SAWANT: Performative activism on social media is counterproductive
Column: Sincerely Rue
The rise of social media has enabled the rapid spread of information. News of a social or political event that occurs overseas reaches our phones within a second.
In this way, the internet has enhanced our ability to connect with the rest of the world and relate to those we have never met and perhaps might never meet in our lifetimes at all.
And though we may never know these people, social media helps us form a relationship with them in such a way that when the news we receive is terrible, our natural reaction to their tragedy is grief, horror and wanting to help in any way we can.
While social media has built a pathway for this empathy to easily reach the people it is directed toward, it has also distorted the urge to help and cultured a much more sinister frame of mind that we may call “performative activism.”
When you hear the term “performative activism” it refers to a mode of activism used to increase one's social capital or personal gain rather than genuine support toward a movement, issue or cause.
For many, the definition of activism starts and ends with a hollow Instagram post with “Stop the Violence” scrawled on it in white lettering. It starts and ends with empty tweets reading “thoughts and prayers” rather than resources for education or materials that lead to individuals who genuinely harness the power of social media to make progress or provide aid.
On social platforms where anyone can take a look at an individual’s profile and make their first judgments about them, people may feel the need to define themselves by the amount of perceived passion they devote to a political or social justice issue. There is a false obligation people feel to speak on topics even if they know nothing about them, and this is where the issue begins.
When one engages with a social or political movement in order to use it as an accessory to expand or promote their personality and media presence, it is insulting to the group of people who the issue legitimately affects and takes away from the gravity of the issue.
It effectively positions oneself as the center of the issue rather than focusing on the issue itself or those who the issue affects. Since there is no genuine desire behind the “activism” — only internal motivation for personal gain — this surface-level commitment stumps productive conversation and real progress.
Social media at its very core is an optical illusion, showcasing lives, events and opinions. Performative activism is the result of people’s preoccupation with these optics and their fixation on their online performance rather than the hard work that goes into enacting social or political change.
These individuals hurt the issues they claim to care so deeply about as they effectively profit off of these movements, where the currency is attention and empty praise for a curated online persona.
People get caught up with appearing “woke” and equate urgent issues with an opportunity to cash in for extra retweets and likes that help boost their internet presence. For the user, it cultivates an image of importance online that feeds a misguided agenda.
This is dangerous also for the fact that it facilitates the spread of blatant misinformation. Performative activists are rarely as concerned with the accuracy of their statements as they are with the way it looks at first glance and how it sounds at first read.
The rapid pace of consumption on these media platforms lends itself to a quite disastrous information-absorbing mechanism in which people only perceive the first couple of words or pictures they see on their feed as the truth before moving on to the next post.
Due to this particular style of media consumption, an onslaught of meaningless, hollow, retweet-grabbing discourse suppresses the voices of actual change by crowding out the words of those who are closer to the issue and can relay it better.
It is easy to feel like the “right thing” to do is to take to social media and partake discourse about sensitive social and political movements we may not be too educated on — after all, everyone has an audience online, and it feels nice to be heard. But it is okay to not speak on a subject if one does not know much about it.
What does help is reading credible sources about the issues, listening (not talking over) the people close to the issues, having educated conversations to increase understanding and unlearning bias.
The line between ally-ship and performative activism is easily blurred as the world continues to change, the internet continues to grow and the very definition of our own selves evolves with these things.
But there is a difference between genuine ally-ship and false “wokeness” that we must continue to make distinctions between. It is for the sake of actual social justice and political progress that make this world a more equitable place for every person in it.
Rujuta Sawant is a Rutgers Business School sophomore majoring in business analytics and information technology and minoring in political science. Her column, "Sincerely Rue," runs on alternate Mondays.
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