Hashtag Trends

My heart ached when I read about George Floyd’s death and the protests in the United States under the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) movement.

Some people in Singapore joined in the unintentionally detrimental act of posting black squares on social media. Some criticize others’ silence on social media as complicity in racism.

I think it would be philosophically and practically untenable to impose a moral duty on everyone to (i) frequently monitor social media trends and/or current affairs; (ii) read and understand all sides of the issues; and (iii) post things that many people are posting on those issues.

(Imagine all the inane memes and food photos one would have to scroll through each day to get to these posts!)

Take for instance the Yemen civil war (read e.g. Geneva Academy page and war report 2017, ICJ briefing paper) or the Israel-Palestine conflict. These are complex issues that cannot be compressed into a trending hashtag.

That is of course all apart from the question of whether and how such a moral duty would lead to greater virtue in that person, virtuous conduct in relation to others, or improved well being of others.

Moreover, I wonder how much of the reflexive response is from an impulse to ease one’s guilt and virtue signal than to actually understand the situation and be in solidarity with the people who are crying out for justice. What they want is to express their frustration and tell their stories.

To then jump onto the bandwagon and post your own stuff riding on the movement when you are not one of them is to hijack their moment. It’s like you are telling your friend about your family problem and instead of listening, your friend starts to wax lyrical about sociological theories of social structures he learnt from Sociology 101 in school.

If social media platform + silence = complicity in racism (or any other social injustice), then we will not only be morally doomed, mentally exhausted, and emotionally spent. We will also probably be unable to live, whether attempting a virtuous life or not. To be clear, I am not suggesting indifference in the face of injustice. But silence on social media is not indifference. It means just that, silence on, or infrequent use or posting of, social media.

This must be an unprecedented blip in time. And I’m not talking about COVID-19. It must be unprecedented that a person’s virtue is determined by what one posts on a World Wide Web-connected account. There is no equivalence to anything before.

Continue reading “Transplanting BLM into Singapore: Racism and Migrant Workers”