Leandra Medine's Blog, page 674

MR Round Table: Should Blogs Moderate Comments?

Leandra Medine: We’re conducting this round table because we got an e-mail from a reader recently that said something to the effect of:

“Hey MR team. I was just on one of my favorite personal style blogs, and I was looking at the comments. I had previously commented something in regards to the post which was not targeting the blogger but rather, opening up a larger discussion about something I disagreed with. I went back later and saw that my comment, along with a few other readers’ comments, were deleted.”

And then she asked our thoughts on bloggers censoring comments.

Stella Bugbee, Editorial Director at The Cut, both online and print: Do you censor?

LM: I would say that our commenters are allowed to say whatever they want and we take it. (Unless they’re being outrightly vulgar or racist.)

Amelia Diamond: And we censor really offensive words when they’re used towards someone else. Obviously people can curse, but if it seems like an attack, anything sexual, or if it’s anything that we think might make another person uncomfortable enough not to return to the site, we censor it.

LM: We had this one male commenter for a bit who kept calling everyone’s mothers whores. It was very dramatic.

SB: How did you deal with him?

LM: We blacklisted him.

SB: So he’s banned from the site? Did you reach out to him beforehand or anything?

AD: No. We actually had one reader e-mail us saying, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this person is making me feel uncomfortable.”

Kate Barnett: I think the crux of the question from the reader was also, does this take away from blogging? Or what blogging is supposed to be? I thought it was interesting that she felt that it was her right to be able to comment and talk. Certainly at Man Repeller it is, and it’s very much a community, but if I was starting my own blog tomorrow I don’t know if I would have comments. And certainly a lot of sites mandate that they have to approve each and every comment.

LM: Some have disabled commenting.

SB: Like who?

LM: Well Sea of Shoes did years ago when she started.

SB: Has it affected her relationship with her readers?

LM: I don’t know. I really don’t, maybe though. Because there certainly is a sense of community tethered to the smaller sites.

SB: Do you talk to your commenters?

LM: Yes.

AD: All day long.

SB: We talk about recurring commenters who are destructive forces — and not necessarily balanced ones. I think comments have different purposes for different blogs. For The Cut, commenters early on were very important. If you look at the number of people who are reading the story versus the number of commenters on a story — and often times with really negative comments, it can skew the way you think the story has been perceived — if 800,000 people have read a story and 17 people have commented, that is literally a statistically irrelevant number of people. Yet, it could dissuade a writer from being more honest with sensitive material that is going to be published. So I have different feelings about it.

I think when it comes to a brand like yours, where it’s very much about talking to a reader in a personal way and that’s a huge part of what you do, engaging with the reader is mandatory. For a site like The Cut, there are a handful of commenters and you see them over and over again.

That’s not to say that every comment needs to be positive, at all. A lot of the time the conversations do get interesting on NYMag.com and The Cut, but with the numbers, it’s just not born out.

AD: So then why wouldn’t NYMag.com disable comments? Do you see a benefit in keeping them there?

SB: Definitely. They’re funny. You know sometimes you read the stories just for the commenters. The Vulture conversations about Mad Men are just as good as the recaps.

Any time you’re getting a ton of reader engagement at a higher level, it’s great. We have a funny relationship with our commenters. There are some of them who are really hardcore and they come back all the time. We talk to them and we know that certain commenters are going to comment on certain stories directly to us in the same way over and over.

But I don’t think that online (in general) commenters should have a right to say whatever they want. You should conduct yourself with all of the basic decency that you would in person.

LM: Technically speaking, anyone has a right to say whatever they want anywhere, just by virtue of living in a place that champions freedom of speech.

SB: I think that those who are terrible, abusive and racist commenters should not have the right to say whatever they want on our blog. We have a code of conduct. I think that people deserve to be protected and we’re not doing nearly enough to protect them online. When a commenter gets really abusive online, they should be banned. There’s no reason for that. Especially on a women’s website where that happens so quickly.

For example, we may publish a story that might trigger the Menimism rights movement, and our writers will get flooded with hate mail. It’s like, sure you have the right to say those things but we don’t have to publish them. And if you were saying threatening, abusive things to me in person I would call the police. Why would I allow you to say it in my comments?

You can say that you don’t like a jacket I picked, sure, but you can’t say that you’re going to rape me in my sleep. No. Absolutely not. There’s no world in which that’s okay.

KB: I think we’re fairly lenient. We don’t get an influx of truly malicious comments and we probably give more credence to malicious comments than we should. In so far as: is it productive? Is it attacking someone? Basically if it’s not productive we feel comfortable removing it or blacklisting that person.

SB: I’m not talking about intelligent criticism. And yes, they have the right to say whatever they want. We do not have to keep their comment on the site, though. I think that’s the difference.

AD: I always think about Howard Stern. He rose to fame because people hated him, and those people called in all of the time to tell him how much they hated everything he stood for and said. The network was thinking that they had to fire this guy, because everybody hated him. But the numbers just kept rising because everybody who didn’t like him tuned in every day. 

Whenever there is a group of people that rise up against something, there is another group that rises up to defend it. It creates this two-team army that feeds off of one another. That happens with comments.

LM: Right, they’re also essentially fighting for the same cause. Which at the bottom line — specifically for a business — is a rating.

SB: But getting back to having asked people to write sensitive things that they don’t want to write about because they feel bullied in the comments, it’s just not okay. There have been times where, in order to get someone to write a story of that nature, I had to say we’d turn off the comments. That doesn’t happen very often. The majority of the most sensitive material comes from people who are sort of beyond the comments. They don’t really care, because they’re not going to read them. Our ballsiest writers don’t read the comments. They know not to. They know better. This is less true about fashion content.

AD: Do you feel like it’s dishonest to delete a comment? Do you feel you’re the one — at The Cut specifically — who gets to make that call?

SB: Oh no. We have an autobot that’s programmed to scan all of the comments across the site for profanity and racist words. There is a whole set of derogatory terms that when detected, get instantly deleted.

We also have a user guideline that anyone can see, which I think is a very clear way of talking to people. It’s a way of saying, “If you’re really engaged, here are our community rules.” For example, hate speech is not tolerated. Language needs to be kept in check, stay on topic; don’t impersonate other people, etc. So it’s all there for anybody to see.

If a commenter is really egregious and they violate often, they get a warning saying, “You will be banned from the site.” So it’s not like we just ban them from the site. If you read the comments across the site, a lot of them will be like, “Oh I can say this, but I can’t say that, NY Mag?” Like, “I can say the word ‘motherfucker’ but I can’t say the word ‘pussy’?” They get very specific in their critiquing of the guidelines. But I think having a very clear set of expectations for commenters and readers is the best way to go. It’s sort of like they can’t fault you for kicking them off because these are the rules. These are our terms.

LM: I guess it’s also very different because New York Magazine, as an entity, doesn’t operate like a blog that has a face behind it. Do you feel any particular way about us deleting comments?

SB: I think it is absolutely your right to delete anything you want. You as women, and as writers and publishers, should not put up with anything you don’t want to put up with. Period. You should set and police those terms. But within that, you should let people have a conversation.

AD: I struggle with that because there are certain comments that are actually constructive criticism. But then there are…I did a post called “Moms on a Cruise” and someone commented and said that I was ageist and misogynistic. I wanted to be like, “Oh no. This was a joke, and I make fun of myself in it, too.”

SB: Well, then I think it’s appropriate to go out and say, “Wow. You’ve really given me a lot to think about. Maybe my jokes didn’t land.”

AD: Well, if this were Amelia.com, I would be like, “Fuck that!” and delete the comment. But, because it’s not, I feel like it’s dishonest to…

LM: Comments like that I don’t mind leaving on there. I actually don’t like taking comments down because I think they harness good conversation, even if the conversation isn’t necessarily constructive for us. So much of our model is based on what happens underneath the stories.

AD:  Something that I keep hearing is that editors self-moderate. We see it on our site too, where readers will jump to the defense of each other or the writer.

LM: It’s funny because now that I’m thinking about personal style blogs — like the one that reader was referring to — Vanessa Friedman called them, “mini media empires.” I don’t think they’re that. I think that they are just a digital manifestation of these people, so maybe it’s okay for them to delete comments because they don’t bode well for their brands. Kind of like a woman looking at herself in the mirror and saying, “Oh gosh I need to lose three pounds” and then losing the three pounds.

KB: Right. Why do they have an obligation to let the commenter take the conversation in a different direction?

LM: They don’t. I think it gets a little fuzzy when dollars are involved, when you’re treating your blog as a business.

SB: Why? Why does that change?

LM: There’s a level of dishonesty associated with not keeping everything open and out there. It’s like a blogger buying 40,000 Instagram followers and then going to a brand and saying, “I have 40,000 Instagram followers, do you have a thousand dollars for a sponsored post?” Those aren’t real followers, there’s no real engagement, is demanding money warranted?

KB: I think it is interesting specifically in the context of integrated editorial. There have been times when we’ve styled something for an integrated editorial — and we’re said very straight forward if it’s a collaboration — and commenters will say, “I wouldn’t have styled it like that.” Or, “I don’t like that.” It wouldn’t even cross my mind to delete those, the same way that we try to ensure that you guys [Leandra and Amelia] have the creative freedom to write however you feel about that actual garment. I feel like removing those comments is dirty in a way. Like it’s changing the content of the site for a brand.

AD: Every time you say something, Stella, I’m like, Yeah! WE get to decide. And then you say something, Leandra, I’m like, Oh yeah, no, we can’t do that. It’s interesting to consider because MR straddles this gray line of, What are we becoming? Are comments something that change with site change? Versus when you’re a young blogger and your site kind of functions like a diary.

KB: Do you guys at The Cut have someone who’s focused on community growth? Someone fostering whoever your super-users might be? On Facebook, or Twitter, and in the comments?

SB: Our social media editor talks to people all day.

LM: I’m not very vocal on Instagram at all but often times the comments are really nasty. When I post a picture of myself, the flood gates open.

KB: And we’ve had that conversation, where yeah, I think it would be great if we were more vocal on Instagram. But I also know when someone says something really nasty, that this is one person out of the however many that have seen or liked this. And just because they’re vocal doesn’t mean that they’re reflective of everyone else.

AD: But that one sits hard, always. You can have a story of 20 commenters but that one person, man. Ouch.

SB: I have become completely immune to this. I have the thickest skin on earth and actually, it’s because I’ve watched these very brave writers that I’ve worked with lob fireballs weekly that generate so much hate towards them. And they don’t care, it’s empowering.

LM: It’s the difference between a big site and a small site, right? We feel that our community is so important, and independent of us, so many bloggers feel actualized by their commenters. It’s millennial bullying, and vice versa – inflated flattery.

KB: I don’t know — regardless of how big we grow – I don’t think our relationship with our community is going to change. I would say we would get more involved with them.

SB: I think this is a good conversation to be had. We’re going through a phase where what we say online and how we say it to commenters under the cloak of anonymity or under our own name is going to come up more and more as a form of harassment. I think it’s worth legislating. So yeah, it might seem like a dumb question of, “Do I delete this comment?” But it’s going to be a big conversation in harassment over the next ten years.

You see something like Gamergate ruin a woman’s life because she dared speak out against people. They constantly troll her on all forms of social media. That is not okay. We need to set up protective mechanisms for that sort of thing. It starts as, Okay you can say whatever you want on my blog, but it’s way bigger than that. It’s worth asking because it’s a whole confusing space. Where does my right end to insult you? In what form?

It’s definitely bigger than us and our blogs and our commenters. It’s about the way we police commenters online and the way we react to our commenters. For me it’s a safety and honesty question. I want my writers to feel safe and honest. But for you guys it’s part of your brand, and so how do you deal with it?

LM: Well for us it’s a question of why one would feel comfortable moderating a constructive but critical conversation. That’s where my head’s at.

AD: Do you think that leaving a negative comment can have a negative influence on a reader’s opinion of the story, and that that is a reason to delete it?

SB: No. You can’t anticipate that because someone lobbed a horrible comment at you, every comment below it is going to be bad so you better erase that comment. You have to stand behind what you do and hope that enough people will read it and roll their eyes at that comment. There have been times at The Cut when the comments have been overwhelmingly negative on a story and it has caused me to think we failed at communicating the thing I was trying to communicate. That has happened. And then you kind of go, hmm okay. Take it with a grain of salt but also take it to heart and say, whatever I was trying to do here, I failed at trying to do it. My jokes did not land, clearly, because 20 people didn’t get them. If 20 people didn’t get them then it’s like 100,000 people didn’t get them.

There’s some clear winners everyday and then there are stories that very few people engage with at all. I don’t look at commenters as a way to validate a story anymore. I look at a story that has really taken off and consider the reasons for that; how did that story connect to readers in a way that I thought another really good story didn’t. That’s kind of the conversation I’m having now.

Stella Bugbee is the Editorial Director for New York Magazine’s The Cut — online and in print. Follow her on Instagram here, and on The Cut on Twitter here. Read more MR Round Tables here.

MR Writer’s Prompt: Living the American Dream

I have been thinking a lot lately about whether the narrative of the American Dream is changing.

My father was compelled to move from Turkey to the United States when he was 17 because of a car commercial for Ford that he saw on the small television set in his parents ornamentally decorated living room wherein “the road looked so big and the energy was so free.” Duly following, he applied to some universities in the United States, was accepted to one in Gainesville, Florida, packed his bag and within months, was here.

He has said, on several occasions, that there was no opportunity, anywhere else, for the kind of freedom that the United States offers. The American Dream, in all its capitalist glory, was palpable.

As recently as last month, he condemned the way in which we operate now: “When I was a kid out of college,” he recalls, “we measured success in dollars, not Instagram followers.”

Twisted as it may sound, this notion got me thinking: has the narrative of the American dream changed? Or perhaps more acutely, (because fundamentally, the dream is one built on tenets that support unconditional happiness) have we, as individuals, finally gotten on the express train — surpassing what we think will make us happy (e.g. tangible comfort) to consider what is consistently fulfilling, i.e. “spiritual” wealth? Did we accidentally synonymize freedom with material wealth when in reality we were looking for what we thought wealth would bring?

More and more, I’m beginning to hear about individuals who have left their cushy jobs to pursue passion projects that indubitably assume substantial pay cuts. They say they’ve never been happier. I’m compelled to believe them.

Are you? In ~500 words, this weeks Man Repeller Writer’s Prompt wants to know where you stand on the shifting paradigm of The American Dream. All stories should be submitted to write@manrepeller.com by Thursday, January 15th at 12 pm. And in case you missed the last published story, enjoy this interpretation of Jay Z’s “New York State of Mind“.

Image via L’Officiel Netherlands

Water Cooler Chatter for Your Thursday Laughternoon

Alternative title: Coat Jokes and Other Tales.

It is fucking freezing. There are broadcasted admonitions on every major television network animating danger warnings with stupid little snow flakes that look cute but are actually deadly, like the sour element of a Sour Patch Kid that has never known the sweet that prevails after you get through that initial acerbity. As such, it seems not just like a public service announcement but a public service requirement that we suggest you peruse the plentiful coats currently on sale through luxury e-tailer Matches Fashion and discount interpretation of Wallet’s Heaven (profoundly different from Wallet’s Remorse), The Outnet. These are my picks:

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But I’m willing to bet that indepedent of my opinion, you have a belief system in place regarding how a coat should look and how much it should cost, so feel free to throw ice cubes at my head. I’d bet they’re warmer than the fucking air outside.

On the topic of coats:

Cult cool girl brand Veda has collaborated with Alice Lancaster on a group of leather jackets that visually laud such prolific pioneers of creativity as Patti Smith, Frida Kahlo, David Bowie, Anna Piaggi and Joan Didion, who is now officially having the Best Week Ever. You can buy them directly through ThisIsVeda.com for a cool $1200 a pop. When considering price per wear — a concept that rarely, if ever, exists within the realm of art — that kind of cash is a drop in the bucket. Especially if you’re the director of performing arts, am I right?

Meanwhile, Justin Bieber could really use a coat. His ads for Calvin Klein were released yesterday and I am just like: remember your bowl cut?

On a further corner of the Internet, where ICYMI’s run amuck, this won’t get old today, tomorrow, probably not even a month (centuries in virtual time) from now, so here, once again, is Nicole Kidman explaining to Jimmy Fallon that is she most definitely The One That Got Away.

Have you ever seen anything better?

Don’t answer that quite yet. Shia LaBeouf and Sia’s favorite dancing anomaly primitively meander about a bird cage in their Adam-and-Eve finest for the anterior’s new music video until minute 4:06, when said anomaly escapes and LaBeouf is left to contemplate all those Holes.

You know who else contemplates holes — namely, the ones in the stockings of that lady you danced with — who also goes by the name Joan (minus the “A,” plus the “I,” so not at all, really)? Joni Mitchell. She was shot by Hedi Slimane for the Saint Laurent Music Project while wearing her own YSL folk tunic, a leather cape Hedi made for her (because she’s JONI MITCHELL), and a classic YSL Fedora.

Thursdays rule, man.

Feature image shot by Driu & Tiago for WSJ, Justin Bieber for CK shot by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Joni Mitchell shot in her home in Bel Air, California by Hedi Slimane.

Why “Fetch” Happens

Our generation has mastered the art of verbal minimalism. Growing up in the age of AOL Instant Messenger with a cost-per-character limit on both ancient texting plans and modern Twitter has forced us to be economical about our words. Airlines have taught us well: passengers with extra luggage will be charged.

We’re frugal with our daily itineraries as well. Nobody has time for bronchitis brought on by long sidewalk chats in the cold, nor do we have the outdoor cat capabilities to withstand laborious “catch ups” in the summer’s heat. We have places to be and we’re always late; we are white rabbits on deadline whose Ubers keep canceling last minute.

In order to make the most of our brief interactions, we’ve no choice but to pack hyperbolic punches into the smallest cabin space possible. “LOL” no longer cuts it. Our ears want lingual Sriracha. It’s why the new “fetch,” to the dismay of one Regina George, continually happens.

The earliest remedy came via Gwen Stefani and Rachel Zoe — both popularized “bananas,” though we credit Zoe for “everything.” In addition are the words “this,” “because,” and “I mean.” They took on existential lives of their own, using the voice of Gen-Y as their vessels, and in turn prompted philosophical wonderment.

For example:

[*Best pronounced in Chandler Bing’s upward inflection*]

– What is everything?

– If “this shit” is actually “bananas,” then what do we call original bananas? I picture piles of the tropical yellow fruit sitting around post-“Holler Back Girl,” lamenting over their pop-driven identity crisis. See earlier reference to existentialism and then imagine ex-bananas everywhere crying out to their local farmers, “WHO EVEN AM I?”

– If you say “I mean” but don’t tell me what you mean, then how do I know what you mean? I do not.

– Is our meme-y use of the word “because” a byproduct of our parents’ manipulative, dogmatic, “Because I said so”?

– When you say “This.”, is the only appropriate response, “That.”?

– Does anyone even know how to punctuate sentences involving such confusing declaratives? The comma above just had an identity crisis of his own. (Suck it up and join the bananas!)

As with all great questions that philosophers have been asking across the ages — “What is the meaning of life?” “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” — the world may never know. But muscle weighs more than fat, and so too do the unanswered questions behind such words. It’s why we tether them to iconic images like Joan Didion in Céline’s spring campaign (or a photo of Kate Moss with Naomi Campbell) and feel satisfied with our brevity.

In the spirit of the new year, however, it’s high time we relinquish the because-es and the this-es and the bananas and I means, allowing them to return to their rightful places in our vocabularies and produce sections. To replace the gaps should a new viral moment occur — and it probably will — in the next ten seconds, I propose the following New Fetches:

– Although.

– Sometimes.

– Whenever.

– Wherever.

– Ant farms!

– Lark.

– Rhyme.

Add your own, but let us never again forget that actually, everything is everything.

What Do You Buy in Bulk?

I have a very fancy friend who wholesales for one when it comes to Wolford turtleneck body suits.

My very practical husband buys both toilet paper and tissue paper for our domestic dwelling center as though we’re the parents of eight, and I’m committed to raw cashew and dried mango containers which I’d love to pass off as nutritionally “timeless” and therefore omnipresent but I’m also prompted to refill both prescriptions twice a month.

I have also worn a different colored version of the same J.Crew cotton turtleneck ($34.50 or $29.99 + 40% off a pop depending on your color proclivities) every day this week which seems to indicate that I, too, am at risk of becoming a turtleneck-bulk-shopper.

And if money were no object? I might be a Louis Vuitton shoe buyer in bulk, too. Of course, though, money is a very real, very dense (though not literally very heavy) object, so I will continue forward on a fateful quest toward social proprietorship by way of incessant, repetitive Instagram posting and pass the mic over to you, Mike.

What do you buy in bulk and, really now, do you need all that shit?

Image by Damon Fourie for Elle South Africa

Esther’s Picks: Fur(by) Peplum

I’ve participated in the peplum trend exactly one time in my life. It was an H&M floral number and I wore it to my cousin’s bridal shower. It was all very exciting. I may as well have come from a blowout with a smoothe in my right hand, a set of “naughty” knickers for the bride in my left.

But like the wedge sneaker before it and the exposed midriff after that, the peplum trend proliferated and was “trend forecasted!” to the point of nausea, rendering it a mistake of the past before it had even secured its place in the present. But then, as if some mythic fixer-upper, Claire Beermann insouciantly suggested its resuscitation when she helped us get dressed this week and in Look 3, breathed new life into the “business on top, party at the bottom” ethos of the tired peplum.

I recently secured the photographed feather top from Topshop and have since worn the viscose out of it because, incidentally, feathers are appropriate on many more occasions that those who have not submitted to their glory might think. The top is worn beneath a plaid blouse because it is my own metropolitan way of channeling Prince Farming.

I should also note that I am shedding like a double-coated Corgi and so if you need to find me, your best bet is to follow the feather trail.

Laurence Dolige blouse, Topshop peplum (now $45!), Alice & Olivia pants, Nike Air Pegasus 83 sneakers

LiLo Loyalty

The golden retriever who waits at a closed door through the course of his owner’s entire work day (taking the odd break to nap, use the restroom, eat, lick a tile, etc.) does so out of a loyalty ingrained into his species. He is man’s best friend because of bacon-bribes and genetics.

The fan who waits at a door that is closed with an unforeseeable reopening, however — no Pavlovian conditioning, no intrinsic trigger that soothes the anxious subconscious by saying, “She’ll return, she always does” – that is true loyalty. That is dedication. It’s not even hope, because hope connotes a lingering sense of doubt.

This fan never had to hope. This fan knew Lindsay Lohan would be back.

One of my earliest pieces for Man Repeller documented Oprah Winfrey’s 2013 interview with a post-rehab Lohan. Her show, aptly and elegantly titled Lindsay, was due to air. The world was waiting for a crash, but I stood by, acknowledging my possible naiveté: “Maybe I see Lindsay Lohan’s life as a TV show-with-a-moral,” I wrote, my bow and arrow pointed straight for the Pulitzer, “featuring Oprah as her Danny Tanner.”

The short-lived series was unwatchable. My roommate dutifully recorded each week in hopes that I’d find the strength within myself that he knew I harbored, but 20 minutes max were all my heart could handle. It wasn’t because the naysayers were “winning” — all those who laughed at her fall from grace, her moments of personal defeat, of frustration and panic, not to mention the aggravation she caused to Oprah and the show’s production team — it was because much the same way a parent protects a child from mall-Santa when he’s underweight and without a beard, I couldn’t watch Lindsay when she wasn’t yet herself.

But she pulled through.

In 2014 Lindsay Lohan covered the September issue of Wonderland, reunited with the Mean Girls cast, appeared on Ellen where she was just as charming (if not more) than DeGeneres’ usual crew of below-the-knee sweethearts with piano skills and exceptional presidential recall. She started a blog (or I started reading it), did a Top Shelf on ITG — the most stressful form of press considering your toothpaste will be judged, AND she launched a clothing line in partnership with Civil at PacSun.

But it wasn’t this list of achievements that finalized her triumphant return. Rather, it was her hair. Hair projects health — that one is being cared for, or caring for oneself. I don’t know if this is scientific, but consider the dull coats of malnourished animals. Lohan’s shining orange mane, no longer stripped of color by peroxide and chemicals, was a literal manifestation of Lohan returning to her roots. She looks fresh, happy — a little bit older, like she’d been through some stuff, but was now much closer to the freckle-faced girl of our fond, collective memory.

So, that settles it. She’s back. But then again, she was always coming back.

#JeSuisCharlie, But Is That Enough?

I posted the first image I ever shared on Instagram on a Thursday. While it would be several weeks before I could deconstruct the various shades of gray that separate Willow from Inkwell, I understood this much of the platform: Thursday was an opportunity. That afternoon, I found an old picture of my best friend and me, cropped it into a perfect square, and captioned it: #tbt.

It seems trite, but it’s true. The simple construction was a kind of inauguration. It gave me a new language. It was how I proved I belonged. It’s dumb, I guess, but we all do it. We find the shorthand that resonates, and we use it to have a conversation that is bigger than the radiant sunset on 57th Street or our #OOTD or that slice of avocado toast we ate for breakfast. The wild virtual universe is more powerful than almost any sequence of symbols I know.

On days like today, when terrible things happen, I am especially conscious of it.

This morning, twelve people were murdered in Paris at the headquarters of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. I am not a political cartoonist or a pundit or even an editor at The Onion but I am someone who has read enough of The New Yorker to know that nothing illustrates senselessness so well as a cartoon. I am someone who cherishes the potent punch that humor and parody can pack.

This afternoon, I have at least one way to express as much. Soon after the attack, untold numbers of images and tweets and hashtags flooded the Internet and my newsfeed, trumpeting “Je Suis Charlie.” The digital demonstrations have become how people across the globe can mourn victims of disaster and this serious blow to free speech in an instant.

Social media has made the world so small it fits in the palm of our hands.

It’s good—a lot of the time. It reveals to us our allies when the universe seems to deny them. It’s how we find our friends and our sympathizers and our fellow fans: #theBachelor is not going to watch itself. But the convenience is not all hearts and rainbows and emojis. It means we can engage without elaboration. It gives us a way to participate that is maybe too passive.

The generous view is that such outpourings of support on social media remind us of our humanity. They show us that we are not alone in our commitment to #bringbackourgirls. They prove that #blacklivesmatter and that #yesallwomen face more than they should have to bear.

But sometimes I am less optimistic. I wonder about our motivations. I wonder how much we would sacrifice for the ideals that we declare in impassioned statuses and tweets and profile pictures that only last until next Tuesday. Our generation has built a kind of network that seems supernatural. I suspect we have maybe deified it. And frankly, I love it. I “like” it. I double tap it. Really. I think it has the power to exact real change. But I’m not sure how.

Can a hashtag make you an activist? Can we protest on the Internet? Do we no longer need bodies and brains and outrage in the streets? Were those things ever enough? Are our thumbs enough? Let’s talk about it.

To Watch: Black Mirror

This holiday month, my true love Netflix gave me the gift of the British anthology series Black Mirror, which is without a doubt an example of the most subversive and smart story-telling I have come across on television. It’s like a futuristic version of The Twilight Zone for the digital age. Each story carefully teeters just outside the realm of possibility in regards to technology, but no matter how advanced and futuristic gadgets may appear, the narratives are grounded in real human emotions that allow us to empathize and feel unsettled about our own anxieties.

Charlie Brooker, the show’s creator, wrote for The Guardian, “If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirror is set.” He exaggerates current inventions to a point where they are horrific, yet still seductive: What if you could “block” a person in real life? Or DVR your encounters and replay them later, having a visual record of every move? Or what if you could rebuild a dead person based on code made up from their social media output? What are the consequences of living lives through these black mirrored screens?

Without giving away any spoilers to the short series, I’d recommend starting with episode 1 to get hooked. (Chronology isn’t crucial since each episode is an entirely new setting with different characters.) Through its mind-bending twists and acerbic wit, Black Mirror critiques the dark future we could be in for, or as Brooker puts it, “The way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes time if we’re clumsy.”

Who’s watched it? What else should I watch?

The Painted Ladies: Five Female Artists to Know

Consider such living painters as Cecily Brown, Jenny Saville, Tracey Emin, Kara Walker and Amy Sillman. Recognized for the quality of their work rather than what lies beneath their bloomers, these talented women are increasing female visibility in the art world at-large. As always, however, art trends are changing: in recent years painting has come to be viewed as an antiquated, if not completely dead, medium.

But you can always count on the rebels, the next generation expanding a classic medium. A few exceptional, modern female artists are bringing painting back to life in innovative, exciting, and often hilarious ways. From Internet-inspired portraiture to designer bagel bags, these five women are expand painting beyond the canvas and gender binary. In short, they’re making history.

Jeanette Hayes

Meme queen Jeanette Hayes brings the best of the Internet to the Renaissance age with paintings that are at once nostalgic and fresh. She’s an era-clasher — think classical portraits reimagined with Pokémon characters or iPhones in oil on canvas. Through both her insightful work and humorous social media presence (Hayes recently tweeted: “I play keyboard in a band called the Internet”), she approaches art with wide Manga eyes, redrawing the demarcation line between digital and classical as though it never even existed.

Chloe Wise

Chloe Wise’s paintings (as well as her sculptures — see: bagel bag that the Internet thought was a real Chanel) are a satyrical look at both the art and fashion industry. After said carb tricked the Internet, she told Stylite: “Referencing fashion brands in my work, as well as making fake logos for myself or packaging for my ‘products,’ is my way of being transparent vis-a-vis the use of personal branding in millennial culture.” Her painted meta “selfies” are yet another ironic observation of Gen-Y, and it’s through her own self-reflection that viewers inevitably do the same.

Genieve Figgis

Irish painter Genieve Figgis knows how to capture the beautiful melange of horror and humor that exists somewhere between life and death. Her portraits depict a ghostly, alternate reality. Faces become blurred memories, bodies toggle between modern and historical portraiture, and each image hints at a story that transcends time and space. But there is a slight, wry smile behind those eerie characters, suggesting at a plot twist lingering in the second act.

Sam Moyer

Who said painting needed to be on a canvas, or even look like a painting? Sam Moyer is breaking new grounds with sculptural paintings that re-conceptualize the hard textures of stone and play with the presence (and lack) of hardness. Whether it’s recreating the look of marble with fabrics and bleach, or laying down a giant slab of the real stuff at Rachel Uffner Gallery, Moyer isn’t afraid to expand the art form of painting and get heavy.

Alice Lancaster

Alice Lancaster paints with a brazen sexuality and true femininity that exists outside the constructs of social conventions, never backing down for fear of offending the masses. You might remember her controversial pro-menstruation American Apparel T-shirt collaboration with friend Petra Collins (the two are involved in the all-female art website The Ardorous), but Lancaster’s work is about more than just shock value. Her slightly augmented portraits are both surreal and recognizable, complicated layers of humanity revealed in every face she paints.

Written by Kate Messinger, Arts Editor of The WILD Magazine. Follow The Wild Magazine on Twitter here, and Kate Messinger here.