Massive terrorist attacks took place in Paris last Saturday. My eyes were glued to the TV in horror as the events unfolded. But I knew, even in that moment, exactly what kind of obscenity will follow on social media. As expected, people started shooting status updates and tweets all over the Internet. Hashtags emerged, followed by a trending graphic and ultimately a Facebook filter.
This was easy to predict as it has been going on for a while now. The Facebook filters and the hashtags promoting propoganda have become a pattern whenever a globally important event unfolds. It all probably started on a global scale with the "Kony 2012" campaign. Since then, it has been replicated domestically and internationally over several major happenings. Some recent viral outbursts of such kind were the Rainbow Pride filter, Digital India filter and now the France flag filter. Mark Zuckerberg’s profile picture on Facebook has bathed in more filters than an Instragram addict.
The only objective this sort of slacktivism achieves is a sense of moral self-complacency. We feel it behooves us to follow this trend otherwise we’d be categorized as outcasts or cynics. It makes no difference to the mother of a young boy who lost his life in the recent attacks. Her pain cannot be put into words, but let’s change our profile pictures with the new Facebook filter app because if we wouldn’t it would be deemed by society as cruel and heartless. A majority of people don’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, but only as a catalyst to boost their public image.
What will probably happen: Facebook and Twitter will collect a massive amount of data about which people are using these filters and hashtags. This data will then be categorized into different categories like location, age, etc. It will then be factored into their algorithms and prediction models, which optimize the objective of an advertisement reaching a target demographic. For instance, a person in India who changed his profile picture just a couple hours after the incident is more likely to click on an ad about European merchandise. Our prayers will be transformed into economic gains for major corporations.
Blatant slacktivism gains nothing. The only process that can bring about change is when this slacktivism translates into activism. The most successful campaign on those lines so far was the ALS campaign. Even though it exhibited high traces of slacktivism, it still managed to translate that into raising money for the cause. The only thing that the other instances of slacktivism achieved is inflating your sense of pride, and luring you into believing that you contributed.