Right after we open our Internet browsers and click on the bookmarks to Facebook and Twitter, we are being led into another world. Here, there are no limitations; the possibilities are endless. Anyone can post anything and anyone can read anything.
With that being said, social media has been a natural means of getting attention regarding certain issues and problems. Joining the never-ending 9gag posts on my news feed are the shared and retweeted stories of various organizations, many of which support great causes. Theoretically, a single like, share or retweet can propel a movement forward as more and more people become aware of it. But the question is, do you think that being aware and accordingly raising awareness in this way are “helping” the cause enough?
The sad reality is that most netizens believe that the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” Of course, raising awareness is a step towards helping, but likes, shares and retweets do not really help the cause at all. The feeling of activism is, in reality, slacktivism: Actions done with very minimal effort and involvement in order to supposedly—but unsuccessfully—effect change. To further explain this slacktivist mindset, let’s go back to what happened a month ago.
The #MillionPeopleMarch, which was largely promoted on social media, took place in Luneta last August and aimed to get the Filipino people to protest against the pork barrel system. True enough, a number of people did come. Sadly, there were also slacktivists present, ready with their camera phones to take pictures of the event, as if they had to prove to people that they ready did attend.
Almost instantly, these photos were posted on Instagram, complete with the hashtag #MillionPeopleMarch. Sure enough, social media brought the Filipinos together in light of Napoles and the pork barrel scandal—but should it end there? For most people, their sense of activism ends after making hashtags trend.
I am also a slacktivist. I do support various causes but I have never really done any tangible action that I am sure will make a difference. When I read about these online, instead of protesting against them, donating money or sacrificing my time and effort to help, I just share links and videos on my social networking sites for people to see. I am also hoping that others will be the ones to actually do something about these issues while I make myself feel fulfilled by taking some of the credit they get for helping.
In reality, we slacktivists never really help because we are intuitive. We are somewhat biased with regard to our reasons for supporting such causes. We pity, empathize with or claim to “understand” these causes. What’s wrong with being instinctive and acting on our feelings is that it is not enough to motivate one to actually run a marathon for cancer patients or donate an amount of money to various orphanages.
Just like hipsters, we slacktivists try to become people we are not. We see a cause trending and we feel that sharing this online already counts for something. Truthfully, we are only exposing ourselves as fakes and phonies, labels that we would never want to be associated with. So what now? The answer to that lies only within ourselves. Do we still want to be frauds? If not, then we have to start walking instead of just doing the talking.
