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Are You Truly Supporting Victims of Terrorism?

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Undoubtedly, the year months have brought so many devastating terroristic disasters upon the world. From Paris to Ankara, and from Lahore to Brussels. Most recently, the Nice attack has grabbed our attention. Some definitely got more attention than others, but nevertheless, they all get attention of some sort.

Twitter has proven to be a successful vehicle for people to lend their support, voice their opinions and explain their frustrations. As soon as any of these attacks take place, the social media platform floods with tweets of prayers, thoughts and expressions of hurt. However, more and more of these tweets are becoming aesthetics and hashtags. They are becoming a mask of support which users thirsty for attention and followers hide behind, whether they care to admit it or not.

Recently, after the Brussels attack, a proclaimed “meme” started surfacing the internet which bore the words “Je Suis Sick of this Shit” in white block letters on a black background. Obviously, it takes from the statement “Je Suis Charlie” that went viral after the Charlie Hebdo shootings. The same meme went around after the Nice attacks. And in previous attacks, such as in Paris and Ankara, the famous “Pray for [City]” hashtags was a way for people to express their distress, which lead to aesthetic fonts saying the same statement on colourful backgrounds starting to go around social media websites.

Moreover, we’re also seeing, and posting, edits that includes said attacked country’s flag on our social media accounts. We have to pick the prettiest, the one that will match our theme. It’s awful how people reduce tragedies to photoshopped aesthetically pleasing images. No one actually needs to do this, but we still do to seem socially aware yet capable of finding the next trendy edit.

With such serious and tragic events happening in the world, these aesthetic posts, “memes” and pictures start counteracting their original purpose. They serve the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do. The colourful backgrounds are tragically ironic and have no correlation whatsoever with the actual issues. The statements are also dismissive of the real problem going on.

Instead of actually speaking up about the matters, or even just simply sending condolences, the creators and users of such material turn attention towards themselves and their abilities. Uncritical audience gets awed by the “beauty” and empty meanings of these posts. They are also quick to disregard the real matter at hand, which is that our world is now full of terrorism, rather than sending prayers or taking action, or reaching out to help people in any form. Terrorism becomes minimised to a series of senseless posts.

Before retweeting any of these edits or reposting them or even liking them, urge yourself to think of its correlation to and importance of the terrorist acts going on; because most time, it doesn’t exist. Remember that people make these edits also for happy occasions, song lyrics, and so on. So if they send their support for victims of terrorism the same way they edit Lana Del Rey posts, know it’s wrong.

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