DISCLAIMER: This is in no way shape or form meant to serve as some form of ridiculous judgement or ‘shade throwing’, it is merely based on my personal observations as seen on the internet and is strictly then a generalization, if this does not apply to you, great wonderful my sincerest apologies for lumping you into a large group of people. THIS IS MY OWN OPINION, which you can choose to take into consideration or discard into the useless abyss that is life. This is my free space to say what I believe and I urge you to not quote me out of context. I cannot emphasize enough that this my PERSONAL view and I am indeed a flawed human and I do not believe my opinion is the be all and end all, and I am willing to consider others and grow a person without compromising my core beliefs.
Activism seems to be the special on the menu of life these days, and I am all for it, provided there is a just cause.
Firstly, I would like to start off on a positive note and thank you for your contribution to my life and knowledge. I am not a person who believes that social media activism is futile for I have first hand seen the immense power of a collective group of people all over the world in educating and bringing about change as demonstrated by the #FEESMUSTFALLMOVEMENT. Through social media my eyes have been widened to many injustices and learned of new concepts such as white privilege, reverse racism (or lack thereof) and cultural appropriation to name a few. For this I am grateful as it has allowed me to critically engage with new ideas and form new opinions and outlooks.
However, I do believe the world is ALWAYS going to be filled with bigots and that we can never truly eradicate or educate ALL of them. Therefore we begrudgingly have to find a way to share the same air and web spaces with them, and this is why I believe that “dragging” can reach sickening levels. More often than not, your endgame is to educate and engage in debate over a conflicting issue, but sometimes it spirals into throwing petty insults back and forth with your crew coming to your aid merely rubbing salt into the wound. It is not a healthy means of getting your point across; you get so caught up in the act of dragging that you lose your point, and I for one cannot take you seriously after that. With the concept of dragging, we face problems such as mob mentality, and many people jump on a bandwagon that probably didn’t concern them in the first place and creates more drama and hostility.
While I do not believe that my opinion is the only correct one in existence, I am generally terrified of voicing it for fear of it being contradictory to the collective accepted norms laid of by social justice warriors. In fact, although I have been wanting to write about this for a long time, my fear of being shunned or ostracized overpowered me. Ironically a core value preached by SJW’s is acceptance, and I hate to say it, but this is greatly lacking. What once was a safe space for me to voice my opinions is now hostile, and yes I realise I should just unfollow, block and mute, but for some reason I find this difficult to do. If your (that being anyone) opinion is not the generally accepted one, it gets lost in the void and is deemed irrelevant, and you can often face mass scrutiny even if the view is not politically charged.
Two great factors that are largely touched on are race and religion, and for most this can be seen as a touchy subject and rightfully so. Let’s start of by saying I am a Muslim Indian, thus making me religious and a POC and despite the fact that I believe in a higher power I have maintained healthy relationships with my friends who are atheists. On the internet however there are many religious beliefs that many hold dear which can be considered archaic or pointless to SJWs, and this can lead to religion bashing, misquoted scripture or quoting out of context. This creates unnecessary conflict, and this is not me excusing religious people for their bigoted statements either, there are always two sides to the coin. Then comes my race. POC have been grouped together mostly due to melanin content and similar media treatment or in a historical context (note I said SIMILAR, NOT THE SAME.) I for one believe I am not educated enough to make statements about race and POC in general, yet some seem to be more than learned on the subject (no wikipedia links do not count). There is a general lack of comradery and almost any statement pertaining to race is broiled in controversy and then we have the widely contentious cultural appropriation and how sometimes we are willing to excuse POC for appropriating other cultures yet vehemently go after non-POC. This is most certainly an internal problem and should be addressed as opposed to swept under the rug and proper research should be done before making blanket statements.
Next up we have a very emotional topic commonly known as “triggers” which is an undisputed occurrence, however what one person finds triggering may not affect the other and vice versa. I have seen many people call out tweets or pictures for being triggering and go on escapades to prove their point or drag a person and yet they or their friends can post something equally as triggering to another and use the empty shell of an excuse of “it’s not that deep.” I am not saying don’t quote lyrics or dark humour but just don’t be hypocritical about it. If you want people to respect your needs, you need to do the same in return.
To end this post off I would just like to say that I apologise if indeed this was triggering to anyone reading it and would like to reiterate my disclaimer. This serves to both commend and condemn SJWs who can too be problematic, as we are all in fact human. Continue preaching the way you do and voicing your concerns for issues so passionately, and I will continue to admire you so long as you have a significant intellectual basis. I would just like to promote the idea of a holistic, tolerant and safely engaging society but this can be seen as my optimistic side. My last word of advice is not to belittle or patronize others because you might just end up becoming your own enemy.
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