Turkey, Twitter, and Titanic Memes
What I'm thankful for online in 2023
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There’s a lot of bad in the world, and there’s a lot I’ve written on with concern this year. But tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d reflect briefly on the things I’ve been grateful for on the internet - or related to it - in 2023. This is also a chance to cover some things from this year that I haven’t yet.
Believe it or not, there’s a lot I’m grateful for when it comes to the internet.
Our collectively dark sense of humor.
I know some will disagree with me, but June was one of the funniest times on the internet in my recent memory. Back in June, five billionaires lost their lives when the submarine they were on to see the wreckage of the famed Titanic shipwreck imploded. The whole situation was a case study in power, privilege, the stories we chose to pay attention to, class, ethnicity, hubris, and the absurdity of billionaires. I discussed a little bit of this in a TikTok I made:
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While the media covered the story 24/7 with “countdown to oxygen running out” clocks on their chyrons, the internet did what it did best. It made memes. Dark, dark memes. You can check out some of the reactions here.
Is any loss of life tragic? Yes. But the hubris displayed by these grossly wealthy men didn’t necessarily mean they deserved it, but people were going to poke fun at their misfortune.
While not everyone agreed with the jokes and dark humor, it’s rare to get this many people to agree on anything online, even if it’s not a totality.
Playing violins with you while the ship sinks
Forgive the Titanic analogy, I couldn’t resist.
I’ve written extensively about the decline of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, under the helm of Elon Musk. X was my favorite social media platform, and I wrote earlier this year about how I harnessed its features to build the career I wanted.
I’m grateful that we now live in a time in which people mostly understand that online friendships are just as real, rich, and meaningful as offline friends. There were so many academics at the recent Association of Internet Researchers conference I hugged as soon as I saw them, even though we had never met in person until that moment. We’d moved in the same online networking and friendship spaces for years, and I already felt like I knew them. This is why I haven’t been able to quit X just yet. It took me years to build and curate that space, and no alternative can replace that.
Even beyond X, we’re living in a time of an increasingly fragmented social media space. Again, I’ve written about this. But I’m thankful that instead of losing these digital connections, we’re migrating to other spaces - group chats, WhatsApp, Instagram, Bluesky. While one article (that I responded to on this Substack) bemoaned this move to group chats as the death of social media, I’m also grateful to live in a time where I do have so many alternatives to keep my online friendships and friends who live far away close in my phone.
De-influencing
Wide-scale pushback against influencers was inevitable. Following accusations that influencer Mikayla Nogueira was wearing fake eyelashes in a video sponsored by L’oreal Cosmetics to promote their mascara, individuals took to TikTok en masse to call out influencer culture and the inauthentic nature of a lot of sponsored content. This turned into a trend where individuals started speaking candidly on their experiences with highly-touted and highly expensive influencer products. The quality of these products was quickly debunked, and people started offering budget-conscious alternatives to highly popular influencer products and brands. For instance, instead of $25 Charlotte Tilbury lipstick, you could buy $6 NYX lipgloss that looks better and lasts longer.
Now, I’m very aware that de-influencing is simply just a different form of influencing. It’s “buy this instead of this” and still very much plays into capitalist influencer culture. So why am I thankful for this? Because the fact of the matter is, we can only work within the society we live in. De-influencing, while still influencing, “levels the playing field” a little bit, so to speak. Recommendations are one part of the lifeblood of contemporary internet culture, and if I can find a good, cheap product that solves a need (including a lipstick that doesn’t come off while I’m teaching class), I’m happy. Inflation is real and times are financially hard, and because I’m an anxious person I stress about other people’s credit card debt.
Labor and progressive activism
This has been an incredible year for labor activism and rights in the United States. Many industries have gone on strike or nearly gone on strike, with perhaps the most famous being the joint Hollywood strike of SAG-AFTRA (the actors’ union) and the WGA (the writers’ union). This was an issue that bled over into the online content creation space, with many companies trying to get creators to cross a picket line, or scab, in place of striking workers, or creators figuring out what qualified as struck work and what didn’t. The latter in is all the more relevant since influencers in the United States recently were granted admission to SAG-AFTRA. These issues aside, social media platforms were largely in solidarity with striking workers.
The most recent bit of activism I saw is one that came across my feed the other day, and it caused TikTok to issue a formal statement: “We’re not biased - millennials are more pro-Palestine.” Vice followed up on this statement, also noting younger internet users are more likely in general to support Palestine. TikTok was inevitably facing accusations of pro-Palestinian bias given its parent company’s ties to China, but it turns out, they didn’t have to manipulate the algorithm. Turns out, younger people are overwhelmingly against genocide and on the side of human rights.
I get to do what I do
(this is a bit academic-focused, feel free to skip if higher education isn’t your jam).
Are you even an academic on the tenure track if you don’t question your entire life and career at least once? For some reasons I can’t talk about publicly, and others I can, Spring 2022-Spring 2023 was an incredibly difficult time at my job. I was faced with a lot of harsh truths and harsher realities about being a professor right now in the United States. I probably wouldn’t have made it through that time without amazing coworkers that I’m lucky to also call friends, an incredibly supportive partner, and a lot of self-reflection about what I want in life.
Before Thanksgiving, I went and talked to a friend’s graduate seminar class, and she asked us to end on a happy note (this was absolutely because of me and a bad joke I made about not being afraid to break up with your graduate advisor, you can’t hurt us, we’re all already dead inside - sorry Cynthia!!). But I did, and this is what I am grateful for.
There are very few jobs in the world that let you do or focus on exactly what you want. Of course, like any job, there’s stuff we have to do that we’d rather not do, but the bulk of my job is choosing to research exactly what I want. That’s a gift I’m grateful for every day. It’s because of that that I even get to channel some of my energy into this Substack, do some public scholarship, and talk about things that matter in my field in a timely way. This Substack has been one of my favorite things I’ve done this year, and I’m thankful so many of you have supported me on this journey.
Community Building
Watch this space - in January I’ll be able to announce an exciting global content creation initiative I’ve been helping start. :)
Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers!
Academic Readings I’m Working Through Right Now:
Sophie Bishop (2023): “Influencer Creep: How artists strategically navigate the platformisation of art worlds.”
Aymar Jean Christian and Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin (2022): “Rage Against the Streaming Studio System: Worker Resistance to Hollywood’s Networked Era.”
Eviane Leidig (2023): The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization.
Ashley Shew (2023): Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement.
Tommaso Venturini & Anders Kristian Munk (2021): Controversy Mapping: A Field Guide.