Wednesday, July 27, 2016

In Praise of Slacktivism

A quick post, because I don't have much time, but I keep promising myself to get back to writing on this blog more regularly...

I'm sure you remember the Ice Bucket Challenge from a couple of years ago--it was a fun, silly way to raise money and awareness around ALS, and it pretty well exploded across the Internet. After a while the hardest part was finding people to challenge, because it seemed that everyone had already done it!

My timing may be off, but I also remember that as around the same time that I started hearing people deriding "Slacktivism," a cute term to describe people who engage in lazy forms of activism. This was a perfect example--all you had to do was pour some freezing cold water over your head and post a video of it to Facebook and, boom, you were done. Of course, you could opt out by donating some money to research, or you could do both.

The problem with slacktivism, according to the critics, is that it gives people the feeling of being involved and making a difference, but without having them actually, you know, make a difference. It let us feel good about ourselves without actually doing something which deserves feeling good about. And, it's not a complaint without some merit.

But, let me say a word in praise of slacktivism. First of all, while doing lazy acts of activism is certainly not as good as doing energetic acts of activism, I'm not sure it's bad. I mean, yes--some people will use it (probably without realizing it) as a way to dodge doing more. But, we live in a age of viral trends and memes--is it the worst thing to put an issue, and an effort to help, at the forefront? Is it bad to make caring and helping cool, even momentarily? I mean, people could be passing around videos of the cinnamon challenge or bad videos, if they wanted to. At least with this, they were raising awareness, and a few dollars.

And, let's remember that, in the end, it wasn't a few dollars. It was $115,000,000. It turns out that when millions of people care a little, and a good number of them care a lot, it adds up to something. Something significant, even.

You may have seen the news that some of that money went to fund research which has just resulted in a major breakthrough in ALS research, and could lead to better treatments or, possibly, a cure.

Let that sink in. All of those people who dumped water on their heads, and donated a few (or many) dollars, and posted the video of it all? They may have just been a part in (eventually) curing a terrible disease.

Sometimes, being a small part of a big thing can be great. Sometimes, it can even be holy.


p.s. If this didn't convince you, just remember that the Ice Bucket Challenge also gave us this:


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