Black and White Social Media Challenge
The Meaningless Black-and-White Instagram "Challenge" Is Great, Because It'south Hilarious
"The electric current cultural moment is one whose urgency feels peculiarly ill-suited to the sort of vapid pageantry that typically constitutes the 'socially witting' arm of a celebrity's public-relations repertoire," Jordan Coley wrote in the New Yorker last month. That essay was sparked by a ii-minute compilation of white celebrities soberly avowing "I take responsibility" for anti-Black racism. The video was black and white presumably because black and white signifies seriousness. It was a painfully earnest do in self-flagellation that avant-garde no bodily cause other than cocky-promotion. Information technology turned into a PR embarrassment for only virtually everyone involved.
Petty more than than a month later on, the celebs are at it again. In recent days, many have jumped on the bandwagon of a vague female-empowerment Instagram campaign under the hashtag #ChallengeAccepted. Typically, a participant posts a black-and-white portrait of herself, with a explanation gesturing at the idea of women supporting i some other. She then tags another scattering of women and "challenges" them to post their ain portrait, then the cycle of empowerment can go on. There's no organized call to action and, in the fad's electric current iteration, no connection to a larger political cause. Famous people including Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Lopez, and Ivanka Trump accept participated. And the phenomenon has now spread like wildfire through the ranks of nonfamous women likewise. Every bit of this writing, almost 6 1000000 posts on Instagram conduct the hashtag.
As the two-toned portraits cropped up across the feeds of celebrities and ordinary women over the past week or and so, criticism arrived right on cue. "Imagine being in the middle of a global pandemic, an economic collapse, and a fight for racial equality while rallying thousands of people to participate in a selfie claiming that doesn't raise money or awareness for a single cause," podcast host Allie LeFevere tweeted of the challenge. "Do people not know y'all can merely mail a hot selfie for no reason?" Idiot box writer Camilla Blackett asked. "Though the portraits accept spread widely, the posts themselves say very little," Taylor Lorenz observed in the New York Times. "Influencers and celebrities love these types of 'challenges' because they don't crave actual advocacy, which might alienate sure factions of their fan base of operations."
All of this is truthful! But what these critics miss is that #ChallengeAccepted is, in fact, practiced, because it is hilarious.
What'southward the "challenge" involved in posting a flattering self-portrait to a platform designed for that very activeness? What is empowering about seeing a photograph of Cindy Crawford looking perfect? If annihilation, doesn't scrolling Instagram make us feel worse? How does posting a photo of oneself empower others? And what does any of this have to exercise with women, exactly?
Sweep these questions from your heed, and savor the sheer comedy of these magnificently meaningless images juxtaposed with sober pride of the people posting them:
Savour in the self-seriousness. Adore the filters. Bravely accept on the challenge of not cringing at the naked earnestness channeled in the cause of absolutely aught. It'south the Instagram version of the Onion headline "Female Friends Spend Raucous Nighttime Validating the Living Shit Out of Each Other."
It's hard to trace the exact origins of the "challenge." In 2016, Facebook users posted blackness-and-white selfies with the hashtag #challengeaccepted in back up of cancer awareness. The 2020 iteration of the format apparently started in Turkey recently with a much more pointed political valence. In a country with high rates of violence confronting women, the portraits are a reference the black-and-white photographs of female murder victims that appear regularly in newspapers and on social media feeds. In response, Turkish women started posting their own photographs in the aforementioned palette as a show of solidarity and protest.
Suffice it to say that the electric current iteration of the trend has been done make clean of even the remotest trace of political significance. Lily Collins: "These posts are a reflection of how strong nosotros are together." Reese Witherspoon: "May nosotros all keep to shine a light on i another." Kerry Washington: "I am awed by the power of women loving each other and lifting each other up!!!!!" Jennifer Aniston's caption admitted, "I don't really understand this #challengeaccepted thing," only she made a stab at information technology past urging followers to register to vote "for the issues that affect women." She didn't take any recommendations of whom or what, exactly, to vote for or confronting.
Critics say that fads like this make participants feel like they have done something concretely charitable when in fact they take non. Only what if they have done something meaningful, past allowing the residuum of us to express joy at them? These are miniature masterpieces of vacuity, bracing blasts of cringeworthy corniness. There's no argument to be made confronting them, considering they make no argument on their own behalf. All I can really say, every bit a woman, is challenge accepted: I will make fun of these posts, and gladly. After all, as J. Lo put it, "When women support each other incredible things happen!"
0 Response to "Black and White Social Media Challenge"
Post a Comment