Slacktivism and the Importance of being Earnest

Another day, another inchoate ramble, and once more the blame credit goes to Amy for forcing my hand, cracking the whip, and telling me to write.

This is one of those topics I'm bound to lose favour through. One people tend to get irrationally defensive about. It's so bad, so serious, that two shallow acquaintances Unfriended me on FaceBook! Facebook is a formidable opponent, and there's a LOT of people that would rather live without me than live without Facebook ;)

I want you to do me a favour. I want you to think of a crime or tragedy. Murder, rape, domestic abuse, corruption, famine, Justin Beiber's popularity, whatever. Got one? Good.

Now, I want you to look up at your ceiling and announce that you oppose this terrible thing.

Done? Great! You've just made the world a better place... right?

Well...

...in a word?

No.

You've just done nothing, and that's precisely as far as good intentions go. And now that the illustrative experiment is completed, let us pass on to the discussion.

Slacktivism: The Illusion of Action

No doubt you will have encountered the Replace your Facebook Profile Photo with your favourite cartoon character to raise awareness of Child Abuse meme doing the rounds a couple weeks ago. Either you use Facebook and it was therefore unavoidable, or you likely noticed it on Failblog or some other such source of mockery and social comment. For those unfamiliar, it was a body of text urging people to copy&paste the message into their Facebook status update, and to replace their profile photos with a cartoon character with the goal of having no human faces visible on Facebook until the 6th of December to show you oppose child abuse.

Some folks used it as an excuse to indulge their sense of nostalgia by replacing their photo with one of Voltron or The Snorks, an admirable trip down memory lane. Others, had very different ideas entirely. And then, of course, there were those who thought they were making a difference.

Here's my problem with that particular meme: It's an empty gesture. A hollow action. It's not merely that changing your Facebook profile photo and copying text into a status update achieves nothing, it's that it is, to some small degree, counter-productive. These empty gestures allow us to feel like we're involved in the solution, like we're helping, without actually furthering the cause one jot. It siphons off your social conscience by convincing you that you're part of the fight, that you're 'showing support', so you'll feel less inclined to actually do something to help. You get to enjoy the altruistic thrill of helping, without helping. Going through the motions and tricking yourself into thinking you've done something meaningful, when you've just forwarded the Facebook equivalent of a chain-letter to avoid the five years bad luck they warn you about. This is the part that so deeply offends people, we don't like being told we're not as altruistic as we think, we don't like getting called out for being lazy. And that's what this is: Slacktivism, making token noises of opposition to the bad things in the world without doing anything about it. I would be hypocritical to judge people for not doing enough to make the world a better place, I'm not part of any charitable organisation and don't take part in many food-drives or any such event. But that's not what I'm judging here, what I'm getting at here is that it's wrong to claim you're doing something when you're not. The satisfaction of charitable action must be earned.

Now, I've been told there's no harm in it. "My heart's in the right place, that's all that matters." Wrong. There are real children suffering real abuse and real poverty and real starvation, that is what matters. Whether you think child abuse is a tragedy or not is not the important issue, what matters is the fate of those who are suffering. Just thinking about the wee kids and saying "That's tragic" isn't going to help them one bit, and it's supremely arrogant to think your Facebook photo will in any way matter to them.

"But it's raising awareness, awareness is important!" Who isn't aware of child abuse? What practical or informative purpose does "oppose child abuse!" serve, what does it tell you? Nothing you don't already know. We know, white people love raising Awareness, but if all you're saying is 'child abuse exists', you're not helping. Gather anecdotal evidence from the newspaper, point people in the direction of the Department/Ministry of Welfare studies on domestic abuse and child poverty, so they have some inkling of how prevalent or worrisome child abuse is in their corner of the world. Better yet, if you can't contribute anything substantive to the 'fight against Child Abuse', instead of just telling people child abuse is wrong, point them towards organisations that can help! It takes about as much effort to copy and paste Facebook status updates from your friends list, as it does to google for local/national campaigns against child abuse. I did a quick search for charitable groups, and at the very least I can inform you that Women's Refuge, Plunket, and The Auckland City Mission Christmas Appeal are all groups trying to make life better for disadvantaged children. You can even support the Auckland City Mission campaign on Facebook. If you watch TV, you've probably seen the "It's not okay to hit your kids... it IS okay to ask for help" ads, and the thing that sets those apart from the Facebook status update trend is those ads point out resources to make yourself informed, places you can go to for help, it gives you an opportunity to contribute to a group active against domestic abuse. This is what advocacy actually is.

These awareness-raising groups that are also doing something to help curtail child abuse solicit for donations on the streets of Auckland. Give them your spare change, your shrapnel is better used ending child hunger than buying your Big Mac.

At the very least the Pink Profile campaign a month or two back had a corporate backer, there was charitable action behind it.

Support is more than just saying you're supportive.

"It's important to show you oppose child abuse." You... you racist!

What? You didn't say you oppose racism. While you were taking a stand against child abuse, you weren't opposing rape, murder, racial discrimination, terrorism, oppression, political disenfranchisement, genocide, homophobia, corporate corruption and graft, and animal abuse.

What's with the presumption of guilt?

It can be taken pretty much for granted that people generally oppose child abuse. Despite the interwebs being serious business, it's not important to show your Facebook opposes child abuse. You see, I assume you don't fancy the idea of beating a defenceless child until he or she requires hospitalization, even if you hadn't changed your profile photo and 'taken a stand'. In fact, I don't believe those heathens who don't use Facebook actually support child abuse either, even though they have no way to say so, being non-Facebook-using heathens. I actually assume pretty much everyone knows that child abuse is wrong, and don't require a declarative statement of them. At the very least, I assume people are aware of the social contract that is The Law states that child abuse is wrong and that you really shouldn't be doing it. I'll thank you for acknowledging that I'm a rational human being of sound mind and capable of empathy, and therefore disagree ethically with abuse of any sort.

So what I'm saying is, cartoon nostalgia trips are all good, and it's really good that you think child abuse is wrong, I'm happy to hear that =)

Just don't take credit for something you haven't actually done.

Sincerity
This is the other one I've run into problems with, and I just can't understand why it's such an alien concept.
It's less factually-based, more focussed on what I personally feel, but I feel it's a point worth raising.

So what am I complaining about this time? (Don't worry, I advocate a positive position here too, but it's the flipside to what I'm decrying so it necessarily requires a critique to justify it).
Another Facebook meme.
Copy this message into your Facebook status if you have a boyfriend/brother/sister/mother/father/child that exemplifies any given characteristic of this long list of platitudes.

What the advocates of this meme think: I want to show the person that fills the relation to me signposted by this meme what they mean to me and show that I'm thinking of them, this is a good way of doing it.

What it actually shows: I want the world to know how lucky I am, I'll make a token gesture and pretend it is a meaningful act despite the fact I've just forwarded CopyPasta, and I wasn't actually thinking about the person this applies to, I just saw it on someone's Facebook page and copied it onto mine.

There's a lot wrong with this meme. I have to preface this by saying I'm not trying to be a dick about things here, no doubt you have genuine and strong feelings for your friends and whanau, and your desire to let them know you appreciate them is almost certainly genuine. But you have to think about what you're presenting first, when you're thinking of others don't forget to actually think.

First Issue: It's lazy.

You saw a post on someone's Facebook page about their partner or their parents or siblings or cousins, or someone that passed away due to a terminal illness, something like that. You thought "Hey, I have a partner/parent/sibling/cousin/know someone that passed away through that same illness, I'll copy and paste this because it applies to me." So you copied and pasted it to show you too have this specified relationship. How much effort did that take? Pretty much none, right? Doesn't something mean more when someone has to make a modicum of effort? It's the thought that counts... how much thought did you put into it? Pretty much none, right? All the writing's already done, all you did was identify that it somewhat applies to you if you look at it in the right light. How appreciative does it make you appear to thank this great person I you treasure by wiggling your mouse, and then clicking the buttons a couple times? Ask yourself, what does that show? What does that say?

Second Issue: It's insincere.

Those aren't your words. Half of them probably don't even apply to the person you're writing about. It's something someone else is saying, and poorly at that. How moving is that? How would you feel if, on your anniversary, your partner took the birthday card you got them earlier that year, crossed out the word 'birthday' and replaced it with 'anniversary' and gave it back to you? Pretty insulting, right? If you're going to use someone else's words, at least be sure to use good writing. Find works by a poet, tracts of a good novel, something seemingly thoughtful, and use those. And if possible, make it personal, something with meaning to the person you're writing about.

Don't just listen to someone talking about their loved one and pipe in with "Me too!" and pretend you've just been powerfully expressive. Put your feelings into your own words and present them to the person you're thinking of, let them know how YOU feel about them, let them know what they mean to you. Don't just point at them and label them.

Third Issue: It's about you.

You saw the post, thought to yourself "This applies to me" and pasted it onto your Facebook page. You didn't tell the person you're copying&pasting about what they mean to you, you put it on your page. It's all about you.

Comprehensive Issue: Vanity.

It's lazy, insincere, and all about you. It's an act of vanity, buddy. That great partner, that deceased relative, that awesome friend... this wasn't for them. You made the laziest comment ever about how good YOU have it, so people can see YOU have a great partner, YOU have an awesome friend, YOUR relative passed away of this or that ailment. You're showing the relationship off to your audience as a status symbol. It's a trophy. If you were being sincere and expressing genuine sentiment, you would've used your own words, you would've actually told the person you appreciate instead of Friend List, at the very least you would've got rid of the part of the message that says "Copy and paste this into your status if..."

Don't tell someone else about the person you appreciate. Tell THEM and make THEM feel appreciated!

Have we lost the ability to communicate already? Has conversation been replaced so easily by Status Updates?

I am vehemently of the opinion that your relationship is unimportant, it's the person that you are relating to that is actually important. I don't care that I have a mother, a father, sisters, brothers, cousins, good friends, etc. What matters are my mother/father/siblings/cousins/friends themselves. And to show I care about them, I have to relate to them and tell them of the things that apply to us as individuals, not the labels or forms we loosely adhere to. The best way to do this is to spend time with them, to make an effort, to get to know them as people rather than as extensions of a specific relationship type, to know and understand WHO they are and be genuinely interested in that.

To make a connection with the people around you. No amount of proclamation or show-boating will ever, ever compare with actually sharing with another human being. Being genuine. Being real.

I'm by no means alone in wanting a world with better connections between people. As we're approaching Christmas, thick in the Holiday Season, a time usually marked by family gatherings and the expressions of sentiment we don't normally bother with during the year, it really is the thought that counts.

So when you're 'thinking of the ones you love', don't forget to think.