Know what I really love? Internet petitions. I mean… think about it. What better way is there to stand up for injustice and really get behind a cause than taking 3 seconds to click a button on a website, then going back to posting about Kei$ha on facebook. You’re doing so much without ever really doing anything at all.
Internet petitions are the type of thing that could only have been created in America, where we have it so good, that fighting for a cause can be accomplished in under 10 seconds. No standing in front of tanks for us, thank you very much. Die or face persecution for what I believe in? Geeze… that sounds dangerous. I’d rather not. Can I just hashtag something instead? #yolo.
Can you imagine how much success Martin Luther King Jr. would have had if the extent of his activism had been getting people to sign internet petitions? “Hey guys. It’s like, not cool that we don’t have, like, equal rights and are treated as second-class citizens and whatnot. Click this facebook link I’ve sent you so that we can, like, make a difference in the world (smiley face emoticon). But what do I know. Maybe that approach would have worked too.
What if the leaders of the free world had collected signatures during World War II in order to get Hitler to cut out all that nonsense. “Hey Poland. Hey Great Britain. What’s up France. This Hitler guy is a total bummer, what with all the people killing, and antisemitism and whatnot. I’m sending you a link on twitter. Maybe you can pass it along to all your friends, and with enough signatures, maybe we can get the government to pass a law making genocide illegal. Thanks! #NoHitler #StopKillingJews #SeriouslyThough.”
It’s commendable that people want to do good and stand up in the face of injustice, but doing something that takes virtually no time or committment at all is usually not the way that problems get solved. If this were the case, every problem in the world would have been solved rather quickly after it’s inception. World hunger? We fixed that with an online petition! Remember when cancer was a problem? Thankfully somebody started an online petition for that too. End racism: sign this petition today!
In closing, I’m going to avoid providing any direct solutions or creative criticism as to how one could better go about the process of actually bringing about change. That is up to you to figure out via soul searching and looking deep within your own heart. Or perhaps I just wanted to plop out a pessimistic post about something annoying from facebook culture and I myself am also part of the problem due to my own rampant apathy. #Kony2012.