Q: What was the most annoying thing about the royal wedding?
A: Reading hot takes from people hell bent on shaming people for watching it.
Full Disclosure: I didn't watch the royal wedding; however, I'm not completely clueless about the most watched, tweeted, and discussed event this past weekend. I, like everyone else, was witness to the media's 360° coverage. From what I saw it was beautiful. Bishop Michael Curry delivered a timely message a lot of people needed to hear. This was the kind of event little girls playing princess dream of.
I chose not to watch the wedding for one reason: it was too early. By the time I got home Friday night I had already worked 60+ hours and Saturday is, usually, the only morning I get to sleep past 6:30 am.
I logged on Twitter shortly after 8 expecting to see some hateful tweets mixed in with the hashtags relevant to the wedding: that's what Twitter does, but I was surprised by how many people spent the better part of their Saturday bashing others for watching it. Contrarian points of view are social media's life's blood, but this was beneath petty.
#BlackTwitter split along ideological, religious, and gender lines. #WokeTwitter started attacking #BlackFeministTwitter, #HotepTwitter started attacking #NegropeanTwitter, and #SwirlingTwitter had a war amongst themselves.
It was sad.
The social media interactions between Black people over the weekend demonstrated how fragile our unity is. With all of the issues facing us, we let the marriage of a biracial woman to a prince, who is likely to never sit on the throne, come between us.
Watching or not watching the Royal wedding didn't open one school or close a liquor store in any of our communities. Tweet shaming people who watched didn't return any of the wealth looted from Alkebulan. Saturday didn't change anything.
The British Empire was built from the spoils of slavery and colonization. A new duchess can't change that history and doesn't have the power to make amends for it. The majority of people understood this. They just wanted to witness a historical event. There are people inside Black social media communities committed to shaming anyone for attempting to escape the daily rigors of life. Imagine if the NBA Finals or the NFL Draft caused this much chaos in the community? Here's a thought: people are allowed to enjoy something without endorsing or approving of it.
