In addition to John Green's excellent point about "cause erasure":
Crimes against humanity, international war crimes, international civil rights, and social justice are not fads. They should not be “trendy on the internet,” and should not be something treated as The New Hot Thing.
I love seeing so many posts on my dash today, from both sides of each argument, about contraceptives, insurance equality, medical equality, Sandra Fluke, KONY 2012, the LRA, and the Invisible Children charity. Especially from within The Hunger Games fandom, which I generally think should spend more of its time and focus on issues of social justice considering the nature of the source material, I think it’s a welcome shift to a lot of Tumblr’s general content (not counting myself out of that, obviously, because I also post a lot of really random/miscellaneous/whatever things).
But.
This same fervor happened in January for SOPA/PIPA/the e-parasite act/ACTA. Do you know the status of any of these bills now? Cary Sherman, the CEO of the RIAA, believes that the outcry over the SOPA bill was a “one-time thing,” and he is most likely not wrong.
Five months ago, the Occupy movement consistently crossed my dash as a major base of activism, awareness, and debate. Do you know where the movement is focused now? Pfizer (which also is a point of contention in the contraceptives/insurance debate due to their production of Viagra) and Bank of America are currently, and rightly, being protested for corporate corruption, and no one seems to be commenting because Occupy is no longer the “cause of the week.”
The Egyptian Revolution that everyone gave copious, and much-needed, attention a year ago… is still happening. And people are still being hurt, and still being killed, and there is still no resolution.
Less than a month ago, uproarious backlash against the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood for ostensibly religious/political reasons brought forward a huge surge in positive (and, okay, a lot of negative) discourse about the nature of women’s medical equality and medical rights. When this cause instantly silenced itself — despite Komen still pinkwashing products like handguns (violence from which causes 29% of women’s deaths in the US) and donating only 24% of their money towards breast cancer research and screenings — the visible online dialogue about women’s medical rights reduced immediately to its original sources (here on tumblr, that means mainly feminism blogs).
Cue Sandra Fluke, and people are once again acting like they’ve never been so shocked and outraged at the lack of concern by the general mainstream media/public about inequalities in healthcare for women, contraceptive availability and ethos, and/or the US’ stilted and politically biased coverage of both sex and the human body as a political warzone.
WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS A MONTH AGO.
While Kony is an exceptionally horrific case, we were discussing the horror of tyrannical war criminals in third-world countries with the discussion and protest of Muammar G’addafi SIX MONTHS AGO. Meanwhile, Libya is currently restructuring and the import of weapons into Libya is rising, and Tumblr Social Justice is fairly content not to remain aware or updated on its status.
Should something happen again in Libya, it will also bring about a week or so of uproarious shock and sudden interest in the region. Just like the uterus, just like SOPA and PIPA and ACTA, just like everything else that Tumblr Social Justice briefly puts 110% of its energies into creating awareness for.
And of course, I do not think that anything that does raise social awareness, activism, and political curiosity, outrage, or understanding is a bad thing.
At all.
I think that the massive pouring of actions and words and ideas about the manhunt for Joseph Kony and the eye-opening expression of his heinous crimes is hugely important and hugely positive. If the KONY2012 campaign truly does bring people into Africa for rebuilding, or does bring about enough international awareness that wherever Kony has hidden himself, he is found, then that is an amazing thing and a true mark of the tremendous good that a free and open internet can do (see that, SOPA?).
But.
Crimes against humanity, international war crimes, international civil rights, and social justice are not fads. They should not be “trendy on the internet,” and should not be something treated as The New Hot Thing.
I’m personally guilty, too, of raising my reblogs of certain causes during their Week Of Fame, too — of course. In part, that’s because that’s when information about these causes (SOPA/ACTA/PIPA/net neutrality, Egypt, Libya, Sandra Fluke, Susan G. Komen, on and on and on) is easier to find and, like the rest of Tumblr/the Western world: I live in a society of passive consumption and it really is easier to notice things when they’re being waved in front of my face than when I have to keep myself abreast.
But if, for only one week, or for only one month, people are concerned with helping child soldiers, and then they are abandoned?
That helps no one. That potentially makes their tragic life situations worse, because perhaps the only thing the Western mainstream considers worse than to be “invisible” is to be “passe,” an old story, one that most people consider solved.
Crimes against humanity are never “solved.” When one treat is removed, others move into its place, and the capture of Kony will not bring about immediate peace or safety for the tens of thousands who have suffered (and continue to suffer) because of the LRA.
Egypt has not been “solved.”
Libya has not been “solved.”
The campaign against a free and neutral internet has not been “solved.”
The integral quest for medical equality for all peoples of all incomes and all genders is not “solved.”
Treating social issues as fads or trends leads to an idea that, like trends, they are impermanent and easy to remedy. That hurts far, far more people and ideas than it helps.
Find the causes that are permanent to you, that are immediate and integral and being handled in a responsible and sustainable manner in your eyes and to your scrutiny (ie, look into where charities’ money is really going; find out what else your spokespeople have said/done), and focus your energies into those causes for the long haul.
Don’t just reblog a few KONY2012 campaign posters and assume your role has been played and the fight against the LRA has moved a step forward. Don’t reblog a post urging a boycott of Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” and then another post captioned “lol ____ is such a slutty whore.” Don’t assume that because Tumblr has gone silent about any given cause that it has been “solved.”
If KONY2012 has moved you to a place of permanent and life-changing impetus to aid the plight of child soldiers and human trafficking in Uganda, Sudan, the DRC, and the CAR, then that is amazing and a beautiful testament to the good works that open communication and social media can do and be.
If reblogging KONY2012 seems “popular on the Tumblr Radar,” then please… at least read up on why, and decide how much you care, and at least decide whether you will still care in a month, or six months, or a year, before you proclaim your FEEEEELINGS.
Tumblr, as a whole, has had FEEEEELINGS about a LOT of things in the last year.
And really, we probably still should. And we don’t.