Neil:On June 2nd, our Instagram feeds went dark.
Blackout Tuesday, dreamed up by music executives Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas, marked an important stage in the Black Lives Matter movement this year. On June 2nd, the fervour of street demonstrations transcended the gravel and was matched on social media when users uploaded a black square in order to consider prejudice within themselves and their communities. Millions of posts were uploaded with the hashtag #blackouttuesday and looked to freeze the constant flurry the average Instagrammer is accustomed to and instead create an environment for much needed reflection. The campaign began against a backdrop of the recent murder of George Floyd, who after having been suffocated by police on May 25th became a rallying point for scores of Americans and people all over the world exhausted and endangered by institutional racism. However, though it pointed to an unparalleled level of visibility towards the movement, it faced skepticism from the most engaged in the movement for its ease of involvement and little action further than a black square. At best, critics of Blackout Tuesday claim, social media initiatives in this vein allow for widespread virtue signalling (posting socially conscious messages on social media primarily to boost one’s profile) at and worst reward flippant engagement in a struggle that requires the utmost engagement from every would be activist.
The question as to whether casual social media activism was an effective or commendable stand against systemic racism, asked before the blackout, didn’t slow many down: the hashtag had 10 million posts in a matter of hours and remains for many (especially those living outside the US) the most significant or only act of protest they witnessed in a summer of unrest. Perhaps it was the pandemic that kept the masses indoors and pushed their protests into the virtual dimension, but would it be such a reach to say that young people of today have created a culture where their apprehensions prevail over drive to act, thanks to an online social jungle of implicitness and indirectness? Is it a symptom of our smartphone-armed adolescence that this sort of ‘slacktivism,’ which lets our comfort zones remain intact and plays the social media game of maintaining the perfect persona, reigned supreme this summer? Surely the same was not true 50 odd years ago when hordes of young people descended on American cities in the name of equality- would anything short of boots on the ground have been acceptable then?
On the other hand, Gen Z’s simple truth of an increasingly digital experience demands an approach to any problem today that is tailor-made to our lives. If activism must be digital to allow more engagement (however casual), then so be it. Social media will continue to be the vehicle of choice of this generation for any conversation worth having, and it is time to work that realization into efforts to combat the injustices around us. On platforms where virality and trendiness are chief, though, it was inevitable that Black Lives Matter eventually fell out of fashion, as any active Instagrammer will recall.
However, it would be irresponsible to shrug off Blackout Tuesday and similar initiatives as all for nothing.
There is a case to be made that the attention from social media trends thrust the issue into national and international discussion, with the issue of institutional racism among the most mentioned in the two presidential debates of this American election. It would be foolish to ignore that without social media as a convenient tool, those who became involved would not have been involved in the first place, and thus the key cluster of changemakers remain engaged like in any other activism (with some support, perhaps, from those spurred into action by their Instagram feeds.) In general, it’s safe to assume many who risked that most precious clout on social media to spread awareness on these issues remain concerned about them today- legions willing to create a more conscious population. Yes, Black Lives Matter as it presented itself online this summer may have been a fad, but it continues to possess the potential to be a catalyst for a change. Change, hopefully, with a definitively un-fad-like permanence.
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