choose to be digitally productive rather than reactive

Hi, I’m Alexandra Juhasz and this is Episode 6 of We Need Gentle Truths for Now. The podcast engages in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19.

In this episode, we focus on the founding illogics of online response and inaction, distancing and touching, by taking up the internet formats at the heart of what ails us. In 2017, after Trump’s election I pledged to respond to the crisis of fake news by blogging alongside him over the first 100 days of the administration. I shadowed him, inhabited his stomping ground, and reacted to his escalating online malfeasance. This left me feeling dirty, grim, and culpable. On the 55th day of creating this online primmer, I wrote the hardtruth: “choose to be digitally productive rather than reactive.” Here it’s read by Kaycee Genualdo, who is working on this podcast as one of my students at Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema:  

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Could the phony question it artfully answers be: how do we make the most of our power online by gathering clicks, likes, and followers?

See this original hardtruth:

See the poetic response to hardtruth #55:

Orr Menirom reads the poetic response "Choose to be Digitally Productive Rather than Reactive":

Response to Choose to be Digitally Productive Rather than Reactive