On Social Media, People Face Pressure to Speak Out About the War

Deb Perelman, the best-selling cookbook author and creator of Smitten Kitchen, tends to focus her social media posts on her work, like pasta or chocolate chip cookie recipes. But days after Hamas attacked Israel, she called the violence “repugnant” on Instagram and expressed dread for “death and destruction now ahead on both sides.”

Subsequently, she posted about her newborn niece and apple picking with her children. Her direct messages immediately filled with irate notes.

“How can you post a couple of paragraphs and go on about apple pies? You are Jewish,” one user wrote. Another questioned why she “never once had a ping of conscience” about “70 years of brutal occupation.” Someone else demanded she say more, adding that Ms. Perelman looked “exactly like one of the hostages in Gaza that are being tortured and raped.”

“The fury in my DMs was unparalleled,” Ms. Perelman said in an interview, adding that she had already received a torrent of messages criticizing her “silence” before she acknowledged the attacks. “There was a feeling that I was either condoning genocide or I wasn’t calling it genocide when it happened, or I wasn’t using enough incendiary language.”

People who work across industries — from famous online influencers to those with far less prominent online profiles, including a yoga teacher, an interior designer, and tech and real estate workers — said in interviews that they faced an expectation to share their opinions about the war. The pressure is conveyed either explicitly or subtly from friends and followers. Silence is viewed by many as its own statement.

They said they realized, though, that posting came with costs, including angry outpourings and personal attacks. It’s particularly complex for those, like Ms. Perelman, whose livelihoods depend on constantly updating their feeds on topics that don’t often veer into the political.