R8: "Sorry The Activist You Are Trying to Reach is Offline"

I have always felt that social activism was more a concept than an actual practice. People in their very nature will take the easy way out to do things, and this case leads to the easiest of ways. Hashtagging your support can only do so much and even more than that, there is little evidence that social networks have had an impact on things like the "Twitter revolution"(Gladwell, 2010). Social Media is a useful tool in many places in life. In fact, you could argue that it will leave such a great impact on the world that it is going to, if it has not already, change the way that we communicate and interact with everyone. Social activism as it has come to be called involves being involved with a protest or a movement online. The example that really sticks out for me is the LGBTQ movement. This movement has been working its way into normalized culture for decades but got its greatest support once it was moved online. Once online it could enlist the help of anyone that shared a meme, was tagged in a photo or retweeted a hashtag to push the agenda of the LGBTQ community. I am still trying to understand and work on my level of acceptance for the LGBTQ community. My decision to accept them is primarily because of what I saw on Facebook. To quote DeRayMcKesson the Baltimore native who helped start Black Lives Matter

"something wakes us up, and for so many people, what woke them up was a tweet or a Facebook post, an Instagram post, a picture." (Opam, 2016)

My wake up call was a Facebook post that I saw in passing. It helped me to understand what it was like growing up not knowing what your sexuality is, what it might have been like to feel hated just because of the person you loved. From there I changed, I made a concerted effort to be an ally to that community.

If that were all social activism was then I would say it's, in fact, a useful tool. However; the way people are treating the social activism it seems as though they think that by sharing something or liking a picture they are doing the same work as those that are risking life at the protest rallies. Social activism does have its perks, like connecting people to ideas that they would not have thought of on their own. But it is no replacement to physically marching for your cause. Rather perhaps a nice supplemental piece that allows people who are in other parts of the world and can not reach the march or be directly affected by it to understand its meaning.