Escaping a mass media complicit in death
Avoiding fear as a currency for action
I have started and stopped writing this several times. The potential to write or say the wrong thing has been a constant worry, compounded by the hideousness present in nearly all the media this week in America.
I am saddened that seven men died this week for no reason. While the dust has not yet settled, it is enough to say that each man showed extreme bravery in the face of fear and evil. Each was a victim of some injustice, whether willfully prompted or by some flaw in our humanity.
However, I am sickened by the grotesque images I have seen and continue to see on television and media following every new tragedy. This week was Facebook Live’s moment. Live video of people running from shootings, a woman crying on camera after the death of her loved one, interviews with friends and family about their “take” on the deaths. When asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo about the shooting in Dallas, Philando Castile’s mother responded, “my son died just the other day.”
Each time I watch or experience these moments I cringe and think to myself “I don’t belong here, I don’t deserve to be a part of this. Why are you making me watch this?” That feeling is one of intimacy. It is that emotion we all feel after watching but cannot explain. It is that which drives our loneliness and feeling of powerlessness.
In this social media age, the overwhelming barrage of tragedies rightly stuns us, but wrongly tempts us to believe a tweet or Facebook post is a substitute for substantive action. This imagery has become the quintessential substance of every watershed event — the required reading if you really want to CARE about what is going on or even want to participate in the discussion. After the Orlando club shooting, I remember two of the victims whose injuries had not been fatal were rolled out on gurneys to explain what happened to hundreds of cameras. As if their immediate testimony was demanded for anything other than to satisfy our insatiable desire to intrude upon the intimacy of horror.
The potentiality to personally relate, for us to become instantly livid — victims in our own right — trumps all other logical responses to death and victimization.
It is important to note that sometimes these personal statements and videos do lead to good and expose unknown social problems. For example, the Arab Spring or the ALS ice bucket challenge. However, it is a fool’s errand to believe that we can build conscientious resolve to solve and combat these problems with such transient communications and media that last a day.
Technology has made media shorter and more digestible. The transaction costs are nearly free and the scale has become immense. A story, once told soberly through a newspaper or evening show, is now instantly transmitted to your smartphone. And the form is a video of a woman crying over her boyfriend who has just been killed. The potentiality to personally relate, for us to become instantly livid — victims in our own right — trumps all other logical responses to death and victimization.
Terrible things happen. However, as despondent Americans, we have worked tirelessly to escape this reality. We constantly develop new gizmos to numb the pain of the world around us; a world we characterize as despair. Moments come and leave, amplified by technology, but we are personally unaffected. Like any distraction, though, the numbness only peels away our attention and keeps us from learning concrete lessons from death and terror. It makes us less prepared for the inevitable moment when that despair reaches our doorstep.
We used to mourn our dead and let more rational minds bring about justice through the peaceful due process of law. Now, this phenomenon has supplanted the old structure and brought about a new phase of democracy.
We have reached a new stage in media, one where moral justice is brought about by visual and emotional movements of the collective mind. Now, emotional catharsis springs up to defend justice and thwart the powers of evil for the span of a three-day news cycle. Issue advocacy groups are suddenly flung into action. Justice is dealt, the quantitative equivalent of trending topics and television air-time. If you are getting earned media, you are winning the justice war. We are talking about blacks, we are talking about cops, we are talking about guns.
But our narratives are bullshit. White, black, criminal, cop, armed, unarmed. These words all demonstrate the acute lack of personal control we have over the events that transpire and our unwillingness to take personal responsibility. Worse, these are merely cues the media feeds us on how to react and interact with each other on the issues at hand. The chief aim is, of course, to feed the news cycle and drive more content, not stir a movement of the heart.
Those who believe that politicians are the ones seeking to earn political points from tragedies are blind to media’s role in perpetuating these conflicts. Jack Gerard explains how the media world we have built thrives on chaos and hyperbole:
Endless feedback loops are meant to produce endless actions taken in a digitally and socially contrived world. If visibility produces money and controversy produces visibility, then sending everyone into an occasional frenzy over short-lived (and short-remembered) scandals is a cost-effective way of producing tremendous profits.
The major media sellers — Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc — must all love when Drudge or some other publication produces editorial taboo. Or when a terrible event escalates a national conversation over x, y, and z. Suddenly the whole internet is up in arms, driving content, traffic, ads and demanding more conversation over absolute nothingness. All of which earn a tidy profit.
If visibility produces money and controversy produces visibility, then sending everyone into an occasional frenzy over short-lived (and short-remembered) scandals is a cost-effective way of producing tremendous profits.
There will always be people who stand to gain from convincing us we are each other’s sworn enemies. But we must resist at all costs to be swept up into the visual narratives others have built. It is in these narratives that greater hatred is born of delusion and mental illness. It is an improper experience with intimacy that leads to the wrong kind of action.
When the dust has finally settled here (or rather, we have become bored of the topic), we will have likely accomplished nothing other than making black people more afraid of police and police more afraid of black people. A circular effect. The phenomenon is not so dissimilar from Masamune Shirow’s fictional “stand alone complex” where actions taken are seen as part of a collective will that has no origin, organization or purpose. They are merely results of a media-crazed society that taps into an unexplainable hysteria and exerts an unreconcilable force.
Media has always done this, right? It has always been to their benefit to channel scandals into commercial profit. However, the new danger here is the instant gratification (or terror) in how Facebook Live, Periscope or other instant media, inject individuals directly into intimate situations where they do not belong. A story, once told through a lens of rationality is now instantly delivered to your handheld computer. Could this extremely democratic and individualistic response to tragedy eventually replace law and reason?
I hope not.
This post is dedicated these men: Alton Sterling, Philando Castille, Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith & Lorne Ahrens.
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“Those of us who are not African American will never fully understand the experience of being black in America. But we should all understand why our fellow Americans in the black community are angry at the images of an African American man, with no criminal record, who was pulled over for a busted tail light, slumped in his car seat and dying while his 4 year old daughter watches from the back seat.” Senator Marco Rubio
