shame roulette: late-stage online activism
"weapons of mass division" - is this something?
unfrosted: tokyo drift
america be privatizing the fuck arounds and socializing the find outs
2 frost 2 furious
“did it hurt? when two things were true at the same time?”
unfrosted: hobbs and chocula
“no one throwing ass in the club no more, it’s the silence of the yams”
un-4-sted: kramer says the n-word
inside out 3: zoloft enters the chat
be wary of those who stand for nothing because they’ll sit out everything and lay with anything
“allow me for a sec — things are so bleak rn in the world fr fr but not for everyone.
if you a big dummy — in all areas, not just generic ignorance — if you’re one of the dumbest bitches who ever walked the earth, this is the best time in human record recorded history for you to thrive.
darwin was wrong — y’all look fit as hell! surviving, thriving, shit — you’re glowing! if you’re stupid, dim, dumb, a simple bitch, a slow mf, lack critical thinking skills, can’t rub two thoughts together in your brain to spark a coherent idea, think one plus one equals you — this, here, right now, is the time for you!
i would say go forth and shine, but you dim as fuck and I love that for you — dummies, please teach us your ways, we need you now more than ever.”
a little OD, sometimes i gotta get my shit off but as always, with intention. i got off social in 2020 because i wrote this exact piece of text in my notes and knew i needed to log off.
there’s a cold case file on the murder of critical thinking. the likely suspects:
lack of education (only getting worse)
lack of emotional intelligence (yeesh)
media literacy rate in the toilet
social media rewarding reactions over responses
“that tiktoker made a 7 part series so it must be true”
“that person has a blue checkmark — must be an authority”
personal reputational awareness coming before historical and situational awareness
imo, the case gonna stay cold because we’re all complicit, and none of us like owning up to our part in it — we all one RICO away, stay safe, beloved. from celebrity blockout lists to amal clooney “disappointing” a few online slacktivists bc she didn’t move on their timeline (even though she was doing more work for the ICC than any of us could from their couches), i’ve been zeroing in on the suspect that rears it’s ugly head time and time again and skates off unscathed.
this week, lemme get my shit off about shame and its role in online activism.
i was raised by an africana studies and political science professor — my pops has always been acutely aware of the dynamics and systems that shaped and misshaped the world we live in. and, after his own education in the united states (after following international radicals and revolutionaries a for his whole life), he made it critical that i was a real reader — if you know me, this ain’t a surprise.
deadass, 8-year-old me was out here doing book reports on mandela biographies and w.e.b. dubois — not just writing, but presenting y’all. safe to say my family had a plan for me.
what was your object permanence moment with bigotry? i was raised like most kids: blank slate, wanted to have fun, play soccer, read tintin, astérix, marvel comics, and harry potter books, have a cool handshake like from rocket power, so on, so forth. but as a kid gets older and starts to individuate, we start to learn similarities and differences, build tribes, us and thems, choose what difference to celebrate and what to isolate
my triple threat moment of racism, police violence, and immigrant justice was the shooting of amadou diallo in the bronx, 1999.
obvious reasons surrounding the police brutality of it all, yes, and acab and all that, but for me, i connected to the fact that was because we had the same name (almost). i think that was the first time i made a giant social issue about me — something we’ve all become very accustomed to in one way shape or form in the last 20 years.
whether it was protests, presentations, panels, or papers, i have always found myself politically active or doing my part. i was canvassing for president in high school (got the shottie pulled out on me, that’s another story though), i organized during black history months, mlk days, juneteenths, ramadans — like a jehovah’s witness of justice.
i gained an affinity for talking about issues and meeting people where they were on issues of immigrant justice, police violence, islamophobia, homophobia, misconceptions about africa, mental health issues, DV, etc.
i was in the mix, i was there, i was outside, i was chatting to people about everything. it’s almost too natural that i became a teacher (and later a professor) but the job is exhausting. meeting people where they were was my thing but that distance felt harder and harder to traverse.
to be brief, things kept coming up that mirrored the prison industrial complex and i don’t bang with that. but the three main things that kept me up at night were:
we aren’t teaching kids the critical thinking skills they need to survive
their education was more regurgitating facts than it was marinating in self-driven thought
shame is a dirty shortcut to changed behavior
having both been a student and a teacher, i felt this schism between wanting to make sure i stopped this shame cycle with me, help them make their own thoughts, and made sure they had the critical thinking plugins to survive in the real world.
i was and always will be lucky to have had a family that had the time to make sure i was inquisitive and learned outside the american indoctrination curriculums but the instinct to shame…it’s insidious, covert, and hard to kill.
shame (somehow also voiced by chris pratt, weird)
“wait…so in the international criminal court…everyone can vote to have a ceasefire in gaza but if only the united states says no…it’s clipped?” a homie texted me a few weeks back.
i responded yes. they then responded, “then what’s the point of the UN and the ICC if they can’t do shit unless the US agrees?”
a voice in my head, familiar yet quiet: “yeah now you getting it, ya simple bitch”
another voice: “whoa whoa whoa where did this sentiment come from, they ain’t know! i’m not just a dick, i’m the balls too”
a third voice: “why don’t people know that these international courts are bureaucratic immersive theater?”
(too many voices but we be having a blast in there)
i’ve known the limits and gradual obscelence of international orgs my entire life; a lot of immigrants or people from countries where wars spark up do. the vast majority of americans spent their entire lives marinating in america’s fantasy of “democracy,” a “trust us, america got it” mentality, and, in some specific cases, believe “the law works as is” and we should “trust the process” — it’s the only truths several generations had access too before social media opened up the floodgates into the age of information.
to take from the truman show “people believe the reality they’re presented with.” for the first time, many people are removing the blindfolds, seeing the lies, and connecting their struggles. but still, there i was, my reactive thought being to shame someone for some shit they didn’t know and never had to interface with which in and of itself? making someone else’s attempt to reconcile what they were told and what’s reality about me? shameful.
shame begetting shame and it came from a person being vulnerable enough to share that they didn’t know something (which is a hit of pure oxygen in the information and social media expert age).
shame addictions and afflictions
the rush of a new experience, learning something wrong, meeting someone new — all hit our dopamine centers and flood our bodies with wonder like a drug. this is as true as an adult as it is as for a kid. but other more toxic variables can manifest from our childhood too: the rush of being right, teetering on a competitive edge and winning, the “in your face” shaming experience when someone’s lost, wrong, or getting in trouble. all of these feelings also evolve and carry into our adulthood.
i know i’m not the first person to cook someone for not knowing something and i know i won’t be the last. but if we don’t excise shame from how we deprogram and re-educate each other about the grey areas of the world we live in, i also know that this movement shit won’t last.
me and my pops talk about how surprised and joyful we are that palestine is still in the news. still a barely comprehensible tragedy, but historically relegated to the footnotes of colonial history and now more center stage. more eyes, education, and empathy has been extended their way than it ever was before in our lives.
harder to control first-hand accounts from the streets and a feral youth movement that went to school doing active shooter drills, i suppose.
i felt the same way with how long the 2020 george floyd protests lasted; i’d grown accustomed to the media’s appetite for coverage waning when no one’s eyes are on the issue. but we were outside, sharing ppe, chanting — community truly in action. my parents were trapped in mauritania for the beginning of lockdown and my dad shared the same sentiment on a phone call. he and my mother tried to keep me inside. i told them i would, i promise.
that same night, we went out to the streets, protesting and marching from barclays over the manhattan bridge, ultimately getting kettled on the bridge by nypd. someone called allies with bikes to the front and a bunch of fresh-faced whites nervously trembled while clutching their european bike frames as if they didn’t know what was at stake — it’s like none of them watched the bridge scene in “selma.” a friend of mine was trying to step up and be a leader, getting increasingly frustrated that no one was giving the 1000+ scared people any guidance. “where are the leaders? why ain’t anyone organizing?”
that’s when i heard that voice for the first time, loudly: “you ain’t read the books? leaders got clapped. people who step up get clapped. malcolm. martin. lumumba. all those ferguson people! we gotta all do the reading and the work — we all need to know our part! why don’t you fucking know that?”
my frustration with the moment. exhaustion at feeling like i had to meet someone where they were again while suspended over the water. surrounded by what felt like useless “allies.” trapped between two platoons of militarized NYPD officers. all mixed with the righteous feeling of wanting to ether my friend right there and then but i realized it wasn’t him. it wasn’t me. it was all of us. and that included me.
we’ve been classically conditioned since childhood to receive validation for good deeds, preferential treatment for keeping that social credit score high, and anything that deviates from that mission feels like it will blow the high. our image and reputation has been called into question if we act (and if we don’t); many people stay in one place, frozen, unable to make any decision, scared to be wrong, scared to stand up, not knowing how to stand up correctly, worried we’ll say the wrong thing and our life gets justine sacco’d (to be clear, fuck her).
a lot of us don’t be knowing but there’s increasing pressure to be not only knowing, but to know the sum of all human knowledge before acting. there’s mad shit i don’t know but what i do know, i know. on the bridge, sudden clarity came to me.
everyone around me was addicted to the feeling of coming together and having a unified goal, something to be morally against. but not everyone knew how to stop it, why we were trapped, the history of what came before, and how we were going to get out of this.
i feel like we naturally tend towards (self-described) justice and schadenfreude — whether we have all the facts or not, it feels good to take out a target. those feelings of dropkicking someone off their high horse often require a target — can’t hit a system or idea but can hit an avatar of it. sometimes, we organize against the system but i’m not alone in observing how we also lash out with shame laterally at people on our level and call it “punching up” because that real oppressive power is hard to dismantle but individuals are easier to topple — can’t deny there’s a logic to it. when those feelings find a physical target, that justice, coming from a place of shaming and blaming hits haaaard.
on either end of the shame stick, it’s a drug, with effects that are harder to quantify than cannabis or hallucinogenic but it feels like we’re all hopelessly addicted.
name, blame, shame…again!
over the years i’ve oscillated between “bring back shame” and “shame is what kills growth” — i don’t think i’m alone in those thoughts. but the latter is much more, sighhhhhh, adult (and correct). but these instances where “shame works” are individually prescribed, not critiquing a system: just people we don’t like. shame, any way you slice it, creates feelings of inadequacy, self-criticism, guilt, anxiety, depression, avoidance of social interactions, reluctance to share and be vulnerable, blaming others, aggression, and loneliness — all both antithetical to cultivating community and our first line of defense (or offense masquerading as defense).
the lines between protesting, propping up, surviving, and being a product of interconnected oppressive systems get crossed often. in a judgemental culture where we reward shaming, eyes narrow, lips whisper, and group chats light up at the slightest perception of public vs. private moral misalignments. we disincentivize trying things for fear of errors. we protest perfectionism while also requiring it.
if not that, we demand people morally or intellectually meet us where we are in an increasingly polarized culture — people left in the gap are forced to pick a side or plummet. in an age of various radicalizations meeting shameless opportunists, we might be in small or large part responsible for creating our next boogeymen.
can’t speak for everyone but since i’ve been online, shame has been the name of the game to find some gains. i’d been politically active online since trayvon martin in 2012 — call me crazy but online activism back then felt truly like it was illuminating something for some people. “post-racialism” couldn’t explain george zimmerman’s murdering of trayvon, the horribly biased media coverage, or treat police violence as abhorrent as easily. some of those gains came from collective action on the ground and some of it came from online lambasting of the more conservative, still more covert racists of the time. these shameless people gained more power in the 12 years since, denied our basic rights and collective human dignity with no repercussions, and their hypocritical uncooked antebellum biscuit-looking ass bleach blonde, bad-built, butch bodies could be pushed down an elevator shaft and i’d look away. one thing that scares me is that shame isn’t working against them at all.
we pull up to their houses, the restaurants, run up on them as they're getting into their cars, and they still go collect their lobbying check and vote against our human rights. it makes us feel insane but then again who are the people trying the same shame game over and over again? i’m not saying let biden and his complicity off the hook — he’s the president, he signed up for this — it’s a greenlight on any elected official actually. that's a specific institutional power that actually “legislates” they should work for us. shame isn't working on ‘em. so where do we turn? celebrity.
american politics are so entrenched in celebrity so it's almost natural that this angle could be another course of genuine action. but what does celebrity do but pacify us? if we're focusing are justified anger at pop stars, niche indie darlings, and superheroes, is this really the work™️? what is selena gomez gonna say about ukraine? lizzo ain’t turning up the tempo on no one. we really think chris pratt is gonna grab the guardians of the galaxy and stop bibi? so my question: who’s shame really working for and who is it working against?
naming shaming behavior
i’m not here to be agreed with or cause a social media mob to chase any individual — that’s a silly little guy with no emotional intelligence, a neoliberal who hasn’t opened a book since uni, or a shorty who girlbossed too close to the sun. when i critique, i’m trying to attach an issue to something that is both immaterial and has costly, palpable effects on all of us. i’ve been parts of those mobs and pile-ons in the past — it costs nothing to get your lil lick in. worse, it can feel fucking good. a release from the hurt and pain we carry — energy can’t be created or destroyed so it just gets passed onto someone else. if it’s an easy target like a celebrity who won’t see your little post, who either doesn’t fight back or can’t…what’s the matter, we can’t have a little shame as a treat? no one will know…
i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again — i’m a yapper. i talk shit, i joke, i clown — if i feel a type of way, imma talk to my friends about it. if i’m glazing crazy or hating a smidge too much, my people will gather me. there’s a huge difference between yapping with venting intent and shaming someone into oblivion for being perceived as less than or dumb. i’m a 7x all nba overthinker of the year — if i feel really strongly, i’m gonna know why and, well, write a piece about it (summer of ethical hate and getting your lick back still loading).
to further describe the shaming behavior i’m pinpointing, it’s:
making the social moment about “you” and not about the cause BUT calling out other people on not doing “the work” because it’s not how you yourself do it
calling someone else’s house dirty when our own looks WILD
using someone else’s ignorance to elevate their own social or moral profile
shaming another’s educational level as if our own experience is universal
publicly flaying someone we agree mostly with but we hate the way that they walk, the way that they talk, the way that they DRESS
throwing stones and hiding hands, saying it’s for the “movement” but it’s because passive-aggressiveness is safer than direct and patient conflict to repair
it’s human nature to want to relate to the going on in the world (feel free to read the back catalog and hear my thoughts on the me me me of it all). since we were kids, we told to do our part but like back then, it was clean up the classroom, do a chore, share, you know — kid shit! but now, it’s blown up to clean up local, national, and international politics, do the chore of reading all the books about things, share information constantly — adult shit. and if buzzfeed is to be believed, adulting is hard (though nowhere near as hard as escaping the cringe vortex of saying “adulting” in 2024).
don’t get me wrong: we need to do our part. it’s essential to being a member of a community and if all of us do our part, things can get done, change can be acheived. or so we’ve been told/promised/indoctrinated to believe. what are adults but grown-up kids, propagating learned behaviors into the present while searching for validation? [to my people dissecting childhoods in therapy to understand the present: psssst, that’s all it is. yeah there’s other stuff but lemme save you a few sessions.]
our decrepit systems are rotten to the core (both domestically and abroad) and the world needs a system reset, a return to monkey, a national day of grass touching. day after day, the theater of government gets exposed as a cheap charade — community theater could be more convincing than any of these ploys to “spread democracy” and act for “the greater good.”
how obvious this theater is varies from person to person and to center the issues, we have to decenter ourselves and recenter collective humanity — faults, flaws, falsehoods, and follies.
we all got ‘em and in an increasingly broken world, i’m personally choosing to do my best not to contribute to the shame carousel — not perfectly but i’m trying. people can’t know what they don’t know. but when an opportunity presents itself to reframe our thoughts around something, watch what a person does. if they continue along the status quo, oftentimes it is because they don’t want to put the work into critique themselves. if they decenter themselves to be open to a different perspective, that’s a keeper.
if you want to school in the US, here, you learned nothing but jumping from war to war, so don’t be surprised when america always seems like it’s at war — although it is nuts that people keep calling it the “israel-hamas war” even though a) hamas isn’t a country (nor does it actually represent one), b) palestine hasn’t been recognized by “countries that matter” (smh) as a country, c) palestine (that non-country that is a country when we need it to be? yeah that one) doesn’t and can’t have a standing army to make this a fair fight or war, and d) what were we really learning for a decade and a half in school if we can’t actually apply basic war knowledge to correctly labelling the almost unilateral destruction of a holy land and it’s people. tangent over. for now.
in american schools, we didn’t learn about queer people — where could we learn about pronouns or anything outside of a gender binary or compulsory heterosexuality? the internet or family (who might have some…ideas about that…) were some of the few reflection points many had before social media.
we didn’t learn enough about women — all their contributions to revolutions, social movements (outside of susan b anthony or rosa parks), science (for black women, against their will most times), math, technology, taking up jobs in factories while men were away, white women owning slaves (had to get one in on white women, lo siento).
we learned nothing about anyone from another country that wasn’t in the united states — we barely learned a damn thing about the native people who lived here first or the people brought here as chattel slaves! only so much world political knowledge my pops could prep me with — i continue to have a lot to learn.
we didn’t learn emotional intelligence unless the school infrastructure hit you with the montessori treatment and had appropriate interventions and pacing to meet student needs. most of us got sent to the wolves and got ate up bad.
what did we learn in school? we learned pledged allegiance to an imperialist country that indoctrinated us into believing lies on every level that we don’t get to question until we are faced with a differing opinion OR realized we’re on the wrong side of the gun the moment we question authority — that first amendment ain’t one size fits all. all this to say, we don’t know what we don’t know and if we shame understandable ignorance before we share knowledge, what are we doing besides propagating ego-driven movement work?
[side note: i swear people never got to use their college degrees that we fought so hard to get so we spend our time online just using all the big words with other big word ass niggas and complain more about the gates and those who keep them and less about building something new or blowing up the gates]
i say this to myself just as much as i say it to everyone here: if we demand perfection from any part of our lives and don’t accept the little mistakes, the imperfections, the unchecked falsehoods, the deep-seated cultural brainwashing, that we all have to confront in some way, shape, or form, nothing will get done. if shame isn’t interrogated properly now, we’re doomed to recreate the same system that’s fucking us today.
mariam kaba’s workbook title says it all: fumbling through repair. fumbling. tripping, stumbling, flipping, fumbling— almost fucked up the point with a fergie ref. but you get what i mean. we are all at our limit, either visibly or invisibly so, laterally, let’s have some grace.
in my years working with children and adults, it’s easy to see the straight line from our childhood socializations to how we treat each other online and then to how it translates offline. by all means, rage against the machine and i won’t stop you — hell, lemme in there, wop wop wop wop wop lemme fuck it up. shame the cops, shame your corrupt politicians, shame the lobbyists, shame the billionaires, shame the corporations — shame up. just not laterally.
but do us all a favor and along the way, remember that some people don’t know that they’re a cog in that machine, don’t know how deep it goes, don’t know what part they belong to, and freeze up because of that fear of shame in confronting it. if we help remove that piece of the machine with care, we can upcycle their use into whatever we build. it’s easier said than done but worth the work if we can spare the time.
next time: shame roulette part 2
all eyes on rafah. i’ve run out of words to describe the immense sorrow i have for my brothers and sisters and will never climb out of the deep well of disgust i have for those who’ve remained silent AND the sycophantic colonial global powers that picks and chooses who gets to grow up and who gets to be human.
brilliant stuff. instant follow. looking forward to reading more of your articulations. thank you
I saved this a long time ago and am just getting around to reading it and am kicking myself for not having read it earlier. this was a wonderful read, thank you for it.
my two cents that my friends and I came to as a consensus recently is that there is no shame in not knowing but there is shame in not learning (once you notice the lack)