The left and the right are the same. And not in a kumbaya we all bleed red and love our children way. In the way we dunk. In the way we own. In the total futility of our respective mic drops.
Social media has evolved a way of phrasing things, each platform its own conventions, rewarded by the metrics and engagement. And both sides use the same tired tropes to make the opposite points in a predictable, actually boring, exercise in preaching to the choir.
There is not one time that Black Lives Matter trends that an influencer doesn’t post “Hands up don’t shoot was a lie.” It goes viral every time. Libs: owned. I’d like to report a murder. No, really.
Hands up don’t shoot is a lie is kind of brilliant because “Mike Brown was a thug and had it coming” sounds kinda racist, but pointing out that an entire protest chant, and movement, is made up of deluded people who wouldn’t know a fact if it bit them in the ass is kinda boss.
But I’ve got bad news for the right. And equally bad news for the left.
There’s not a single dunk, not a single own, that doesn’t prove to the ostensibly owned party that you’re a complete idiot.
If I were to try to explain why “hands up don’t shoot” is a perfect protest chant and captured the zeitgeist perfectly (as did “sixteen shots and a cover-up” for Laquan McDonald) I’d say that there are only so many times you can chant “no justice, no peace!” I’d say that its pithiness and staccato rhythm allow chanting in unison without getting out of sync. I’d say it also works as classic call-and-response, with even a physical action (throw up your hands). I’d say that it evokes a specific moment, the moment of no return, the moment of realization, and that, unlike any phrase that means “what happened to Mike Brown was a tragedy” it instead *places the protester in Mike Brown’s shoes* essentially saying “it could have been me, it could have been you.”
I’d say that asking it to be literal last words, or believing that we believe it is literal last words, is to miss the point so profoundly you have owned yourself.
