With nothing to do but write, I guess I should finally put some thoughts down on a few subjects that have been on my mind lately.
One of the many thing that irks me is hashtag activism. The idea that simply writing a catchy phrase on twitter of facebook is going to lead to massive reform is at best ridiculous, and possibly intellectually stunting. Take for example the #bringbackourgirls campaign. On paper, it seems worthy and righteous: these poor girls were kidnapped and will be sold as "wives" (read: sex slaves) on the black market. Thank God twitter came to the rescue. Except it didn't. These girls haven't been returned. Those responsible haven't been caught. Nothing came of mass hashtagging, but yet everyone bandwagoned it. Feminazis, neonazis and facists alike all "joined together" to "rescue" the girls, yet nothing actually happened. All we got was annoying click bait headlines and pointless petitions and ranting tumblr feminists. Some argue that the twitter hashtag was to raise awareness about the kidnapping, as if no one had any idea what was going on. This is similar to the campaign a few years back to change your facebook picture to a cartoon to "raise awareness" about child abuse. I wasn't aware child abuse existed before this, and when I saw all my friends were suddenly cartoons, I just had to learn more. The idea that no one beforehand knew that children were abused is bullshit. It didn't raise awareness, and it didn't stop anything. As written by the satirist Maddox: "Want to stop something? Do something, like: Make a pledge to abuse one less child everyday, or try bowling instead of beating kids. There are lots of things you can do to end child abuse. Changing your facebook profile picture isn't one of them." (link) The reality is hashtagging isn't doing anything for anyone. There have been tons of examples: #yesallwomen, #kony2012, #cancelcolbert. None of these have done anything but provide more rhetoric points for the echo chambers that perpetuate the groupthink behind these types of things. Abuse never stopped. Kidnapped children were never returned. Warlords still exists.
Along the lines of #cancelcolbert, there is something else that has happened with hashtag activism: people using twitter and facebook to make stupid points or get an easy 15 minutes of fame. If you don't know about the cancel colbert fandango, google it. The story behind the hashtag is ridiculous, but the reaction and perpetuation of it is even worst. Granted, most people with a brain didn't buy into it, including even a few feminists, but it took off quickly in the intellectual sandbox of twitter, where everyone is Mensa material. But what made really bad even worst, was the attitude of the woman who started the hashtag. She wanted everyone to hear her opinion, which changed often, and absolutely refused anyone else to disagree with her, telling them to "check [their] privilege." Now we have idiots calling for the Daily Show to be canceled because they used satire to prove a point, which was lost on most of america's youth. It must be true what I've heard: You have to have a least a double-digit IQ to understand satire.
Maybe this is all just evolution embracing artificial selection: We now can tell who's to stupid to breed.
Maybe we should embrace this afterall.
