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I& #39;ve spoken before about how much I hate the phrase "pics or it didn& #39;t happen." My reasons have always been personal: I grew up very poor. I don& #39;t have a lot of pictures of my childhood or my teen years. "Pics or it didn& #39;t happen" erases my past with a laugh and a smirk.
And yes, I understand that people lie on the internet, people tell tall tales, people embellish. This isn& #39;t a new phenomenon. Someone& #39;s brother& #39;s cousin& #39;s girlfriend& #39;s best friend has always seen Bigfoot, or caught a giant fish, or been to Mars.
And yes, lies can be harmful. But "pics or it didn& #39;t happen" feels a lot more harmful, to me, than "I saw a really big fish today" or "my uncle works for Nintendo."
"Pics or it didn& #39;t happen" means that when my stepfather started raping me, since there was no camera on the scene, it wasn& #39;t real. Sure, I started attempting suicide at the age of nine, but there were no pics. It didn& #39;t HAPPEN.
"Pics or it didn& #39;t happen" means that when someone spits racist slurs on the subway, or threatens to break a man& #39;s teeth for holding his boyfriend& #39;s hand, or bans cameras from the interrogation room, nothing HAPPENED.
"Pics or it didn& #39;t happen" is a stepping stone toward "fake news" and "false accusations" and "if he really did that, there& #39;d be PROOF, right?" Only when there are pictures, half the time we find a way not to believe those, either.
Absolutely interrogate the things you hear. Think critically about the claims people make. Ask yourself "if this is a lie, who gains? Who is harmed?" But please stop erasing the parts of the world that aren& #39;t caught on film. Too much is invisible.
We can& #39;t insist that only the evidence of our eyes is real. We have a lot of senses, and a lot of capacity for thought. We have to use all our tools, not just the one that feels easiest.
