Breathe. Just Breathe.

I've been thinking about social media a lot lately. How we talk to each other. What we take from other's posts. How someone can be a complete stranger, someone you've only interacted with through one of these apps, or someone you know and maybe have even met with in-person. How easy social media has lowered our inhibitions about treating each other like sources of content to evaluate rather than people to be in conversation with.

I made a silly post the other day.

"The only live action remake of an animated film that has felt like it was truly successful on its own has been Cinderella. Preferably the one with Brandy, Whoopi Goldberg, and Whitney Houston. The one with Lily James has its own charm too. In both cases the visuals are stunning, the acting is earnest and just a little goofy, and they *feel* like fairytales. Shout-out to Ever After for being in a class of its own because it's not really a live action remake but its own brilliant thing."

It was early. I wasn't really thinking all that deeply about it. I'd seen some announcement about the live-action Moana and got to thinking about how the animated version isn't all that old. And huh, it feels like there's been so many of these lately. An animated film and then a live action version. And now that I think about it, the only time I feel like I really remember the live action version of a story that has a well-known animated version has been Cinderella.

The 1950s Disney animated version was lovely. But watching Rodger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella with Brandy, Whoopi Goldberg, and Whitney Houston absolutely enchanted me. I had a taped-from-broadcast VHS version that was fuzzy, wobbly in parts, and had commercial interruptions. Ever After, a variation of the tale but clearly a Cinderella, came along the next year with Drew Barrymore and I connected with another facet of this character, not just as a dreamer but as a woman who fought for others and herself. Then came the 2015 version with Lily James and Cate Blanchett and it was beautiful and earnest and had its own sweet and soft charm. Each actress's take emphasized a different aspect of the character. Brandy's Cinderella was an adventurous dreamer. James' character Ella radiated her love for her mother and her kindness and empathy was neither weak nor naive. Barrymore's Danielle was a well-read, unapologetically passionate, principled fighter.

It's worth noting the obvious for myself. I grew up in deep poverty with very complicated familial relationships, and became independent at a very young age. Cinderella, in its many forms, was a story that was absolutely going to resonate with me as a child. I didn't dream of a ball and, as my husband will tell you, I didn't care about princes. As the joke goes, Cinderella didn't ask for a prince, she asked for a night off work. But I wore sparkly shoes to prom, I dreamed of going to far off places, and wielded my independence as fiercely as Drew Barrymore wielded her sword. (As it turns out my prince was super into that, followed me on my adventures, and did, in fact, become my husband.)

So here is this story—a very, very old story—with thousands of iterations. There is a well known animated film version and multiple live action film versions. Compared to The Lion King, Lilo & Stitch, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, How to Train Your Dragon, etc all of which have popular animated films and a later live-action versions, it's the Cinderella movies, in my mind, that the live action versions are as memorable, if not more so, than the animated one.

Obviously, this is only my opinion. It's not an objective truth.

Obviously, my words are imprecise and even inaccurate depending on how loosely or strictly you hold the definition of the word "remake" to be. I'll be honest, I just wasn't thinking all that hard about it when I tried to share an inane thought on live action versus animated stories in 500 characters at roughly 5 in the morning. Nor was I trying to be all that precise at a follow up reply later in the thread because what I was focused on just wasn't the same thing, it was still pretty early, and the topic just wasn't a priority. I was sharing a pointless-in-the-big-picture opinion on a social media platform, not writing a thesis.

There aren't many replies to the post and frankly, I wasn't expecting any nor caring all that much if there were. (It is a bizarre thing to simultaneously like sharing things out loud while being kind of averse to actually being perceived.) But there were a few replies and what fascinates me is the reminder that what one person focuses on about any given topic and what others focus on, can be entirely different things.

In the replies, what apparently caught people's attention the most was that by using “remake” I implied that the 1997 made-for-TV Rodger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella was a direct remake of the 1950 animated film. It isn't. I know that. They know that. Nor was Ever After. The only literal remake by Disney of the 1950 Disney animated film is the 2015 version with Lily James. Disney now holds rights to the TV film and streams it but they didn't make it. It would have been more accurate for me to say “take.” I’ve seen the word "remake" used loosely before and I just didn’t think that much about it.

There are a couple ways to look at this. That implication is incorrect. No argument there. Certainly my language created that read for some people. The other way to look at it is that based on my list of Cinderella movies, one could also reasonably understand the bigger point that I was trying to share beyond the technicalities.

People can have entirely different things they zero in on with regard to any given topic as the thing to focus on and none of them are necessarily wrong in their particular attention. Any given topic, no matter how seemingly-innocuous, also touches on serious and complex issues. Also, what we are drawn to is not an automatic reflection of what is objectively most important but more often what matches our own interests and priorities.

You can be talking about a book you just read and maybe you're just thinking of a specific trope or theme, or just a line that particularly stuck out to you but that book also sits in the context of the political acts of publishing and reading, the interplay between culture and representation of marginalized identities and voices, the politics of book bans, the evolution of societal issues influencing plot and language, the influence of capitalism on the publishing industry, and the manifestation of biases and prejudices, both overt and implicit, within the storytelling itself. To deny any of these connected facets exist is wildly wrong. But also, the logistics of conversations, the limitations of social media exchanges, make it quite difficult to unpack all things at all times when engaging in any aspect of the topic. But maybe you just wanted to say something about the cover. I keep seeing exchanges that develop, not necessarily hostility, but certainly friction when one person is engaging in one aspect and someone else is focused on another aspect and they just aren't having the same conversation.

"You can't talk about <> without mentioning <>..." Can't or shouldn't? Either way, social media makes that kind of hard to do in reality. Between character limits, weird reply formats, an algorithm that churns things out of sequence and throws strangers suddenly into the middle of conversations, it's actually quite difficult to talk about any one thing and succinctly and articulately also convey all the other relevant aspects.

That's before we even get into that it is entirely to be expected that at any given moment, one of those aspects can be the conversational priority of one party because that's just where they happen to be in their thinking at that moment, and someone else can be focused on an entirely different aspect. Neither is automatically wrong for that.

I was talking about variations of a story. Some respondents focused on intellectual property and who owned what versions and that two of the three films I mentioned were not technically remakes. We could dig deep into IP overreach by major corporations, the impact of capitalism on cultural artifacts like folk tales, or how we think of originality versus derivation in art. All of which are fascinating, nuanced, and also at times serious topics that certainly merit a more intentional and precise participation in their exploration.

Since that wasn't the conversation I was trying to have, my language was incorrect for that conversation. That's the thing that feels especially common in a million different topics and conversations right now. We can be trying to speak in one space and stepping, stumbling, or being pulled into conversations we're not actually trying to have at that moment and then fumbling.

A lot of social media has become less about socializing and more about people, in their own way, purposefully or subconsciously, trying to establish agreement with a record of fact that fits their worldview, their understanding, and their priorities.

I see far more interactions of corrections, fact-checking, countering, or arguing than dialogue. Not just on the big conversations...on everything. And yes, countering someone's point is a normal, reasonable thing adult people should be able to do in conversation without it creating insult and affront, but social media is designed to catalyze emotional response not reasoned exchange and then amplify it as far as possible to drive engagement.

It says something about the world we're living in right now. That lies and falsehoods, misrepresentations and manipulations are so pervasive, so rife, so affecting that we are primed to receive broad, nebulous, unspecific, tangential, or just differently focused speech that doesn't match our own priorities as if it represents the same level of threat as the misinformation and disinformation infecting our institutions and civic life.

It feels more and more like the expectation that social media users have is for other social media users is not sharing their thinking out loud or thinking in progress, but declaring positions with which one argues or agrees. If you don't caveat every possible nuance, related topic, or thing you aren't including, the oversight will be noted. The social convention of not making assumptions about what someone thinks about the things they don't mention is no longer convention. What you say is assumed to be the totality of what you think and know. Every word has become evidence, including their absence. Sometimes especially their absence. Correcting others has become, maybe not the motive, but most certainly a prominent activity of social media users.

Few people have the ability and access to go stand in the face of a politician or billionaire and tell them to their face they are wrong. But with just a few clicks, you can easily come across someone online who is entirely or just wrong enough, that you can tell them so. The power out of reach for so many where it matters most, is easily within reach where it matters arguably least.

I came across a post early this year that was one of those technically inaccurate but still mostly innocuous musings that a person had about how they needed to be a librarian so they could read and work with books all day in silence. To me, it read in a kind of tired sarcasm tone. Incorrect because that's not what librarians do. But, by itself, it was just silly musing. A daydream shared out loud. It wasn't meant to be a literal interpretation of the job of being a librarian any more than me saying I wish I was an astronomer so I could look at stars all the time is me saying I literally think that all astronomers do is sit outside at night and look at the sky. That post exploded. Bookish users latched on. Many librarians were insulted about such a reductionist take on their difficult, underfunded, and far more complex jobs. And that thing that social media does happened where one person replied and said something along the lines of "this isn't what being a librarian is like" and then another person, and another, and another. It was quoted that way multiple times and the pile-on grew. Because the post could be presented to others with the framing of "this is problematic" new viewers could be primed to read it through the lens of offense which they might not have had if they'd come across it themselves on its own.

Now before I go any further in this story, I’m going to make a caveat that is necessary because, again, the internet. I understand why many librarians felt disrespected and misunderstood. The details of this story aren’t to enrage people about librarians or say that the librarians' feelings weren’t valid. This is just a clear example I witnessed of the social media dynamics I want to unpack and it could have happened with any profession. I’ve spent almost my entire professional career in and adjacent to journalism. A poster-child for professions the majority of people do not understand. This story could have easily been someone musing about wanting to be a journalist so they could spend all day doing hard-hitting investigations to uncover the truth and telling people’s stories. Ask your average reporter how much time of their day they get to spend actually doing that. Ask an artist trying to make a living from art about how much time of their day they get to spend actually creating versus hustling to run a business they can live off of. Or an author how much of their work is writing versus promoting their books. Every job has some aspect of it from the outside that can be idealized and over-simplified. That perception can become exhausting over time. But the existence of those perceptions do not invalidate the complicated, difficult, and arduous aspects of the job. We need the parts that people can dream of, that’s how they start down the path of learning more. Now, moving on...

I was transfixed by the whole event. I checked this person's feed. They weren't a troll. Just a youngish-coded profile that shared random thoughts, experiences of their day, and the like. No rage-bait. No controversial takes. No problematic -isms or -phobias in their profile as far as I saw in my scroll. Just a person sharing stuff online and a follower count of a few hundred. But this poster rapidly ceased being a person to the people engaging, they were now a common enemy. An avatar of why librarianship is so misunderstood, undervalued, and underfunded. A single post that somehow was responsible for all the collective disrespect of the profession.

I engaged with a few respondents. "Why the need for so many to reply to tell this person they are wrong?" Because people needed to know that this wasn't what being a librarian is actually like. Because they needed to make sure other people didn’t think this was what librarians do all day. Because this contributes to people not respecting librarians. Because it's disrespectful to the threats librarians face under fascism. Because being a librarian is serious and this trivialized their important work. Because this person needed to be corrected.

A couple hundred corrections later, the original poster was struggling. At first some earnest replies. The corrections keep coming. Then confused replies. More corrections. Then sarcastic replies. More corrections and some insults. Then combative replies. Then judgments about the poster's character and intelligence. Then bad behavior, insults, and angry replies. I saw references to some awful language in replies that I didn't see myself but wouldn't be surprised if they happened because of how things devolved. That behavior is not defensible nor would I try to. Understanding how something happens and defending it are two different things. The person mentioned how this whole thing was affecting their mental health and that was then cast as being manipulative and trying to avoid accountability for their words. In these later stages, the original poster's sarcasm, defensiveness, offensiveness, and “manipulative” words were then held up as the proof as to why all the pushback was necessary in the first place. As far as the critics were concerned, the poster had been unmasked as being as awful as they suspected based on a post about reading books all day and the critics were now validated in the force of their response.

In Ever After, Danielle quotes Utopia: “You first make thieves and then punish them.” On social media, we often make things into offense and then pile-on.

A handful of replies could be interpreted as a "correction." Respondents I did interact with told me that's all they were doing. They were just correcting the poster, it wasn't an attack. One implied their response could have been worse and they were holding back. It is bizarre how we've sort of just accepted that humans beings should be capable of receiving a large quantity of responses, far more than we ever experience in person and just shrug it off. Hundreds of repetitive replies and quotes, many of which were laced with insults and judgment, and the intent of correcting the perception of what librarianship actually is no longer matters. At that point, the nervous system is going to feel under attack. Human beings don't make the best decisions when we feel like we are under attack. Expecting someone to remain polite, deferential, and apologetic in the face of thousands of negative responses, seems like asking a bit much especially when the offense was...let's check our notes again...saying they wish they could be a librarian so they could read and work with books all day.

It's worth noting that it was an assumption that the daydream was one of ignorance rather than wishful thinking that something could be better than its reality. If this person said something like "I know this is not what the job is like but..." would this still have happened? Seems unlikely and I also suspect the post would have gotten a lot of "I wish that too" type of responses because a lot of people dream about reading books all day.

That's the struggle with social media, you don't have to be articulate enough to satisfy the entire platform, you just have to be less articulate, well-spoken, thorough, or specific than one user with a big enough following at the right moment in the algorithm thinks you should be and that can be enough of a transgression to bring down thousands upon you.

Ironically, the original poster gained followers from the whole situation because other people came across the exchanges and were baffled at the intensity and negativity of the response to the original post. A small account with little influence became a bigger account with more influence directly as a result of people wanting to minimize this person ostensibly contributing to a reductive perception of something they cared about.

I asked one of the frequently engaging posters why it was so important to correct this random poster's random daydream shared out loud and I will never forget their response. "The daydream is ridiculous."

"A dream is a wish your heart makes."

Everything is a lot. All the time. Everything is urgent. Everything is a threat. Everything is important. Everything is the priority. Except it can’t actually be. I don’t think that any of us are equipped to function like that for long.

Maybe the dream is that the world could be just a little bit softer where we can make it so.

A little less extracting. A lot less contentious. A little more forgiving. A little more understanding. A little more graceful. A place where we give each other the space to be a little wrong when we're not actually causing harm. Where we don't artificially make the stakes higher than they really are. Where we give a little benefit of the doubt when there's no evidence it will be abused at that moment. Where we can act with the cautiousness that's warranted by collective histories while still treating people as individuals with the potential to be better than that history.

I used to be a more argumentative social media user. I don't like false information. I have, as the memes describe, that delusion where I believe that if people just had factual information the world would be a better place. But lately I think that how I, as an individual, try to create that factual record matters as much, sometimes maybe even more so, than the facts themselves. I try to withhold my corrections and counters except when it feels useful and important enough to share. Facts should be the bricks upon which we build better futures, not the ones we use to bust apart the dreams that can lead us to those futures. I want to hand people bricks, not throw them at them. I want to see what they build with them.

Cinderella said “Impossible things happen every day.”

Ella said “Where there is kindness, there is goodness.”

Danielle said “Breathe. Just breathe.”