Red Light Politics
Welcome to my short form Tumblr blog. My name is Flavia Tamara Dzodan, I am a business developer, writer, public speaker, ideas instigator, content creator, media facilitator and trend watcher living in Amsterdam.
This Tumblr is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix.
My long reads blog is Red Light Politics.
I also blog at Tiger Beatdown.
If you would like to know more about me, visit this page .
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The person behind this blog
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Noted Elsewhere
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“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”— Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider.
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I’d be very upset if I worked at Fage USA and had to drive every (Monday) morning to:
1 Opportunity Drive.I suppose that neighbourhood has...
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“Prison relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and,...”
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When the Lesser Of Two Evils Isn't Enough
by Mia McKenzie
Yesterday, I wrote a post called Michelle Obama...
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Try not to forget why they came to the United States of America, and though the specific circumstances may differ, you’ll find that hundreds of...
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Taken with Instagram
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Haarlem, Netherlands (by Epicantus)
Tag Results
49 posts tagged Social media
“Our community has largely been defined by not-poor straight white men over the years, but it’s growing more diverse every day as kids get excited about technology and adults realize our industry is fast-growing and valuable. Diversity does not end at gender or sexuality or race; people with a wide variety of life experiences and opinions have joined the community. This is a wonderful thing, but it also means that there will be a wider range of reactions and more potential for miscommunication. In other words, we have many more opportunities to decide whether we 1) belittle and ostracize people for being different from us or 2) react with empathy, patience, and kindness.”
Dear Fellow Geeks: WTF? - Making the World Suck Less
Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, on racism and sexism in online, geek communities.
“The reaction on Twitter to major political events and policy decisions often differs a great deal from public opinion as measured by surveys. This is the conclusion of a year-long Pew Research Center study that compared the results of national polls to the tone of tweets in response to eight major news events, including the outcome of the presidential election, the first presidential debate and major speeches by Barack Obama.”
Twitter Reaction to Events Often at Odds with Overall Public Opinion | Pew Research Center
Also, from the report released today: “At times the Twitter conversation is more liberal than survey responses, while at other times it is more conservative. Often it is the overall negativity that stands out.”
So, Twitter’s collective consciousness is neither liberal nor conservative… just angry?
Hilarious. You can buy fake twitter followers but the “supplier” outs you as proof of the quality of their service.
I came across an article in the New York Times (it’s a few months old but I was checking some social media tactics in politics and this was one of the top search results). The article explains how celebrities and politicians buy Twitter followers and contained a link to one such “service provider”. The capture above is part of this person’s pitch, where they brag about the quality of their service… outing their customers. I suppose that probably defeats the purpose of the “investment”?
“Progressive” comments sections
I think the comment sections of many “progressive” media should be renamed to “white and wealthy middle classes judge other people’s lives devoid of context of survival strategies or personal circumstances while hiding behind the alibi of “social commentary”“. (see the comments on the post about waxing I already raged about for a glaring example).
“But this idea that we are trading the offline for the online, though it dominates how we think of the digital and the physical, is myopic. It fails to capture the plain fact that our lived reality is the result of the constant interpenetration of the online and offline. That is, we live in an augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online. It is wrong to say “IRL” to mean offline: Facebook is real life.”
“Which brings us to the first consequence. That what you write has an effect. If you write something racially offensive then those you have offended will be less likely to participate. The hostile environment to which you have contributed will also become, by definition, a limited and limiting one. What you end up with is a community, where people are excluded because of who they are that then shrinks to a fetid ecosystem including only people who are just like you.”
Who thinks about the consequences of online racism? | Gary Younge | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
This is a great piece by Gary Younge. I am only quoting a short paragraph because I wanted to copy/paste the whole thing.
“Sometimes I just look at my children and think about the time when they had my vagina round their neck.”
Sweden Twitter Experiment Goes Painfully Awry
The Swedish government has been handing over the @sweden Twitter account to a different citizen each week, and this week’s owner is steering the car right off a social media cliff.
The quote above is part of a long string of racist, homophobic and just plain bizarre tweets from the “Swedish citizen” handling the account this week. Eh, eventually it had to happen, for seven months they had nothing but nice and amiable users tweeting from the account. And now they have this.
The nature of Tumblr and insidious changes in meaning
My Tumblr posts are not always very well thought out (well, not that my non Tumblr posts are, but that’s another topic altogether). I sometimes respond to comments on the fly and don’t necessarily flesh out style or proper paragraph breaks. My Tumblr posts sometimes contain typos or kinda broken grammar (especially if I am working with sources in a language other than English and translating them as I type). However, even though some of the posts can have a draft-like quality, I do consider the words I use. So, yesterday I vented about the European boycott over the Eurovision Song Festival. Now, I fully acknowledge that it wasn’t a ground breaking post or super meaningful or even all that original. It was written in a couple of minutes just to share immediacy, to express something that was relevant to yesterday’s news cycle.
In the post I used the expression “these Othered bodies” to refer to the way the EU deals with undocumented immigrants and internment camps. This wasn’t a typo. This wasn’t a mistake or something that I misused. This was fully intentional and central to my politics. So, when someone reblogs this post and changes the expression to “these other bodies”, they are actually changing the very basis of my politics. I know it is a trivial and a small issue, pretty inconsequential, etc. However, it is worth noting that these changes in meaning (which we cannot control) are also of a political nature. And I’d say not exactly free of ideology either.
![rosa—sparks:
madamethursday:
[Image: A picture of a tall, very thin Black woman with her shoulder over a shorter, older white man wearing traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing on a New York sideway.]
staghunts:
“This one is very serious, guys:
I came upon these two on the sidewalk. They were having a conversation. “Excuse me,” I said, addressing the girl: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but is there anyway I can take your photo?”
“Why would you want my photo?” she asked.
“Because you look beautiful,” I said. And she did. She was Sudanese. There is a very distinct beauty among people from the Sudan, and she was filled up with it. Suddenly the man cut in:
“I was just telling her she was beautiful,” he said.
Naively, I assumed I had just walked up on one stranger giving a compliment to another. I wanted to capture the moment. “Let me take your photograph together,” I said. The man seemed reluctant, he started smiling nervously and inching away. But the girl called him back.
“Come take a picture with me,” she said. Encouraged by her attention, he returned. She put her arm around him, and I took the photo.
As I examined the photos on my camera, the man started whispering to the girl. She answered him in a loud voice: “I told you! I’m not that kind of girl.” She seemed agitated now. Finally sensing that I had misread the situation, I stepped between them. The man began hurrying down the sidewalk.
When the man left, the girl’s demeanor changed completely. She seemed shaken. Her eyes were tearing up. “He just offered me five hundred dollars to go out with him,” she said. “And then when I said ‘no,’ he offered me one thousand. Why does this always happen to me?”
“It happens a lot?” I asked.
“All the time,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional. I just can’t go out of my house without this kind of thing happening. I have a son. I’m a mother. I would never degrade myself like that. I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“Do you mind if I tell this story?” I asked.
“Please,” she said. “Tell it.”
Let’s hope this man, and all men, realize the emotional damage they are inflicting on the women they try to buy. In the meantime, feel free to SHARE.*
Dear Tumblr, fuck you for trying to erase this.
I’m saving this post because as many times as Tumblr tries to erase this woman’s story and act like anything about this was okay, that’s as many times as I’m reposting it. They can either cut me off or stop being assnuggets about this. whichEVER.
Do not forget this.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3v4ahIMJ41qlxu8ho1_500.jpg)
[Image: A picture of a tall, very thin Black woman with her shoulder over a shorter, older white man wearing traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing on a New York sideway.]
“This one is very serious, guys:
I came upon these two on the sidewalk. They were having a conversation. “Excuse me,” I said, addressing the girl: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but is there anyway I can take your photo?”
“Why would you want my photo?” she asked.
“Because you look beautiful,” I said. And she did. She was Sudanese. There is a very distinct beauty among people from the Sudan, and she was filled up with it. Suddenly the man cut in:
“I was just telling her she was beautiful,” he said.
Naively, I assumed I had just walked up on one stranger giving a compliment to another. I wanted to capture the moment. “Let me take your photograph together,” I said. The man seemed reluctant, he started smiling nervously and inching away. But the girl called him back.
“Come take a picture with me,” she said. Encouraged by her attention, he returned. She put her arm around him, and I took the photo.
As I examined the photos on my camera, the man started whispering to the girl. She answered him in a loud voice: “I told you! I’m not that kind of girl.” She seemed agitated now. Finally sensing that I had misread the situation, I stepped between them. The man began hurrying down the sidewalk.
When the man left, the girl’s demeanor changed completely. She seemed shaken. Her eyes were tearing up. “He just offered me five hundred dollars to go out with him,” she said. “And then when I said ‘no,’ he offered me one thousand. Why does this always happen to me?”
“It happens a lot?” I asked.
“All the time,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional. I just can’t go out of my house without this kind of thing happening. I have a son. I’m a mother. I would never degrade myself like that. I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“Do you mind if I tell this story?” I asked.
“Please,” she said. “Tell it.”
Let’s hope this man, and all men, realize the emotional damage they are inflicting on the women they try to buy. In the meantime, feel free to SHARE.*
Dear Tumblr, fuck you for trying to erase this.
I’m saving this post because as many times as Tumblr tries to erase this woman’s story and act like anything about this was okay, that’s as many times as I’m reposting it. They can either cut me off or stop being assnuggets about this. whichEVER.
Do not forget this.
(via ro-s-aspa-rks)
If you haven’t seen this incredible Tumblrite on your dash, then I’m guessing you’re new around these parts or you just haven’t been properly introduced or the folks you do follow just don’t follow her.
Read ALL OF IT at the link!
“Tumblr is on the cusp of doing something quite incredible. Google searches mentioning the service are poised to surpass searches for ‘blog’ by the end of the year, showing that the New York-based company has truly established itself as the Web’s most popular blogging platform.”
“When I was managing the Tumblr of Newsweek magazine, I had two goals,” told Mark Coatney , who has since been hired by Tumblr and became their “media evangelist.” “The first was to provide Newsweek, whose readers have an average of 57 years, to an audience who do not read.”
In which something is lost, but much is gained, through Google Translate. (via markcoatney)
Sage advice.
(via theamericanscholar)
Bit patronising for our taste, but interesting…
(via guardiancomment)
FINALLY! Now we understand the Social Media strategy that led Newsweek to post stuff like this to “celebrate” International Women’s Day! See? it was just a way to attract a “younger” demographic!
(via guardiancomment)
Twitter has made stalking easier
The latest re-design of Twitter is truly cringe inducing. They have added a new tab called “Activity”. In this tab you can now keep track of every Twitter move of those you follow. Has your stalking target friend followed someone new today? Are they having conversations you could only previously see through several clicks and purposeful search? Have they shared a photo with another user that wasn’t you? Now it’s all neatly packaged in a single place! No longer do you need to click several times and manually check the people they follow, Twitter has facilitated this process for you. Which you know, bah. At least make stalkers work for the information. I am almost certain many used to get discouraged simply because it took time and some effort to find all of this out.
Dear Internet
It is OK not to have an opinion about certain topics. It is OK to say “I do not have enough information or knowledge of this subject to have an informed opinion”. It is totally acceptable to not say anything on those occasions when people are discussing issues you might have never been exposed to before or have no experience with. Just because the option of leaving a comment is available, it doesn’t mean you need to exercise it.