I had taken the power of the internet for granted.

On any given day, I post on four different apps: TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. My virtual life is abundant. The internet has been a source of personal and professional growth, creativity, and kinship for me. As a content producer, lifestyle vlogger, and fashion enthusiast, I understand the power of the internet as a space to create, share, and commune with online friends. I alternate between advocating for important issues and using my extensive archive of SpongeBob memes to express my current mood.

After November 4, 2020, the day of the U.S. elections, the internet became more important to me than ever. Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, shut off telecommunications in Tigray, which many thought was an excuse to commit atrocities in the dark. It worked. For nine months, my homeland of Tigray in the northeast region of Ethiopia has been facing genocide. Haven't heard of the Tigray Genocide? No surprise.

Today marks nearly 300 days of almost no contact with our families. During this period, Tigray has experienced massacres, chemical warfare, vandalized hospitals, looted universities, destroyed churches and mosques; humanitarian aid blockages, man-made famine, and weaponized rape (yes — intentional, systematic rape). Most nights I’m restless, my chest tight, knowing that soldiers are going door to door to harass, loot, and devastate our families. My body struggles to comprehend their starvation — not simply the ambiguity of hunger, but the firm knowledge that there is no food and food will not soon appear. We are witnessing ethnic cleansing, mass rape, forced famine, and more, and yet the world's leaders refuse to label what is happening in Tigray a “genocide.” Everyone from the head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church to a former president of the country has used the term to describe the facts on the ground. Although “genocide” is a difficult label to use definitively, especially to describe an ongoing crisis, because governments obviously will not admit that’s what they’re carrying out, we are using the power of the internet and demanding everyone call the crisis what it is: a genocide.