today on the meme curmudgeon

[pauraque_bk]

I was about to post this on Twitter, but, uh...

Social media has lowered the bar for doing good

This has been going on a lot longer than Twitter and Facebook have existed. Remember when colorbars were sincere and not ironic? Thems were the days. I actually have always felt the same way about awareness ribbons (even though I used to wear one, it was for breast cancer... guess I was a hypocrite!) and bumper stickers and so on. It makes perfect sense that this stuff has migrated to social networking, which for many people is largely about looking good in front of their friends.

I don't think it's as consciously cynical as that makes it sound. I doubt anybody is thinking "Ha ha, by turning my icon green I'll make my political views apparent to my friends, thus earning their approval!" But it can come off that way, and it doesn't surprise me at all that most people stop at the symbolic part and don't do anything concrete.

I wish we had more of the "donate $10 to Haiti with a text" memes and less of the merely symbolic ones, is all I mean by this.

Comments

[pauraque]

I'm in total agreement. Oh, cancer is bad, no kidding?! If only Twitter had existed a few years ago, I'm sure the massive power of your Retweets would have prevented my mother from dying...