Color-Coded Connections: The State of American Politics and Culture Expressed in Color
For a man who is prone to name calling, the current president has an abundance of names himself. The Orange Man. The Donald. Mr. President. #NotMyPresident. Once you see any of these names, you instantly know who is being talked about. And you instantly have an opinion. Such is the nature of this man, and such is the immense aura that his very name commands in the lexicon of this generation and the culture surrounding it. Some view him as a savior, while others view him as the ultimate enemy of a savior to be. Your (likely strong) opinion of the man says less about the fractured states of this era of politics than the very fact that you already have a (likely strong) opinion of him in the first place. What does it say about our politics that red and blue colors are almost as good as maps when it comes to visually dividing the country into pure domains?
We as a country are united by our ability to hate the other. If the internet and social media has shown us anything, it’s that reds loathing blues and blues loathing reds result in massive discrimination among those who wish to have the right to be purple, or to live in a purple country, if there are any of the purple race left at this point to begin with.
And yet, on a surface level, the internet and social media has shown us that there is plenty of purple. Zoom out of this red and blue map far enough using your iPhone camera (or Android, if you can’t stand Apple products or don’t like standing in line in front of an Apple store), and you’ll see that purple is what is posted on your feed. Purple is the color of laughter that sprouts out when you see a meme that perfectly describes how agonizing it feels to procrastinate on a paper, or a meme that perfectly portrays the concept of mockery by using alternating uppercase and lowercase letters. Purple is the laughter that both reds and blues give when they watch a video of an idiot tripping on himself when he deserved it, or when people use Twitter to post aesops with the vast philosophical depth of modern Socrates or Plato. Purple is traditionally referred to as the color of regalia, but could it also be the color of shared connection? You can argue that the easiest way to show how purple we are is to post the mocking caricature of a yellow sponge on the internet, and watch the entirety of the digital community repeatedly rally around his latest meme of the month, regardless of whether or not you are red, or blue, or purple, or black, or white, or rainbow.
The internet has made it easy for this generation to view things in terms of color. The development of the internet and its many technological offshoots, such as social media and the near necessity of smart phones in modern culture, is arguably the defining invention of this generation. It’s used to raise awareness for causes that many care about, or don’t care about, or have never even heard of before. It is a place where people can just as easily be “cancelled” as they can be consecrated in pop culture: The court of public opinion now firmly resides in a digital courthouse, its jury the profile pictures and names of millions of people willing to speak, sometimes with anonymity and always, no matter how undeserved, with confidence. The world is more connected now than it has ever been, thanks to the internet. Suddenly an array of infinite colors, colors more intimate and personal and individualized than the basic “red” or “blue,” are available one screen tap away.
To some, the massive array of color is beautiful, a reminder that as humans we all have lives and opinions that bring depth to the world that we live in. To others, the very existence of other colors, or even different shades of a singular color, brought to light by the internet, is a challenge to the very core of their existence, and must be eliminated at all costs. To a different group, the influx of bright pigments seems to drown out their own, and as a result they feel lonely and less fluorescent. Whether or not the apparent prevalence of mental health disorders has increased in this generation due to the internet is beside the point; this era contains the first generation where being connected can you make you feel completely disconnected at the same time.
At least we can all agree that we are all connected by the ever looming feeling of knowing that we are at the precipice for great change, in technology, politics, our environment, and society in general. Whether we are excited or scared for what looms beyond this horizon is the question that ever presently hovers over our collective populace, and the current lack of a definitive answer occupies our thoughts, revealing in all of us a sense of cautious optimism and confusion that color on its own cannot ever hope to accurately express.
