Instagram stories of war

A couple of days ago, I came across a YouTube video that condensed the 1983 made-for-TV movie “The Day After” down to about 8 minutes.  I remember being assigned the homework of watching the “what if?” nuclear war drama back in high school.  I didn’t remember much about it, other than lots of fiery orange explosions and being suitably terrified by the whole concept of nuclear war and the USSR.

I started watching the 8-minute Cliff Notey video and made it just over 4 minutes before I hit pause, closed the tab, put my face in my hands and said to Rob, “No wonder I’ve been so edgy the past few days.”

I had no idea how deeply seated and traumatizing the images from that television show were for me.  But it helped explain my somewhat intense engagement in news over the past week of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

I’m not a terribly political person, especially not publicly.  I definitely have opinions and ache at injustice and hypocrisy.  I just don’t enjoy debating philosophies and values and world views.  Discussing them, absolutely.  But debating, nope.  And these days, discussions about political things seem to descend with warp speed into debates.  So I deftly avoid those conversations with even more artistry than my ninja-stepping around Covid for the past 2 years.

I remember watching the Gulf War on TV in the early 1990s.  Wolf Blitzer, General Schwarzkopf, and CNN all became TV icons overnight. The constant access to news – some of it even verified before airing – and the maddeningly distracting scroll of yet more news at the bottom of the screen provided a new way for civilians to experience war.  Instead of war feeling distant, we got to watch war as if it were a Hollywood video from the comforts of home.  Having the green lights of missiles flash in my bedroom via satellite was fascinating and vivid and terrifying.

And now here we are, 30 years later.  A war is underway on the other side of the world, but instead of watching it on TV, there is social media.  Instead of my news being packaged for me, it is raw and nearly instantaneous.  Instead of professional journalists, I am consuming images and content from average citizens with cell phones and Instagram accounts.  I have seen highly disturbing yet incredibly important images that have helped me understand this is not just a horror flick on my screen; it is real and it is war.  I have heard Ukrainian voices full of determination and defiance.  I have ached at their terror and cheered at their cursing.

Until a few days ago, the bulk of what I follow on Instagram was friends and family and favorite food sources (Tillamook Cheese, Slurpee, Moonstruck Chocolate, C’est La Via Café’s daily temptations…).  Now, in one of the strangest developments in my personal social media consumption, I am also following a Ukrainian professional ballroom dancer (Maksim Chmerkovskiy) and the Ukrainian President (Volodymyr Zelensky).  Thank goodness for that translation button. And for the occasional interruption by images of grilled cheese sandwiches.

"I need ammunition, not a ride." ~ President Zelensky
as he becomes the best living example of a leader
in my lifetime (Photo from Today.com)

The use of social media in modern war is mind blowing.  In just the last 3 days, I have seen it used to mobilize Uber-like transportation of refugees at the Polish border, collect monetary donations from a global population desperate to help, convince a multibillionaire to provide internet service within 10 hours of the request, and unify nearly a world of people around a single cause.

I suspect one of the biggest, most important weapons in war is information.  And now, with a world armed with billions of personal news platforms and tiny computers and cameras to instantly broadcast information across borders and time zones and cultures, war has changed forever.