#Winemom culture

Abstract

Experts trace a congruent trend, pinpointed as originating around the 2010s (Grose, 2020) and only accelerating in the pandemic and its aftermaths: the rise of social media activity relating to parents’ performances of their substance abuse – what this paper defines as “#winemom culture” – with a broader social tendency, a general increase in “rates of high-risk drinking” that lead to such outcomes as “long-term health damage” and “dangers to family” (Macarthur, n.d.). I interrogate the ethics of moralizing against #winemom culture under COVID-19 culture and its aftermaths through exclusively quantitative metrics or surface-level analysis. As with anything coded according to the “momification of the Internet” (Dewey, 2015), such cultures are often disregarded, seen as superficial or in receipt of unchecked judgments. I trace the following question: What can #winemom culture reveal about how parents are processing and communicating within this moment? And begin from the premise that there are as-yet undetermined drivers motivating what appears to be a “zoning out” (Heyes, 2020) in the mediation of #winemom culture production. This project then opens into an analysis of how to actually study digital feminist practices in this current moment, one that is defined by methodological crises surrounding the increasing complexities of enacting justice in social media research. This paper thus serves as a methodological disquisition for feminist researchers attempting to perform ethically just social media research.

Keywords

• #winemom culture
• COVID-19
• feminist media studies
• social media research ethics