Flagging up tragedy hipsterism
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n Saturday the 14th of November – the day, of course, after the tragedy in Paris – you probably found your Facebook awash in tricolour. It illustrated news articles, it was presented as photos of poignantly arranged flowers – and it was laid over profile picture after profile picture. I myself had one of those ‘Bleu, Blanc et Rouge’ photos.
And like #Kony2012, Jeremy Corbyn or Justin Bieber’s recent reinvention as a critically respectable popstar, it wasn’t long before this new, hyper-popular thing had an equally forceful backlash.
Articles that congratulated you on your “corporate, white supremacy”.
It came in the form of articles telling you that by changing your photo “you are doing nothing for the victims; instead, you are making the issue about yourself”. Articles that congratulated you on your “corporate, white supremacy”. Facebook posts that called it a bandwagon alongside pictures of multiple flags asking if you were equally upset by all the terrorism occurring in these countries (two of the flags I saw here were, bafflingly, Jamaica and the Vatican City, but that’s beside the point).
Bandwagon hopping isn’t important, but one issue raised here was. Everyone was talking about Paris, but no one was talking about the recent atrocity in Beirut. Tragedies in non-white, far-off countries receive a disproportionate amount of media attention: this is definitely a problem.
But French flags draped over profile pictures are not. People did this because they wanted to show solidarity. People did this because they wanted to show that this tragedy mattered to them. People did this because they saw their French mates and friends who are studying abroad in Paris putting flags up in their profile pictures, and saw the button that said ‘try it too’, and thought it was a small, simple, good gesture in the face of incomprehensible horror.
Tragedies in non-white, far-off countries receive a disproportionate amount of media attention: this is definitely a problem.
People responded to this by saying flag-drapers were racist, by citing other tragedies in a way that’s been termed tragedy hipsterism, by doubting the sincerity of people who’d put up a temporary banner (I had a friend who volunteered to help organise donations for the Calais Migrant Crisis get told he didn’t care about Syria on Facebook by someone who might not have done anything for Syrian refugees).
If someone could doubt the sincerity of these people, someone could equally doubt them back and think they were just trying to appear more cynical, more smart, in the face of abject tragedy. While it is important to reflect, and perhaps self-criticise, on our euro- and white-centric world-views, Facebook flags were never an apt target.
People responded to this by saying flag-drapers were racist, by citing other tragedies in a way that’s been termed tragedy hipsterism
We live in Britain. France is about as close to London as Birmingham is. We’ve been there. We’ve walked those streets, had our photo taken with the Eiffel tower, eaten the food and drunk the wine and loved the culture. It’s in swimmable distance from us. We have friends there, who were out for a Friday night when the unimaginable happened near them (which isn’t to discount those of us who have Lebanese friends and relatives – but this will be statistically far less common).
People reacted more viscerally and directly to Paris because they were more personally emotionally affected by the news. They reacted because they’re human. Don’t insult people for that.
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