SJ Walker
Stay safe.

Meara McNitt
I’m sorry.

Sam Olmsted
Meara, I’ve added, so can you start by telling us how you got into social media for community justice? And I’m gonna do the how are you, and then I can jump right into that question if that’s okay. Okay, cool. All right, so SJ, we’re gonna start by saying, thanks for joining us, SJ, how are you? You can say, I’m good, and then I say, okay, we’re just gonna dive right into it.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, that sounds good.

Sam Olmsted
And then of course, again, we’ll do everything afterwards. So it all makes sense, I promise. Any questions before we start?

SJ Walker
No, I feel well-prepped. I’ve watched, I’m a listener, I’m a fan, so you’re welcome.

Meara McNitt
Oh my God, thank you.

Sam Olmsted
You’re a listener? Oh my God. I listen to the Always Sunny podcast and they call the listeners, I think they call them listeners and then they call the people that watch it, they call them creeps. I don’t know why it’s funny, but you’re a creep. Oh my God. I love that. Jordan, you hear this? Okay. All right, everyone ready?

SJ Walker
Well, I’m a creep. I watch it on YouTube.

Meara McNitt
Yes. That was really aggressive of me. I’m sorry. I am ready.

Sam Olmsted
Hehehe

Sam Olmsted
All right. All right, thanks for joining us, SJ. How are you?

SJ Walker
I’m good, how are y’all?

Sam Olmsted
We’re doing great. All right, let’s just jump right into it. So can you start by telling us how you got into social media for community justice?

Meara McNitt
good.

SJ Walker
Good.

SJ Walker
Yeah, so I got into social media specifically through the online optimism specialist program. I was working in like just general marketing and doing a lot of like putting together brochures and stuff like that. But I had a film degree from the University of Louisiana Lafayette.

and I was running my own photography business and I really wanted to learn the digital media, social media side of stuff. So I quit my full-time job, did the specialist program. I think everyone thought I had lost my mind, but I really liked it. It was super great. Shameless plug, anyone wants to learn. I recommend it to everyone I know. And then from there, I mean, I felt super equipped to then start doing social media, ended the specialist program.

got a job with a smaller agency doing social media management. And then after about a year or so there, got the job with the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, which was just an immediate jump into community justice, nonprofit, criminal legal system space. So that was a lot of learning, like books and.

webinars and just learning from, I mean, there was a bunch of attorneys that worked there, so like learning how the legal system works and learning how, like what you can post and what you can’t post is really different when the court is involved. And so that kind of all snowballed into what I do now, which a bigger firm that kind of specializes in a range of things related to non-profit.

justice work.

Sam Olmsted
So your marketing career came first, and your interest in social media marketing design and everything like that came first. And then your interest in community justice came along with that as you stepped into different roles and different spaces in your career, is that right?

SJ Walker
Yeah, I mean, I think I was always pretty civic minded. My grandmother is super civic minded, in the League of Women Voters. And I was registered to vote before I turned 18, because you can technically register six months before the election that you’re able to vote in before you turn 18. So I grew up kind of around that and very hyper aware of being Black in America, being a woman in America, and how all those things intersect.

And then even at college starting, fun fact about me, I started UL’s first black student union. So they didn’t have one on campus. So any org that was mainly a black led org, you had to have a GPA requirement to join and it was an application process. There was no org for black students that they could just be a part of without any steps really to join.

and UL had a really low black student retention rate. So to combat that, we started the Black Student Union. So I think just social media for justice and community justice, I think, really combines and meshes really well everything I’m kind of interested in. So it’s a nice way, though sometimes a bit taxing, to just kind of be able to touch point all of my interests.

Meara McNitt
Yeah. Do you ever feel burnt out that two of your, like, strongest interests are things that you have, that you spend your nine to five doing?

SJ Walker
Yes, all the time. Part of my resolution this year is to get more hobbies, so that I’m not constantly doing work. It’s super easy to feel like I am always working, especially, I think, when you’re the friend that knows about all this stuff too, right? Because then it turns into people just like, conversations turn into like, well, what’s going on with this? Like, you know.

Meara McNitt
guys.

SJ Walker
what’s happening with the crime in New Orleans? I know you know, tell me what’s really going on. And it’s like, I just wanted to get dinner and drinks. I didn’t want to break down data points for you tonight, but I will. So definitely, I think it’s super easy to get burnt out. I think you have to work really hard to center yourself and make sure you’re not exhausting yourself.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, it’s.

Sam Olmsted
And to that point, sorry, I was just going to say, do you still have fun on social media? Do you still enjoy social media as a place for fun?

Meara McNitt
Go ahead.

SJ Walker
Yeah, I think so part of what I try to do too is like not in like doing social media for community justice. I’ll use LCCR, the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights as an example, like trying to post the positives about what’s going on. Everyone knows or you know things like crime right now in New Orleans is a huge problem, right? Like we don’t need to get online and like reiterate that.

What we can talk about is what improvements we’re seeing and what good stuff is happening. They recently did a partnership with some of the children who are in community programs and some who are in JJIC, which is Children Who Are Incarcerated, where they paired them with an artist and they put together art that talked about their experience. And some of it is…

was really sad to hear their stories, but the end result was these beautiful pieces of art done with professional artists that have a name with these kids on them. The exhibit is at the Newcomb Center. It’s beautiful to see. It’s fun to be there. The topics aren’t necessarily fun, but the outcome was a happy outcome. So I think I try to focus on that type of stuff on social. I think, as y’all know, social media can be super negative if you let it.

Even if you’re not doing community justice stuff, there’s just a cesspool out there. So I just try to really be able to tie in like fun trends. I don’t wanna say these are trends, but like make it still like fun social to be on. I don’t wanna be on there like giving a speech every day, like stop putting people in jail. Like I wanna still be able to tweet a meme every now and then.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like, I feel like social media used to be this almost like superficial space. People just saw it as like an escapist zone, but it’s clearly turned into a like communication platform and a like awareness platform. How how has that change happened? Because I feel like you were kind of doing this work. You were in this before 2020. So I feel like for most people, that’s like the timeline started for them. But obviously, like people were doing awareness before then.

But can you just give us kind of like a gloss over of like how you see social media has changed from like just fun to actual like conversations about this?

SJ Walker
Yeah, I think social media was always kind of a town square, like everyone was just kind of on there doing their own things. And I think in the last, I would say, like five or so years, it’s definitely grown to more of the conversations that are happening in that square are much more based in reality. I think due to a number of things, I think.

the pandemic was a big shift because everyone was at home. And so what was there to do? You had to get on social media if you wanted to connect with people. That was the way that people were connecting. So I think the conversations that you might have, with your coworkers or with your family when you guys have Sunday dinner and that’s when you talk about the upcoming election or that’s when you talk about, hey, did you hear, the police did this and that’s crazy. Those in-person conversations.

just shifted to online and they never left. I think it’s been super impactful because now a lot of people are privy to those conversations that weren’t privy to those conversations before, right? I think with a lot of like the community justice and criminal justice conversations, it was people that knew about those spaces, having those conversations with other people in those spaces, which was really limiting if only lawyers are talking about the flaws in the criminal justice system.

are only activists or talking to activists about what they can do to talk to the lawyers. So I think it’s definitely bridged a lot of gaps. In good ways and bad ways, I think it also makes everybody think that they’re an expert. I say all the time, like social media is causing like the loss of the concept of an expert because everyone thinks that they know something in its entirety because they saw a snippet of it on social media. But I think overall…

it opened up a bunch of communication channels. I mean, why would you not want to reach as many people as possible, you know, without even having to get up out of your bed?

Meara McNitt
Can I make a hot take? I think one of the, I just thought of this. I feel like one of the main drivers of like social media being this like town square where people are like, it’s going outside of individual circles and the conversations are getting broader. I think it was the introduction of sharing Instagram posts to stories. Cause I feel like that’s how so much gets spread. And beforehand, like you had to be following the account and you kind of just had to know it.

SJ Walker
Yes.

SJ Walker
You had to see it. You had to already know it existed to even lay eyes on their content. And now I think you’re right. Cause I think that also spearheaded like other platforms then being able to share like the sharing on platforms. Now, I mean, originally I want to say like, you could really only reshare on what Twitter and Tumblr. Like that was just kind of like, those were the platforms that did that. And now every platform has, you can reshare even on Tik TOK, you can repost someone’s Tik TOK and it’ll just show up on people’s fees. I don’t even know.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

SJ Walker
how that works in their algorithm. But you can repost a TikTok, that it doesn’t show up on your actual feed on your page, but it will show up when someone’s scrolling that you’ve reposted it.

Sam Olmsted
Well, you could DM posts to other people, right, before you could share it on their stories, right? But it wasn’t as saying like, you weren’t saying, okay, this is a take that I’ve seen that I’m gonna share with my whole network. It was just, hey, did you see this one little meme essentially, right? Yeah. I agree, I do see a lot of that.

SJ Walker
Yeah, you could send it to like your one friend, like, look at this.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, but I like.

Once we got to that point where we could do that, I’m a big sharer of the things to my stories. And it like, yeah, and it made me an accessible person. So someone that I went to high school with, he DMed me and he was like, hey, this is weird, but can you explain to me the difference between appropriation and appreciation? I keep seeing that, but I don’t really get it. And it’s like, because he saw me sharing those graphics and those were getting into his field where I was like,

SJ Walker
Well, it’s so easy. It’s so easy.

Sam Olmsted
Mm-hmm.

Meara McNitt
other people he follows might not have put that into his awareness. He one, saw that and was starting to understand that there’s something there. And two, was able to be like, okay, I can identify someone that I know and have contact with who I feel comfortable talking to. As opposed to if you follow these accounts, there are plenty of times where these educators, someone comments a question and then their followers just dog pile on that question that could have been asked in total good faith. And-

So then people get scared. So it’s nice that we like, not only can share it to our stories, but then also have this like, private communication system that you can then like, deepen the conversation with someone.

SJ Walker
It creates a space to ask questions, which I think is really important, especially in this space, because there is just so much that you don’t know. When I took the job with LCCR, it was very much like a mission space. I was like, I know I can do the social digital stuff. I have that.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

SJ Walker
And it was like, I also know that I don’t think that children should be incarcerated. Like, I don’t think we should put children in jail, right? Like to me, that’s just a value. So like, yeah, the job makes perfect sense. Like, let’s do it. And then getting there and learning about how that happens, like not even just like systemically, like what steps have to happen in a child’s life for them to end up in a situation to go to jail, but just like the actual, like legal step-by-step process that happens for like a child to be put in jail.

It was just like, there was no way I would have learned that just existing, you know, going through my normal life. So I think it makes it very comfortable in a very safe space. Like he identified you as somewhat of an expert, right? And then felt comfortable like coming to you and asking you and knowing that what you would tell him he could take and apply.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, yeah, it’s just interesting like how it facilitates, it’s like a catalyst for spreading information and then also like bringing it back home and like having those one-to-one conversations.

Okay, I think we should move on to the next question. So this one’s a doozy, but you agreed to it. What impact has Black Lives Matter had on social media for criminal justice?

SJ Walker
Oh yeah, I really liked this question when I saw it on the list. So I don’t think that we’ve seen the full impact yet, first of all. I want to preface. I think that it feels like we’ve seen like a really strong full impact because for a lot of people what they’re seeing with Black Lives Matter is like shocking new information. But for a huge segment of this country, it’s like very old news to us. We’re not like shocked and surprised.

by the videos or by the content or by what we see, right? So I think it’s kind of a twofold thing. I think it educated a ton of non-black people on the lived realities that black people face from the police, from the criminal justice system, from the legal system, from the white women in the park, from, you know, like all of these things that happen on like a very daily basis that seems super rare. And that if you were like,

talking to someone, like to call back to the first question, if you were just like talking to someone at your job, they’d be like, yeah, but what are the odds that happens, you know, all the time? And it’s like, but then you can get online and see that it’s happening every single day, right? So I think it definitely made that super clear. But on the flip side, I think that it also brought up and highlighted how often people are not believed in real life and online when these things happen.

I mean, how often do we see under the videos where people are like, okay, but what, like where’s the first 30 seconds of the video, you know, or where’s the end of the video or what happened first, or we don’t know what, you know, and it’s like this like state of disbelief that I think feels super specific to the internet, but that happens in real life too, right? Like people, cases get thrown out because the actual victim, which is, you know, the black person in the situation isn’t believed.

because we have this inherent trust in the criminal legal system that maybe isn’t always right on target. So I think the impact of it is twofold in that we also see pressure. You’re not able to put this massive amount of public pressure on elected officials, on police chiefs, on specific officers when they release their names and stuff. And then you have 200,000 people.

SJ Walker
who are calling that police station, you know, like does he still work there? We need to know, let us know, which is the form of protest, that before you had to get out of your bed to go protest. You had to know someone personally that was doing the protest to inform you that it was happening, to get there, and now it all happens online. So I think that is maybe the biggest change or the impact. And then also the way that we’ve seen it spark up,

for other communities, which I think is great, like hashtag stop Asian hate and stuff like that, where it’s like now these other marginalized groups see the power of like your voice on the internet and are using it for their own wellbeing as well.

Meara McNitt
kind of an interesting question about this. So I’m not sure which organization you were with at the time of like the heaviest part of the Black Lives Matter movement, but did you see like an influx of followers, the accounts that you were managing and then a drop off of engagement or followers? Like, did it feel like there was like an in the moment, like, yeah, we’re all in. And then like a couple months later, people are like, I don’t super care about following this anymore.

SJ Walker
Yeah.

SJ Walker
Yeah, I call it the Black Square effect. Everyone was like super pumped up to post their Black Square to show that Black Lives Matter or like their Black Out date, which like what ended up happening with that, right, was like then actual Black voices got shoved down to the bottom because a bunch of non-Black people were just posting this nothing, like literally just the square of nothing to show their support, which in turn drowned out the people that needed to speak.

And so I think that is something that happens. I think with everything, I definitely saw it where people were like super ready to be engaged and like everyone was eager to be an activist because this is awful and terrible and we’re gonna change the world. But I think then people realized like it’s a super heavy lift and it’s taxing. And I think if you’re in the community that’s not directly impacted by it, it’s super easy to be like.

Well, I don’t want to do that anymore, right? Because it doesn’t actually affect your day-to-day life. So it’s super easy to just be like, well, that was like a nice, like I did my part, right? Like I followed the page. I agree with what they’re saying. That’s all my lift is. Like, what am I supposed to do? The police aren’t stopping me.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, following, following is, is the easiest thing you could possibly do, right? Like, uh, it’s nothing. Yeah.

SJ Walker
Possibly do it’s the it’s not even the bare minimum. It’s yeah, it’s But it makes people feel good and I think similar So it mirrors him like now that you can share right like you’re like why I shared it to my story like People saw it like that’s all I needed to do and then definitely saw a drop off like in a few months of like And just like also people like unfollowing which isn’t I laugh but it’s like not funny, but it’s just kind of like seriously

Sam Olmsted
Exactly. Yeah.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

SJ Walker
Like you’re that uninterested now that you’re like actually just not even going to follow the page anymore. Like don’t even want to see it, like gone with it.

Meara McNitt
Did you like go into your reports with like, yeah, we lost 100 followers this month. It wasn’t anything we did. They just decided they were done being anti-racist.

SJ Walker
Yeah, I’m like, it’s I mean, it was a conversation of like, how do we flag this as like racism, like in the like explaining like the data of numbers, like the explanation for why this is happening is like, internalized racism, like that’s just the note on the thing, like, you know, the proper, you know, thing is like, fatigue, right, like, like mission driven, you know, fatigue, people just get tired of.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

SJ Walker
having to care about other people, it makes people tired. But yeah, like definitely having to explain those numbers and having to explain like the super big surge, right? That’s always like kind of shitty to have to put in like a monthly report of like, here’s last year’s last month’s report where the numbers were off the charts. It was crazy, it was amazing. We got 500 followers, the engagement was crazy, like all this stuff. And then the next month it’s like, actually we lost more than we gained because like people just got tired of it.

Meara McNitt
We went through something similar in like March and April of 2020 with COVID and we were working with like healthcare centers. So they were having to publish a lot of information. So like our numbers were off the chart and we were like, I mean, I’m not really happy these numbers are off the chart because I mean, something really bad is happening. But then for like two years, we’re having to be like, yeah, our engagement’s down from the best that it was, but it’s like there was a worldwide pandemic. Like you can’t compare us to that.

SJ Walker
Hell yeah!

SJ Walker
pandemic, yeah. And now people don’t care about it. So yeah, it’s very tricky.

Meara McNitt
I’m sorry.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah. And when outside forces kind of like impact the campaigns that you’re running, um, you know, it’s not always a good thing. I mean, it could be anything, uh, but you don’t want to necessarily see that spike in engagement for sure. Um,

SJ Walker
It’s, and it’s, sometimes it’s scary. Yeah, cause you’re like, what’s, what’s happening? What’s causing this? Um, that is, I think it’s super important for like nonprofit orgs and especially those in like the criminal justice space. I, I look at it through a lens of like, we’re not necessarily trying to like get a ton of followers. We’re not trying to like get a ton of engagement. Like we’re really trying to build like an online community of people that care about this thing, because we need people to like be in it for the long haul and we need them to stick around. Like, so we don’t necessarily need.

Meara McNitt
It’s scary.

SJ Walker
60,000 followers. It would be great to have that, but what we need is like a solid amount of people that will show up continuously every time and then just honestly put their money where their mouth is and donate money so that we can function and you know still be able to do things actually in the real world in the community.

Sam Olmsted
And when you do that, when you’re trying to build this online community, what is the unifying messaging that you create to build that online community? I think that Black Lives Matter, for example, was such a great succinct, you know, getting to the point of like Black Lives Matter. This is what we need to do. These are the things that we can do in terms of next steps, but at the base of it all, it’s our lives matter. And that’s what we’re trying to say.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
in terms of the messaging. Do you have that same type of thing? I see a lot of hashtags, for example, for like criminal justice reform, you know, and gun violence, things like that, things that are about community safety or things in that realm. Do you have something similar or what is your unifying messaging?

SJ Walker
Yeah, so I think with the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights specifically, it’s just leading with the values that we hope everyone in the community shares, right, which is like hashtag treat kids like kids, which is like we all want the children that are around us to be cared for and taken care of and educated and respected and able to act like the children that they are.

which I think is like a very good way to unify like what the core message is, which is like kids can’t be treated like kids if they’re in jail, right? So I think definitely like how you said, like summing up just like what is the baseline value that we have, right? It would be super easy. And I mean, sometimes we do, sometimes the messaging is like, don’t put kids in jail. Like that is like just the direct, like that’s how we have to say it. But I think sometimes it is easier for people to kind of

grasp on and fully understand what the mission is when we’re leading with the values that we just should share as a society, which is we should treat kids like kids and we should not be violent with people from people that are expected to protect us and just kind of that bottom line values of this is how a society should be acting. I think it’s super important to lead with. And of course it’s nice when stuff can be bundled up into a hashtag, always.

Sam Olmsted
that’s a great slogan also because it doesn’t say anything about jail. It’s implied that treating kids like kids would of course be something that does not include the prison system, you know. So, and it also doesn’t speak to any specific audience except parents who also know that they don’t want their kids in jail. So, I think that’s a great answer that I wasn’t really ready for. So, thank you.

SJ Walker
Exactly.

Meara McNitt
coming in with another hot take. All right, ready? I feel like slogans like that are great because you say it to someone and it’s very hard for them to disagree. Like, no one’s gonna be like, no, don’t treat kids like kids. Everyone will be like, oh, why don’t you like that? But I think that’s also part of the reason some of these dangerous social media movements have caught the scene like QAnon where it’s like save the children. Like I had to contact one of my family members when that was…

SJ Walker
Thank you.

SJ Walker
Yeah.

Meara McNitt
really catching on and be like, listen, you’re gonna see these posts on Facebook and they’re saying save the children and they’re anti child trafficking all this. And it’s like, yes, 100%, but that is not actually what they’re doing. And like, I’m gonna break this down for you about what this actually means. And they were like, why did you know that? I’m like, well, because I pay attention. But if you’re only using Facebook, you’re not getting the full breadth of information that I’ve been seeing by watching this go down on Twitter and all these other spaces. So I think that there’s like,

almost a danger to the catchiness of the simplification of social media. And we also see that in passive headlines and stuff like that. Those are very good about blaming the victim and just omitting that there was a villain at all in whatever they’re talking about what happened. But I’m going to phrase this into a question. I’m going to go directly from my hot take into, so Ashleigh, I want to hear what you think are the dangers or negative impacts of social media on criminal justice specifically.

SJ Walker
Well, I think one, your hot take sparked a thought in my head, which is like, it’s the thin line of, I think in our line of work of like, do we assume that people have media literacy skills or not? Right? Which is like, it’s like, we hope that they do. And I think, well, yeah.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
I’m gonna say no. Ha ha ha.

SJ Walker
But I think it’s hard because it’s like people know how to end with the sudden growth of social into this space. People for the most part know how to consume, I’m being generous here, but they know how to consume the news. They know that your news channel that you watch is going to be more aligned to what you want to see because you’re choosing to watch the news channel that you’re choosing to watch. The same with your paper. The paper that you pick up to read, you know what’s going to be in it. You’re choosing to read it.

Meara McNitt
Yeah

SJ Walker
And with social media where things can be put in front of you that you are not choosing necessarily to engage with or see, they’re just being placed in front of you for your consumption. I think it’s a harder literacy skill to build to know how to engage with it, right? Because how deep do you look to see what something is, right? Because you could read one article about it that just says, like, save the children. Children shouldn’t be trafficked, like Mary said. Of course, I don’t think that.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

SJ Walker
And then you read deeper into it and you realize, that’s not actually what they’re talking about at all. It’s just kind of like a, it’s a misdirect, right? It’s just kind of like, there’s more to it than that. I think, what was the question? What are the dangers of social media in this? Sorry, I got off on a tangent.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, like how, no, it was a great tangent, but like what are the dangers or negative impacts of social media, either on criminal justice or in tandem with criminal justice?

SJ Walker
I think in a few different ways, right, like I said, it primes everyone to be an expert and you don’t listen to the experts because, and Mir I think you’re an expert on a lot of things, but like to bring up your example of your high school friend messaging you, right? Like if you weren’t, if you didn’t know what you were talking about, right, but you had given him an answer, would he have still like held onto that answer and just like accepted it as fact and like not ever been able to change his mind, you know, like it creates stuff like that.

Meara McNitt
Right.

SJ Walker
I think social media with all things, it makes it super easy for people to jump to conclusions, you know, negative and positively. But I think on my end, I try to be really careful with what I’m putting out there, right? I don’t want people to see a post that we make about what the city government is doing and run and use that to form.

an opinion about a specific official. Like there’s not necessarily what we’re talking about, right? You know, so I think it’s dangerous in the way that like, it’s super complex to understand how things are being posted. Everyone is engaging with social media differently. So everyone’s perception and context for what they’re reading is different. Um, so me, I use social media super seriously. I’m on there talking about like real life shit. Can I curse on here? I’m on there talking about real life stuff. And it’s like.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

SJ Walker
So when I see things on social media, I have to check myself oftentimes and be like, this is probably a joke. They’re probably like, ha ha, laughing at this. I’m reading it through like my serious, like life is hard and messed up right now and real things are happening and we should be like fixing things. But like this tweet is just a joke. I have to like check myself with that. Right. So I think it happens in reverse the other way too, where people are like on their very shits and giggles. They’re like, social media isn’t real. It’s just social media. Ha ha ha. And then.

not factoring that there is like real life implications to the stuff on social media, right? So I think.

with the even posting the videos of like, how we know now, like we see videos of people being killed like by police officers, right? Like that’s just like the norm for those to be released now and put on social media. And with the case that just happened where my timeline was filled with people giving instructions on how to not watch that video. If you didn’t wanna watch that video, because the norm is that the video is gonna pop up on your timeline, right? Like that’s just what’s expected.

We probably, that shouldn’t be the norm. We shouldn’t be able to like hop on Twitter and see that video. So I think there’s dangers to people’s mental health. I think there’s dangers to the way that we engage with public officials. I see all the time in New Orleans specifically, people are really upset with the city. They’re on social media. They are full of comments and good opinions and strong opinions on what’s happening in the city. But also for my job, I watch a lot of the city council meetings.

Not a lot of people are watching those, right? Not a lot of people are engaging with those. And it’s like, well, that’s where we actually need to be. I think people assume social media is a way bigger part of the process for criminal legal stuff than it is. And it’s like, it’s not. I mean, it’s a good way to get the initial message out there. But.

Sam Olmsted
And I think social media and media itself, people have the same illiteracy in terms of how to consume it. In the same way that people don’t quite understand how to consume social media, they don’t know how to consume traditional media. They read headlines and that’s it. And then they post those headlines onto social media. And I used to be super critical of people with no social media literacy because I’m deep in the weeds in social media. I’ve got…

five Instagram accounts, way too many, but that’s just the way it is. And I realized, and this is just going off on a little bit of a tangent here, but I realized in looking at my paper mail that I was receiving junk mail and straight up did not know it was junk mail. I was looking at it, I was like, is this a bill? Like, do I owe someone something? Is this a medical bill? I couldn’t understand it. And I was like, this is what…

grandmas and grandpas feel when they look at social media. They’re the same way. They’re like, is this real? Do I need to take action? What children do I need to save? And they get really confused. And exactly, like at Pizza Gate, like it’s in somebody’s pizza parlor. And so, I think it’s sort of that flip and reverse of just recognizing that people just don’t understand.

SJ Walker
Yeah, who has the children? They are like stressed out.

Meara McNitt
But also people aren’t making it easy. So I don’t know if either of you are aware, but on TikTok there’s this thing right now where Gen Z specifically are using the word mascara. Is that what you were thinking of? They’re using the word mascara to take the place of another word that they believe the TikTok algorithm is censoring. Part of the problem is that like, I don’t think anyone’s consistently using the word mascara to censor the same word.

SJ Walker
I already know where this is going.

SJ Walker
Yes.

Meara McNitt
So some people are using it in reference to consensual sex and boyfriends and relationships, and it’s turned into sexual assault, or it might’ve gone the other way around. I think it might’ve started with sexual assault, but now people, like, they weren’t really getting, like they were like, oh, it’s about sex, and then they changed it into consensual sex. But it wasn’t like a global, no one sat down and was like.

this is what we’re going to use. It’s not like on Tumblr where everyone’s like, oh shoelaces, that means Tumblr. Like we all know, we all get it. This just happened in this like corner of TikTok. So now people like someone made a post about their mascara and a celebrity commented and was like, I don’t get it. Like, I don’t really feel bad for you right now.

SJ Walker
What she actually, yeah, what she said was, I don’t really feel bad for you right now. Like, I think that was like verbatim what she commented, which was like.

Meara McNitt
Oh, I froze.

SJ Walker
I mean, it was a weird comment in itself, but also like, if you just read the sentence, you have no idea what it means. I think the guys posted said something like, a girl used my mascara one time and she liked it so much that her and her friend used it again without asking or something like that. So if you know what the word is coded to mean, then you’re like, oh, that’s awful. I’m so sorry that happened to you. Right?

Sam Olmsted
in this person. Ha ha ha.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
Yes.

SJ Walker
But if you have no idea what’s going on, then you’re like, oh, some girls, his girlfriend and her friend used this mascara. And if you’re a girl, people use your mascara all the time. Your actual, not the coded word, your actual mascara. People use it all the time. And so it was this weird thing. And everyone, and we reference the dog piling when you ask questions. Everyone kind of dog piled on her for being so insensitive and like, oh, you don’t care about this.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Meara McNitt
Right.

SJ Walker
And I don’t know if she knew, you know, what was going on or not. The comment was super crass. I’m assuming she did not. Um, but yeah, it was like, how is anyone supposed to know? Yeah. Like I’m, and I’m a millennial, like right there. So it’s like, even, even me, when I first saw mascara, TikTok post, I was like, what? Like I was in the comments. I was in the comments. Like, what does this mean? What is going on? I had no idea.

Meara McNitt
Which I ended up saying.

Meara McNitt
Same.

Sam Olmsted
I mean, if.

If the three of us don’t, if we don’t get it, then I’m just gonna say that like, people are not gonna get it like unmasked, you know what I mean? So.

Meara McNitt
And so that’s the thing is that like, when you bring up pizza gate, like this situation made me automatically think of pizza gate because people were using pizza as a code word, but then other people weren’t aware. So now all these celebrities are being accused of being child traffickers because they’re talking that they like pizza, but everyone talks about pizza. Everyone uses mascara. Like they’re just using these very like innocuous common terms and it’s just depleting the, even the opportunity to have media literacy.

SJ Walker
Pizza.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, yeah. And maybe that’s the point, honestly, for the people that are trying to cloud social media and tamp down any sort of advocacy or actual progress. Who knows? I mean, just a small, small percentage of trolls and bad actors can really impact the messaging and what good, well-meaning people are trying to do. So just to tie it back to SJ’s work, it’s tough, I’m sure, to really

get that point across on a consistent basis and connect with an audience and build an audience online.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, well, okay.

SJ Walker
Yeah, it’s a ton of repetition. So that’s why I’m just like, I feel like I’m constantly repeating myself, but I think, like we said, like that’s the clearest way, right? Like I’m like, if I shift the messaging, like we use treat kids like kids, right? If I shift to saying something else, I have to worry about like, is there now confusion in that, right? Like if I shift to saying like, keep kids in our communities, do people process that as meaning the same thing? Like, will they know that this is like connected in the same thing?

Sam Olmsted
I’m gonna go to bed.

Meara McNitt
Right.

SJ Walker
And then, yeah, I try not to get like, exactly. You’d be like, where are they sending the kids? Like, why do they need, you know, like what’s going on? And I try not to get into my like conspiracy theory bag a lot but I do feel like a lot of this is like, you can’t build media literacy if people are constantly changing the language, right? Like you cannot learn a language that is constantly, constantly changing. Even as we all work in this space, like how often are we just having to relearn how the same platforms work?

Meara McNitt
it’s whom the kids are moving.

Meara McNitt
Right!

SJ Walker
you know, looking at you meta, like constantly changing your buttons and where things go. Like you can’t learn it. Like you’re constantly having to catch up. So if you’re not on TikTok, um, and then you see a TikTok, like re-shared to someone’s Instagram about mascara, like you have no idea what’s happening at all. Like there’s no concept, like there’s not even a framework for you to like try to piece together what’s happening. You have to read it at face value. And it’s, I mean, it can cause a ton of miscommunication.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Meara McNitt
Yep, okay, we are over on time. Thank you, I wish we could keep going, but our producer is saying wrap it up. All right, Sam, do you wanna go into the?

Sam Olmsted
Hehehe

Sam Olmsted
Oh, yeah, Lily Estre. Anything you want to plug, anything you want to promote, anything you want to share with the audience here?

SJ Walker
Yeah, I plugged it in the beginning, but I’m going to plug it again. Please head to the Newcombe Art Center and check out the pieces made in collaboration with the Louisiana for Children’s Rights, Mbuntu Village, a whole bunch of orgs in the city were involved, a ton of kids were involved. It’s some really amazing art pieces. And then also you can learn more about me, my work. I still do a little bit of photography, all of that on my website, the t-h-e-s-j walker.com.

Meara McNitt
Amazing. Thank you so much, SJ. I had so much fun in this conversation. Maybe the listeners and creepers will love it and we’ll get to do it again.

SJ Walker
Chris. Good, I’m glad.

SJ Walker
Okay, good.