{"id":21395,"date":"2022-10-11T19:01:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T02:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=21395"},"modified":"2022-10-11T19:01:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T02:01:57","slug":"using-black-people-in-gifs-and-memes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=21395","title":{"rendered":"Using Black People in GIFs and Memes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today&#8217;s topic comes once again from Twitter, where the message is that if you are not black and you are using a GIF of a black person to express yourself, that is digital blackface and is bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">there are studies about digital blackface and how non-Black ppl use gifs to reference their feelings yet have no clue what the reference is from<br><br>they specifically type in an emotion then go for the Black version of it. it&#39;s weird asf.<\/p>&mdash; im HB: Joe Buddens biggest hater. (@H_Baeee) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/H_Baeee\/status\/1579873329691103232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 11, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Me, a straight white male at the top of privilege mountain, should probably not touch this subject and just move along.  I just took a shot of cough medicine, however, so I&#8217;m feeling more foolish than wise, so let&#8217;s do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I agree with the person in the tweet that if people are specifically looking for the black version of a gif to express themselves, that is weird.  I don&#8217;t know anyone that does that, which isn&#8217;t to say it doesn&#8217;t happen.  It sounds weird, and I don&#8217;t understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s not really the direction I want to go with this, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll get my personal experience with expressing myself with gifs out of the way.  For the longest time, I&#8217;ve been running with a bunch of people on Twitter called the #WriteFightGIFClub.  We&#8217;re all writers, we do writing sprints together in November, and we express ourselves with GIFs.  It&#8217;s fun.  It&#8217;s a good group of people that are very supportive, and it&#8217;s one of the reasons I latched onto Twitter as hard as I did.  Covid kind of killed that group, but we&#8217;re still around.  We&#8217;re just really, really tired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have definitely used GIFs of people that were not white.  I didn&#8217;t really think about it.  I just saw a picture of a person making some expression that matched the mood or vibe and went with it.  I didn&#8217;t seek out black people, but I also didn&#8217;t exclude them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s the heart of it.  That&#8217;s what I want to talk about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Blackface was a way of taking an entire race and reducing them into a caricature, emphasizing their physical differences and othering them for entertainment.  Blackface is a way of saying, &#8220;look how different these people are.  Aren&#8217;t they funny?&#8221; Blackface is about separation, dehumanization, and is obviously Bad with a capital B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have a hard time equating blackface with using GIFs of a black people.  If I&#8217;m using a GIF to express myself, I&#8217;m saying, &#8220;This person is like me.  This person is expressing what I&#8217;m feeling.  We are the same.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If people are just grabbing GIFs of black people and laughing at them because they think the picture is funny&#8230; well&#8230; that&#8217;s something else.  There is separation there.  Laughter is being had at the expense of the person in the GIF.  There is a whiff of othering there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I know that&#8217;s now how I have been using GIFs, and it&#8217;s not how my friends were using GIFs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It makes me wonder where the outrage is coming from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another part of the argument in the Twitter thread is in regard to knowing where a meme comes from.  I have a vague recollection of a video where I thought &#8220;Bye Felicia&#8221; started.  I don&#8217;t remember.  But you know what?  I don&#8217;t know where most of my memes come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/surprised-guy.webp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"195\" height=\"229\" src=\"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/surprised-guy.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21398\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I have no idea where this originated from, but I think I personally make that expression at least three times a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No one is complaining about using that GIF.  The root of the complaint in the original thread is about appropriation, and&#8230; and I can&#8217;t disagree with that.  It is appropriation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So where does that leave things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know.  If I&#8217;m wrong and I need to start looking at my GIFs to make sure they don&#8217;t feature people of color, well, I&#8217;ll do that.  Or maybe I won&#8217;t use GIFs anymore at all.  I don&#8217;t know.  If my behavior is hurting people, I&#8217;m willing to change my behavior.  I don&#8217;t want to hurt anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there&#8217;s something I&#8217;m missing, please let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s topic comes once again from Twitter, where the message is that if you are not black and you are using a GIF of a black person to express yourself, that is digital blackface and is bad. Me, a straight white male at the top of privilege mountain, should probably not touch this subject and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21399,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21395\/revisions\/21399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}