Let me tell you a story. Less than a minute after I posted information about the shooting of 24 year old Chris Kaba, an unarmed black man pursued and shot by police in South London, to my Instagram Stories feed, my doorbell rang. I picked up the intercom and was informed that the police were trying to get into my building as they were trying to gain access to a flat. My stomach twisted up and I felt light-headed and nauseous. “Which flat?” I asked, as my hands began to shake. “Not your flat,” the officer said, before quickly adding: “Nevermind, we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

Given my past interactions with the police, this response was not foreign to me, but I thought my PTSD-like symptoms had been cured by time. The shooting of Chris Kaba had re-triggered them, and I was watching other Black Brits across social media go through similar, as the dizzying mix of grief, outrage, powerlessness and exhaustion rippled across TikTok, Instagram and Twitter.