With sarcastic hashtags, Parisians are defiantly asserting their joie de vivre

By -

With sarcastic hashtags, Parisians are defiantly asserting their joie de vivre

 

It’s been almost a year since the world proudly declared itself #JeSuisCharlie.
Millions of people used the hashtag to show solidarity to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shooting and proclaim their unwavering commitment to free speech. This time around, following the Paris attacks last week, the hashtags are a little more defiant, more ironic—more tongue-in-cheek.
A typical Parisian cafe bistrot. Don't let evil DAESH scare you from a very Parisian experience. #ISISisEvil #ParisForever #WeAreNotAfraid
A photo posted by Michael&Marlys (@easyhiker) on
Since the deadly attacks on Friday, Parisians have used the hashtag to post pictures of themselves out in the city’s cafés, restaurants, and bars to send a defiant message to ISIL: Même pas peur (Not afraid).
While terrorist attacks usually take place in a city’s most populated area—often tourist hotspots—so the most damage is inflicted, the Paris attackers had a different strategy. Ignoring Paris’ touristy areas, such as the Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower, the attackers instead targeted the city’s young and progressive core. They turned Paris’ trendy, multicultural neighborhoods, which are popular areas for young Parisians to hang out, into a battleground.
These hashtags are one way Parisians are fighting back. Other mocking hashtags (link in French) include #OccupyTerrasse (after the Occupy movement) and #FuckDaesh, a more direct insult towards ISIL, the group behind the attacks. A French woman tells City Lab:
I never thought having a drink on a café terrace would be an act of resistance. But I think I could get used to it.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mystery of the Canadian Whiskey Fungus

By -
Image
The Mystery of the Canadian Whiskey Fungus The air outside a distillery warehouse smells like witch hazel and spices, with notes of candied fruit and vanilla—warm and tangy- mellow. It’s the aroma of fresh cookies cooling in the kitchen while a fancy cocktail party gets out of hand in the living room. James Scott encountered that scent for the first time a decade ago in a town called Lakeshore, Ontario. Just across the river from Detroit, Lakeshore is where barrels of Canadian Club whiskey age in blocky, windowless warehouses. Scott, who had recently completed his PhD in mycology at the University of Toronto, had launched a business called Sporometrics. Run out of his apartment, it was a sort of consulting detective agency for companies that needed help dealing with weird fungal infestations. The first call he got after putting up his website was from a director of research at Hiram Walker Distillery named David Doyle. Doyle had a problem. In the neighborhood s...
Read more

The Zero1 Flexible Football Helmet May Save Players’ Brains

By -
Image
The Zero1 Flexible Football Helmet May Save Players’ Brains   Football is a game of simple physics: One player has a ball, and many other players who do not have the ball want to stop him in his tracks. Sometimes this interaction happens at high speed. Speeds so fast that the parties involved bang into each other with a G force equivalent to a bowling ball being dropped on a head from 8 feet high. Football is a beautifully violent game, which is the reason Americans simultaneously exalt and fear the sport. It’s the reason people cheer when a cornerback makes the tackle or a linebacker pummels his opponent. It’s also the reason that one out of every three players in the NFL will experience some form of brain trauma during his career. According to an investigation from Frontline, there have been nearly 200 concussions so far this NFL season, and those are just the concussions that were officially reported. The NFL has a ver...
Read more

Psst: You Could Probably Lift a Car by Sucking Through a Straw

By -
Image
Psst: You Could Probably Lift a Car by Sucking Through a Straw   In another great MythBusters moment, Adam and Jamie managed to lift a car with a vacuum cleaner. That’s pretty cool, but could you replace the vacuum cleaner with just a human sucking on a straw? How Do You Lift a Car With Suction? Really, there is no suction. There is only air pressure. Yes, we are immersed in air. It’s all around us and when air molecules (let’s say it’s mostly nitrogen) collide with some surface it’s like a super tiny little push. Since air has lots of molecules, you get lots of collisions and pushes. The greater the surface area, the greater the force from these pushes. But really, we just like to talk about the push per unit area—we call this pressure. The air around us doesn’t just push down on us. It also pushes up and to the side and every which way since the air molecules are moving in all directions. Ok, technically the air pushes more up than down and this leads ...
Read more