Systems of power want you to be apathetic
As social media continues to be a hub with which many people get their news, there has seemed to be an increase in conversation about knowing when to disengage with certain social rights movements or stop yourself from seeing content covering particularly sensitive or difficult topics. While, of course, I would never argue that the general public should willingly sacrifice their mental health in order to keep themself as informed as possible when feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I can’t help but wonder who this mass desire to disengage and the movement towards apathy really benefits.
Let’s be honest, we have all seen a TikTok come up telling us not to scroll before talking about how you can support struggling families amidst a crisis, only for us to do just that, scroll. We’ve also all clicked through Instagram story after Instagram story containing infographics we couldn’t compel ourselves to care about or look into further. The ways in which social justice movements are seemingly never lacking in their online presence is both encouraging for those of us who believe in the cause, but also disheartening as the internet will decide some other issue is more worthy of mass reposting in such a short amount of time.
This “trendification” of social justice movements, though, does not only act as a quick high for those who rally behind the movements’ sentiments, but also works to assure the perpetrators of these issues that they do not actually have to make any real change. With how fast many movements go in and out of the public eye, waiting for the heat to cool on some conservative politician fear-mongering about drag queen storytime does not take a host of public relations experts, but rather just a little bit of patience. The speed at which social media scrolls through their Rolodex of activist causes takes the power out of commonly used activism routes like mass upheaval and nullifies the truly effective aspect of having many people behind the same cause: it increases the group's stamina. If the group cannot contribute to the movement’s overall stamina, mass upheaval’s main mitigating force becomes voided to some extent.
Making it trendy to participate in social justice has also sharply increased the number of people who might support a movement, or post an infocard about a specific incident for the wrong reasons. Wanting to seem like a good person, someone who is politically engaged, or a well-informed person has become too many people's reason behind their vocalized support. This sentiment is what has colloquially become known as ‘virtue signaling,’ which basically boils down to the idea that you are outspoken on social media about your support of a certain cause because of a desired perception rather than because you hope or do any real work to make change.
This has made it hard for more dedicated activists to know how to go about getting support. Do they post the infocards and repost the informative TikToks and risk others thinking that they are virtue signaling? Do they compile resources for the truly dedicated to be able to donate, send letters or emails, or draft conversations to have over the phone with local representatives? Do they remove their support from public spaces like social media and opt to donate, protest, and/or boycott privately in order to maintain a social sense of integrity? This phenomenon has certainly complicated what, exactly, it might mean to be an ally, and how movements might find success in the future.
Like many other spaces, such as classrooms, brands, and humor, social justice too has to figure out how to adapt to the times. As the ‘trendification’ of movements becomes increasingly more prominent and the half-life of mass upheaval starkly decreases, social justice movements and their activists need to start to question how they can create movements that last long enough to enact some real attention and real change.
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