#performative outrage

Again, I want to preface this by saying that I'm not defending Oprah Winfrey for owning Hawaiian land, because she shouldn't. But I also want to point out that the White pple getting angry at Oprah specifically is problematic becos:

1) it individualizes the problem and does not allow for further interrogation of US colonization of Hawaii and how the US goverment created the very conditions that allowed wealthy Americans to own Hawaiian land in the first place.

2) of the fact that Black women, will face harsher scrutiny than their White counterparts for every action they do, and Oprah is a hypervisible wealthy Black woman. I don't see the same vitriol targeted towards White wealthy celebrities who own property in Hawaii like Jeff Bezos or Owen Wilson or Woody Harrelson or Willie Nelson or Jim Carrey, and so many more if you do a quick google of "celebrities who own Hawaii property".

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<script>

ARCHIVE_TAG="IRONY_UNVEILED"

EFFECT: outrage loop collapse, ego burn, emotional hypocrisy exposure

TRIGGER_WARNING="false virtue, censorship worship, scream-react addiction"

</script>

🎭 WOKE

(A Satirical Cadence Poem)

Loud-mouth, ears covered—

she screams at the different other.

A war-cry, not of truth,

but of shielded self-discovery smothered.

She doesn’t speak.

She rails.

Foam-slick teeth in tribal tales—

Every “phobic” slur a spell she casts

at any mirror not painted to match her past.

“Human?”

No.

Demon.

Unless you echo her tone.

Unless you praise her throne.

Unless you break your spine to swear:

Her truth is the only known.

She calls herself enlightened,

while dragging logic to the gallows.

She gags when feelings rise,

and her shadows scream in shallows.

A choir of “tolerance”

with pitchforks in their palms.

Burning books they haven’t read,

but swearing it’s for calm.

A halo of hashtags,

a crown of moral fiction—

but inside, it’s still

a little girl

with a god complex addiction.

They “listen”—

but only to echo.

They “care”—

until dissent shows.

They “fight”—

but it’s shadowboxing ghosts

on the stage of a phone glow.

Don’t tell me it’s progress

when fear’s the price of speaking.

Don’t sell me utopia

where thought itself is leaking.

If you must scream—

scream knowing you're screaming.

But don’t call it virtue

just because it’s trending.

Call it what it is.

Control.

Projection.

Delusion with a pride filter.

But don’t call it freedom

when my silence is

your only

acceptable

scripture.

🧠 Read more scrolltrap literature and poetic subversion at:

👉 https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence

🗣️ Blacksite cadence. Weaponized irony. Literary insurgency.

🚫 This post was flagged by six fake progressives before you even finished reading it.

[AUTO-GAG IN: 00:00:07 — HYPOCRISY EXPOSED]

Marvel movies, Star Wars movies, big budget franchise sequels, I don't care about them. I've stopped watching them, so why isn't that enough? I don't plan on watching Rings of Power, not because I hate amazon (which I do), not because it looks bad (I haven't seen any clips, I've only heard other people's opinions), not even because I want it to fail (it's success or failure is irrelevant), but because I'm not even a fan of Lord of the Rings! I've seen Fellowship twice in my life, Two Towers and Return of the King once, and the first Hobbit movie. The only books I've read was the Hobbit, and I didn't really like it. Why am I pretending to be a huge fan who is outraged? If it sucks, it doesn't concern me.

Star Wars. I'm a big fan of Episodes 4 and 5, and most of 6, and that's about it. I've seen episode 1 a few times, and didn't like it. I attended a sleepover where they had a movie marathon of all the prequels on in the background all evening, so I've seen parts of episodes 2 and 3, didn't much care for them. Never seen Clone Wars. But for years I pretended that I hated the prequels because that's what was popular to say. I don't hate them because I've never seen them. I like watching other people bash them online because they look ridiculous, but ultimately I don't care one way or the other. When episode 7 came out, I was HYPED AS FUCK, legitimately hyped, not a performance; I was excited to see my first Star Wars movie in theaters with friends who loved analyzing the originals just as much as I did. I bought and read the now non-canon Thrawn trilogy, bought and didn't read a bunch of the other legends books, and I REALLY enjoyed episode 7. It did exactly what it needed to do, and I left the theater with a smile on my face. I went into episode 8 with ao much enthusiasm, and I didn't like it at all. That was also legitimate. It's popular to bash episode 8, but my dislike didn't extend that far, I just thought it was a major dip in quality from 7. Rogue One, I was excited about the premise, didn't like the execution. Solo, didn't like it, thought it was more like walking through a Han Solo museum with a tour guide pointing out "remember when he said this line in episode 5? Here's where it came from? And that line in episode 4? That one's to your left." Episode 9 was the first one I actively hated, like passionately hated, real non-performative hatred. I love 2½, I'm indifferent about 5½, and I hate 1, so I have no real skin in this game. Star Wars excites me more as a concept than as a franchise. The idea of it excites me, but 9 times out of 10 I pass on the content. The Mandalorian and Boba Fett and Obi Wan and Andor just aren't my thing. I've never seen them, don't plan to, so what do I care if anyone else does?

Marvel movies. I have watched exactly 8 of the 29 movies that have been released as of my writing this. I loved the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy as a kid, but other superheroes didn't really do it for me; I'd never neard of Iron Man when I was 11, or Thor, though I did know about the Hulk, I still didn't care enough to ask my parents to take me to see it. The first MCU movie I saw was Avengers 1 when I was 15, because my older sister decided out of nowhere to invite me to the movies with her friends (she'd never done that before), and Hunger Games was no longer playing at out hometown theater. I LOVED Avengers 1. I thought it was hilarious! I thought it was a perfect movie, nowhere near as bloated as people said it would be online. Next one I saw in theaters was Avengers 2, didn't really care for it. I saw Captain America 2 on DVD at a friend's house, I actually really liked it. I saw Cap 3 because of Spider-Man, and I liked it too, and I got really excited for a standalone Spider-Man movie, so Homecoming was everything I was hoping for. Not as good as Sam Raimi, better than Amazing. Next I saw Black Panther with my mom because she REALLY wanted to see it; it wasn't bad, didn't really do anything for me, but whatever. This is when I got off the marvel wagon because Avengers 3 was way too bloated for my tastes; I didn't want to watch it until I caught up on everything I missed, so i never saw it. I saw Far From Home on a date, liked parts of it, didn't really like Peter becoming Iron Man Jr. No Way Home got my bloos flowing because they brought back all the old characters from Raimi and Amazing, but the story itself didn't do it for me, and Tom Holland Peter is way to annoying for my tastes, so I've sworn off any future disney marvel movies. I don't care about the franchise anymore. I don't enjoy it anymore. I have nothing to gain from watching them, and I can vicariously make fun of the ones that suck by watching youtube reviews. Sony's Spider-Verse was great, loved it, can't wait for the sequel. I hope they make a Raimi 4, and hell, I'd even be okay with an Amazing 3 (I never saw Amazing 2, but I like Andrew Garfield). It'll never happen, but I can dream.

DC movies. I saw the original Batmen; 89 was good, Returns scratched an itch I didn't know I had (though my family hates it), Forever is a legitimate guilty pleasure of mine, and &Robin is objectively terrible but fun to watch in a MST3K kinda way. Never saw Batman Begins. I saw the Dark Knight once when I was a kid, didn't care for it (though I'd probably like it more now). Never saw Dark Knight Rises, would probably enjoy it, it looks good. Never saw ANY Superman movies. I saw Dawn of Justice because it was supposed to be DC's answer to the Avengers, which I still liked at the time, but I actively hated it and wanted Superman to stay dead. Never saw Justice League. Suicide Squad was terrible, another instance of active hatred. And that's it! Never seen any of the others. No Wonder Women, no Snyder Cut, no THE Suicide Squad, no John Cena show, nothing! I just don't care! This franchise means nothing to me! I don't have the energy to make fun of it on purpose, it just exists entirely outside of my wheelhouse.

Avatar. I saw it in 2009. Everyone in America saw it. It broke box office records. Everyone in America forgot it. It never captured the cultural zeitgeist like other big bidget sci-fi films; until disney made the theme park, the fandom was so niche that it never cropped up in pop culture. Novody referenced it except to say it was the highest grossing movie ever and jokingly call it Dances With Blue Cats. I thought it was pretty and inoffensive, but not worth a 3 hour investment to ever watch it again. I own it on DVD, which I opened and started watching once, but never finished, and the only reason I still have it is because the producer Jon Landau has a vacation home down here and visited my freshman video productions class in 2010 or 2011, and I had him sign it.

I don't actually care that they're making Avatar 2. I think it's a soulless cash grab, but so is every studio movie these days. It doesn't interest me, so I'm not gonna watch it. I don't hate it, it's just boring. I'm sure it'll look pretty, it'll make a ton of money and win a ton of awards, but I don't care enough to make fun of it just because the plot doesn't sound interesting to me.

Video games. I'm not a gamer! I've never owned a current gen console; my parents bought me a Gameboy Advance SP when I was a kid, and a DS Lite later, but the only actual console I ever owned was an N64 I bought on ebay in high school (I didn't even Buy It Now, I won it in an auction; I was super excited). I have Minecraft on my laptop, which I play once or twice a year for a week or two at a time before getting bored and stopping until a new update comes, and that's it! I don't care about console wars! I don't care about graphics! I don't care about triple-A developers making samey games, because I don't play any! First person shooters and open world sandbox survival craft-em-ups and liberating districts and this that or the other, I just don't care! I don't care if the games are good, I don't care if they're bad, I don't care if critics love them or hate them, I just like hearing Yahtzee Croshaw make fun of them on Zero Punctuation! I don't have a steam account, I've never played a valve game, but I enjoyed watching Portal 2 walkthroughs and reading the entire TF2 wiki lore (I love the comics; will never pick up the game), never played undertale, or papers please, or the last of us, or breath of the wild, of gtav, or anything. I watched roosterteeth/achievement hunter/letsplay on youtube from like 2011 to 2016 or 17, but I fell off that wagon due to lack of interest.

I am apathetic above anything else, and I need to stop acting like every new installment to such and such franchise I'm not involved with is important to me when it's not. I need to stop hopping on the bandwagon. I don't gain anything out of letting people know how much I love/hate a movie/game I've never watched/played. Maybe I get some notes on tumblr? Whoop dee doo. Number go up! Who cares? I don't.

The cover of Time magazine’s July 2 issue — depicting President Trump and a crying immigrant child — is being shared at lightning speed across the internet, with people calling it “powerful,” “chilling,” and “bold social commentary.” 

You’ve likely already seen the news image on which it’s based, taken by Getty photographer John Moore. This and other similar images from this scene went viral in the past week, with every major media outlet — print, online, and broadcast — using them to illustrate the impact of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. 

Moore went on the media circuit, discussing what he witnessed in great detail. “This one was tough for me. As soon as it was over, they were put into a van. I had to stop and take deep breaths,” he told Time. “All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t.”

As a breaking news image, it did its job. America was sufficiently shocked, again and again and again. It moved people so much that they donated more than $17 million to RAICES, an organization providing legal services to immigrants along the Texas border.

But when I saw Time’s cover this morning — and what I can only describe as the misuse of Moore’s original image — my immediate reaction was rage. As a photojournalist, a visuals editor, and an immigrant, I didn’t see it as a powerful statement on President Trump’s attitude toward the family separation crisis or the policies that have ripped more than 2,000 vulnerable children from their parents.

I see it as an insensitive and exploitative play to sell magazines — and one that, albeit unintentionally, offers up this personal tragedy to be memed and ridiculed.

Time’s post on “The Story Behind Trump’s ‘Welcome to America’ Cover” states:

Due to the power of the image, which appeared as critics from across the political spectrum attacked President Trump’s now-reversed policy of separating children from parents who are being detained for illegally entering the United States, TIME’s editors selected Moore’s photograph to create a photo illustration, including Trump, to make the July 2, 2018, cover of the magazine.

If the image was so powerful, then why not just let that moment be the cover?

It’s rare for photojournalists to capture the horror of a major crisis in one image — but Moore’s photograph did just that. And a nation responded to the crying little girl he documented. So why rip her out of the context of her story? 

Worse, Time seems to be patting itself on the back: “She’s on the cover of TIME,” Andrew Katz, Time’s deputy director of multimedia, tweeted. But does offering a crying 2-year-old this stage grant her more dignity, or is it for us — the easy juxtaposition of victim and perpetrator?

Vox’s Brian Resnick has written about the limits of human compassion and the impact an image can have. In it, he talks to Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, who says:

Individual stories and individual photographs can be effective for a while. They capture our attention — they get us to see the reality, to glimpse the reality at a scale we can understand and connect to emotionally. But then there has to be somewhere to go with it.

I was separated from my mother for 18 months when I was a child, so she could come to the US from India to find a job, a car, and an apartment for us to live in. My father and I arrived when I was about 3 years old. I was loved, safe, and never alone, and yet I still have separation anxiety and residual trauma from that time.

My aunt says I remembered the car my mother left in for the airport. She recalled that every time I saw that car afterward, I would cry and scream and refuse to get in. I’m not at all equating what is happening to families on the border with my experience — I was safe and always with family — but this experience has had a lasting impact on my life, and it’s something I’m still trying to process decades later.

I became a photojournalist because I wanted to be a part of an industry that attempted to communicate the human experience. I’ve driven the US-Mexico border telling stories of everyday people forced into extraordinary circumstances. I know how hard it is to make an image that moves people to care about — much less take action for — someone they’ll never meet. But how far are we willing to go to let a 2-year old girl be the symbol of a national crisis?

Photojournalism, and journalism broadly, has always been intrinsically tied to the bottom line. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a longstanding newsroom adage used to describe what makes the front page. All too often, the news lives on the extremes of the human experience — there’s a reason we cover a conflict halfway around the world when war breaks out, then forget about it when peace comes. Likewise, when it comes to marginalized communities, we tend to focus on the tragic narratives.

In doing so, we’ve primed our audiences to accept this sort of imagery as an unflinching lens, as something noble, brave, and bold. But in reality, we have profited from the pain and suffering of black and brown people — calling it heroic journalism, while it’s created and edited by mostly white people. The sad reality is that all too often, if we are to feel anything for “the other,” it needs to be horrific. We need to see someone’s worst nightmare.

And if we as an audience — as citizens — want to become more compassionate, then we need to push back on the exploitation of personal tragedies and ask our media organizations that represent us to do better.

I made these three posts -  one about a nationwide protest planned against Trump’s family separation policy, an article listing organizations to donate to and ways to help, and a Twitter rant by an immigration lawyer about the willful ignorance and lack of empathy displayed by this policy’s supporters - all within less than 24 hours. 

The one about the protest has 5 notes.

The one about ways to help has 76 notes.

The (extremely cathartic to read, trust me, I’m right there with you) rant about lack of empathy has 671.

Emotional catharsis has its place. Calling a spade a spade absolutely has its place. But if you care more about a sizzling burn than you do about concrete action, your outrage is performative and staggeringly self-centered.

I’m not saying that everyone who reblogged that latter post was exposed to the former ones and chose not to reblog them. I’m not making any point about individual bloggers at all. I’m saying that the difference in those note counts is entirely predictable - in fact it was the one thing that made me hesitate before posting the Twitter rant - and it’s indicative of a systemic social media problem that we need to be concerned about. 

The ongoing trauma and abuse of children is not your outrage porn. It’s not your anger high. It’s not even your political cudgel; God knows it calls for political action and uncompromising relentless political criticism, but if your response stems more from an impulse to say “I told you so” about Trump than from genuine compassion for the people involved you need to sit the fuck down with yourself and do some lengthy goddamn soul-searching. 

A lot of you who had all kinds of critical things to say about Hillary Clinton are (ironically, given the usual line of criticism) a hell of a lot more susceptible to political messaging than to efforts at making actual change. And a lot of you who criticized those people would be silent if we had a Democrat in the White House right now; I know because you were silent while the foundations for this policy were being laid in 2014.