Imma really need people to stop shaming those of us who utilize Facebook/Instagram/Tumblr. We engage with social media in many different ways and for a myriad of reasons (that honestly is not anyone elses business and shouldnt be up for dissection, critique, or interrogation). Scrutinizing the survival mechanisms of people in any capacity in an act of violence. Like, nobody owes you an explanation. There are many of us who live in extreme isolation with such intimacy offline that our online communities are literally our survival. We utilize social media as a method in which to escape some of the violence imposed upon us in our day-to-day lives. Many of us use our social media presence to be affirmed, valued, reflected and celebrated in environments that insist on upholding our dehumanization and rejection. We use it as a space to expel some of the falsehoods we are forced to internalize about ourselves; a platform to place our truths. As institutionally disenfranchised people whose communities have (and continue to be) subject to historical erasure, siege, and occupation, we trace our genealogies to a diaspora; overlapping forces of colonialism and imperialism have meant (& continue to mean) that our communities and families are fragmented. Scattered. Made distant in intentionally violent ways. We dont have to be complacent in the ways colonialism and capitalism has displaced us; we can exercise our collective agency over these dominant forces and (re)claim, (re)discover, and (re)create meaningful ways to engage with one another on our own terms. Social media can be and *is* (for me) a way to resist against the formulaic ways that hegemonic dominant norms demand I live disjointed and separated from my families.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 14:25:24 +0000
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