Ever since my good friend Zeynep Tufekci brought me a revolutionary t-shirt from Egypt, I’ve been fascinated by the popularization of hashtags outside of Twitter. And by outside, I don’t mean on blogs, Facebook, and Flickr, where they’re increasingly appearing, but offline. T-shirts, posters, graffiti, and protest signs all make use of hashtag symbolism; rather […]
First, a note: I’m no expert on either of the two countries that are a focus of this piece, nor do I intend to be comprehensive in my analysis. I know a bit more about Syria than I do about Bahrain, having studied its history closely and traveled there, but nonetheless, I intend purely to […]
There are these humans scattered across the earth who know me better, perhaps, than even those I grew up with. Who are able to recognize when I am three seconds away from tears, and who whisper tiny bits of wisdom to me, shattering my façade of serenity. Who stand in as my surrogate mother, or […]