’ve been getting nervous that I only want to live and experience adventure so I can share it online. And when I experience the latter I realize that my time online has become unhealthy.

I have to remind myself that not doing anything not meeting a goal deciding to not work on a thing doesn’t mean my drive isn’t there and the internet places these harmful intrusive thoughts that I accept but I choose to not believe it. 

When is the last time we gave flowers to a person just vibing, that we gave attention to a person for something we don’t deem worthy? When have we wanted to be friendly to people who aren’t doing anything?

We as users have been told that if an accomplishment isn’t being shared then this person doesn’t deserve our time our likes our comments our attention. We have reduced the worth of people based on Instagram posts, and brand deals. Social media is worst than that manager who wants us to clock in during a five-foot snow storm. It tells us that we have to always be on. And I have to actively work against that control that is over me. I have to remind myself to accept my reality of not doing anything and most importantly accept others who aren’t doing anything.

My days are slow, and my days are full of rejection, there are no’s and there are yes’s there are meetings, more rejection, drafts, giving up starting over, feelings of discouragement, feelings of pride, feelings of resentment, and essays that I half-ass yet still submit.

The pressure to be on is one I don’t think I will be able to keep up with because I strive to be Tracy Chapman and live in the hills somewhere suing people for stealing my work.

There Is No Safety Online:

I love the internet despite what you read above. I have made actual friends yes real-life people at least that’s what they tell me. I have garnered financial support from the internet from strangers and friends that I am still so grateful for, the internet can make moves and shake shit up. My best friend, her, and I followed each other online years ago and there isn’t a day that goes by we don’t talk. I met my partner online through our mutual friends who I met ONLINE! I’ve gotten to learn to explore and follow talented writers who I am inspired by and I want to pick their brains because what they post online isnt enough I need more. The history accounts and archives that I’ve quoted for research papers. The internet has changed the lives of all of us, especially Black users. The Internet is a real place because it exists in this realm. And whatever exists here in this world can only show us safety in a way that is manipulative and exploitative.

I saw a lot of tweets when donald trump’s Twitter account was restored. I was quite confused by the uproar and panic. Listen I know that social media is real here I am writing about how I am comparing myself to a little German lady on a farm that is getting forty thousand dollars a post photographing clementines.

Does this panic stem from the internet bubbles we create? The ones we search for and remain in, the thing is when that bubble is no longer safe or it’s penetrated with hot takes that we haven’t dissected yet, or harm we thought was sealed and discarded by social media CEOs we scurry around and we tweet a repetitive think piece. Our panic is due to trusting a digital system that would never protect us. A system that wasn’t made with Black people and marginalized individuals in mind. Do we deserve comfort and safety online? Yes! Will we get it? No! Why?

When daddy trump comes in where it is now possible to see his award-winning racist tweets on Twitter, that safe club we’re seated in becomes threatened. I get it. But what I also get is that donald trump exists outside social media, that he is still making speeches, still rounding up his fine people, and spreading harmful rhetoric.

What I’m trying to say is, there is no safety on the internet, because there is no safety off the internet, as we know that harm exists outside 280 characters.

Will I even see our boy donald trumps tweets? Probably not because the algorithm wouldn’t do that to me, not in my echo chamber. Yes, our good old echo chambers, wherein the digital space we have those lovely people who always think we’re right the ones who don’t challenge us and tell us we have great hair ( thank you guys) It is a chamber that we don’t want to be rattled. The fear of someone who has a better hot take than us. Someone who angry-types about donald trump and then here comes along a person in the comments saying:

“ donald trump is sensationalized, dismantling donald trump won’t dismantle white supremacy, deleting his account does nothing, it is a penalty, it was probation, and because we hold the internet at a high standard because the world wide web is everything to us, him receiving that punishment made us believe he had been held accountable. It made us believe we were being listened to and that our safety matters this is an illusion as a white CEO behind an app cannot grant us safety.”

And then we block that person because it’s a good rebuttal and they might be right! ( they are absolutely right)

Looking for safety on apps that don’t have our best interest can create disappointment beyond our comprehension, it can create illusions of safety, and illusions of community. When users on the internet are victim to racial digital violence constantly and we finally see it, we panic because that “safety” was merely a roof made out of paper.

The internet was a place that I once thought was a world to connect and it is, but that isn’t the tagline that isn’t the goal. There is an exchange on social networks and we will most likely get the short end of the stick. This is a place on how can we harm, compare, sell, and how we have to be right, it’s a platform we give to, despite knowing how it censors groups of people who are dark-skinned and queer and fat and disabled.

The creators of these social media platforms did not have someone like me in mind when creating their safety guidelines. I was not in that talk, there was never how do we protect someone who looks like me, someone who is darker than me fatter than me louder than me?

I ask myself why am I logging on. What do I want to see, what do I want to share, why do I want to be right when writing this caption, and why do I think we are unsafe if donald trump is on Twitter? Why do I want to stalk my frenemy just to see if they have a new haircut? They do have a new haircut, it’s alright it’s ok. ( me hating)

The internet discourages me it confuses and manipulates me, it pressures me to share, I know, I know, you’re shocked because I am a certified hater who can’t stop judging all of you for sharing your teslas and your dogs that have an overbite.

I could just be a buzzkill right now, tell me to shut up and I will zip it. I will go back to looking at Teslas online trying to find the lowest interest rate. I’ll go and be an old mean lady at a gentrified cafe and read the newspaper to get my fix. But who am I kidding? I can’t do that because I’ll be missing the stars on the gram who should be verified and protected, those are who I am in love with, the ones who share infographics that are original and helpful the tweets that make me fall out of my chair because they’re so funny. The talented writers I actually don’t hate on.

elon isn’t making Twitter less safe, I think what we will see more of are the people that make up the terrible parts of this world, people we were never actually protected from offline. With all this said, I understand the want for escapism for learning for connecting to be in a space free of hatred. They’re alternative apps, and social networks that are ready for that safe journey, and they have always existed, and I’m questioning myself as to why I always chose the digital spaces that were never meant for me to thrive in.

Anyway, I don’t have anything to share, I’m just alive.

Affirm someone who has nothing to share.

-C

This has no affiliation with Black Twitter which is a fine establishment.

Names that are lowercase are intentional. As I don’t subscribe to giving capitalization to improper nouns.

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