FLAPJACKS: So everybody I know is putting up red equals signs on Facebook to show that they support gay marriage.
ME: Why red?
FLAPJACKS: It is the colour of love?
ME: It’s also the colour of anger, danger, stop signs, and retired assassins who are Bruce Willis. What was wrong with rainbows?
FLAPJACKS: I think maybe the guy who started it was all “well, rainbows are too political. But everybody likes red!”
ME: Or maybe he figured American conservatives who consider themselves red-staters would be tricked into supporting gay marriage this way.
FLAPJACKS: That is not the best plan I have ever heard.
ME: For a Facebook campaign it is basically genius-level thought. I mean, come on, it’s Facebook. Politics on Facebook is less advanced than online competitions involving Doritos.
FLAPJACKS: In fairness, Doritos are more important than civil rights to a surprising number of people.
ME: A surprising number of bad people.
FLAPJACKS: Your point being?
ME: I don’t know. Something about Doritos, probably.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway, I was reading that Facebook activism is bad because it makes people think that they are doing something to help a cause when they are actually, in fact, doing next to nothing.
ME: I, too, have heard that.
FLAPJACKS: But I have a theory, which is that that theory is completely wrong.
ME: Elaborate.
FLAPJACKS: Well, people are, for the most part, useless good-for-nothing assholes.
ME: Wow, this theory got dark in a hurry.
FLAPJACKS: Can you prove that I am wrong?
ME: Well, definitive proof –
FLAPJACKS: Right. So we accept that presumption. Moving on, because people are useless, the theory that people are being dissuaded from helping with a cause by internet activism is crap, because – and this is the important bit – they never would have done anything anyway. I posit that the number of people who really would have gone to protest marches or helped with community organizations or written letters to their elected officials or any of that, but instead did not because they were presented the option to express their support instead with an image macro on a social media website of some sort, is in fact very close to zero. Or, if you prefer, just zero. Straight-up zero.
ME: I don’t know that that is accurate. Given that people do tend to follow the path of least resistance, like rivers –
FLAPJACKS: Rivers have use.
ME: I reiterate: you’re awful dark today.
FLAPJACKS: I broke your wok.
ME: Oh. Well, in any case – wait, how do you break a wok?
FLAPJACKS: The handle came off.
ME: But it was bolted on.
FLAPJACKS: It came off!
ME: Anyway. Given that people tend to follow the path of least resistance, I think the argument that zero people are dissuaded from true activism because of slacktivism is probably erroneous. There must by definition be some people who would have done something more substantial, who were dissuaded because of the option to instead express themselves with a cause-oriented lolcat.
FLAPJACKS: But at what point do we say that the effect is de minimis?
ME: That’s a law term. I’m impressed.
FLAPJACKS: I was watching Boston Legal reruns last week. But anyway, I think activists are, by nature, shit-disturbers. And shit does not get disturbed on the internet. If they had had internet in the 1960s, Rosa Parks still would’ve sat down at the back of the bus.
ME: The front of the bus.
FLAPJACKS: What?
ME: Rosa Parks sat down at the front of the bus. Because black people had to go to the back of the bus. If Rosa Parks had been at the back of the bus it would not have been activism so much as “what normally happened.” Don’t you remember “Sister Rosa” by the Neville Brothers?
FLAPJACKS: My main takeaway from that song was that they really wanted to thank Sister Rosa.
ME: Look, I’m not going to get into the dynamics of bus-sitting, racism and how the two intersected in 1960s Alabama, because I am not Wikipedia and Wikipedia is a thing. And I agree that activists are shit-disturbers. But the point of the slacktivist theory is that social media activism provides the illusion of shit-disturbing, because your Uncle Morris who acts like it is fifty years ago gets offended when you post your “I CAN HAZ GAY MARRIAGE” lolcat on Tumblr, and you feel like you have disturbed shit when you have really done nothing.
FLAPJACKS: I get the illusion argument. I just don’t agree with it, because people recognize when something is something and nothing is nothing.
ME: Aha, and now we turn the cynicism angle back to my side, because people all too frequently don’t realize that and treat their Facebook actions like they are real life, because they know you can get fired for being stupid on Facebook so they assume that all actions on Facebook have consequences.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, but those people are stupid, whereas activists – well, activists can be stupid too, but there is a difference between idealistic stupid and disengaged stupid. Your argument doesn’t depend on how kids who thought KONY 2012 was a real thing that had meaning, because anybody who would have given a damn in any other circumstance was able to figure out that the campaign was being run by weird people who had a history of doing dick and all about the issue. I saw more of that on Facebook than actual Kony posts. Which is why I said de minimis. Well, that and I wanted to lawyer you back for once.
ME: And I was duly impressed.
Related Articles
15 users responded in this post
Technically, aren’t they PINK equal signs on a red background?
Also I love that under this post is a “like on Facebook” button.
Your argument feels unfinished. I know you were probably avoiding a “yes/no” answer, but it feels like the two would continue talking from this point.
FLAPJACKS: And now I’m hungry.
ME: Well, I was planning on making stir-fry, but you broke my wok.
I was wondering how you’d tie up the “Where’s my Wok?” subplot.
On the bright side, when I see people pushing back against the campaign on Facebook, I get to know who is on the wrong side of the issue. And for living in a very conservative part of the country, I’ve been pleased to see more people expressing support for gay marriage than pushing back.
I call shenanigans.
No way did they use real law terms on Boston Legal.
The biggest problem I see with the cynical mindset among those who are pushing back against folks updating their profile photos is that they’re operating under the assumption that we’re all thinking we’re doing something. It’s a common Internet pastime to operate from the position of “Everyone else is stupider than I am. I must educate the masses.” And I think that’s at work here, especially in the really ugly article posted on Vice.com.
Look, it’s really, really quite simple and everyone I know is 100% in agreement here. This is less about activism and more about solidarity. This is about the sense of community of seeing how many of your peers are proudly showing their support of gay marriage. No one’s under any illusion that they’re changing the world through Facebook, and anyone who thinks that’s what people think is entirely missing the point because they can’t see through their own petty cynicism the communion of gays, straights and trans folks sharing the a common hope for a future more full of love than our present.
I was actually more annoyed that changing the Facebook icons went without context for me until someone did that and actually posted why they were doing it.
I know that makes me look lazy for not looking it up, but at the same time when have an equal sign on top of solid red, it doesn’t immediately leap out “Social justice cause!” to me. Maybe there’s some new nerd centric thing people are excited about and that’s what it’s for.
It’s also just about making people curious. My boyfriend works in CG and he participated in the green square FB profile pic (still is), while also sharing stories about the issues in the industry. He got at least a few people asking what that was about.
Yes to the solidarity thing. Ten years ago, I don’t think this a gesture like this (were it possible) would have gotten nearly the results.
That means something and I’ve talked to people who it means a lot to personally that so many of their friends were willing to make a very public gesture.
I would be much less cynical about this if it didn’t use the Human Rights Campaign logo. As an LGBT group they’re kind of awful, and this movement is benefiting them regardless of whether the Facebook slacktivist crowd is aware of it.
It does make me a little angry when I see people using the HRC logo as a brave choice feel-good ribbon, especially when I know those in question did nothing in opposition of the 2004 Oregon gay marriage ban. Shit, some of them bragged about voting for it back then.
The thing that bugs me about stuff like this is when dumb nerds take the image and stick their dumb nerd stuff all over it. The message is not enhanced by turning the equals sign into two Batarangs.
MichaelP- But what if you support same sex Bat-Marriage between say, Batman and Robin, or Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer?
That was funny. Not as funny as the transcript-recap written by a law professor-turned-romance-author (http://courtneymilan.tumblr.com/post/46374496823/truncated-transcript-from-todays-scotus-argument), but still funny.
showing support lgbt causes on facebook can make queer people feel better. perhaps even make coming out a little less scary. also, “raise awareness”; this may be old hat to most of us, but its still news to a whole new generation. its not exactly setting the world on fire, and i dont know if id call it “activism”, but it does a have some merrit.
Did you ever stop to think that perhaps putting an equal sign up as our FB userpic might not be the *only* thing we were doing? Did you consider, perhaps, that we might show our support for marriage equality by voting for candidates who support it, and encouraging others to do so? Did you consider that, in this case, taking days off from work and flying out to Washington DC to stand outside a courthouse might now have been the most practical thing to do in this situation? Did it occur to you that perhaps we did the userpic thing not to annoy our homophobic relatives but to make our GLBT friends and relatives aware that they are not alone?
Probably not. I look forward to your next alignment chart.