Aren't You The Commentary Person?
When I heard Queen Elizabeth had died, I felt obliged to write something about this historic event. So I started researching.
I learned about constitutional monarchies and the Queen’s figurehead status. I read about colonialism and the dissolution of the Empire. I watched the heated debates on social media about who she was and what her death meant. And it was here, as I tried to put my thoughts into words, I realised something important:
I didn’t care about Queen Elizabeth’s death. Like, not at all.
In my article, Jesus, Is Nobody Else Tired Of This?, I asked, for all the yelling and screaming and insult-throwing, how many people had given Queen Elizabeth a second thought in the past decade. I asked whether the instinct to attack each other over irrelevancies has ever made anything better for anybody. Even once. I asked why we get so angry about things we don’t care about.
Erin tried to help me understand.
Erin:
It all feels like flight or flight response to me, with your emphasis here on “fight.” People first waking up to the truth of systemic and cultural oppression are understandably triggered and enraged, often expressing and asserting themselves unskillfully… directly to other folks who are triggered by a challenge to the status quo.
Change is as terrifying to some people as stagnancy is to others. In the landscape of instant access brought to us by modern technology, everyone’s knee-jerk, triggered as fuck, fight or flight is in contact with everyone else’s. My optimistic part hopes it’s just the painful friction of collective growing pains, the precursor of a more peaceful, healthier, safer era. Somehow. Maybe.
Steve QJ:
“People first waking up to the truth of systemic and cultural oppression are understandably triggered and enraged, often expressing and asserting themselves unskillfully”
I think you're describing a different phenomenon here. One that I certainly agree is real. But I don't think Queen Elizabeth's death, for example. woke anybody up to the truth of systemic oppression. I don't think anybody was helplessly triggered into rage by the news of it either. The rage was already there. The news was just a handy post-hoc justification.
Nor do I think the outrage merchants spinning it to rile up their audiences are expressing themselves unskillfully. In fact I think there's a certain degree of skill in conjuring drama from events they don't really care about.
Erin:
Personally, when I learned the Queen had died I instantly thought of history of colonialism and the stories that Meghan Markle had endured racism from her in laws. I just thought, hm, this is complicated, I don’t know how I feel about her death. I imagine that folks having big feelings in response to her death were not “woke” because of her death, but rather the feelings they have about the world being the way it is were triggered.
By “unskillful” I mean the outrage across the internet— the reactions to the news, and to others’ reactions. And I don’t mean grammatically unskillful, I mean sometimes lacking emotional intelligence, effective communication skills, lack of insight. (At least in the moment one was triggered and impulsive enough to type that shit and hit send.) You think the Outrage Machine is the news itself, not just the reaction to it?
Steve QJ:
“You think the Outrage Machine is the news itself, not just the reaction to it?”
Yeah, pretty much. People are already angry, dissatisfied, stressed, unhappy. The only reason we have these arguments about stupid irrelevant things is that there's an undercurrent of discontent in the world.
I think the news has more or less become a product that people consume to justify the release of that discontent on "enemies." And for its part, the news makes that justification as easy as possible. It's not about information and understanding, it's about emotion and division. That's the "outrage machine" part.
If we can rage at each other about the ethinicity of a mermaid or even whether there's racism in the royal family (a question that is both obvious and doesn't affect us in any way), it's not because that rage is a reflection of our level of investment in the issue, it's because we're looking for a distraction.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that racism doesn't matter, obviously. I'm saying that none of us, not even Uju Anya, is so emotionally invested in the history of colonialism or "revelations" about the Royal family's casual racism that the Queen's death had us "triggered." We're already triggered. I think the news just acts as an excuse.
I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that the overwhelming majority of people hadn't given the Queen a serious thought in years. And have already gone back to not thinking about her at all.
Erin:
You call it an undercurrent of discontent, I call it unresolved collective trauma. I think people react to the news because they’re triggered, you think it’s a distraction. Distraction from what? Discontent? Maybe the things in their own lives they feel powerless to change or unable to speak to?
I think the news does their job the best they can and they are impacted by the capitalistic system in which they exist. And I think people who hadn’t thought about the Queen in years would have thought about her just because she died, and then stopped thinking about her again because her death didn’t impact most people.
It’s interesting that you seem so exasperated by the “outrage machine” when you are The Commentary person. It seems like you intentionally engage in debate with others on the internet about provocative issues. You (and I) are both part of the machine of which you complain.
Steve QJ:
“I think the news does their job the best they can and they are impacted by the capitalistic system in which they exist.”
The previous lines are just definitional really, I don't think we're necessarily pointing to different things so I don't think it matters what we call them. But the quoted line here is, I think, completely untrue.
The news media (and social media) have demonstrated over and over again that they will cynically twist information to fit narratives. Given that I spend an unusual amount of time reading various news sources to try to understand stories, the obviously deliberate twisting of facts is especially clear to me. A lot of the "controversy" my writing creates is simply based on presenting facts that one side or aother hasn't heard from within its echo chamber.
Yes, I'm "The Commentary person"😅 But I don't see your point. I engage with people on provocative issues, I write about them too. But my intent is never to provoke. Nor to present information/debate dishonestly. As I said in the article, the problem isn't that we have opinons, and I certainly don't think we should stop talking about the issues we face in society. The issue is the instinct to attack each other and treat each other as enemies. The instinct to treat disagreement as hatred. Our unwillingness to listen to other perspectives.
People are never going to universally agree about the issues we face. This is as it should be. But this is in no way synonymous with outrage.
Erin:
I believe you and I appreciate your work. These extremely problematic news sources aren’t so prominent in my life. As a therapist, what is prominent is how many folks are dealing with various forms and layers of trauma. I feel like we’re going in circles here, but when you refer to instincts to treat people as enemies and disagreement as hatred, I’m sharing with you that it helps me have compassion around the whole thing to understand that those folks are coming from fear and trauma. People are not born hateful. All that said, you’ve probably written and posted six more articles since we began this discussion… I see your work and truly applaud your effort to engage in respectful exchanges and build bridges in a divided world.
The sad truth is that life is stressful and difficult and most of us are (or at least feel) powerless to do anything about it.
Most people work jobs they hate, have dreams they’ll never fulfil, and are afraid to say what they think. Social media provides a release valve for all of this.
Under cover of anonymity, we can express opinions we’d never dare admit in person. We can hurl insults and abuse that would get us punched in the mouth in real life. We can block anybody who makes us feel stupid or who tells us a truth we’re not ready to face. And we can tell ourselves it’s okay because, well, “everybody does it.”
The toxicity on social media isn’t a social media problem, it’s an “us” problem. Social media just gives us an outlet for our pent-up frustrations. But imagine if we focused that frustration on our problems instead of at strangers on the internet. It wouldn’t stop us arguing. But we might solve a problem or two in the process.
I had to look up Uju Anya and I came across this article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11213985/Professor-Uju-Anya-Queen-excruciating-death-doubles-down.html
When I think of "teachable moments," I do not think of people like her, even though she styles herself as a "teacher." I think of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. They seem to better model a more productive transition from colonialist racism to some kind of post-colonial dialectic that actually produces something positive.
The truth is that some people just want attention. The Queen's death offered an opportunity to get loud and perform "outrage." It's so damn easy to do with social media. Most people who do it really have no skin in the game upon closer inspection. I'm still trying to understand what the Queen had to do with Prof. Anya's Nigerian father's philandering.
The United States did welcome her Trinidadian mother and Uju and her siblings as immigrants. She ended up going to Dartmouth. That's truly impressive, as is the story of Nigerian immigrants in the US generally.
So Uju could have told an inspiring story based on her own life, had she wished. But instead, we got hate.
Hate is so easy. Reconcilation is hard.
I thought Queen Elizabeth was a sweet old lady who led a long and full life. It never crossed my mind to hold her responsible for historical atrocities she had nothing to do with.
And that is all I have to say about her death.
But we are living in a society that is increasingly fascist and one aspect of fascism is that everything is political, and for some reason most of us see a need to fight viciously over every tiny disagreement.