Never mind what I think. I'm not Justin Bieber
Never mind what I think. I’m not Justin Bieber
When I sit down to write, I sometimes register a tug of shame behind my navel. It’s a missed call from imposter syndrome; jeers about writers more deserving of this job recorded in a voicemail I can’t delete. It tells me, as I hit “send” on another frivolous piece, that my assignment was a test of ethics, and I’ve just failed.
With my small online following and the inexplicable confidence my editor has in my ability to produce something entertaining every other week, I have not only a voice, but an audience to hear it. That more talented, more qualified writer whose place I’m taking up would use these newspaper inches to address real-world issues. With the privilege of this platform, aren’t I duty-bound to nudge my readers towards something better? Forget word counts and engagement data: is influencing social change my job?
Recently, when Olivia Wilde reposted a tweet that said, “I wish Taylor Swift was in love with a climate scientist,” I understood both what she meant and why it made people mad. Fixating on a certain superstar’s love life isn’t interesting any more, and yet there seemed to be no corner of the internet not talking about it. Tens of thousands of people chattering about a pop star and a football player; imagine if all that attention was focused on something actually important.
Credit: Robin Cowcher
Two philosophers of equal merit, Voltaire and Spider-Man, agreed that power and responsibility are inextricably linked. Couldn’t you argue that with each moment Taylor Swift isn’t using the full scope of her influence to eradicate world hunger, end dictatorships, cure cancer, she’s actively contributing to humanity’s suffering? God. It’s like she doesn’t even care. How does she live with herself?A reminder just came up on my phone: “COLUMN DUE.”
The shame is back. I search my socials for something to quell it; something important to write about. My feed spits back posts about the Voice vote, news stories about Nazis I’m getting far too used to, infographics about genocide. Meanwhile, my last story was about my horoscope. As fresh conflict broke out between Hamas and Israel, I went to print whining about the cost of takeaway when you’re single. My silence: is it telling?
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It’s a requirement now for celebrities – real ones, not nobody writers – to post sombre, nuanced statements about global news within hours of stories breaking. They owe us their transparency as payment for our streaming service subscriptions. When protests feel pointless and echo chambers feel infinite, it’s handy to be clear on who’s a bigot and whose films we can watch in good conscience.
Yet when Jamie Lee Curtis and Justin Bieber both posted their support for Israel mistakenly using photos that depicted violence against Palestine, my question wasn’t whether they were using their platforms the right way, but why the hell we were considering Justin Bieber’s opinion on one of modern history’s most controversial geopolitical conflicts in the first place.
When allyship is determined by how fast you hit the “share” button, it feels less like solidarity and more like performance. When someone’s investment in a cause is measured by how loudly they support it, we hear less about the issue, and more about the person holding the megaphone. Suddenly it’s not social justice, but social capital. It’s not advocacy; it’s indulgence.
I just wrote 800 words about holiday fatigue, felt ashamed of their insignificance, and deleted them. I wrote 800 more about a conflict I’m not qualified to commentate on, felt ashamed of my attempt to cling to relevance, and deleted those too. I’m a culture columnist and a romance author. My major struggle in life is my complicated relationship with gluten. What do I know about a racism I’ve never experienced? What gives me the right to butt into a conversation about terrorism in a corner of the world I’ve never been to? Who the hell do I think I am, Justin Bieber?
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Our values define us, and often, the most we can offer people in crisis is support. But the act of reposting a photo is empty if you don’t look deeper, listen to first-hand accounts, engage beyond a perfunctory click. Who do we think we’re helping?
By the time this is published, untold horrors will have defined the lives of people you and I will never meet. Maybe this time we could give them something other than the box-ticking, ego-satiating act of reposting a photo that tells a story we don’t fully understand.
Maybe we could step out of the spotlight we force upon ourselves, hand the mic to someone with something real to say, and do the thing we all seem to find so hard: listen.
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