Andy Warhol famously said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
After watching the video of Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian child who was saved from the ruins of his collapsed building after airstrikes on Aleppo and pictured, dazed and bloodied in the back of an ambulance, I did the only thing I can do: a cartoon.
This cartoon — or “Khartoon” — was liked, shared, reposted, and retweeted by world-renowned politicians and celebrities.
The cartoon went viral and ended up translated and published in most major publications from The New York Times to blogs in Japan (some with my permission, most without, and all without pay).
Within a few hours after posing it on my Facebook page, I was interviewed by CNN, AJE, TNT, the BBC, the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Hindu Times, Masrawy and many more. Everywhere but my native Sudan, but that’s another issue.
As a social media-based artist, this has not been the first time I have seen one of my cartoons go viral.
It all started in the first days of the Arab Spring when my work suddenly got the attention of the internet and the international media.
Nevertheless, every time my work goes viral I still get puzzled and anxious and ask myself: Why this image? What do I do now? And most importantly, what do I do next?
The next big news was the images of the Muslim woman who was ordered by armed French police that she must remove some of her clothing by law.
Coincidentally, the next article I read was about Iraqi women who were burning their niqabs after their town was liberated from ISIS, who had forced them to put them on – by ISIS law.
I drew what I saw and again the Internet chose it.
Andy Warhol might have imagined a world where everyone got their 15 minutes of fame. But in the age of Snapchat, it’s more relevant to say everyone gets their 10 seconds.
I have quickly learned that the internet has a very short memory, especially when it comes to news. Tomorrow, inevitably, there will be another must-see video or image, or an ISIS attack elsewhere that Twitter will deem worthy of its attention.
I don’t worry about my post-viral action now because I realized, after my initial experience, that I will be a “has-been” almost immediately. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
In a world of memes, gifs and instant rolling news, the internet doesn’t tolerate the usual or the expected. That means that to stand out, I have to work smarter, not harder, and to try to ask different questions.
I am a social media independent political cartoonist. All my work is free online under Creative Commons license. I do not make money of these cartoons. I draw because it’s the only thing that I can do to try to make sense of whatever is going on by starting a discussion.
The coverage of Syria should go more viral than any image — it lasts longer than any flash in the pan. In that case, we can’t afford to let the internet decide what’s really important.
