Black Lives Matter and Social Media

Happy Emancipation Day!

The Black Lives Matter movement is a hot topic in America right now. Millions of Americans have taken the street to protest the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylors (and many more), and the crystal clear institutionalized racism. America, a ‘free’ country fabricated off the backs of slaves on land stolen from indigenous bodies, is now experiencing large protests in all fifty states. But, this blog post won't cover the details of the protests (if you are looking for that, you can find that here). This blog post seeks to talk about the issues that occur with social media and the Black Lives Matter movement.

We are well aware of the informational posts and tweets that have gone out since the death of George Floyd -- which is great! However, there are two points I want to address: 1) fake/false news and 2) reactions.

With more and more teens on social media, they happen to be susceptible to this notion of fake news. There are numerous examples of this and they often get shared around. Whenever I stumble across fake news, I always ask myself: Why? Why did the person share this? Did they even to bother reading more or fact-checking it? And after sitting down and just thinking about it for a while, I began to understand. It's simple, really. One person posts it, their friend views it and says "Oh cool, let me be a decent person and post it too," and this cycle just continues. But this is not valuable to our society. Treating the Black Lives Matter movement as a trend is truly disgusting, because it means so much more than that. And the funny thing is, it's very easy to realize that someone is just posting things for a trend. It becomes apparent when they broadcast fake/uncredited work. It is shameful to see this happening, and unfortunately, there's no way to fix this -- we have to hope for the best.

Treating the Black Lives Matter movement as a trend is obviously horrific and vile, but what's worse is attacking those who don't post anything on their stories. Now, I understand when people are angry with certain celebrities or well-known people for not using their platforms. But when people start attacking their own friends/peers for not posting/tweeting, it becomes questionable. Posting on your story does not mean that you do not agree with the movement or that you are not acting upon the movement. It simply means you did not post on your story, which I find acceptable. I think that you, as a person, should have the ability to take a break from social media and not be bashed about it. Now, thankfully, there is a way to fix this. How? Just learn about the Black Lives Matter Movement yourself and don't question other people's beliefs. And hey, occasionally you'll find that 'person' who says "Hell yeah, all lives matter," and you'll get angry because you can't change their minds. All you have to do is stay calm!

That's about it; if you want to support the BLM movement, check them out here.