Social Media Mental Health Advocacy
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Social media mental health advocacy is a fucking joke.
A person who reposts about giving “leeways” for people with mental illness as a form of empathy is also the person who accepts in words, but not in action. A person who reblogs about asking accountability from others is also the person who does not offer it to others.
There is this sheer lack of nuance in online spaces. Algorithm rewards black and white thinking and people start to revel in the thought fallacy repackaged as Borderline Personality Disorder. People clicking on how Bipolar disorder makes someone difficult to understand, so unpredictable, saying, omg that is so me, then moving on.
Nuance doesn’t feel good. It does not feel gratifying. People want to be understood, but not do the work to be understood. Understanding is a one-way street and if you’re not understanding the illness you are not taking part in the suicide prevention. Accountability is uncomfortable, exhausting, and we’re all here for escapism, not “the work”. Why are you attacking the victim of life as if we haven’t suffered enough?
We are all consumers in the eyes of capitalistic companies, psychology subconsciously shaped by the things spoonfed to us in the For-You-Page. What is doomscrolling if not the mindless consuming? If not for the instant feel-good of being seen by hundreds thousands people who don’t see us in our cowardly complexities?
Much easier, I suppose, to brush it all off to being misunderstood. Easier to brush it off as the other person not making these people feel safe enough to express, rather than them not being courageous enough to speak the truth anyway. Slacktivism worn like a badge of honor, people claim to advocate something they only want to receive but not give. Or want to give as a collective, but not as individuals.
Social media spheres have unchained the unregulated tribalism out of us. Worse, because the tribalism is based on surface-level activism. Click yes, click reblog, and they think they have contributed to the group they claim as their identities. Ownership held onto only until something feels too real and they’d have to fight against it on their own. Who are we when there’s nobody else with us and why can’t we stand for it? Is it activism, is it advocacy, when we huddle together in anonymity until the noncomformity costs too much of us in the society that is too lazy to comprehend differences?
What do you even know about loyalty that would carry the carcasses of the loved ones ailed by neurodivergences that were crushing them from the inside? What do you know about hardships not owned by you, but by the ones who are the halves of you?
Stop joking around.
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