By now, Beyonce’s controversial halftime performance at the Superbowl has been scrutinized and picked apart by every media outlet. It’s old news. Superbowl Sunday came and went, and now we are left waiting for the next controversy to flare up so we can converge on it and make news of it. My opinion, which doesn’t mean much when compared to the size of the Internet, is that her performance at the halftime show really doesn’t deserve a social outcry.
It almost feels as if this generation of bloggers, tweeters and keyboard warriors deserve a movement for any little thing that could be used for their own agenda. One example of this mentality is the #alllivesmatter movement. In 2014, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin Case, community organizers founded the #allblacklivesmatter movement. This cause, that is reminiscent of the African-American civil rights movement, was soon criticized by blank faces all over the Internet. (I’m sure it was also picked apart by different media outlets, but in this case the Internet is much more vicious in its content.) The opposition to this movement soon produced the pseudo-movement #alllivesmatter.
I can’t really wrap my head around this concept for two reasons. The first being how ignorant the Internet is for having to remind itself that all lives do indeed matter. The second being that a response like #alllivesmatter is like going to a cancer support group and interrupting the meeting with, “Hey guys, I know you’re going through this hard time, but let’s not forget that all diseases matter.” It’s sort of sweeping things under the rug. It’s almost gentrifying the movement itself.
This isn’t the only example I could use. There are thousands of instances where social outcries are lost in the mix by even louder social outcries. Unfortunately, some of these people on the Internet are fighting for an actual cause. There are issues and events that do require our attention. Actual journalists and advocates are fighting and trying to wrestle our attention from things like Beyonce’s performance at a football game, or Kanye’s beef with Wiz Khalifa. I know people who have been across the ocean trying to inform the public about ISIS, about conditions in countries that aren’t as fortunate as we are. This attitude of being politically correct about everything and watching where we step so we don’t offend anyone needs to change.
In reality, I know that not every person who owns a Facebook account will stop sharing posts that hold no weight in the issues that they address, or people will stop tweeting ignorance about anything. It’s nearly impossible to imagine a society where we can ignore things that have no relevance and focus on issues that affect the world around us. It’s wishful thinking of someone who is socially aware of their surroundings to try and rally people to think on a larger scale, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Not everything warrants a social outcry, just the things that affect us all. We must be proactive about things around us before something that could’ve been prevented happens.
