Where was social media tribute when Beirut was bombed?

When the U.S. Supreme Court granted American gay couples the right to marry nationwide in June, Facebook offered its many million users a new way to “celebrate pride.” With a special photo-editing tool, the social networking site enabled users to decorate their display photos with an LGBT-themed rainbow filter — a feature so popular, more than 20 million people adopted it.

For weeks after the Supreme Court’s historic decision Facebook was awash in rainbow avatars; a trend some critics bemoaned as bandwagon behaviour by “slacktivist” liberals otherwise uninvolved in the LGBT cause.

But for many gay people in the United States and around the world, the photo feature and its popularity were actually quite touching; it’s not every day one sees celebratory support quantified in such stark, visible terms.

Nor is it every day one sees grief and horror quantified this way. This week, we witnessed the return of Facebook’s photo-editing tool, not in association with a happy event, but with an unduly tragic one. On Friday, Islamic State-affiliated terrorists murdered more than 129 people and injured more than 350 others in co-ordinated mass shootings and suicide bombings throughout the city.

The attacks, which disproportionately targeted young people enjoying a night out on the town — at cafés and a rock concert — were carried out in some measure by young people, too; Ismaél Omar Mostefai, one of the dead terrorists identified after the attack, was reportedly just shy of his 30th birthday. In other words, many of the victims of the attack as well as some of its perpetrators belonged to the Facebook generation.

It makes sense then, that in a rather morbid turn on the celebratory rainbow filter, Facebook has offered users an opportunity to show solidarity with terror-ridden Paris through a French flag avatar.

We don’t yet know the exact number of users who have adopted the photo filter, but it appears that Facebook is once again awash in colour. Like many of the world’s landmarks, the social networking site has lit up red, white and blue in solidarity with Paris. And once again, critics have emerged to question the social network’s well-meaning campaign, this time with a charge of hypocrisy for users eager to show compassion for Paris, but who pay no mind to victims of nonwestern tragedies.

The question on their minds: Why Paris and not Beirut?

The day before the Paris attacks, Beirut suffered an Islamic State-orchestrated suicide bombing that killed at least 43 people and injured 200. Facebook has not yet offered users a Lebanon-themed avatar so they may show solidarity with Beirut, nor has the site expanded its “Safety Check” feature to the Leba- nese city. This is a service that allows users to check in with family and friends in an emergency, a service that was enabled in the Paris attacks on Friday but was unavailable in the Beirut attacks on Thursday. Facebook has promised to expand its service (previously available only in natural disaster emergencies), but critics remain skeptical about what they believe is a clear example of western favouritism on the part of Facebook and its users. And they aren’t entirely wrong.

It is indeed disturbing that most westerners seem to acknowledge tragedy only when it occurs in the whiter world. And it is a sign of our immense limitation that most of us pay attention to tragedy when we can envision ourselves as victim, in places we have visited.

But it’s also ironic, not to mention annoying, that many of the critics displeased with Facebook’s France avatar on account of its alleged hypocrisy seem to decry western favouritism only when a tragedy occurs in the western world. Anec- dotally, I didn’t see a single critic of western favouritism post about the Lebanon attack the day it occurred. Rather, I saw only posts about the Beirut attack and insufficient western response the day Paris was attacked.

Ironically, it seems many critics of western favouritism are its unknowing adherents — moved to action not by outsized suffering in the Middle East but by outsized support for suffering in the west.

Perhaps the lesson here is that analysis of human reaction to horrible events should be reserved until after the bodies are buried. No matter one’s claim to the truth, it is cold, uncouth and misguided to criticize or disapprove of people engaged in genuine outpouring of shock and grief, whether that grief is the result of a highly publicized western horror or a little known eastern one.

Mourning is not a time to pass judgment — even if you are right. Emma Teitel is a national columnist. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. eteitel@thestar.ca