Over the past couple of days a new wave of activists have taken over the world, as we know it. All over the globe, people have come together for a noble cause, the fight against child abuse, and confronting this very real conflict, they decided that something should be done.
One by one, they sat down in front of their computer screens, and changed their profile pictures into snapshots of 90’s cartoons.
Viral campaigns that bring attention to issues such as this one are not something new. A similar example includes the “I like it on the ____” trend that occurred a couple of months ago, in which many women filled in the blank on their facebook statuses in order to confuse others into thinking they were referring to sex, while actually talking about where they like to lay down their purses, which as a statement was meant to unify these ladies together in awareness of October being breast cancer awareness month… Wait. No, yah, that’s right.
If you happen to be one of the many who participated in these awareness campaigns, my point here is not to make you feel dumb, you’re not. Awareness is important, and we all (myself included) love to make ourselves feel good by giving something up, doing just a bit to help out or feel like we’ve made a difference. This is a wonderful human quality, and one that often times leads to some of our finest hours. I am also not implying, at all, that these statuses are the ONLY way in which we aim to make a difference.
The larger point I am making here is that we’ve gotten lazy. Truthfully, aside from being confusing, there is nothing inherently wrong with these campaigns. The problem is, they are not bringing about much good either. I agree that seeing Doug and his green sweater vest gives me nostalgia for when I was a kid. But it does little to actually help a child suffering through abuse today. Most recently a group of celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Seacrest and others have declared themselves “DEAD” in order to raise money for the charity Keep a Child Alive, which provides aid to children affected by HIV/AIDS. “DEAD” meaning they will not appear digitally on twitter until 1 million dollars is donated to the organization. Aside from the fact that we live in a society which equates ceasing to post 140 characters to a website every once in a while to death, which in itself should alarm us to how out of touch we are, the campaign is not working. So far only $183,966 dollars have been raised for the cause, no doubt a very worthy amount of money that will indeed make a difference in many people’s lives. Why not 1 million? Or more? Because the dramatic sacrifices offered up by these celebrities are not real, nor are they motivating. We can do better.
There are today, real issues worth fighting for, real conflicts in the world, which require time, work and commitment. We all know that because we face them daily. Unemployment, disease, poverty, sadness are real tangible problems which touch all of us. But we’ve all found the perfect mask to hide behind. The Internet. Somewhere between asking for someone’s a/s/l on Instant Messenger, to changing our relationship statuses to “It’s complicated” we’ve forgotten the most appealing part of personifying yourself online: it’s not honest. The self we post on facebook is not our real self, but instead the self we want to be, or even worse, the self we think we should be. Again, I think we are all guilty of this. Aaron Sorkin the screen writer of “The Social Network” put it best when he said: "I think that socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.”
Members of previous generations have told me, in more than one instance that we are incredibly lucky (which we are) to live in the time we live, because technology has made organizing, representing and educating ourselves on important issues much simpler (which it is). However, these same advancements have also made it much easier to FEEL like you are doing something when the real impact is minimal.
We should do better. We can start by truly and honestly talking to one another. While online on-the-surface relationships can be fun, in real life they are not valuable. In conflict resolution, there is nothing more valuable than personal connection and communication. Living in a time of conflict, personal and exterior, we need to find ways of truly connecting to each other in order bring about sustainable solutions to our problems. Issues such as breast cancer, AIDS, and child abuse are incredibly important, and deserve the right effort. Social networking can be essential implementing that solution, as was sternly proven by the tweets and posts of Iranian activists during last year’s elections. But we have to remember that it is only a tool for doing so. We are the agents of change, and as such we must begin by taking real action.
