Why We Tend To Be Slackers

February 23, 2011 at 10:25 am (Class Post, Clicktivism, EMAC 6361, Internet)

It is only recently with the increasing embrace of technology and the Internet that slacktivism has started to flourish. Maybe we’ve always had a tendency to be lazy, but with the Internet we can pretend we are being efficient and doing something to affect the world at large. However, in all reality, we haven’t really done anything but sign a few online petitions or go to some charity websites or pages. After all it’s easier to do if it’s just a click away.

Megan Boler addresses this issue in her book Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times about why we lean on the Internet more and more to be our tool for activism:

Today many North Americans spend hours commuting to work. Life is work. We are fighting off the onslaught of information and it is not just the disappearing public sphere that makes true political engagement difficult. In the United States, people work endless hours. How do you squeeze in activism in this precarious situation? The Internet makes it in many ways easier to engage (p. 357).

So we’re tired. We work to make money so we can afford to survive, and sometimes we just don’t have enough time, energy, or resources to also participate in organizations that require us to act on something. The Internet then allows us to easily “participate” in these groups and organizations, find out more about them, perhaps donate or organize (as is pointed out later in the book), all within the comfort of our home with us only exercising our fingers. But here is where our tendency to be slackers comes to play because often all that we do comes to a stop online and doesn’t go past or spill into the real world.

As Boler mentions (via criticis), “activism in virtual worlds… only detracts from real life activism. Entering Camp Darfur in [Second Life] users may have something like a cathartic experience that leaves them with the impression that they have actually done something about the issues when in fact they were simply sucked into computer screens for hours” (p. 361).

We click on a few pages, read some information online about the organization, feel good about ourselves for becoming more informed, or perhaps we donated some money via PayPal, and then call it done. So often, however, organizations (both political and non-profit) need support in real life, more than just online. We need to find a way that gets more people to take what they find or see online, and bring it on the streets to cause real change. It is possible and it has happened, but it shouldn’t be such a rare occurrence as it is now.

We must find ways to combat slacktivism so that people can do more than just click on some websites to really make a difference in the world. It’s okay to find out more information and donate online, but it’s time to do something more; “it’s time for complexities and radical hybridity” (p. 361). There must be a way to use the Internet and still create social change and do good in real life as well, to help people still have time and energy to be activists and still be working adults.

Let’s start by getting rid of Mondays. Who wants to create the online petition?