Social Justice Insomnia (SJI) is a condition in which people have a heightened empathy and hyper-awareness to social and culturally inequitable behaviors. SJI is typically followed by difficulty falling asleep, irritability, and an assertive online presence. SJI can severely disrupt normal levels of wokefulness (wōk-fəl-nes) and affect the quality of online presence.
Those with SJI show one or more of the following symptoms:
• Difficulty falling asleep with the knowledge of unapologetic, discriminatory content posted online.
• Waking up at night thinking of sources you can cite to fight online oppression.
• Waking up too early in the morning to start drafting a thesis paragraph in reply to a potentially disrespectful facebook post.
• Constantly feeling tired of the system and inflammatory abuse of our country's free-speech privileges.
SJI may be characterized based on its duration. Acute SJI is brief and often happens because of stress, or life circumstances (for example, when you can't fall asleep the night before reading a particularly transgressive comment about which lives matter.) Chronic SJI is disrupted sleep that occurs at least three nights per week and lasts at least three months.
If you think you have SJI, just log off for a while and stop letting the internet destroy your peace of mind, and healthy levels of wokeness. Remember, actions speak louder than 140 words or less.
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