I am curious about, and depressed by, how EVERYTHING becomes a meme or a joke or “content” meant to go “viral.” It can’t be divorced from the desire of the maker/sharer to become famous & seen as clever. And not everything tragic is funny, nor should be so flattened as a meme. https://twitter.com/geedee215/status/1277568986880847872

Some things are serious.

Some things require doing the reading.

Some things don't need to be boiled down to or hidden within delicious, creamy, easy-to-digest memey content.

Can you imagine Emmett Till's lynching being made into GIFs or memes?!

I get the impulses of "we are going to meet ppl where they are" & "we are going to force ppl to think about this hard thing, even when they are trying to think of something else." Akin to protesting in white 'burbs.

But it also flattens the serious into the realm of the clever.

I saw some kind of Bill Shatner meme with Breona Taylor and it just didn't sit right with me. The impetus of social force isn't just about shocking the viewer into action; it's about shocking the viewer into thinking the meme maker/sharer is clever. Breona Taylor isn't a meme.

I am deeply suspicious of the memification of everything, and I loathe the term "content" as if everything—EVERYTHING—is plug & play, interchangeable fodder to be consumed.

The idea of Black life & death as mere content for consumption as delicious memes is alarming.

Which isn't to say art and satire don't have a role in protest life; they do. Artistic expression & even a sense of fun are EXTREMELY important to social movements.

But that doesn't mean we turn off our critical minds in assessing such art, and especially w memification.

Initially, I wondered if these memes w Breona Taylor are like lynching postcards. They're not really; a goal of the memes (raising injustice) is not the same as of postcards (scare Black ppl into compliance).

BUT! They're alike in how they make Black death easy for consumption.

And so with that worry in mind, I ask viewers to resist to see Black death in any form as something you do NOT just take in, scroll past, snark it, absorb passively as "content."

Rather, try to wrestle w, work w, and be made uncomfortable by Black death. Actively engage.

Tech platforms make you feel a compulsion to keep making "content." I am giving into this compulsion right now. So, I think it's important to read these memes within the profit-driven motivation of tech platforms, compelling us to make EVERYTHING into content, even death.

As I write book, I am thinking about how "viral news" infects traditional news media processes but—like viruses themselves—viral news connects us.

What does that connection look like?

How does it disrupt certain power structures & reinforce others?

Do these memes fall into the dynamic @taoleighgoffe references here from @ProfessorEA? https://twitter.com/taoleighgoffe/status/1277601584705351685