The Revolution Will Not be Posted
TikTok and Social Media at Large is not an Engine for Social Change
The first article I ever posted was No, Twitter is Still a Trash Fire. I wrote it to be a wake-up call to everyone who thought Twitter under Jack Dorsey was a bastion of decency. Those who thought Twitter was an inheritor of the Roman forum and not a dumpster fire where people went to waste time and scream at strangers over dumb shit.
With the recent congressional vote to “ban” TikTok, this line of thinking has come around, again.
Ypulse argues that activism on the site leads to real change, by calling out talk shows.
There is a section about sexism by the NCAA, but the other two are about James Cordon and Jimmy Fallon being “racist.” People are being shot by police; the necessities are poison and expensive; but hold-the-phone talk show hosts are being racist.
Tenley Brown on Medium argues that TikTok is revolutionizing activism through the ease of raising funds.
Jourdan Johnson, a TikTok effect creator with over 220 thousand followers, has been at the forefront of this movement. She created the Filter for Good, an AR filter that has the user trace a watermelon on a line, a simple game that has garnered over 11 million posts. The Filter for Good raises money for people in Gaza.
I guess doing something for people in Gaza is as easy as tracing a line. The future of activism, I guess.
Several articles talk about TikTok users getting tickets for the Trump rally in Tulsa only to not show up, making the event appear empty.
Nice work, guys, on that one event, one time.
Several authors have argued that TikTok is key to youth political expression.
I thoroughly disagree for several reasons. As I wrote last year,
I think part of this view is informed by how different people use Twitter. Experience is not universal, but calling Twitter “the world’s main hub for news and politics” is such a stretch it’s almost pulling something.
I know what TikTok is used for by regular people. An ex-partner used it for make-up videos, Reddit Am I The Assholes', and “Get Ready With Me” videos. A buddy looks up football clips and videos of AI-voiced Presidents playing Call of Duty. My own experience with TikTok was looking for Budd Dwyer memes (they don’t have any) and a video of an Orangutan putting on a jacket.
You may use TikTok and other social media sites for activist purposes, but a lot of people don’t. TikTok becomes a dopamine sink where people waste time and create inane content.
I recently read an article where a girl scrolled TikTok until she finally fell asleep at night.
God knows how much of my life I’ve wasted scrolling through short-form content. My habit got pretty bad too.
In 2010, Malcolm Gladwell wrote Small Change for the New Yorker, or, as I knew it, The Revolution will not be Tweeted. (It’s also the inspiration for the title)
He criticizes the idea of social media playing a role in certain political events, such as the anti-communist protests in Moldova and student protests in Iran.
The article also talks about civil rights protests, sit-ins and marches. A time when activism was hard and sometimes dangerous. Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond didn’t make a callout post on TikTok. They didn’t make a hashtag or quit doing TikTok dances. They physically went to an establishment and risked getting beat to protest racial segregation.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a serious undertaking. According to Small Change, there were dispatchers, carpoolers, and black church leaders who worked to keep spirits up. Discipline among the activists had to be created and maintained to make the whole thing work. This effort went on for a year.
It was difficult and costly.
Posting a black screen on social media and drawing a watermelon is easy and decadent.
Is raising funds for a cause important? Yes, but that money needs action and organization.
Shit, maybe I’m not giving these activists their fair shake. Maybe they have achieved some incredible societal change that I’m just not bringing up. Let’s take a look.
James Cordon changed the premise of a segment.
The NCAA updated a weight room for female athletes. Credit where credit is due.
The TikTok filter I mentioned earlier raised $14,000 in total for Gazans. $7,000 went to Doctors without Borders, and $7,000 went to eSIMS for Gazans. Not food, nothing like that, but eSIM cards. Okay.
And one kind of empty Trump rally.
Seriously? Is that it?
Is the future of activism? The inheritors of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X?
As a side note, any piece of pro-Palestinian social media activism will pale in comparison to Aaron Bushnell Setting Himself on Fucking Fire. Drawing a line with watermelons is, in no way, comparable to a man dying in one of the most horrific ways possible.
The truth of the matter is that the government will be taking away a smoker's cigarette, and the smoker is trying to stop that from happening.
Anti-establishment types, activists, and “the smokers” are all trying to keep their habit and keep the slow drip of dopamine, clicks and content. The slacktivists can feel good about themselves while scrolling.
It’s an insidious little drug when you think about it.
Shit, even the annoying activist busybody Joshua P. Hill posts shitty little gaming clips on TikTok interspersed with activist messages.
This is Michael Vincent Hawthorne. I highly recommend checking out Malcolm Gladwell’s piece, Small Change, that I mentioned earlier. It’s long, but it's still a very interesting read.
Until next weekend.