A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER TO ACTIVISTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
By Sgt. Olivia
Dear people who pretend to be activists on social media,
I’m perusing my feed casually, (catty food-cop stupidity deleted), enjoying myself thoroughly. When all of a sudden, out of flaring nowhere, cr@p gets realer than an episode of House of Cards. Okay, maybe not more real than HOC because almost nothing gets on that level, but you get the idea: cr@p got real, real fast.
What happened? One of my (Facebook, def not real life) friends has shared some article on fracking or something with a caption like, “THIS. THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT AND YOU ALL SHOULD TOTALLY CARE AND KNOW IT’S GOING ON.”
…And there it goes. 🚺🐕Wench, you just killed my vibe. Kendrick would be so disappointed in you. Do you understand that the world does not revolve around you and your do whatever it takes, ruin as many people’s vibes, so long as you make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or vibes you leave dead and bloodied along the way, so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose, or vibes you leave dead and bloodied along the way?
Like I get that clubbing baby seals or whatever may be a crime against animals, but you posting about it demanding we all take note of it is a crime against Facebook. So we all know who the real evil genius is here.
I get it. You’re outraged. You’re passionate. And you want the world—or your 1,637 friends—to know. But then what? What are we supposed to do? Donate? To what cause? Have you started a Kickstarter, or even linked to a foundation where people can donate? No. Have you started a Change.org petition? Also no. (Not that it would do any good, online petitions are just chain letters and info collectors.) So you’re just going to spam my Facebook news feed in the hopes that—what, exactly? Are you Facebook friends with that many politicians that social media activism is an effective strategy?
Honestly this is what I didn’t get about the whole #BringBackOurGirls thing. Obviously no terrorist is going to be sitting in his remote cave like, “Oh cr@p, they brought out the hashtag guys, looks like the jig is up, gotta give those girls back.” I get that eventually the government got so annoyed by the Twittersphere that they were like, “fiiiiiine okay we’ll send some negotiators in,” and it was some sort of trickle-down activism effect.
But the real problem was it created this wave of people who legit thought they were helping those girls in Nigeria by typing out a few words and hitting ‘send tweet.’ News flash: you’re not doing anyone a service by tweeting out a popular hashtag or reblogging an article. Anyone with working fingers can do that. Literally, a monkey can do that.
Unless you're also providing some way your Facebook friends (who likely dgaf) can get involved, making us "aware" of a problem is only helping your sense of self-importance and not, you know, real people/animals/landscapes/you get the idea. So do us all a favor and go lick some envelopes for your local congressman over the summer. Until then, flare outta here with your phony activism.
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