Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women world-wide. Technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instruments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other.
- Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto
We exist as frozen moments on our curated social media pages. We delude ourselves into thinking that this is how we relate to each other. We think we’re making the rules, but we actually don’t have that power. The embodiment of technology is happening to us without our consent. How much of us is machine and how much of us is human? I see our humanity dwindling rapidly while completely tethered to technology. I am not a luddite. I am not anti-technology. What I’m concerned about though is that social media platforms are biased and they honor the continued freezing of ourselves and our activism in online spaces.
Returning to old hashtags is like returning to a grave site. You see an activist moment frozen in time—frozen in social media space. The hashtag becomes an archive, which can be incredibly helpful to the rich history of our collective movements. Hashtags catalogue personal stories, and act as consciousness-raising. Clicking on a hashtag can bring anyone into a conversation, a discussion, and a reading list of stories.
Hashtags not only catalogue stories, but they also act as emotion archives, like in the case of #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and #ShoutYourStatus (an STI+ tag that I co-created years ago). Trauma doesn’t fit neatly into 140 characters; trauma rarely fits “neatly'' anywhere. As someone who has contributed to more than one viral traumatic hashtag, it feels a bit like you’ve had hot coffee spilled over your heart. The burn is slow and excruciating, and you question why you did it. Yet another layer of victim-blaming.
The good and bad of digital storytelling (and archiving) is that people can add to the living “document” at any given time. It’s public sharing of deeply personal matters, and a survivor can be revictimized over and over and over again. What was once said in private, in-person conversations, now happens as a public-viewing spectacle. While people can simply scroll on by, many trolls, unfortunately, decide not to. Just like in our offline worlds, our personal stories may also be questioned or attacked online. The difference with this being done online is the frequency and rate at which you have people coming after you—and the potential of thousands of heinous things you might end up reading.
Something I often question is: do marginalized folks who add to a viral hashtag understand the potential ramifications of this? The path of social media is winding, inconsistent, and erratic.
Digital storytelling has the potential to build community online, however, this is happening in the public sphere of social media. I’m at the point now where I don’t want to build community online unless it’s private, locked-down, and small. I question how community can be built on social media when there is typically a “follower” and a “leader.” I gag at users with large followings who talk about what a “great community” they have. That’s not a community; it’s a performer with an audience. It’s a parasocial relationship; it’s not reciprocal on either end and there’s a clear hierarchy. We simply cannot use social media platforms to collectively organize. We can barely use it to disperse (factual) information.
I am tired of fighting with social media platforms who are tits-deep in corporate greed. I am tired of asking for crumbs. I am tired of seeing celebrity nonsense get the most visibility (yet again). Everything is an ad and I don’t want to see our movements become further fractured by commodification.
What is the point in having a following if they don’t even see your posts? What is the point in feeling beholden to a platform who has not done anything for its users? What is the point of creating an informational carousel on Instagram when it just seems to go into a void?
I am still toying with the idea of deleting my Instagram. Because what good is it doing me or anyone else? I am still trying to figure out what to do or where to go next. I don’t want to be an influencer or a social media creator.
I just want to write and interact with people who read my writing.
🎉 Things of the Week
Let’s take note from French protesters
This entire album from Krakow Loves Adana
This tea that hasn’t even come yet, but I’m so excited for it (it’s the little things)
When the author Helen Garner was asked about happiness, she wrote: “I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for it. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness—moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist.”
Looking at homes in Duluth, MN because I want to live there at some point
Girl Scout cookies (obvi)
Artificial ‘creativity’ is unstoppable. Grappling with its ethics is up to us
Late March snowstorms
“Tears are a river that take you somewhere… Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.” ―Clarissa Pinkola Estés
✨Reminders✨
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I just finished reading this series and wanted to say thank you for writing it. ❤️ I love your ideas and writing style! Really appreciate you sharing this with us.
This series has all been great to read, but this entry was particularly resonant. I struggle with how to continue connecting with people, too, but now am questioning if/how I even connected with them truly. That critical lens was needed, so thank you for putting it into words 🙌