- When we tweeted the accusation that the world didn't care, many people retweeted it. But most didn't click the link to read our stories. Perhaps they wanted to be seen to care. Perhaps they believed that people should care. But they didn't care enough to read what we had written.
"The twisted steal the attention. And the people we should pay attention to fade into the background, bit players in a narrative wrongly and unfairly dominated by the grotesque." This line of reasoning always sticks out to me. Many journalists and online communities discuss it in the wake of the media storm for mass shootings and atrocities such as this. And yet it continues every time. The wrong-doers are highlighted and the victims are left as statistics for the story. The media continues to bring attention to the perpetrators, but also, people continue to discuss the vileness of their acts more than the tragedy of the victims and plans for aid. I don't know if this a condition of being and trying to make sense of one's own potentials or possibilities of a villain and focusing on denying the realities of that because you can quickly understand the victim, but it takes more time and discussion to understand the villain. I'm not sure I can fully blame the media for showing certain aspects of tragedy anymore. A large part of the responsibility is theirs, but they give only create for viewers, so we are the ones that are ultimately paying more attention to that side of the story and giving the media the incentive to highlight the villains.
Here is something I suppose nobody heard outside of France: The killers of the Charlie Hebdo attack gave an interview (by phone with the press) a few hours before being killed. They stated, that the attack was a retaliation for the thousand of civilian dead in Syria. They stated, that they didn't strike blindly. They indeed could have killed far more people during their escape. They stated that they didn't kill any women while European/US soldiers do kill child and women in Syria. The interview aired one day, then faded very quickly from the media (I never heard it again since the following day).
Free-speech commemoration and mourning of french caricaturist was the hot topic of the moment, and who want to hear justifications from a bunch of assassin.
Like anyone, I really don't care for Syria. Don't even know what is happening there. So I guess the Charlie Hebdo victims really died in vain: the killers could not bring some kind awareness to the Syrian massacre.
Honestly, I stopped reading that shit because I'm sick and tired of seeing horrors I can't do anything about. There's already enough bullshit locally for me to care about people far away, no matter how bad they have it. Because let's face it - saying how everyone else has it bad is no way to go forward.