
I recently watched a video on TikTok from user mikaila simone; the video is a spoken word poem about the trauma black Americans face thanks to institutional racism, and how that trauma continues even after their deaths. It’s an incredibly affecting video, and I opened the comments, hoping to see how others were reacting to simone’s video. What I found, to my deep confusion, were supportive comments absolutely laden with emojis, and a series of completely incomprehensible comments, from multiple users, in all caps. One comment read “A WHILE AGO I WAS LIKE OH YEAH YEAH OH YEAH NO NO REASON WHY NOT I JUST DON’T WANT TO ME GO TO SLEEP AND THEN GO EAT AND THEN GO TO SLEEP AND THEN GO.” These aren’t even song lyrics; these words are, quite literally, gibberish.
And they’re helping advance social justice.