Have you noticed this kind of messaging circulating after the recent tragedy of Alex Pretti this past weekend?
“If you don’t post ‘this’, you’re complicit.”
“Silence [on social media] is complicity.”
So what do these messages actually say?
The underlying idea is that if someone isn’t publicly posting, whether that means sharing, resharing, liking, or otherwise signaling their stance online, then they are aligning themselves with those committing the harm. And if they’re aligning with harm, the conclusion follows: they must be a bad person.
On the surface, this logic can sound convincing.
If someone isn’t saying “I don’t agree with this,” it’s easy to assume they must agree.
But that assumption is wrong.
This way of thinking is deeply flawed, and it’s important to slow down and actually examine how because it doesn’t just misrepresent people, it actively flattens humanity.
First, people respond to tragedy, violence, and death in fundamentally different ways. Some people speak immediately. Some need time. Some go quiet. Some take action in real world ways. Some don’t have the words at all.
Expecting every person to process grief or moral shock by posting publicly on social media… and then treating that post as proof of their moral alignment, is not only unrealistic, it’s dangerous.
It reduces something complex and human into a single outward behavior: posting online.
The problem is that silence does not actually tell us what someone believes, values, or is doing. It never has.
Social media silence is not a moral position. It’s an absence of information. But when we treat it as evidence, we start judging people not by their actions or integrity, but by whether they performed care in a visible, approved way. That’s when caring stops being about ethics… and starts being a compliance signal for others.
Now I’m seeing another version of this same logic show up
“If you posted about Alex Pretti, but not about Israel and Palestine, you have work to do.”
This might sound like a call for consistency. Like it’s simply asking people to be broadly aware or morally serious. But when you slow it down, it’s the same assumption wearing a different outfit.
It assumes that posting is how we measure care. And that not posting is how we measure failure.
In this framework, what matters isn’t what someone understands, believes, or is actually doing… it’s whether they’ve visibly checked every box.
If you post about one tragedy but not another, that gap is treated as proof that your care is selective… proof that your values are flawed… proof that you’ve fallen short.
But this ignores some very basic realities…
People don’t experience every tragedy the same way. They don’t have the same context, knowledge, emotional bandwidth, or capacity to speak on every issue… especially ones that are historically, politically, and humanly complex.
It also ignores how social media actually works!
What people see (and therefore what they care about) is heavily shaped by algorithms. Some stories flood feeds for days. Others barely break through. What shows up in someone’s timeline isn’t a neutral reflection of what matters most in the world. It’s a reflection of what the platform thinks will keep them engaged.
So treating “you posted about this but not that” as evidence of moral failure is a category error. It mistakes visibility for values.
Not to even mention, that I can’t even tell you how many times I saw a post, went to a feed/page for said person, and realized I hadn’t seen any of their last five posts.
And this is where the anxiety really starts to build…
Because once posting becomes the measure of care, the standard never holds still.
First it’s: If you don’t post, you’re complicit.
Then it’s: If you posted too late, that’s a problem.
Then it’s: If you posted about this but not that, that’s a problem.
Then it’s: If you didn’t say it the right way, share the right source, or use the right language, that’s a problem.
There is no clear finish line. The goalposts keep moving. No matter what you do, there’s always another expectation you failed to meet. As if collapsing ethics into a grid of reposts and captions somehow proves we’re good people.
This is purity politics at play
Purity politics is the idea that moral goodness has to be constantly proven, publicly, visibly, and without mistakes. Where one inconsistency is enough to call your integrity into question. It’s not about what you’re doing in the world. It’s not about what you think or how you feel… it’s about staying perfectly and publicly aligned.
And for a lot of people, this feels eerily familiar because purity culture works the same way. What I’m talking about is a similar kind of moral logic showing up in a different arena.
The idea that goodness has to be constantly proven.
That it has to be visible.
That one misstep can put your character into question.
Different content but the same system.
I care deeply about what’s happening in the world. And I’ve felt the anxiety this creates in online spaces: the pressure to show up for every tragedy, in the right way, at the right time or risk being seen as complicit, inconsistent, or uncaring.
This isn’t an argument about whether people should post or not… This is about what happens to moral concern when it’s reduced to a public, scrollable performance… how it starts to feel unreal, hollow, and disconnected from real action.
Because many of the people who feel this pressure aren’t indifferent. They’re thoughtful. They’re sensitive. They’re trying to act with care rather than certainty. And they’re wondering why something that began as solidarity now feels like the moral police coming to knock on my Instagram door.
I understand where this impulse comes from. It’s rooted in fear.
We all watched that video. We all felt how destabilizing it was.
In moments like that, it’s natural to look to others and ask: Are you a safe person? Can I trust you?
Those are valid questions to ask of people you admire, live with, or work alongside.
But not posting on social media doesn’t answer them!
If you want to know what someone believes or values, the only reliable way to find out is slower and less performative: have a real conversation. Ask. Listen. That’s where trust actually forms.
