I would hazard a guess that many people reading this heard about #thedress. It’s a picture of a dress that was posted online and is lit in such a way that certain people see it as black and blue, while others see gold and white. This picture caused many an existential crisis (or maybe just for me) and was all over my Facebook for about 24 hours.
I admit, I was one of those who talked about it a lot, getting people’s opinions and trying to find a reason for why we were all seeing it differently (actually, I wigged out any time someone saw it different than me). Eventually, as with all things viral, it got played out and a little annoying constantly seeing it in my Facebook newsfeed. C’est la vie; that’s the Internet.
One thing I saw a lot, and that I see whenever something dumb and funny goes viral is the following: “Why are you worrying about this when children are dying in Africa? Why do you care about funny cat videos when ISIS is killing people in Syria?”
Look, I agree that maybe people don’t care enough about what’s going on in the world. But that doesn’t mean that people only have to care about others or they’re terrible human beings.
Attention isn’t finite. Believe it or not, people do have the ability to care about many things at once. It’s condescending and belittling to try to police what people care about. Besides, a lot of the time, the person making the comments is no social justice activist himself. Maybe they read the odd article about ISIS and think they’re so advanced beyond everyone else who still cares what people wore at the Oscars.
I also see this a lot in complaints about feminism: human trafficking is a huge issue, so why are you talking about how men yell at you in the street? They’re not hurting you, right? People care about many different things at many different times, and if you feel like you can’t, maybe you’re the one with the problem.
This ties into another problem I have, where people who like fluff and lighter things are looked down upon by those who see themselves as more serious. I actually had this problem a lot in journalism school, where people talked about reading the New Yorker and the Walrus and I always dreaded being asked, “What’s your favourite publication?” because my answer is People Magazine and I knew I would be getting looks. I like chick lit and romantic comedies and half-hour sitcoms, but I also read nonfiction books and love history. Because people are complex and can use their brainpower to think of any number of things.
Besides, it’s not like posting a link to an article about ISIS is going to make a difference in that issue. Unless I’m actively working against ISIS, I’m not making any more of a difference than if I post yet another link to #thedress.
It’s not your business what I decide to pay attention to, because human beings all have free will. It’s okay to care about fluff stuff sometimes; it’s not inherently bad. If you care so much about other countries, you can fundraise for them. That would for sure help the world more than hectoring people who dare to care about that llama chase in Arizona.
