That Damn Dress

Over the weekend I found myself encountering a plethora of articles on #TheDress (not the one shown above - you know the one I speak of) and felt myself getting rather annoyed. Not because of the phenomena itself - that's fine - but because it stirred such a backlash ranting about the privilege of society or the viral bandwagoning it's sure to cause. Almost everything I encountered felt overblown and unnecessary. Soapboxes to say "this is such BS but I'm still going to chime in on it because I want to be a part."

But the very end of this Atlantic article did say something that I agree with and think we should keep in mind:

And what are memes if not games? They are small; they are low-stakes; they are often silly. (Sorry, #llamadrama.) But they are also communal. They invite us to participate, to adapt, to joke, to create something together, under the auspices of the same basic rules. That is not a small thing. That is, in fact, a huge thing - particularly when it comes to the very concerns the attention police like to remind us of. If we have any hope of solving the world's most systemic and sweeping problems, we will have to come together. Inequality, climate change, injustices both enormous and less so ... these will require cooperative action. They will require us to collaborate and compromise and value diversity. The dress makes a pretty good metaphor for all that.

As it says, "that is not a small thing." Social media is often absurd and low-stakes and ridiculous but it DOES bring people together. You can dump on #TheDress all you want but it's the same mechanism that causes people to band together over Net Neutrality, getting a candidate voted into office or raising awareness of god awful things like police brutality or terrorism against freedom of speech. We can't be serious 100% of the time and events like #TheDress help to bring people together over something trivial, which builds communication and the ability to act when it really does matter.