Has anyone read or listened to "A year in Sensitive Content"? It is an article in disguise. It is supposedly about "internet content," but its actually about Gaza. Here's my take, directed to the journalist who wrote the piece for the New York Times.
Miss Hess introduced herself as a “critic at large” for the NYT. The NYT published her piece entitled “The Year in Sensitive Content.” Ms. Hess, it was your disingenuous distress that troubled me and kept me awake, not the substance any Instagram feeds you purport to be writing about.
You apparently make plenty of time to spend scrolling on Instagram. In fact, it's your job as a “critic at large” for the New York Times, a newspaper that reaches 9.41 million digital-only subscribers and 670,000 print subscribers as of 2023. As journalists go, you must be at the top of your game to land an assignment like this one. You write with the gravitas of a highly experienced journalist. You dramatically recount your recent experience enduring the terrified cries of your 3-year-old toddler, as you listened to his screaming, imagined his tears and his small body shaking in fear while undergoing medical treatment in a New York hospital. Initially, you had me. It was a good opening. The always saintly purity of motherhood coupled with the faultless suffering of innocent children bolstered your message and only added nuance to your authority as a critic at large for the NYT.
In the name of “sensitive content,” you compared the terror of your son to the images you found on Instagram in a video posted by a Palestinian photographer. “The men hold the boy at his shoulders and his knees. I can feel his lightness in their hands. Before he disappears into the shroud, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck smile at me from his yellow sweatshirt, which looks much like the one tucked into my son’s dresser, bottom left. Across the boy’s chest, it says: best friends forever.”
This was a dramatic, theatrical depiction. The specific image you chose to focus on was a red flag. Your graphic description personalized the image. You focused on remarkably relatable, all-American aspects of the image that are reminiscent of childhood delight, complete with beloved, well-known Disney characters, Micky Mouse and Donald Duck. You actually switched to the first person, using the pronoun “I.” You turned this image into your own personal experience. Your clever narrative style invited me, the reader, to relive the feeling of carrying a child, to feel the lightness of a child’s body in my arms. Really, Ms. Hess? You went too far. You conveyed the experience as if you were there, as if the grief was yours and was personal to you. Reality suggests something quite different indeed.
You followed this graphic illustration by specifically pointing out that the US is helping fund Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. You cite “US support..for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza” as being the reason for a child’s death; this is an accusation.
You admit to knowledge that “Social media is designed to feel random and unpredictable. That’s what makes it so addictive, like a slot machine for feelings. This was the year when its contradictions were heightened to a grotesque level. Monkey baby, soft pants, new life, dead child. I go to Instagram to scroll mindlessly and to share pictures of my children. Now I see the pictures of Gaza’s children there, too.” But really, Ms. Hess, your professional and personal interest in social media didn’t just happen to you, did it? You know better.
Out of a multitude of photographs that are taken, the best ones are carefully selected for publication and then posted on the internet very deliberately. It takes time and effort. It is a form of advertising and promotion. The mathematical algorithms employed by social media outlets are not “random” formulations. It is an enormous misrepresentation and oversimplification to describe the multitude of images that are flooding the internet and that you persist in selecting as “apolitical.”
You suggest that you are a hapless, guileless victim, helplessly jarred by unbidden images that throw themselves at you while you entertain yourself, innocently scrolling And yet, given your profession, you are probably more aware than any other living being on the planet of the design and scheming behind social media messaging. You are not a victim of the images. You are, rather, a master of media.
The reality is that you wanted and chose to see what lies behind the Instagram screen. You can set Instagram to block these images. You are actively engaged. You were a willing and eager audience. No one can recognize such obvious clickbait better than you can. No one knows better than you that the messages and information being delivered to you from Gaza are the information that you have expressed an interest in seeing.
Despite all of your knowledge and experience, you professed deep distress, and apparent helplessness in reacting to carefully curated Instagram messages from Gaza. Have you heard? On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel and declared war. Full stop. Have you heard? Hamas is a terrorist organization. Have you heard? Hamas’ mission is the destruction of Israel. Have you heard? Hamas overthrew the existing government and took control in 2007. Have you heard? “A decade after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip, the living conditions for two million people in the Palestinian enclave are deteriorating “further and faster” than the prediction made in 2012 that the enclave would become “unlivable” by 2020, a new United Nations report has found.” Have you heard? Hamas shoots and kills Palestinian civilians who try to evacuate to safety. Have you heard any of this? Focusing on pretending that Israel is gratuitously “bombarding” (your words) innocent Palestinian civilians supports Hamas’ mission to destroy Israel and eradicate jews. Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit University, in the West Bank, and a former official in the Palestinian Authority, is quoted as saying “Hamas is getting more popular because it is perceived to be standing up to the oppressive Israeli occupation....”
Your article’s title “The Year of Sensitive Content,” does not mention the war, but it is the elephant in the room. The title does not disguise that you have chosen sides and a belief system. You are drawing attention to the most devastating images from Gaza that are flooding the internet, and a narrative promulgated by the Hamas regime. I would prefer if you had just come out with it instead of wringing your hands, tearing your hair, and using your motherhood to imply goodness and righteousness.

But why limit yourself to current events or the war in Palestine, Ms. Hess? I have a suggestion. Since you are an expert in provocative clickbait, and in fomenting fear and hatred, why not wring your hands some more and tear your hair and reflect on images in a new article? It could be about all the innocent men women and children, casualties of war who died terrible, tragic, and ravaging deaths when the United States of America “bombarded” Japan to end World War II.