Meme Mexico
Living in any country is complicated but I wonder if living in Mexico is more complicated than lets say, Amsterdam? After years abroad, coming back has been a trip of rediscovery into my own land, my own people.
A small glimpse into national television was enough to understand it's reality or better yet, the staticity it's immersed in. Soap operas with decaying actors and actresses mixed with new but less talented blood and of course, the few programs that dare to educate still have that 20 dollar backdrop that evidences low budget programs, miraculously produced by starving writers and presenters.
Education wages are incredibly low, both in the public and private sector, the only difference is the irony on the second one.
I could keep on enumerating countless situations where I have been through a cultural shock in my own country. But they're not new. They have been dragged, postponed, stuck with duck tape and archived under a cloud of dust.
How is that Mexicans keep a grin on their faces? I used to think we were resilient. I was actually very proud of it, smiling against adversity, against cartels, against injustice. Something has changed, I wonder why we laugh so hard at our situation when anger and indignation should replace that denial of events with a joke.
I feel now, this "virtual activism" of memes does not help but works against us. Is this really free expression or just a way of admitting we are but helpless to save ourselves, not responsible to fight as an organised community for our rights and remain as victims? Technology in this sense seems like a waste of time, we spend it in sharing the joke, posting the bitter laughter, retweeting the ways things have always been, maybe without realising, we are the joke and not the reality we're in.
A small glimpse into national television was enough to understand it's reality or better yet, the staticity it's immersed in. Soap operas with decaying actors and actresses mixed with new but less talented blood and of course, the few programs that dare to educate still have that 20 dollar backdrop that evidences low budget programs, miraculously produced by starving writers and presenters.
Education wages are incredibly low, both in the public and private sector, the only difference is the irony on the second one.
I could keep on enumerating countless situations where I have been through a cultural shock in my own country. But they're not new. They have been dragged, postponed, stuck with duck tape and archived under a cloud of dust.
How is that Mexicans keep a grin on their faces? I used to think we were resilient. I was actually very proud of it, smiling against adversity, against cartels, against injustice. Something has changed, I wonder why we laugh so hard at our situation when anger and indignation should replace that denial of events with a joke.
I feel now, this "virtual activism" of memes does not help but works against us. Is this really free expression or just a way of admitting we are but helpless to save ourselves, not responsible to fight as an organised community for our rights and remain as victims? Technology in this sense seems like a waste of time, we spend it in sharing the joke, posting the bitter laughter, retweeting the ways things have always been, maybe without realising, we are the joke and not the reality we're in.
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