Social Media Martyrs

Originally published in ShagMag’s 2021 December Issue.

Social Media has become a staple of how we interact with our world. We pair Instagram with breakfast, scroll Twitter with our morning coffee, and, if we’re under the age of twenty one, log in to Snapchat to send back a hot photo to our significant other. With access to so much information, rules and regulations put in place by big corporations exist to monitor what people can and cannot see online. The pressure government puts on big corporations to censor specific content on social media has pushed a specific narrative — one that demonizes anything that falls outside what it deems socially and politically acceptable. Voices are lost. Activism falls to the backburner.

And the disproportionate power yielded has had dire consequences for creators, activists, and small business owners.

Cali Rockowitz, an artist who runs the brand Sorry Dad on social media, has faced her Instagram being taken down for going against user guidelines, despite remaining in the app’s terms of service. Creating oil paintings from nudes her clients will send in, Rockowitz is technically protected under Instagram’ policy allowing artwork depicting nudity.

Instagram banned her despite this.

“I shifted into making more shareable content that doesn’t have bodies in it, which is sad…