Scroll; I see images of children grey with dust, sobbing; scroll; an ad for an eye cream to buy in Tiktok shop; scroll; somebody posting about how they have no food or water or shelter, their house was bombed; scroll; a meme video of someone impersonating being a Latina girlfriend
Scroll; here’s 7 of the best new restaurants in LA; scroll; Bisan and her braces tell me she’s still alive; scroll; Parade underwear is having another Black Friday sale; scroll; I see a child comforting his dad about his mom dying
Back when I was delivering flowers, I had to give a birthday arrangement to someone in Garfield Park. The address did not exist, as I found out by rolling up and seeing nothing but an empty lot, full of tallgrass. Sometimes delivery is a puzzle to solve, and a puzzle I have done often. The person was not picking up their phone, like how most people do when a number from out of state calls. So I went to the address where the last two digits were switched. There it was: a matching last name on the mailbox on the metal gate, next to a crumbly, old, painted-red brick house. White lattice metal lined the windows.
The arrangement was small. She was humble. Couldn’t have been more than $35. It was a simple birthday arrangement with carnations and daisies in multicolor, and a small pin that said Happy Birthday! in rainbow font. At the door nobody was answering my knocks, so I used my best judgment: I hid the arrangement neatly behind the siding on the front porch, so it was out of view unless you standing on the doormat, and I hoped for the best.
When I got back to our shop, I was sent out to do a routine change for this expensive client of ours: a very wealthy white, gay man who lived in Gold Coast. Each week or two he would have three giant silver planters with custom orchids swapped out while one of us maneuvered around his housekeeper, only in our socks because shoes were forbidden.
Having just passed by the 2-story flats of Garfield Park, by the dilapidated businesses, plywood windows, the trash, the overwhelming sense that this neighborhood was neglected by the city, that its inhabitants deeply lacked the care they deserved, it felt ugly to suddenly be around this kind of wealth. The Gold Coast apartment complexes felt alien, some of which have actual oil lighting the flames in their street lamps, with doormen sitting in lobbies lined in mahogany, or marble. And here, I followed strict directions to go up to the 14th floor with these orchids to replace them, scurrying around this million-dollar apartment in my sweaty socks.
This stark contrast, this disgust and hatred of disparity, is exactly what being online feels like today. Like my job, I welcome the experience to witness and draw a conclusion: that our world is evil. But unfortunately that means we have to, in fact, acknowledge our world as evil.
The cognitive dissonance of scrolling and seeing Tiktok funnyman haha content directly below images of children being amputated, or Palestinian infants huddling together in the NICU before Al-Shifa was raided, it disturbs the soul. But in doing so, this reveals purpose. We, who are glued to our little box screens, are forced to reckon with the reality that our everyday living in the center of empire comes at the cost of literal lives, lives we see destroyed every day on our phones.
Obviously, this is not the first time, nor even the first social movement, where social media takes such precedence. But as the nature of being online changes from a fundamentally millennial to gen Z mode of thought, that does mean it feels a little more in your face.
The entire reason I joined Tiktok two years ago is because I, who loves social media, who is addicted to The Scroll, read an article that basically said the modality of the old sites was over. Static images and blocks of text were the methods of communicating we grew up on, but that was replaced by in-your-face videos of Tiktok, changing the point of view to a personal vantage point rather than a voyeur. I was curious, and this was enough to convince me to make an account.
It’s this direct access to users that makes watching a genocide happen in real time all the more harrowing.
A video from a 20-something in DC I saw sums it up well: once we log off, suddenly it’s time for Halloween weekend. Well, that was when I saw the video, but now it would be talking about Thanksgiving. According to the life I live, I’m just back in the daily grind: buying iced coffees, doing a little online shopping, seeing a movie or two with my friends, working my typical 55-hour weeks. But it is not permanent and it will not last, as predicated by the scroll, and once again I am reminded of the moral failures of this country I have called home for 29 years. Sure, I can protest all I want, but at the end of the day I get to go home, to my bed and apartment and things that have not been shelled into rubble.
I don’t really know how else to write this, except to say that distraction and dissociation are no longer an option. The juxtaposition of daily life, online and in the real world, has created a chasm in me. I feel guilty for wanting to write about anything else, so I’ll save it for another time. But despair is not the correct response, either. So I am taking each day one step at a time, holding it heavy in my chest: Free Congo. Free Sudan. Free Palestine.
At the end of this, I leave you with writings from people who’ve written more eloquently than me and who are sharing invaluable knowledge right now:
Ayesha Siddiqi’s Twitter and this piece from her substack
Take care! Love you.
-Liv