Political Memes

I mean… She’s taking the ambiguity in the original statement and using it to make a valid point about how the country has never healed the wounds of slavery, and the concepts of unity and division continue to play a significant role in racial oppression.

But also… In order to do it, she had to ignore the context of how the original statement tends to be used. Which is something like: “This information ecosystem pushes everyone to express a controversial opinion about every little thing, and willingly misread others’ words in the least charitable way possible in order to use them as fodder for establishing in-group status, and that leads to a political identity so far removed from the reality of lived experience that it can only exist as hot takes, memes, and clap-backs.”

And in that sense… Her words aren’t wrong, but her words also aren’t the actual message. The actual message is: “Any time someone complains that social media creates a hostile, divisive environment of one-upsmanship over phrases, you can one-up them with this phrase”.

Also: I am aware that I’m also trying to one-up a social media post on social media! It’s status games all the way down, as Andrew Potter points out in this interview on The Authenticity Hoax. Successfully contrasting against the prevailing culture is how the prevailing culture gets built. I just… hope we start to build a culture that’s more critical of the way the tech fascists abuse that cultural pump to their own benefit.