But looking at a twitter trends map in the United States or anywhere in the world on that day you wouldn't know that four horrible terrorist attacks took place.
That all happened on the day that love won in the United States and no one noticed. Or at least no one talked about it. Everyone was rightly celebrating the Supreme Court ruling and I am not criticizing them for that, but I do wonder how such horrific events can go unnoticed and undiscussed.
Just a week earlier, nine people were killed in a horrible racist terrorist attack on a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Everyone was talking about it on twitter as they should have been. When it happened, people who went on tweeting the same things they do on any other day were criticized for doing so. But what made the events in Charleston more worthy of stopping, taking notice and changing gears than the events in Tunisia, Kuwait, Somaila and France? I don't think it is just an issue of America being insular (although I think that is part of it), since the United States did take stop and take notice when the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place.
I wonder what would have happened if the Supreme Court ruling on equal marriage had happened on the same day as the Charleston shooting. Would we have been able to mourn, to express outrage, and celebrate at the same time? Or would one have taken over and the other been buried?
Are we in this together?
Does the world go on lock down with us? Does the world grieve with us? Does the world celebrate with us? Does the world express its outrage with us? Does the world call for change with us?
When something big happens, are we in it together?
I would say that we're not. We're all in our own world making decisions about what affects us and what we feel we need to speak out about. I appreciate a gentle nudge, or even a not so gentle nudge, to wake up and pay attention to something. I am a person who likes to pay attention to things.
But I think when we ask people to stop and shift gears, we may be asking too much. Unless we have and we would always do the same thing for them. Take a moment to think about who "them" is. The world is a big place and there are a lot of things going on. Sure you tweeted #bringourgirlsback. But that was one issue, one time. Are you really on top of everything? Do you even know whether the Nigerian school girls were ever found?
Who am I saying this for?
I'm not saying this for myself, because I didn't need you all to stop what you were doing when Canada was on lock down. I only noticed that you didn't stop because it seemed like a double standard. I wondered why your lock down was important and my lock down was not.
I'm saying this for the issues that go unnoticed or that get forgotten quickly. The ones where no one stops, tells everyone to shut up and listen and turn off the scheduled tweets. The ones that get swept under the rug over and over again.
Figuring out how we get those issues talked about is more important to me than whether someone continues their scheduled tweets or posts a picture of their lunch during a crisis. So let's keep talking about racism and #BlackLivesMatter because I love the momentum I've seen on those issues and we need more of it. But let's also talk about #MMAW, which needs more momentum (please do me a favour and take a moment to learn about it if you don't know what it is). And let's keep talking about the many other globally important issues and events.
Rather than telling other people what they need to stop tweeting perhaps we should all stop and think about what we are not bothering to tweet.