Man Sensing Egypt Flag In Twitter Avatar Not Affecting Terrorism Levels

“Maybe there’s a magic formula for how many people have to change avatars and retweet the right things before the good guys win.”

Plano, Texas, May 28 – A resident of this Dallas-area city has begun to suspect that repeated changes of the image accompanying his Twitter name to the flag of the country most recently attacked, to show solidarity with victims of terrorism, may have no actual results in combating terrorist attacks.

Rudo Wakening, 30, began adopting the national flags of the nations targeting by terrorist attacks when gunmen assaulted the offices of satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Subsequent shooting, bombing, and automotive attacks elsewhere in Europe, including several more in France, prompted him to switch his twitter avatar to the French, Belgian, Dutch, and British flags. This week saw a new avatar on his profile, the flag of Egypt, to acknowledge the shooting massacre of Coptic Christians in that country over the weekend, but the continued proliferation of terrorist attacks by Islamists has Wakening thinking his efforts, and those of millions like him, might be for naught.

The paralegal father of one adopted the practice after feeling the need to do something, anything, to help the victims of terrorism. Upon encountering the trend of the flag avatar, Wakening was immediately taken by the ease with which one could thus express solidarity, thereby affording oneself the illusion of having contributed in some immeasurable way to making the situation better. He followed the same course of action after attacks in Antwerp, Nice, Manchester, and Egypt, before realizing this morning that in none of those instances did his actions produce results beyond assuaging his guilt at not doing anything concrete or discernible.

“I thought I was doing something helpful, but I’m not so sure now,” confessed Wakening. “Maybe I assumed that enough people putting an Egyptian flag image on their Twitter profile would somehow force the terrorists to give up? I don’t know. It certainly didn’t happen after Paris, or Nice, or Manchester. But then, nobody ever did it in significant numbers for the people of Syria, who face atrocities from ISIS all the time, and just as bad from Assad loyalists, plus whichever other factions are vying for power. You don’t see a bevy of Iraqi flags despite all the horrors of ISIS, and the less-than-gentle treatment people get from Iran-backed militias there.”

“And don’t get me started on Israel – nobody even hears about most of the attacks on Israelis,” he continued. “So I don’t know. Maybe there’s a magic formula for how many people have to change avatars and retweet the right things before the good guys win.”

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