This is a comment from a 2013 blog.
"For a while I've been commenting on different sites a phenomenon I've seen on Facebook (my most used social media, though I wouldn't say it doesn't happen in others). It's seemingly innocent, even adorably naive things like "comment and repost", "change your profile picture to a picture of you as a child if you're against child abuse", or "comment '37cm' to erradicate breast cancer"; these seem harmless, but I believe that in essence they reproduce and support a logic of imposing discourses that are sold as being spontaneous but that, as I said in my previous comment, are designed by someone else.
I think this creates, in a certain population of the middle class, those who depend on technology and cannot stop perceiving all that's public as belonging to others, an idea of activism seen as the acritical reproduction of causes and slogans that sound noble (who would be so heartless as to not want breast cancer to disappear?), but that did not imply any sort of involvement not only on elaborating said watchword, but on choosing the cause itself.
They think of themselves as people who are committed to what happens in the world around them, when in reality they fall victims to the compulsion of thinking that they take part in events that someone else points as being relevant. From that point onwards they reproduce a stance that was already stated as if it were their own, because there's no time to waste on research: if a kid dies in a highly publicized tragedy I must post my opinion now-now-now so everyone can see it and I can be ready when the next watchword arrives."
snowghoul
germansingergirl
tangentwithtanner
titsay
