by Ryan Dement
recently malcolm gladwell and adbusters have been kvetching about ‘clicktivism’ and how social media is destroying true activism. (see disclaimer below). i think that some people who are touting this belief see ‘true activism’ as standing in circles, holding hands, and singing hippie songs.
ROMANCE – traditional sixties-esque activism is awesome. and it’s fun and sexy and romantic and nostalgic. and having it all filmed and photographed with hazy decades-old technology only increases its inspiration factor. let’s not pretend all of that makes it perfect. or that it wasn’t limited in scope. or that despite all its diversity, that it also wasn’t limited in its inclusiveness to only a certain demographic. there were plenty of middle-aged ‘squares’ who had the same passions for social change in those times. but throwing on some acid-wash jeans and screaming at a riot squad isn’t a viable option for all lifestyles and personalities. some people have children. and jobs.
ENDS V. MEANS – in my opinion, social change comes from raising awareness and increasing the frequency of which people give conscious thought to an issue. social media can only help that happen. there’s evidence of this. we can absolutely dismiss a positive end because the means compromise our values, but not because the means aren’t cool enough. if we, as average american citizens, with mortgages and weight problems, can be exposed to what life is like halfway across the world in a police state, all because of twitter: great. if isolated incidents around the country of LGBTQ teens killing themselves due to bullying can be noticed and brought to national attention because of technology’s rapid info sharing: awesome. it’s not as exciting as molotov cocktails and yelling pithy mantras, but i don’t care. excitement in activism is important, but only as a means to the end of social change. otherwise, it’s not essential.
SMARMZVILLE – there is less cool activism happening. less riotous marches with witty picket signs. less sit-ins and candlelit vigils. while the idea of a tweeted revolution may make us want to groan inside, why does it? it’s easy and popular at the moment to drag one’s feet and scoff at the growth of social media, but if the ‘hipness’ factor is all that’s keeping someone from utilizing such a valuable tool, then you’re not an activist. you’re just a smarmy douchebag. you may have an aesthetic or practical preference for analog living. go for it. but don’t pretend that there is an objective evil in doing things digitally rather than physically. using either method for any task will inevitably have pros and cons, and for certain things, traditional non-digital means may win out as being more effective. this should be taken into account in every situation, but we need to be aware that a pre-established bias one way or the other is ultimately going to hurt our end product.
while sensationalistic public gestures can be powerfully effective they are limited to a specific location and time. while the internet is (almost) ubiquitous and (semi) permanent, information overload makes it harder for any one thing to remain relevant or for it to be able to keep someone’s attention for a long period of time.
TOOL – the internet is a tool. not good. not evil. like a hammer. or gunpowder. we make it good. we make it evil. the concept of good and evil, whether absolute or subjective, are things that have only ever existed within the minds of humans. therefore, it’s the minds of humans that define it. the internet can’t take that away. (although, the impending robot revolution might.) sure, it’s easy to joke about it. ‘the world doesn’t care about what you had for breakfast.’ bad grammar. jersey shore. texting while driving. all frustrating things. but don’t hate the internet or facebook for that. that’s a faulty syllogism. which is just ‘smart people’ talk for stupid.
CLICKTIVISM IS TOO EASY – once again we need to weigh means v. ends. the biggest critique of clicktivism is that it’s way too easy to ‘like’ a facebook page and do nothing else. that real activism is strangled by the useless gesture of a click that assuages guilty consciences just enough to prevent them from enacting real change. this argument always sounds great when i hear it. but the more i think about it, the less it makes sense. 1.) the person who does this, the person who clicks and walks away, is not the person who would drive to d.c. for a modern day march on washington. people do however much they feel that they should. or can. the person who cares enough to retweet one link or news story cares exactly that much. or can afford to care exactly that much. there are good arguments for whether or not they should or can do more. but despite that: they decide to click, to tweet, and stop. the clicking didn’t keep them from greater activism. in fact, the ease of social media probably incited them to do that little bit, more than they would have otherwise. 2.) this least amount of effort isn’t useless. the internet works in trends and memes, and adding that one tweet-drop of exposure to a social issue has a positive effect. even if someone glances over it, makes a programmed decision not to read, care, or think about it, and moves on, that decision to dismiss occurred, where it would not have otherwise. thus increasing the frequency in which people are consciously thinking about the issue. certainly not glamorous, but not useless either.
INDIVIDUALITY – ‘clicktivism’ offers much that traditional activism does not. for the first time, a person can express their beliefs as individualized as they actually exist. we don’t have to subscribe to organizations that represent our perspectives in some ways and not in others. we can share and develop our opinions with greater articulation and more exactitude.(i wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future, this trend of individualization presents a serious threat to our bipartisan political system. people may start to realize the silliness of funneling our multifarious beliefs into one of two choices. an argument could be made that this is already happening.)
A SEMI-RELEVANT SOAPBOX TANGENT: YOUNG PEOPLE DONT CARE ANYMORE- that’s not true. old people, please stop saying it. i think young people care much more than they used to. they are inevitably exposed to way more things to care about than any previous generation. i do believe that apathy is the biggest and most urgent problem among young people, but there’s a slight difference in how i see it and the popular complaints about our generation. it’s not that we don’t care. it’s that we’re not as gullible. it’s hard to be excited about a company, a movement, a politician, a philosophy, or an issue when the ubiquity of information technology is constantly showing us the failings of all these things. we have a more transparent society. sure, companies and politicians are still spouting the same bs, but each year, less and less people are falling for it. my generation isn’t apathetic in a hedonistic ‘who cares?’ way. it’s apathetic in a depressed ‘i want to care, but how? and about what?’ way. the social media craze and the individuality stuff i said earlier are helping this problem. young people are starting to care more. they’re seeing others who do. not on a corporate, faceless level, but through individuals who express themselves uniquely. and like the same music.
(in this note-thing, generalizations abound. none of these observations are absolutely always true. this is how people talk.)
by Ryan Dement
SHARE THE GLORY – the adbuster view of traditional revolution is valuable. and it still can and does occur. but it’s not mutually exclusive with ‘clicktivism.’ actually, they’re complementary, and if social change is, in fact, our desired goal, whether it’s shouted through a megaphone or tweeted through the interwebz, we won’t care.
SORRY – i just kind of vomited this out as i thought it, and didn’t really edit it. so i apologize for grammar problems, no caps, convoluted sentence structure, and maybe some nonlinear logical progression. just trying to do it quick and dirty so i can get back to schoolwork. comment, and we’ll flesh out a more precise viewpoint together. with some back and forth dialogue. why? cause that’s how being rightest is done.
DISCLAIMER – i read both the adbusters articles, but am only aware of what gladwell said on a ‘headline’ level through second-hand sources. i’m not necessarily responding to either of them directly, but more to a movement of thought i’ve experienced in people that they’ve both recently brought to the public in a more concrete way.
