This video is pretty goofy, but it does make a few good points, particularly in the last 12ish seconds.
This event hit very close to home for me since I spent a few years of high school living in Davis, California. Many of my classmates attend this University and have been participating in these protests. It was very hard for me to watch people from my town being treated this way, especially given that Davis is what we like to call “a total hippie town” where things like this don’t really happen.
I was incredibly angry when I first watched this video, and I really hoped it would go completely viral. I wanted everyone to know about this. It has not been the only university protest that has ended in undue violence, but the know-your-meme spokesperson in this video is right in saying that the pictures and videos that came out of this peaceful protest were highly exploitable.
I first came across the article on the front page of the huffington post website. news of this show of violence spread through all sorts of social media. People got really angry! And that is what I wanted. I wanted people as angry as I was when I first saw the video. But I was worried that the story would blow over too soon. People would forget about this story before some of these victims left the hospital. I was so hoping that people wouldn’t forget, but I don’t know how to feel about what it the story has become. The issue hasn’t disappeared from the media as I thought it might, but look at where it resides now; almost exclusively on meme databases.
I don’t know how to feel about this meme because although it keeps people remembering the injustice of the event that occurred, it also diminishes the impact of the issue. The benefit of social media is that everything is faster. Stories can spread like wildfire given the opportunity, but they can disappear just as quickly.
