The Repost Series, Volume X: An Essay on Facebook “Activism”

A disturbing new trend has been emerging on Facebook recently.  Rather, “trends” are the new trends.  But these “trends” are fast becoming the new “activism” of the masses, and more importantly, young Americans.  They are akin to memes, pre-written messages that are copied and pasted by a (sometimes) large number of people to supposedly “raise awareness” (a problematic/idiotic term at best) for some cause/thing/whatever.  The most recent one of these memes (as of today) has been “change your profile picture to a cartoon character month/week/ some period of time to raise awareness for abused children”.  The origins of this meme are as mysterious as Amelia Earhart disappearance in 1937; guesses range from Cartoon Networks annual “post a cartoon character as your profile picture week” (why is this not the unanimous culprit again?) to a shady group of pedophiles who want unwitting children to friend them because OMG IT MUST BE THE REAL CARTOON CHARACTER, ONLY HE SPELLED HIS NAME WRONG!!  SILLY GOOSE!!!  Whatever the case, this brings me to my next point: awareness.

Much ado has been made in this past decade about the concept of “awareness”.  The Dictionary defines awareness as “having knowledge; cognizant; conscious”.  Note how nowhere in that definition appears the word “help”.  Helping people/activism and awareness are in no way synonyms; apparently this fact escapes most charitable organizations.  A while back, there was a Facebook “campaign” to “raise awareness” for “breast cancer”*.  The entire campaign revolved around girls (and many times guys as well) posting statuses that said “I like it on the…”  Women were supposed to then include the place where they most consistently put their purse down when they reached home.  But, see, it was funny because it seemed like they were talking about where they like to have sex! Hee hee hee!  Note how nowhere in this meme were 1. breasts mentioned or 2. cancer mentioned, or any said combination of 1 and 2.  That is unless someone posted “I like it on the breasts” or “I like it on the cancer”.  However, I find this highly unlikely and in some cases, physically improbable.  The year prior to this, women had simply posted a color, which was supposed to be the color of their bra.  An example of a status: “Purple”.  This was SLIGHTLY** more reasonable as bra color at least relates to breasts in some way, even if that way is only in a purely aesthetic/non-health or cancer-related way.

However, these are not the statuses I loathe the most.  The most sickening, utterly classless, despicable, despondent, wreteched, repulsive statuses are ones such as follows:

“Most people have 1000 wishes for Christmas; a cancer patient only has one, to get better. I know 97% of you won’t repost this to your status, but my friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who has died, or is still fighting, or survived cancer, copy this as your status”

I intentionally did not correct a single word (or punctuation error) from that slime to not only show the atrocious grammar, but… no, it was basically to show it had shitty grammar.  But grammar is the least of that meme’s problems.  These cancer statuses tend to show up around holidays, or randomly whenever the hell they feel like it.  But the entire thing is sickening: the baseless statistics of reposters and non-reposters, the sickening, trite pathos appeal, and the sheer narcissism displayed by the poster.  The post isn’t about cancer patients at all, and anyone who doesn’t admit it is a deceitful coward.  It’s a “look at me!  If you don’t do what I did, you’re the asshole!” post.  In no even slightly conceivable way does posting a status on Facebook help ANYONE with ANYTHING, except wasting time on Facebook reading it.  No cancer patient is helped at all; people are only made more aware of cancer, which is every cancer patients’ dream, I’m sure.  

The long and short of it is, awareness does nothing.  Is anyone really not aware that breast cancer exists?  Is anyone unaware of cancer in general?  Is anyone unaware of child abuse?  The answer is no, at least not anyone who could do anything about it (this is excluding small children with no income/no real “power” or sway in the world… yet).  Awareness is itself a moot point.  Diseases and causes really only need awareness in their infancy.  Things like the avian flu and SARS got plenty of awareness in their heyday, but after a short while and enough exposure, they didn’t need it anymore.  Everyone knows about those illnesses, yet you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that even knew someone who had those diseases.  This begs the question of WHY cancer groups still think people are unaware that cancer exists.  Almost everyone has known someone personally or through some other individual that has cancer or had cancer.  It’s not exactly like cancer is the unsigned band trying to make it big.  It’s already at Lady Gaga status.  And the problem is, awareness does nothing.  Awareness helps no one.  Awareness cures nothing (except unawareness).  People with cancer don’t need awareness, they need a cure, they need help.  They need medical Marijuana.  But people seem to miss that point, especially on Facebook.  The same goes for abused children, and any other cause that Facebook statuses will inevitably pimp out.

These memes, which I have seen called “Slacktivism”, a term which I think is fitting, also reveals something deeper about this generation: it’s raging narcissism.  I believe I talked about this in my previous essay, “The Banality of Personal Experience” or something.  Point is, I talked about this before on this blog.  But I will reiterate: these statuses are not about other people, they are about the posters.  Anything done on Facebook is, for the most part, a call for attention.  Post a cool link, you expect people to comment on it reaffirming it’s coolness.  Post a scandalous link with a strong opinion, expect comments in support or in opposition to your opinion.  Post a picture of you looking like a boss, expect comments telling you that you are, in fact, a boss.  That’s the way it goes in the realm of social media.  You know what people will do when they post that status and see someone else repost it?  Assume they did it because they did it and feel like a trendsetter, when in fact they reposted it from someone else from someone else and so forth, all the way back to patient zero, who is probably actually some cancer-awareness group.  The response is deeply personal and makes the poster feel good about themselves, not the actual cause.  Narcissism.

Also, fun fact: if you don’t capitalize “Facebook”, the text editor says it’s spelled wrong.  

*Note excessive use of quotation marks.  This is so that I can have a lot of fun with “air quotes” when I inevitably bitch about this very topic IRL to people because they didn’t read my blog.

**All-Caps words indicate emphasis

Originally posted to Tumblr on December 10, 2010