Should you take your date to eat at the Cheesecake Factory

The apprehension I used to have about writing things pertaining to the black community is largely behind me. For one, I think I’m a far better writer than I used to be, and can more effectively communicate what I’m feeling. I’m more nuanced at least in my approach, and I take great care to say what I mean with only a necessary amount of aggression. I’m afraid this might come off as very nuanced, but I feel it all the same. 

We all know different races and demographics interface with the internet in different ways. No matter which group you identify with, there is a larger community that looks, sounds and speaks like you. The individuals that participate in this collective space receive the same exposures and that forms a shared space. In short, we may not be the same, but if our cultural touchstones are at all alike, our internet diet will reflect as such. In keeping, I’m a black 20-something year-old, and my internet feed says as much. It's the internet culture I am most acclimated with. I'm usually aware of whatever the black Twitterverse is talking about, or what has us up in arms in the Instagram comments, and even if I try to avoid it, my friends (also 20-something year-olds) will send it to the group chat, so there is no avoiding it. So I’m aware even if I don't want to be, and if I were speaking honestly—and I am—what can be summarized as black internet culture has become completely baseless, depraved, redundant, and all-together boring. I'm sick of it, the whole thing. 

I'm thinking back to a few months ago, and the conversations that were animating us then. I'm sorry to say that as a collective not too long ago, we were all engaged in a conversation about if The Cheesecake Factory was a reasonable place to take a girl on a date. If your immediate reaction is to laugh, do so now, because if we examine just how useless this discourse was, the laughter ceases. I scrolled through scores of unsolicited opinions about how “wack” or “how cheap ni**as is.” I even found myself for a second forming opinions of my own. Then I realized…this is fucking stupid. What the fuck am I even talking about? And I’d imagine that if you asked most black people, they’d agree. Then the question is, who is driving these conversations? Why is it that from one week to the next we find ourselves in such shallow places. Obviously “we” are the ones driving the conversation; they wouldn't be happening if not for us. But I also believe the things (movers of our culture) that we have become reliant on are, by design, depraved. As sad as it may seem, the prominent thought leader(s) in black internet space are largely entertainment companies. For those who are used to them, your mind will go to The Shade Room, JAM’N 94.5, VladTV, Revolt, etc. For us black people, these need no introduction. But for the less aware, these entertainment bodies hold a significant sway in the black internet space. Their importance, and others like them, are practically indispensable, and I think unintentionally, they’ve all cheapened it to varying degrees. I say unintentionally because the cottage industry of adjacent entertainment companies were never meant to do anything but that. The problem is not that they exist, but that they have become all-encompassing. 

It's really not any different than what has happened to culture across different demographics. Things that matter are delivered and exist side by side with things that are completely frivolous. It isn't as if The Shade Room only posts frivolous things, or if The Breakfast Club only talks about trendy topics. They also engage in important conversation. The Breakfast Club specifically has done several interviews that left me feeling smarter for having listened. I also remember The Shade Room being an important hub of conversation during the George Floyd protests. But as I stated before, these spaces are insufficient platforms for these conversations, regardless of how genuine they might seem when they broach them. They can’t help themselves; they are in the business of attention by any means necessary. So when they post or talk about something that has real value, that value is only measured by how many people engage with it. Those metrics are the exact same as the most recent viral video of a celebrity twerking. When conversations of social change are churned in the same mix as the most pointless clickbait, those conversations become pointless as well. Because rest assured, social justice only garners attention for an entertainment business for so long. The goal is to have as many people under the tent commenting as possible, and the larger the tent, the more profitable the company is. So news about the most recent murder of a young black man by a police officer is delivered and used for the same exact thing as discourse about whether or not Cheesecake Factory is a suitable enough location for a date. The topics that might require more afterthought, the topics that we truly need to sit with, have to compete with junk. 

These spaces almost have a monopoly on our collective dialogue. If they act as a hub for everything, then within that, everything critical that matters dies at the altar of content. We have allowed—and I say we because, without our involvement it wouldn’t be possible—these platforms to treat sensitive matters however they wish. They use our trauma, hope, and pain to sell us likes, comments, and follows. You feel it too, I’m sure, like you’re being taken advantage of. That feeling of discontent after you’re done scrolling, asking why the most seedy and wasteful parts of our culture dominate these platforms. The things that in reality occupy a very small part of who we are, seem to be all we are on the internet. 

Whenever I engage in any sort of cultural critique, even in flippant conversation, I ask myself what I am comparing it to. If I'm being critical of a current cultural trend, it stands to reason I believe it is getting worse, or rather there was a time where it was better. The comparison I made admittedly isn’t a one to one, but what I think objectively has become worse is that the people of most prominence in our communities are not as thoughtful as they used to be. When I say prominence, I mean those who occupy most of our shared attention—easily put, the celebrities. To me it seems the ones with the loudest microphones aren’t saying what needs to be said, or are contributing to the denigration I am referring to. I believe what has changed in large part is that the people we used to look up to did things of importance. Importance referring to maybe why it is those people might have risen to prominence within the black community at all. Celebrity or notoriety is usually a one to one for influence, and I'd say specifically in the black community, those who rose to prominence were typically the ones affecting a positive change. Being famous used to mean something, but now people are famous and therefore have influence for not really doing much. We had leaders such as the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm King who rose to prominence because of their significant contributions to our (black) community. Their celebrity was nearly a direct result of the change they were affecting. Of course we had celebrities from entertainment (music, movies, art) and they had a role to play in our collective consciousness, but they existed in conjunction with the likes of James Baldwin or a Maya Angelou. There wasn't an over reliance as there is now on the entertainment figures. They seem to have become the bearers of all things us. People who didn't set out to be community leaders have de facto become just that. Some detractors would say maybe I’m unaware, or I haven't done my homework. But I ask, who could we say is our modern day Malcolm X, or even a Stockley Carmichael? We are completely missing that part of our diet. I wager more of us know who Charlamagne tha God than Ta Nehisi Coates. What kills me is even the figures who are more concerned with black liberation are largely a part of the same entertainment scheme. We’ve come to rely on the likes of Dr. Umar (admittedly there are things he says that are spot on), a man so committed to the cause he’s turned himself into a meme. I’m sure in a perfect world he wouldn’t have to cheapen his message to garner clicks, but in our current digital age, he has to give 20,000 lashes to Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe to get his message out. Content wins again. 

I want to expand on a point I only maybe alluded to earlier, pertaining specifically to the type of things we as a culture engage with. I don't think the frivolity alone of what we consume is what bothers me the most, but actually how sensational and traumatizing it is. Those conversations that sound like us and the people that look most like us are rarely ever about the good in us. The images we are being offered, indeed the images that are used against us are that of rappers being arrested, that of spouses being cheated on, that of petty feuds, or that whatever Blueface and Chrisean Rock are doing. These images come to act (wrongfully) as representatives for what the community is, or rather the community engages with it so vehemently it seems as though we want it to represent us. In regards to the traumatizing, not only are we being traumatized by being fed bad representations of ourselves, but again when injustice is done to us and it is used to capture our attention. Specifically, I remember watching a video of a black man being shot by a police officer in his own car while thinking to myself, “It’s important this video is available but why should it have to exist here?” Here I was looking at the life of a man leaking out through a bullet hole, and when I'd had enough, I could just scroll up to news about which NBA star just got an Instagram model pregnant. Or what Meg the Stallion video just dropped. And just like that, I forgot somebody died. Just like that, an issue that requires more of you both mentally and emotionally are completely beside the point. It helps you compartmentalize pain that shouldn’t be easily forgotten, because rest assured there will be something loading that will help ease your mind.

What makes black internet culture even more dangerous is the apathy that it creates. The apathy is generated by various means of course, one being the sheer magnitude of things we have to divide their attention to. This deviation is split amongst hundreds, and even thousands of posts and podcasts daily. Think of it as a firehose, and I contend that a firehose is not a healthy means to a drink of water. This is exactly what our consumption has become, a firehouse of content, largely meaninglessness which drowns all potential meaning. That same apathy can be seen in the way we even engage with would-be causes. When something that is deemed important or pressing happens, rest assured it will be reposted on stories, Instagrams and the like. These people (the genuine and the disingenuous) get to signal that they in fact do care, and in doing so show the rest of us just how virtuous they are. The truth is that it is a little more than just that, a show, one that allows you to play activist dress-up without risking much. It’s a show in the worst way because it allows you to perform activism, and in doing so satisfy that need to feel like you’ve done something when really you didn’t. This is the apathy I want to allude to; it stems from the satisfaction that could be garnered from participating virtually but doing nothing in the real world. I always think back to the Arab Spring and how the revolution didn’t truly begin until the internet was shut off. Sadly this doesn’t seem to be something on our horizon. The internet will not be turned off, and I fear the revolution will never be realized.

I don’t mean to disrupt the narrative flow of this essay, but I think the process of writing this essay was just as important as the essay itself. It's taken me about three months to revisit it because I felt even though my criticisms were valid, I wasn't sure why the vapidness is particularly detrimental to the black community. I mean isn’t just about every corner of the internet tainted? Then it dawned on me, not suddenly but slowly, like that feeling you have when you are the only black person in the room or when you’re the only black person at your job or when a room full of kids are misbehaving, but the black one is the only one that gets in trouble. It’s that burden that comes with being black in the real world and on the Internet. That feeling of having more to lose than anyone else. So yes, mostly the Internet and how we most commonly interface with it has become perverted. But unlike some of our counterparts, we don’t have the time to waste. We entertain ourselves at our own risk. The more and more we distract ourselves, the less we realize just how much we are distracting ourselves. We alone know how dangerous this world is for darker-skinned people, and if we are too busy engaging in frivolity, we alone will bear its destruction. We’ve always had more to lose, and it’s no different now. I’d suggest we have more to lose now than we ever have, and what is required is we act as such. I don’t have the solution nor will I pretend to, but this should not negate my diagnosis and its validity. We ignore them at our own peril, we replace our medicine with sugar at the detriment of our own health. The tools of change are right at our fingertips; we only have to realize what needs to be made.