Social media began as a way to connect and share life happenings with friends and family. On Friendster (2002), you shared short text posts about what was going on in your life on any given day or you would simply post a photo. On MySpace (2003), you wanted to be in someone’s “Top Ten” friends list. On Facebook (2004), you’d upload pictures from your digital camera the morning after a particularly raucous party. There were no filters, and yet, we were at the early stages of carefully crafting our social media presence. It was an online playground for older teens and adults. It wasn’t an activist space—not yet.
I came of age in the 90s and early aughts. I’m an elder millennial who remembers life before the internet and social media. Let me take you back.
When I was fourteen, like any teenager, I spent a lot of time in my room. I was precocious and curious and tried cybersex with strange men in online chatrooms, which never led to my own pleasure. I spent my evenings reading online message boards on my red iMac that I named Rockstar Ruby. Initially, these message boards were devoted to bands I loved at the time: The Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer (I had an older brother who was listening to them, so this was mostly his influence). I read as strangers on the internet debated what Rivers Cuomo was sorry for in the song, “Butterfly”, or more broadly, what did any of Billy Corgan’s lyrics mean? It would be a while before I found Riot Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. It would be a while before I found feminist blogs.
In the year 2000, I was a freshman in high school. After school one day, I did what I usually did: connect to the internet. The dial-up always felt excruciatingly long. Once connected, I looked up a website I had seen advertised in an issue of Bust Magazine. The site was called Feministing. I didn’t identify as a feminist yet. I had been raised by one, but I also grew up watching (and hating) the character Jessie Spano of “Saved By The Bell.” This was my lone representation of feminism in pop culture, and I was not a fan.
I looked through the website, and it completely blew my mind. I kept scrolling. I scrolled for what felt like forever. This wasn’t doom-scrolling, this was bliss-scrolling. By the end of my first day scrolling the site’s backlog, I decided that, yes, I was a feminist after all. I was hooked. I was ready to fight against all of the injustices I read about: sexism, misogyny, racism, and more. It was my initial foray into cyberfeminism (a term coined in 1994 by British cultural theorist, Sadie Plant). My obsession with Feministing continued. It pushed me to read everything I could about feminism and social justice issues. I began writing my own feminist musings in my journal (both print and digital—remember LiveJournal?) I no longer hated Jessie Spano—I felt pissed at the male writers who created her. By the time I got to college, I was firmly rooted in my identification of “Feminist.” This identity was as important to me as breathing. I started the first feminist club at my college and attended my first Take Back The Night the same year. My activism was turned on and all the way up.
In 2011, a year after I had finished my grad program in Women’s & Gender Studies, there were few social media accounts specifically devoted to creating and curating posts about social justice issues. I initially started the Facebook page for Guerrilla Feminism as a way to get people offline and in-person. To my surprise, people were more interested in discussing topics in the way of comment threads under posts. The Instagram page was created shortly after and erupted. I attempted to use these platforms to amplify and educate around a variety of social justice issues. I spent hours crafting educational posts. It became an unpaid full-time job.
For me, digital activism meant using social media as a tool of respair. Respair is the “return of hope after a period of despair.” Perhaps the 90s and early aughts weren’t exactly a period of despair, but it may have felt like it to us Millennials. If it didn’t feel like despair to us then it certainly does now as we try to survive a global pandemic and too many inequities to name. In the 2010s, we wanted more ways to collaborate and more efficient ways to discuss global injustices so we could do something about them. The immediacy of digital activism through the use of social media allowed for instantaneous communication, visibility, and resistance. It allowed for our voices to be heard—on our terms. Through my work on the popular social media page, Guerrilla Feminism/The Guerrilla Feminist, I’ve been able to create, curate, and archive digital feminist activism.
However, it feels very much like social media is harming social justice movements (along with our mental health, of course). I see this happening primarily in three ways. The first is through chronic mis/dis-information.
In next week’s issue, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of this from my professional librarian perspective.
🎉 Things of the Week
Who is allowed to defend themselves? - Sohum Pal
A Museum for the Working Class - Joanne McNeil
Green line theory and the rise of misogynistic pseudoscience - Serena Smith
What Has Feelings? - Kristin Andrews & Jonathan Birch
A Genealogy of Open - Betsy Yoon
✨Reminders✨
The Guerrilla Feminist is reader-supported! Thank you to the folks who pay monthly to support my work. If you want to be added to a paid plan, go here.
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Wanna add to The Guerrilla Feminist Spotify Playlist? Go here.
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I agree with your arguments against social media, but for the fact that there are people I really only interact with through those spaces. These people are in a liminal zone where we don’t email, text, or call each other at all or very often.
If I knew them in my real life, I keep following them (generally on Instagram) because I admire and enjoy the person they’ve become or we’ve come to share something (like chronic illness) that strengthens my feeling of community. And DMing an image or video that will resonate with them feels like a love-language of sorts. Images of affirmation? Quality time fragments? Something along those lines.
If I don’t know someone from my real life, whether I’ve worked with them or found their content and we’ve become casual friends with occasional moments of poignancy, I’ll absolutely DM when appropriate to check in when things are difficult or to say a more personal congratulations than feels appropriate for a comment. If it’s someone whose thoughts align with my own and we follow and respect each other and share each other’s content, that’s an affirming relationship in itself that feels healthy. And sometimes it’s that person’s following that I need in my life--the people who feel so close to me, even if we’ll never meet again.
Hell, I met one of my ex-girlfriends exactly ONCE, when she came to my city from the west coast to tour colleges. The rest of our 9-month relationship consisted of lingering over each other’s IG posts, DMing when we could, and calling each other on Instagram so we could see each other. We said “I love you” on Instagram. We broke up and made up on Instagram. We broke up for the last time on Instagram. When she ultimately moved here for school and lost her beloved cat, I DMed her on Instagram to express my condolences (luckily, the cat came back). She apologized for treating me badly on Instagram and said she missed me, but I didn’t respond with a message of my own. And three months later, I found out via Instagram that she’d gotten married. Then I cut the cord, except for one instance when I asked her some questions about being trans and taking hormones (I’ve deliberated about microdosing T for a few years now). But our entire long-distance, semi-long-term relationship was on Instagram, setting aside the night we met.
I’ve become familiar with authors of my favorite books on Twitter, people who I champion, I chat with, and I check in on when they’re suffering. I recommend their books. I celebrate their accomplishments. I’ve asked them to read samples of my WIP to get an idea (outside of a workshop situation) of whether or not my stuff is working, if it’s ‘good.’ Some of those people are friendly, some have enormous followings and don’t often ‘hear’ me over the noise on their feeds, some encourage me, and others are people that, when I meet them for the first time, I know I’ll just want to run and hug.
I generally don’t use Facebook except for big, life announcements and all my posts there are public.
Do I think all those platforms are toxic in their own unique and monstrous ways? Absolutely. The algorithm on Instagram is atrocious (show me EVERYTHING, you unwashed a-hole!) and Twitter has the same problems, with the added headaches of making me angrier and sadder lately than almost anything could. Facebook feels like a desert where all oases are groups and any group could devolve into a multifaceted mean spirit. And I just can’t stand Snapchat or TikTok, but would love to start a podcast with a corresponding YouTube channel.
Do I also think that everyone can find a balance for personal use that works for them? Yes, especially if you decide not to take part in everything.
But I was once a full-time freelance writer and I used my personal Facebook, my Facebook page, Facebook groups, Instagram posts, Instagram stories, scheduled tweets, LinkedIn posts...The Works. And that drained me, especially all the hatred coming my way.
Now I have a new job that I’ll want to create content about (not for the nonprofit, but just because the philosophy and process saved my life and I want to spread awareness), and I’m thinking about how I can do that without it meshing with my ‘regular life stuff’ that’s not as palatable sometimes. I’m realizing my personal stuff will have to be completely separate (and tricky to find) whereas I might need new Instagram and Twitter accounts, and maybe adding in some TikTok content or YouTube stuff or a way to post sound bites somewhere.
Using social media for the personal can definitely be tricky, but once you’re using it for a cause, a side-gig, or professional reasons it feels inevitable that you’ll experience backlash, your mental health will suffer, and the passion you once felt for the topic/work will dwindle under the weight of the responsibility and comments/replies alone--though there are so many other things I could mention.
You’re seen and heard 🖤
I believe it does more harm than good. Some of the sick shit people say is disturbing at age 37, let alone 14. I’ve been banned from most of them for being too progressively “radical” liberal political whatever. So I’m done with them. I Snapchat my cats to people once in awhile. I’m glad I didn’t have that shit when I was going through puberty. I might not even be here if I had.