A few days ago a girl in Utah posted some pictures of her prom night on Twitter. She was wearing a red Cheongsam, a beautiful traditional Chinese dress that she had found at a vintage store in downtown Salt Lake City. Naturally, someone dimwit with no social life on Twitter (a male at that) just had to say something about it:
“My culture is NOT your …. prom dress,” a man named Jeremy Lam tweeted days later, sharing the photos she posted. “I’m proud of my culture, including the extreme barriers marginalized people within that culture have had to overcome those obstacles,” Lam also wrote. “For it to simply be subject to American consumerism and cater to a white audience, is parallel to colonial ideology.”This represents one of the big problems in America today. Not the dress, I’m not going to weigh in on that other then to say I also have a similar one myself. The problem is that national media outlets like the Washington Post and others routinely turns trivial local stories into national news based on nothing more than a tweet that attracts the usual mob and then the usual counter-mob.
The true story here is that one guy steeped in anti-colonialist theology got mad and pounded out a tweet. That’s it. The rest is inevitable because, you know, it’s The Tweeter. There’s always a mindless mob with no ability to think for themselves on social media willing to play follow-the-leader. When unimportant crap like this becomes fodder for national news, it makes you believe that everything is part a of gigantic culture war playing out at all times. It’s not. At least, no more than it’s ever been. But the sewer of social media and it's want-to-be stars makes it look a lot bigger than it is, and the national media can't wait to blow it up and further drive the wedge. Knock it off.
As for Jeremy Lam and his minority band of twitter cultural appropriation nazis, F**k OFF. I'll be wearing my blue&gold cheongsam out to dinner this weekend.....
