Nothing Came of It

Libya in 2011 was phone videos, shaky footage where a cleric describes watching a tank roll over a car with two people inside. Just flattened them. Gaddafi had ruled for forty years and apparently his answer to protest was mechanized. Soldiers, helicopters, his own son’s unit. Some cities seemed to fall to rebels. Other reports said they were holding. You never knew what was actually happening, just fragments coming through before the internet got cut.

Everyone shared the videos. Tunisia and Egypt had both kicked out their dictators and Libya looked like it might be next. That feeling of witnessing something change, of being there in real time even though you’re not there at all.

Nothing came of it. Gaddafi got killed but the country never recovered. It just collapsed into something worse. I don’t remember when I stopped paying attention to Libya. There’s no moment where I consciously decided I didn’t care anymore. It just evaporated from my feed, then from my mind.

What stays is the gap between watching and doing. How you feel like you’re part of something by seeing it, sharing it, knowing about it. How quickly that feeling disappears when you realize you never actually did anything. It’s the safest kind of engagement—you get to see the world falling apart and then go back to your day.