Performing is the New Black.

The desire to appear in touch and aligned with various ideas and movements is eroding the work activists are putting in.

Photo by Mike Von on Unsplash

“The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, It Is Obscene

Social media is one helluva of a drug. Soothing, stifling, and stinging, it creates the conversations we feed off and feeds the negativity we internalize whether we are aware of it. Many people see the response and backlash people get when they violate social media norms and have rightfully adjusted their approach to issues they are unfamiliar with. This has caused others to take these terms and ideas that they hardly know about and flaunt them on their pages for attention.

However, this creates a landscape where we see people falsely proclaiming allegiance to ideas and morals for attention while destroying others for being true to the learning process. Is that what we want from a platform dedicated to dialogue?

I get it. It is important for us to see the realities we want and nothing makes us feel better than seeing negative narratives being challenged and corrected in live time. Imagine the…