Lithium Magazine
  • Home
  • About
    • Editors
    • Writers
    • Artists
    • Photographers
  • Contact
    • Work With Us
  • Events
  • Shop
  • Read
    • Sex & Love
    • Culture & Entertainment
    • News & Politics
    • Life
    • Photography
Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
Followers
Followers
Lithium Magazine
Lithium Magazine
  • Home
  • About
    • Editors
    • Writers
    • Artists
    • Photographers
  • Contact
    • Work With Us
  • Events
  • Shop
  • Read
    • Sex & Love
    • Culture & Entertainment
    • News & Politics
    • Life
    • Photography
  • News & Politics

#BlackOutTuesday Isn’t Helping Anyone

  • June 2, 2020
  • One comment
  • 4 minute read
  • Kenneth Kim

It’s been a tumultuous week in America, filled with burning Targets, unhelpful celebrity responses, and valid black anger in response to centuries of suffering. But this morning, I woke up to a new trend that quickly and very obviously became a large sham—the #blackouttuesday challenge. 

The concept is simple: post a simple black square and caption it #blacklivesmatter and #blackouttuesday to show solidarity. On paper, the concept makes sense—what better way to showcase widespread solidarity than to fill everyone’s social media with the same unrelenting hashtag? But the problem isn’t with the intent—it’s the impact.

As of the morning of June 2nd, most of the #blacklivesmatter hashtag is filled to the brim with black squares. This is extremely harmful; what used to populate the #blacklivesmatter hashtag were details on how best to protect yourself in the riots, links to bail funds, and informational posts about local black businesses to support. But now, all of these posts have been pushed out in favor of the blackout.

Attention economy, or the “‘bottleneck of human thought’ that limits both what we can perceive in stimulating environments and what we can do,” according to the Berkeley Economic Review, is essentially the amount of information that people can intake at any one given moment. In 2020, social media capitalizes on this; it’s why the entire practice of social media-specific marketing exists. On Instagram, the space you occupy on both someone’s timeline and the hashtags they interact with is attention economy at its finest, which makes the clogging of these hashtags all the more damaging.

When many of my mutuals realized this, they began to advocate for changing these captions from #blacklivesmatter to conversative hashtags like #trump2020 and #makeamericagreatagain. Their intention was simple: by blocking conservative hashtags from viewing relative information, conservatives would have to confront the Black Lives Matter movement. While this, once again, seems to be productive in theory—after all, wouldn’t inconveniencing conservatives on their hashtags offset the damage done to the #blacklivesmatter hashtag?—the argument falls apart once examined outside of its vacuum.

To go back to the concept of attention economy, the effectiveness of bombarding a hashtag heavily relies upon the subject matter of said hashtag. The more serious and necessary a hashtag is, the more damaging these blackouts become. Before conservative hashtags were overridden with black squares, most of what populated these hashtags were conservative memes. Did they carry a dangerous ideology? Yes. Is removing them from the hashtag completely removed from positive impact? Of course not. But this is a false equivalence; populating these two hashtags couldn’t be any different. One set of hashtags, once populated, caused conservative people to lose a space to see memes. Annoying, yes, but certainly not something that is important to conservatives right now. They can always view memes at a later point, or just go on Twitter or Reddit instead. On the other hand, the takeover of the #blacklivesmatter hashtag has culminated in the destruction of resources and information that would have been vital to rioters, protesters, and those at home. For many, the #blacklivesmatter hashtag was a hub of valuable information.

And that’s at the heart of this, really. Impact will always remain more important than intent. Even if the black squares were posted with the best intentions—I’m positive that no one who posted a black square intended to silence black men and women, trans and cis, who desperately require #blacklivesmatter for a level of centralization surrounding their movements—they ultimately served only to kick back against the movement. This is neoliberal nonsensicality at its finest: a focus on the destruction of conservative ideology without any thought given to the detrimental impact on black communities. 

Currently, the largest petition concerning George Floyd is at 11,778,706 signatures. On Instagram, the #blackouttuesday hashtag has 24,071,314 signatures. That’s a deficit of 12,292,608 signatures minimum. 

When harmful trends like these forego relaying actual, tangible change under the guise of raising awareness, the actual impact could not be any more harmful; there is nothing good that comes out of this. We are one week into the largest unified set of riots in the 21st century. If awareness is to be raised, it must be done so economically, sharing its space on the timeline alongside real resources that will help people better understand Black Lives Matter and the protests. Real solidarity is allowing black people to have access to the resources and information that will help them, not creating an ocean of empty posts interfering with the conversations to be had. These are not conversation starters.

Delete your black square. Post information and resources that spread actual awareness. Don’t sacrifice your contribution to the attention economy. Black Lives Matter.

 

By Kenneth Kim

Related Topics
  • activism
  • black lives matter
  • Instagram
  • Kenneth Kim
  • politics
  • social media
Previous Article
  • News & Politics

Black People Are Tired and Angry. You Should Be Too.

  • June 2, 2020
  • Kalena Chiu
View Post
Next Article
  • News & Politics

Police Brutality in America: When Will It Ever End?

  • June 3, 2020
  • Sanai Rashid
View Post
You May Also Like
View Post
  • News & Politics

How the Left Is Becoming Reactionary

  • March 4, 2021
  • Joseph Kay
View Post
  • News & Politics

r/WallStreetBets Was Never David

  • February 24, 2021
  • Jill Risberg
View Post
  • News & Politics

The $1,400 Question (and the Unwanted Unity in Its Answer)

  • February 18, 2021
  • Sophia Moore
View Post
  • News & Politics

The Impossibilities of Joe Biden’s COVID-Riddled America

  • January 31, 2021
  • Kenneth Kim
View Post
  • News & Politics

The Ideology Behind Anti-Vax Mommy Bloggers and QAnon Followers 

  • January 25, 2021
  • Cierra Bettens
View Post
  • News & Politics

Why Do Leftist Men Still Hate Women?

  • January 20, 2021
  • Sarah Bennett
View Post
  • News & Politics

Trump’s America Is Nothing New, But I Hope We Learn From It.

  • January 8, 2021
  • Simisola Fagbemi
View Post
  • News & Politics

The Day Georgia Made History, Again.

  • January 7, 2021
  • Raven Yamamoto
1 comment
  1. lucy says:
    June 3, 2020 at 12:03 am

    thank you so much for speaking out kenny!!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Featured Posts
  • 1
    We’re Not Really Strangers Makes Me Feel Held
    • March 5, 2021
  • 2
    How the Left Is Becoming Reactionary
    • March 4, 2021
  • 3
    Sexual Empowerment or Reckless Endangerment?
    • March 2, 2021
  • 4
    What’s the Point of “Fake Accounts”?
    • March 1, 2021
  • 5
    Oops!… We Did It Again: Why We Get Off on Women’s Pain
    • February 28, 2021
Recent Posts
  • “Whole Lotta Red”: A Feverish and Avant-Garde End to 2020
    • February 28, 2021
  • Blind Worship and the Films of Quentin Tarantino
    • February 27, 2021
  • Why You Should Reject Music Elitism
    • February 26, 2021
Categories
  • Culture & Entertainment (141)
  • Fashion & Beauty (31)
  • Life (134)
  • News & Politics (70)
  • Photography (63)
  • Sex & Love (68)
Search
Instagram
@nat.geisel discovered @werenotreallystrangers one month into quarantine, virtually getting to know while concurrently falling in love with her girlfriend at the time, by playing their free, downloadable quarantine edition with her over FaceTime. We’re Not Really Strangers reminds us that even through sadness, anxiety, and emotions we can’t exactly name, we are all trying our best. Check out the latest on Lithium now ♥️
The left is becoming reactionary. Blame it on the proliferation of liberalism or whatever, but you can’t deny that a lot of leftists today constantly moralize, seeing personal flaws as akin to structural ones. Instead of politics of reaction, we should be practicing politics of actions. As @kosherwhitewine writes, “Instead of treating leftism like an inclusive club, we must treat it as it’s meant to be—as a collective banner under which we march toward the liberation of all people. We don’t break each other down; we build each other up, standing together, fighting together.” Read about it on Lithium now 🗣
OnlyFans, selling worn underwear, sex work—are these acts of sexual empowerment or reckless endangerment? As Modesty Sanchez writes, “Because OnlyFans creators are portrayed as entrepreneurs taking control of their image and brand, the role that the platform itself plays is often obscured and dismissed, especially since the company prefers to hide behind the feminist, sex-positive glow emanating from the sex workers that have flocked to the site.” Often, the dangers of online and IRL sex work are simply swept to the side while corporate exploitation is covered up by a girl boss narrative. Read the latest on Lithium now ⚡️
What’s the point of “Fake Accounts”? Written by Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts is a perfect addition to the list of much-overhyped millennial reading: Normal People, Bad Feminist, How to Do Nothing, etc. And if Oyler wasn’t such a harsh critic of that specific literary circle, this novel would just be another pretty well-written, unmoving book. But Oyler has gone after too many media darlings like Sally Rooney, Jia Tolentino and Roxane Gay in open takedowns that center on her distaste for moralizing, self-absorbed, digital-first writing. Read Lithium writer @katwilliiams take on this book, live on the site now 📚
Britney Spears, Tessica Brown “Gorilla Glue Girl,” and trauma porn all have something in common—they are representations of our fascination with women’s pain. In @tamaravjones’s latest piece for Lithium, she points out that “It’s up to readers to support better journalism and think about the consequences before sharing their unfiltered hot takes on social media. Britney Spears’ legal battle will continue and inevitably, someone else will take Tessica Brown’s spot as the internet’s main character, and I can only hope that we manage to break this cycle before someone else gets hurt.” Live on Lithium now 💫
Playboi Carti’s newest album Whole Lotta Red is the rapper’s ARTPOP. While it’s different from a lot of the rap dominating the Billboard 100, Carti does something a lot of mainstream acts are afraid to do: experiment. Lithium writer @kaiya.shunyata dives deep into Whole Lotta Red and discusses how the album, like Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP, is a fantastic work of exploration and departure from the rap that mostly dominated 2020. Read about it now 🎧
When you’re first getting into film, you tend to hear the same names repeated over and over again: Fincher, Scorsese, and, most of all, Tarantino. But when @kaiya.shunyata rewatched his directorial debut Reservoir Dogs, she couldn’t help but think of his mistreatment of actresses (notably, Uma Thurman), his use of the N-word in films, sprinkled in like a garnish he and his fans can’t live without, and decades of controversies. She writes, “It’s become impossible to ignore the way Tarantino has been worshipped, while simultaneously not changing the things for which he’s been criticized.” Read about it on Lithium now 🎬
Middle school sux. Hulu’s Pen15 follows thirteen-year-old best friends Maya and Anna as they tackle an endless seventh-grade year. From day one, they face humiliations that only strike when you are thirteen, like bad haircuts and periods. But Pen15 sets itself apart from all the other middle school dramas by not only having good stories and actors, but drawing attention to the fact that even performing thirteen is a complex thing. Read about it now on Lithium, written by Jade Stillwell 📚
We’re all culprits in contributing to the shame and embarrassment that have become synonymous with listening to specific artists. Rex Orange County has become the unofficial pinnacle of a wannabe-indie girl who’s a regular Urban Outfitters patron. A Smiths fan is egotistical and decidedly unable to get laid. Bon Iver attracts the coffee shop connoisseur with a God complex. @elliergreenberg’s latest is all about why you should reject music elitism— this one is a must-read. Live on Lithium now 🎵

Input your search keywords and press Enter.