I'm taking a vacation from my Facebook wall, which is 75 percent political causes, 20 percent people I haven't spoken with since high school. A lot of that stuff sounded true when I added it and I don't know if it is me getting old or just something getting out of style, but the internet has given a weird meaning to the very word "revolution"...
I've grown skeptical of cyber-activism, not that I think it's absolutely worthless. It's just that we sill have to learn what to make of social media and the ability to push information around like never before. The absolute lack of skepticism that some people have towards the information highway is discouraging. How many times a day can you hear people in those groups chant that everything you see on CBC, CNN , BBC and the rest is the evil government controling your thoughts but mindlessly believe everything that's on the internet because it's "the media of the people".
Wrong! Any person's ability to manipulate others has nothing to do with who's on the board, who's friends with who's on the board or if there is a board at all. Anyone who has the possibility to pass a message around has the possibility to manipulate others! You just need to know which sensitive nerves to scratch over and over again...people being manipulated may even be convinced that it is for their own good, especially if you tell them what they want to hear.
Cyberactivism is, if anything, a huge achievement in propaganda. Think of it for one second; the first guy to use Facebook for political reasons was Barack Obama for his first election campaign, after Bush. Is an action still revolutionary if the guy who represents power did it himself already? If we had social media in 2003 when Iraq was invaded, all Bush and the CIA would have needed so everyone would approve their war would be a few fake Twitter accounts, supposedly originating from Iraq about the horrors or Saddam's regime and the 2003 Iraq war would have been as popular as the intervention in Libya.
Yet, cyberactivists completely buy everything that's online and fits their views with a frightening naiveté. Just last week, with WW3 simmering in Ukraine, much of what I've read on Facebook fell into two categories; "Putin's evil incarnate" and "The US is evil incarnate with its invasions, so Putin must be the good guy". Like the whole thing was just an action movie, Good vs. Evil but this is real life. With the World at stake, there are no angels and no demons, just humans, both in Washington and Moscow.
But the objective of this form of entertainment (like all other medias) is to get as much attention as possible. Moderate words don't get attention. You have to sound shocking to get your word around, hence all the latte-drinking anarchists (those who would never know how to run a country but do they know how to count Platoes on pin heads!), the feminists who equate telling a woman to smile (that's annoying and a tad bit sexist) as bulletproof evidence that men are absolutely hard-wired to oppress women. I heard a black activist say that interracial relationships are a form of racial oppression, of consuming one's race for sexual pleasure. With all due respect to those people, who do they think they are to tell people who they can or can't sleep with over skin color? People did that in the past, until they legalized interracial marriages. I heard it was seen as a good thing...
...but those kind of positions have to make sense, they just have to catch attention They divide the World between good and evil, but that's what people want!
The one big flaw of considering activism as entertainment is that it's not really "for" something, it is often against a "villain". Think about it one second; if there are native canadians oppressed in 2014, they must have been oppressed also earlier, even under Prime Ministers that we consider wise like Pearson, Trudeau and, in a lesser meassure, Chrétien. Yet nobody paid attention until an evil conservative showed up with his tar sands. Suddenly, CBC (liberal media!) made a t.v. special on the issue and everyone who hates Harper (all of the country except Alberta) jumped on the bandwagon. Harper won't be Prime Minister forever. When the Liberals (or the NDP) come back in power, will people still pay attention or think the Dragon has been slain and it's time to go back watch t.v.?
I've grown skeptical of cyber-activism, not that I think it's absolutely worthless. It's just that we sill have to learn what to make of social media and the ability to push information around like never before. The absolute lack of skepticism that some people have towards the information highway is discouraging. How many times a day can you hear people in those groups chant that everything you see on CBC, CNN , BBC and the rest is the evil government controling your thoughts but mindlessly believe everything that's on the internet because it's "the media of the people".
Wrong! Any person's ability to manipulate others has nothing to do with who's on the board, who's friends with who's on the board or if there is a board at all. Anyone who has the possibility to pass a message around has the possibility to manipulate others! You just need to know which sensitive nerves to scratch over and over again...people being manipulated may even be convinced that it is for their own good, especially if you tell them what they want to hear.
Cyberactivism is, if anything, a huge achievement in propaganda. Think of it for one second; the first guy to use Facebook for political reasons was Barack Obama for his first election campaign, after Bush. Is an action still revolutionary if the guy who represents power did it himself already? If we had social media in 2003 when Iraq was invaded, all Bush and the CIA would have needed so everyone would approve their war would be a few fake Twitter accounts, supposedly originating from Iraq about the horrors or Saddam's regime and the 2003 Iraq war would have been as popular as the intervention in Libya.
Yet, cyberactivists completely buy everything that's online and fits their views with a frightening naiveté. Just last week, with WW3 simmering in Ukraine, much of what I've read on Facebook fell into two categories; "Putin's evil incarnate" and "The US is evil incarnate with its invasions, so Putin must be the good guy". Like the whole thing was just an action movie, Good vs. Evil but this is real life. With the World at stake, there are no angels and no demons, just humans, both in Washington and Moscow.
But the objective of this form of entertainment (like all other medias) is to get as much attention as possible. Moderate words don't get attention. You have to sound shocking to get your word around, hence all the latte-drinking anarchists (those who would never know how to run a country but do they know how to count Platoes on pin heads!), the feminists who equate telling a woman to smile (that's annoying and a tad bit sexist) as bulletproof evidence that men are absolutely hard-wired to oppress women. I heard a black activist say that interracial relationships are a form of racial oppression, of consuming one's race for sexual pleasure. With all due respect to those people, who do they think they are to tell people who they can or can't sleep with over skin color? People did that in the past, until they legalized interracial marriages. I heard it was seen as a good thing...
...but those kind of positions have to make sense, they just have to catch attention They divide the World between good and evil, but that's what people want!
The one big flaw of considering activism as entertainment is that it's not really "for" something, it is often against a "villain". Think about it one second; if there are native canadians oppressed in 2014, they must have been oppressed also earlier, even under Prime Ministers that we consider wise like Pearson, Trudeau and, in a lesser meassure, Chrétien. Yet nobody paid attention until an evil conservative showed up with his tar sands. Suddenly, CBC (liberal media!) made a t.v. special on the issue and everyone who hates Harper (all of the country except Alberta) jumped on the bandwagon. Harper won't be Prime Minister forever. When the Liberals (or the NDP) come back in power, will people still pay attention or think the Dragon has been slain and it's time to go back watch t.v.?
