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Pointing and Clicking Is Not Activism |
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A few months ago, I was invited by a friend of mine to play an Internet game called “Free Rice.” It was simple enough. All I had to do was answer a series of vocabulary questions. For each question I got right, 20 grains of rice were donated to the UN World Food Program. I played for 20 minutes, learned a few new words, and earned over 2000 grains of rice. My efforts didn’t end world hunger, but perhaps a child in Somalia or Indonesia would be able to have a meal or two. I felt a small sense of pride in helping to fight one of the world’s worst problems - until, that is, I though a little bit about what had really happened in this game.
According to the Free Rice website, the rice that is “won” is paid for by sponsors. The more people play and get the questions right, the more the sponsors end up donating to the program. I began to wonder what the point of it all was. If the sponsors were willing to give that money, why not just give it directly without having to go through the charade of the game? It soon dawned on me that the only real accomplishment of the game was to allow two people to give themselves credit for the same donation. I felt good about “earning” those 2000 grains of rice, and the sponsor felt the same satisfaction for paying for them. It’s quite a scheme that’s been developed.
Free Rice is only the beginning of the problem. Facebook, for example is full of these schemes that allow people to feel like they are helping with a cause when in fact they have done nothing. Right now on my Facebook account, I have offers from friends to accept virtual plants that will fight global warming, to decorate virtual Christmas Trees that will help cure cancer, and to sign a petition that seeks to end human trafficking. Who knew I could do so much good for the world by simply pointing and clicking?
And this laziness masquerading as activism is everywhere, even among those who consider themselves to be informed and passionate about politics and society. Last week, on a whim, I decided to send the following self-post up on the interactive news site Reddit: “How many people would be willing to join a boycott of companies that misuse their bailout money?”
I knew there was a good bit of anger out there at both the failed corporations and the federal government over the trillions of taxpayer dollars that have been changing hands, so I guessed this post would receive a fair number of votes. Much to my shock, it got nearly 1500 votes, which was the highest post of the day and in the top five for the week. It seemed that quite a few people are interested in doing more than just clicking their mouse, and that they want to take genuine political action.
Well, as it turned out, a lot of people like the idea of a boycott, but very few of those will actually follow through. A few days later, I posted this: “Nearly 1500 Redditors said they would boycott companies that misuse their bailout money. So let’s get started. Who should we boycott and why?” This post got 83 votes, but most of the comments were devoted to explaining why a boycott was a bad idea or would never work. Exactly six of the comments were from people who seemed serious about doing it. That means that in this very unscientific survey, 1 out of 250 of those who were willing to click their mouse to support a cause were actually willing to do something concrete.
Clicking our mouses will change nothing. It make us feel like we are helping, when in fact we are doing nothing more than enabling the corporate-political hegemony that has brought our economy and our society to the edge of the abyss. Wake up, America! And do something real.
I think these are fair criticisms. But I would say that some online actions - like signing up for email lists - can lay the groundwork for future offline actions. Moveon is a good example. Signing up for moveon’s email list meant that later I participated in a phonebanking party to other members, which in turn contributed to moveon turning out thousands of volunteers for the elections.
I also think that signing petitions and so forth can help groups build up their prestige and power. My post on J Street’s petition is not really to say that signing their petition will make a huge difference, but rather to say that if we support them they grow stronger.
Yeah, I struggle with this all the time. Is joining a Facebook group or signing an online petition “real” activism? I agree with you that these superficial actions don’t have the same meaning or impact as canvassing or shutting a building down through protest.
In the past, politicians looked at groups that raised 500,000 signatures and were in awe. Now, I think it has much less impact on policy because they are aware of how easy it is to amass actions of little cost.
However, I agree with Alex that some of these online actions do have value. They can be useful for volunteer acquisition: signing an online petition is a low barrier to entry, then continue by canvassing or phonebanking or whatever. It also reinforces the belief of the person who is signing the petition: they’re probably much more likely to remember and care about the issue having taken the time to sign the petition. Finally, these things still do have value to the media in critical mass: claiming X number of signatures can be an important component of a publicity campaign.
None of that, however, excuses the problems you point out or detracts from your main point: clicking our mouses doesn’t substantively address the issues we face.