infographic regurgitators

I stopped writing for a while because I was afraid I had nothing new to say. And to be honest, none of my opinions are probably very original. From time on the Internet, I have learned to scour comments for the collective opinion. I have learned to search for a topic before taking the time to actively consider it myself. I hold back on saying things unless I have watched at least five people validate the viewpoint. And that’s not okay!

Yesterday, my school newspaper staff rounded up to host a discussion for the staff editorial. In light of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, we decided to focus on political violence and the effects it has. My co-editor-in-chief begins firing off questions and slowly , people begin to respond.

You know when somebody makes a joke, and you just know you’ve read it, seen it, heard it before, yet they still try to pass it off as some brand new spark of personal creativity? That’s what the entire discussion felt like. Nearly every point made could easily be traced back to a highly reposted Instagram infographic. Yet they ramble off somewhat intelligently sounding, nothing truly formed.

I have long hated the Instagram infographic. You always know when something major has happened because the same repost will pop up on every single one of the stories you click through! This has always seemed so performative to me. In this day and age (or perhaps exclusively found in my Bay Area high school), everyone tries to seem so educated, so informed! So they repost to “spread awareness,” but truly, it is just another hindrance, just another thing to click through. And it does nothing. To be truly well-informed, you have to go beyond Instagram, and take the time to form one’s own opinion. If one is just repeating everything they’ve read online, naturally, you’re taking no time to critically think about the topic. You appear intelligent, but at the cost of not being so at all— just another infographic regurgitator in a sea of many.

Through these infographics, politics become just as consumable as anything else you repost— just yesterday I saw one of Charlie Kirk followed by a “fit check”! The repercussions of the integration of serious content in the normal/fun content have been discussed many times: jumping from Subway Surfers, to violent videos, back to “day in my life”. I don’t want to say politics has no place on social media, because it does. This is genuinely how some people are able to get informed. But reposting an infographic on your story does not make you actively engaged in politics— you just continue being a follower, and that is not how you make a change. Hopefully, most people know that, though.

So why post?

Is it to show you care? Is it to prove you care? Politics has always been underlined by the “performative” in some sense.

Stop being an infographic regurgitator, and truly do something meaningful. Your job as an active citizen does not end with the repost button.