Occupy Wall Street and it's legacy

        In this day and age, it is almost an impossible task not to partake in any sort of social media activity. I am a consumer of media but I am trying to change that in a very small scale, such as creating an Instagram page solely dedicated to photography. In the end, I am not looking to become a full time photographer but just curious how people would react to the sort of photographs I take. None of it is controversial and dare I say some are boring, but I do look through a multitude of Instagram profiles mainly photography. Although I do have a Facebook, I only use it for occasional updates on people I no longer talk to. Facebook and Instagram are only a small percentage of social media used for news gathering, Snap chat is following suit with their creation of their stories and how we are able to look through public stories that are uploaded by everyday users. The 6 o’clock news broadcast is still my main consumption of news, however I catch myself looking through the Instagram pages of the news channels. This is where it gets tricky, it’s still social media, however, is it considered news if it’s from the page of a news channel?
I’m not against any social media platform, I partake in it and I have no intention of leaving it all behind. However, the way we consume media really should be something people need to be aware of. There is no single or “good” way to consume media, I think we just need to be aware of what we are feeding our brains. For example, I don't follow any celebrities or "reality" stars, I have no use of them showing up on my Instagram feed. I follow film pages, news channels such as CNN, Fox (yes I know, very unreliable but I have my reasons), Vice ( again, sorry) and known film directors or cinematographers. I follow them because it's my craft, film production is a career I wish I can accomplish and in following these pages, I use them as inspiration or guides.
A recent but somewhat forgotten protest is the Occupy Wall Street protests in September of 2011. The mission of this protest was to fight economic inequality between the rich and the poor. Being only about 12 years old, I had no way of knowing what they were protesting, nonetheless I saw people living in tents being gassed or sometimes beaten in a park. As a fairly young child I did not understand what they were protesting, the news outlets didn't explain it in simpler terms. Instead, they just portrayed these people as homeless people living in tents and peeing in the park known as Zuccotti park. Another fragment of memory I have is the “We are the 99%.” Till this day I am still confused as to what was the result of this protest and I begin to wonder if the message was so universal why did it die out? The poor against the rich, isn't that what makes headlines in the years to come? Why did it become a lost memory? What was different in this protest that caused it to die?

Reuters/Brendan McDermid

Was it the coverage that allowed this movement to die out? After all, the most memorable piece I have of this movement is the number of people peeing in the bushes instead of the actual demands news anchors reported on. Without a doubt, the news broadcasts did not portray these protesters in a positive light. Although the movement did not seem to have  a clear leader or demands, it did shed light on the economic inequalities. It brought back the conversation to the way wealth is distributed.

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/23/18284303/occupy-wall-street-bernie-sanders-dsa-socialism