I don’t care what the color of your bra is, where you put your purse or who your favorite cartoon character is. And for the love of God, please don’t invite me to your virtual Facebook sit-ins demanding world peace. Slacktivism has got to go.
“Awareness” is the favored term among slacktivists, though it offers no tangible goal. Taking five seconds to change a Facebook status that your 700 closest friends may not see won’t stop genocide or prosecute Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Certainly, slacktivism garners awareness, but if everyone knows about a problem and no one does anything about it, we’re back at square one.
At best, some will join a listserv and receive e-mails they’ll never read. At worst, these actions breed complacency. The most quixotic will believe changing their profile picture to a cartoon character means they’ve done their duty in preventing child abuse. More realistic folks understand its limited effect but go along feeling better about themselves and believing it’s better than nothing.
Facebook and Twitter are tools to further engage people, not genuine means of political activism. Having 100,000 people across the world stand in virtual solidarity with the Egyptians, Yemenis, or Tunisians is worthless if they don’t actively condemn these dictators. In Egypt itself, Tweets were mostly used to spread information on where protests were occurring. If the masses simply tweeted “Mubarak resign now #Jan25” instead of gathering in Tahrir Square, the people would be no closer to a democracy.
Egyptians saw the tumult in Tunisia on television, and sought to bring justice to their own nation. Once the Internet was shut off in Egypt, the people still came out to protest and weren’t relying on online updates to encourage them. And despite the alleged power of Twitter in the 2009 Iran protests, the Tweeters were brutally put down by the government. Had the army and police clamped down on the Egyptians as they did in Iran, Mubarak would still be in power. Online media is powerful, but it would be naïve to believe it alone could ignite revolutions.
Admittedly, the new slacktivists aren’t likely to be people deeply invested in politics in the first place. If Facebook existed during MLK’s time, they might have changed their profile pictures to MLK, and then tuned into “The Beverly Hillbillies.” The Internet did not create political apathy, but the two fare well together.
Grassroots change isn’t impossible. The UCSD graduate Laren Poole who co-founded Invisible Children, an organization dedicated to preventing child abduction in Uganda, was able to further its goal by lobbying Congress. In 2009, as a result of Poole’s efforts, President Obama signed a bill to strategize the end of human rights violations and to fund peace. Though websites like Facebook were indeed helpful in promoting Poole’s cause — the activist today claims over 300,000 online fans — it was only through real-life action that progress was made.
Social networking devices can be used to mobilize populations, but they can’t be seen as the end solution when it comes to activism. Joining a Facebook group but not attending planning meetings or protests has, in the end, the same effect as doing nothing at all.