The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is a challenge and resistance to White Supremacy and state-sanctioned violence. The proliferation of social media and smart technology has allowed the recording, documenting, and archiving of police misconduct and brutality against Black bodies. Furthermore, BLM is critical of various institutions that create disparities, including the criminal justice system. This article examines the nexus of BLM and prisoner reentry. Using qualitative research conducted in the weeks and months following the death of Trayvon Martin in February 2012, a collective of formerly incarcerated and recently released Black men discussed and analyzed this death and its impact on the Black community. Here, these individuals shared their ideas surrounding punishment and justice as well as reflected on their own past, present, and future roles in their community.

Social media’s shift from storing media permanently by default, to supporting increasingly diverse temporalities of display and interaction has important implications for understanding the political economy of the digital. In this article, I use queer theory to complicate the normative dimensions of the privacy discourses that popularly frame digital ephemerality, suggesting instead that we understand the ephemeral as redistributing the pleasures and dangers of risk. To demonstrate, I do a close reading of the functions, design choices, and aesthetics of popular digital communication platforms, which increasingly provide the affective texture and context for everyday life. Using Snapchat and Apple’s Find My Friends and iMessage as case studies, I highlight a profitable dynamic between promiscuous exposure and monogamous retrenchment.