where his civilizations, including our own

That too. There's a long list of things you could name like that, where Twitter and LJ were full of sympathy and support for a few days or weeks, and then it's on to the next thing. I think it's not even just boredom or poor attention span, but that it becomes uncomfortable for people to be reminded that major problems continue to be major after the "post your support" meme has run out of steam. There are aspects of it that can be dismissed as naive, but after a while, when you see it over and over again with every new (or "new") catastrophe, it begins to look self-righteous and wilfully ignorant.

Probably none of us can claim we've never fallen prey to it. But it's no good.