The Orlando shooting was the biggest in American history, 50 dead and over 53 injured. It will go down as one of the most infamous events in our nation's history. However, something the history books will not remember in 2116 is the battle that happened on social media following the shooting. From all angles, people were talking; talking about their sympathies for the gay community, talking about how an AR-15 isn't an automatic weapon, talking about how we should ban assault weapons, talking about if it's better if we should all have guns or if no one should have guns. Talking, talking, talking, all while no one opened their mouthes.
Something has definitely changed.
Bands seem to go through the same evolution thematically. With some exceptions (Sufjan Stevens), it usually goes like this: start with personal, even esoteric stories and themes in the first few albums, and then, once popularity and cultural relevance has been earned, go toward the zeitgeist. Radiohead had "Creep" in their first album and then "2+2=5" in their fifth, for example.
Social media has seemed to follow that suit. Think back to what stocked the Facebook feed a few years ago, and you'll see pictures from parties and events, as well as statuses pertaining to things that happened to those people during the day. Only rarely would you see someone talking about something that happened in the realm of politics or culture. It was mostly just about the individual. It was self-absorption at its finest.
Then something changed.
More people followed suit, and everyone starting giving their opinions on culture and politics. And then the election race started heating up, giving people even more of a motivation. After being put aside for more appealing offers at the time like Instagram and Twitter, Facebook was back like nothing had happened. Odyssey became a millennial phenomenon, giving people even more of an opportunity to give their opinions, and now they can splurge, taking 500 or 1,000 words to get their opinions out there. NowThis and NowThisElection received seven million likes combined. Now, the personal Facebook status was the odd one out, like the uplifting story of personal triumph they put at the very end of the 5 o'clock news.
Why the change? One can say the election, and I think that has at least some influence, but if you look at what's being talked about on social media, it's not all election talk. There are issues like gun control that are discussed, issues that are tangentially, but not directly, correlated to the election. There are also issues that are strictly cultural, like the Stanford rape case.
I think this evolution was natural. I don't think we're necessarily more interested in talk about social issues than we were before, nor do I think we're necessarily more inclined to talk about them. I think that we are just as interested and inclined to talk about our personal lives, as well as politics and culture, as we were before, but now we've found the best way to talk about both of them respectively.
If you are at lunch break at work and you bring up a controversial issue with your coworker, your coworker will be compelled to respond, whether he or she agrees or disagrees with the issue. If he or she agrees, great. If he or she disagrees? There might be some trouble. On the other hand, when you discuss a controversial issue on social media, it's much easier for someone who agrees with you to like the status than for someone who disagrees with you to dispute it in the comments section. No one feels compelled to make any input because, on social media, you are not seen until you are. There's no indicator that you've read someone's status, so if you don't agree with someone's viewpoint, you can just scroll down, as apposed to the lunch break at work where you'd have to either stay quiet or hastily change the subject.
It's makes sense, too, both conversationally and phonetically, for you to reserve your personal life for when you're talking to someone in person. When someone's talking to you, they want to find out about you, not necessarily your opinions on what's happening in the world. You can turn on the television any time of the day and see someone blow hard talk about it. Not to mention it makes more sense to keep one's life private, at least in the confidence of one other person, instead of on the internet, there to stay forever and for everyone.
Being that social media is hypocritically the millennial generation's biggest punching bag, I'm sure you expected me to talk about how horrid this evolution is to the already horrid horror that is social media, but I think this is what I described it: an evolution. It's a great step forward. That doesn't mean that there aren't a few bugs, though. For one, we are no longer talking about ourselves, but about cultural and political hot topics and there are only so many of these topics to go around. It's easy to get caught up and say the exact same thing as ten million other people. There's only so many times you can call Donald Trump a bigot before it loses its jazz. I'm not saying stay away from the biggest of the big topics, but don't compromise your originality for it. Instead, critique Trump on his view on political correctness. It's something new, something that contributes to society, something thought-provoking, and isn't that what social media is trying to achieve?
Maybe, after this election, we'll stop talking about politics and culture, either because either Bernie or Hillary won and America doesn't like to talk about politics if it doesn't have to do with the presidential race, or because Trump won and his "lack," to put it generously, of foreign policy experience has started total nuclear war. Either way, there is still that prospect. However, hopefully we will remember the advances we have made culturally this year, understanding how important it is to talk about things like this, and we will keep it going, Orlando and beyond.
