Louise O'Neill: Why this need to document every detail?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it must have been like to be Jess Brennan, waking up last Sunday morning. Checking her phone, all the notifications, the dawning realisation that she had become the news headline of the day.
For those of you who are not familiar with this story, Brennan is a popular social media influencer who hosted a ‘Baked Brunch’ in Dublin’s Berlin bar.
Videos and photos from the event were shared online, a particularly egregious video of bar staff pouring shots — from a shared bottle, no less — down the throats of party-goers went viral.
Noel Rock called it an “absolute disgrace,”; the former Health minister, Simon Harris, described it as a “kick in the gut”, and within hours, Jess Brennan was trending #1 on Irish Twitter.
The brunch was ill-advised and deserved to be criticised — particularly given the worrying increase in Covid cases this week.
There are some who feel that Brennan is a scapegoat, that it’s easier to blame the rise in cases on young people having parties rather than addressing more systemic issues, like Direct Provision and the conditions in meat factories.
But these are two separate issues and we are more than capable of parsing both.
The truth is that people who live in Direct Provision don’t have any choice in the matter.
The rest of us do have personal responsibility when it comes to our socialising habits, particularly at a time like this, and the statistics show that the numbers of younger people presenting with the Coronavirus are increasing.
However, I do think Brennan, unfairly or not, became a lightning rod for people’s frustrations. I hope she has good people around her right now — I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to be caught up in something like this.
But these frustrations are bigger than one Influencer or one boozy brunch – Brennan is just the face of our indignation right now.
We’ve seen this time and time again over the last few months; We have little patience for anyone we deem to be breaking the rules we are following so diligently.
When we see people dancing and drinking and acting as if there’s no such thing as a pandemic, we feel infuriated.
Angry, yes, because we think of all those who have lost their lives, we think of their grieving families, we think of the courage of front-line staff, but we also think about the parties we’ve missed, the cancelled festivals we had tickets to, the friends and loved ones we haven’t seen in months.
And the injustice of it burns us — how dare they have fun when we cannot? I imagine seeing videos like this must be particularly enraging for anyone in the pub industry; so many small, family-run establishments have been put under intolerable pressure over the last few months as they obey the Government’s advice to keep their communities safe.
So too, are people in the Arts suffering, those in music and theatre and dance who so desperately want and need to get back to work. Their concerns are very real and should not be dismissed.
The thing that baffles me about the whole debacle is this: why on earth would you share it on social media?
Even after a drink too many, wouldn’t you question if it would find a welcoming audience in the current climate?
It was only a couple of weeks ago that other social media influencers came under fire for holidaying in Ibiza, despite the strict Government guidelines. I’m not being deliberately obtuse about this; I do realise that being an 'influencer' is dependent on creating content and their income often relies on posting regularly.
But none of the photos, as far as I’m aware, were tagged #Spon or #Gifted, so, presumably, their holidays weren’t dependent on tagging the hotel they stayed in or the restaurant they ate at. So why did they?
I’ve seen it with others too, friends of mine who aren’t famous or in the public eye, sharing photos from their trips to Italy or the south of France, and I can’t quite bring myself to like or comment.
They’re not breaking the law; we have been advised to avoid unnecessary travel but if people decide they want to take their annual trip away (and are committed to adhering to self-isolation guidelines upon their return) that’s their prerogative.
We don’t live in a police state and it’s not my job to tell another adult what they can or cannot do. But why this need to document every detail?
Why the urge to post a photo of yourself lying by the pool abroad when you know it’s going to cause seething resentment in everyone back home, staycationing with their three children in a rain-soaked tent in Clifden?
Wouldn’t it be so much easier to put the phone away and log off Instagram for the week?
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