Beyond Slacktivism
The implementation of popular debate on social media has been evolving for the past decade. Although this has brought a million of positive consequences, it has also helped the development of very passive and problematic attitudes.
Our importance as humans is constantly being associated with the amounts of followers we have on our platforms and the popularity we reach online. People are constantly talking about what celebrities and influencers are posting on their profiles. We have become so immersed in this world that we sometimes forget about the reality that happens outside of social media.
However, with a big audience there comes a big responsibility. I believe that your online voice should be used to inform and keep your followers up to date with ways in which they can remain active regarding social issues. As a global community we can’t continue living in ignorance, otherwise we will keep repeating mistakes that could be avoided with better education on many subjects.
Take Instagram for example, the influencers on that platform have such a big audience but most of the time they choose to stay silent regarding social issues because it will “not fit their brand”.
In order to make it “trendy”, there has been an evolution in activism that has had a reciprocal growth with social media. This new type of activism that emerges is called “slacktivism”. Basically what this means is that people participate in this very passive “activism”; which is basically a pat on the back for people who haven’t really spoken out about a certain issue. Then when it becomes a hashtag, more people post about it and three days later when the hype is gone, the slacktivism is as well but the issue remains present in society.
A recent example of this was the #blackouttuesday hashtag movement that started on Instagram. People all over the world started participating and adding black squares to their page with different hashtags. Without thinking it through properly, a lot of people added the BLM hashtags which resulted in the hashtag pages being completely filled with black squares. Hence censuring all the protests videos and pictures and information links from people’s feeds. People who had stayed silent for days decided to participate in this initiative without really bringing anything to the table.
This is where I would like to reiterate the importance of educating ourselves and staying informed. We need to look beyond the superficial information we consume and use the tools we have available to us. Taking into consideration all the ways in which we can inform ourselves, remaining ignorant in this century is a big privilege (and a conscious choice).
I believe that there is a responsibility in ourselves to stay informed but also, to use our platforms and voice to educate others. It’s important to go beyond social media activism and not just repost pictures and sign petitions. There needs to be physical activism that merges with your online political persona.
So of course the question of how to do that arises….
I feel that the main step is to understand that these injustices are ALWAYS happening, and not just when the media shows them to us. Also that it is important that we take our information from various sources to avoid misinformation and biased mainstream media. It is not enough to only watch or read the news, we need to expand our consumption of information further than that.
We need to evaluate the people we are interacting with in our lives and zoom out a bit in order to observe the micro-aggressions we encounter and let slide.
What are we doing in our day to day to stand up for others? Are we being part of the oppressors?
Specifically talking about racism, it is important that we take our actions beyond a black square on social media. We have the duty to be actively anti-racist and constantly educate ourselves. We can call out the horrible things that happen in other countries but we need to start changing the societal dynamic within our bubble. We can start doing this by observing our own upbringing and the ideals that were ingrained in us. This way we can start the process of unlearning a lot of attitudes and be a part of change.
I am aware that due to the Corona crisis, it is harder to actually take it outside social media. However, I think it's crucial that we use this time then to deconstruct and decolonize our minds.
I have collected some links with useful information and also will add some Instagram accounts that inform about different ways in which we can start this deconstruction.
Also it is important for us Non-BIPOC, that we use this time to reflect on ourselves and our attitudes. To truly see if what were are posting about matches the way we react when we face these situations in real life.
Links:
Instagram accounts:
theslacktivists
migrantscribble
theunapologeticallybrownseries
the_blackarchives
thecentamcollective