Like this to save the world.
I’ve noticed a startling online trend lately. You could call it a form of Digital Activism in the loosest sense but one thing that can’t be argued is its Digital Activism in its laziest form, I call it the “Petition Like”.
In the modern world, people want to feel like they’re making a difference and working to somehow change the daily barrage of bad news stories they are exposed to in ever growing media. Giving to charity out of guilt is well documented, we’ve all been confronted in the street by Charity Muggers aka “Chuggers” and paid our Street Tax to “Share”, “Concern” or one of the countless other charities on the streets in return for a sticker that immunises us from shame when buying presents at Christmastime but saving the world has in the last few years has transformed to incorporate millennial sensibilities.
Pink water bottles donating money to breast cancer, nappies that donate packs to overseas hospitals or orphanages for every pack you buy and even one of the mainstays of Irish life, computers for schools vouchers picked up at the checkout in your local supermarket are all targeted marketing tactics devised with one purpose in mind, to make you spend more money. These businesses have calculated that they can drastically increase their revenue by adding new customers to their base when they align themselves with a charity by donating a small percentage of their profits to it.
It’s from this mindset comes the “Charity Like”. Petitioning Coca- Cola to create a breast cancer awareness can if a status gets two million likes or telling Justin Bieber he “has to” visit a cancer patient fan if the arbitrary figure of ten thousand likes can be reached can only be tracked back to one thing “Self Publicising”. Much like the companies or pop stars these people are petitioning these people are pushing their own brand. They attract new customers in the guise of Friends or Subscribers and project the idea they can have an influence over the world if you join them that is just not possible. Its my belief the Facebook / Twitter fad of created celebrities has become so out of control it’s finally begun to eat itself and attack the cult of branding it has so eagerly tried to emulate.
I leave you by citing a study in the July 2011 Journal of Consumer Psychology it showed that consumers who buy charity branded products end up giving less money to a social cause or charity. This will probably come as no surprise to most but it goes on to say this can also decrease consumer happiness. "Consumers appear to realize that participating in cause marketing is inherently more selfish than direct charitable donation, reducing their subsequent happiness (versus a direct donation)," said Aradhna Krishna, the Dwight F. Benton Professor of Marketing. "Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent them from substituting it for charitable giving, which reduces the overall charitable donation." If we take this principal and apply it to the similar “Petition Like” any person knows that simply liking a status isn’t in fact doing any good. In fact all it’s doing is satisfying a short-term guilt you have about not being altruistic enough. The truth of the matter is you’d feel a lot better about yourself if you got up off your ass and gave a real charity your money or time but since that requires real effort not many of us will ever go to that extreme.