I totally agree with your assessment/sentiment here. I actually actively find those things really obnoxious. I tend to console myself by thinking that "well, at least it's showing up as something 'popular' to do, which means the overall awareness of our culture to this issue is improving" but I agree that it's not actually doing anything concrete to help, and could be actively hurting if it provides the soothing balm for the feeling of needing to do something, as you put it.
One thing I wanted to draw your attention to (which I unfortunately don't know much about) that combines this 'social status' thing of showing that you are into a certain cause with actual checkbook action: there is apparently a system or app on facebook for actually donating to charities and having that show up on your profile/status update. I actually haven't seen this myself, because even though I have a facebook account I rarely log in. But a friend of mine is now working for the company that does that particular app or whatever it is. So hopefully that can be a way to move from the 'slacktivism' to something more productive. It's a really interesting idea and I hope it does go somewhere... I'll be interested to see if people really do donate more given the social environment of facebook.
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Date: 2010-12-06 06:28 pm (UTC)One thing I wanted to draw your attention to (which I unfortunately don't know much about) that combines this 'social status' thing of showing that you are into a certain cause with actual checkbook action: there is apparently a system or app on facebook for actually donating to charities and having that show up on your profile/status update. I actually haven't seen this myself, because even though I have a facebook account I rarely log in. But a friend of mine is now working for the company that does that particular app or whatever it is. So hopefully that can be a way to move from the 'slacktivism' to something more productive. It's a really interesting idea and I hope it does go somewhere... I'll be interested to see if people really do donate more given the social environment of facebook.