Performative Activism: When Human Lives Become a Trend - Olivia Huang

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Social media began as an escape, a platform to cherry pick from our lives and showcase the unapologetic, hyper-idealized versions of ourselves. Our profiles are inherently built off of lies, the desire to pretend and become someone we’re not. However, the relentless tragedies over the past decade, whether it be Black Lives Matter movement, the invasion of Ukraine, or the Israel-Palestine conflict,  have sparked a revolution in the way we use social media. Rather than a platform with the sole purpose to post pretty pictures and show off our ostensibly perfect lives,  it became a one-stop shop to learn about current events. As a result, the once fabricated and performative nature of social media was dragged down to the level of reality. In theory, this shift should have been a positive one, one that could erase the disingenuity plaguing our feeds. However, the attempt to make social media a place to educate ourselves has only opened the door to a myriad of misinformation and performative activism. Masked in dramatic reels reposted into oblivion by every celebrity on the internet, the seemingly good intentions of influencers educating their followers has caused severe detriment to how we understand real life events. Real tragedies become a hashtag. Violence becomes an aesthetic. Human lives are reduced to a trend. 

The collective demise of our generation’s attention span has caused the influx of graphic, jarring posts designed to hook viewers immediately. Videos of harrowing violence are shared relentlessly, making its way to every corner of the internet under the guise of raising awareness. Though it’s imperative to inform users on these tragedies in the world, this message doesn’t necessarily translate to everyone who shares it: it’s attempt to educate viewers is pervaded by the shock of seeing something so gruesome and abhorrent, leaving users feeling more deflated than fueled with the desire to make change. However, these staggering posts are often the ones getting picked up by news outlets, using this collective shock to gain easy views and clicks. It’s a self perpetuating cycle: graphic videos go viral on social media, getting picked up by the news, causing more discussion on social platforms, and so on and so forth. This isn’t to say that these videos don’t deserve to be shared, and many people who repost do so with good intentions. However, the response to these videos are a prime example of the social justice trend cycle, inevitably breeding the poison of performative activism. The cycle goes like this: videos of horrible incidents often lead to a plethora of hashtags, petitions and fundraisers, usually started to spread awareness of the given incident as quickly as possible. These hashtags and links start to gain traction and are shared amongst hundreds of millions of people, suddenly flooding your entire feed with tags like #blackouttuesday or gofundme.com/ukraine or #standwithpalestine. As the trend begins to gain traction, so does the pressure on celebrities and influencers to follow suit, feeling the need to vocalize their support in order to avoid public backlash. Though some matters may be as simple as using a trending hashtag or reposting activism accounts, the fact that a simple click of a button can create the illusion that someone genuinely cares about an issue is horribly alarming. These issues are real problems, not a bandwagon to jump on to save face. Important movements are tarnished by a sea of obligatory concern, shifting from a significant issue to just words on a screen: perfunctory activism turns injustice into a trend.

Nevertheless, celebrities aren’t the only ones to blame. The rise of cancel culture and our need for every celebrity to be “woke” has tarnished the genuity of the movements these concepts were created to protect. Cancel culture creates the expectation that celebrities must care and post about every single issue or else they’ll be canceled- activism turns into a shedding of self guilt rather than a way to truly incite change. It turns into a box that needs to be checked off, an obvious side that must be chosen, a heartfelt message with no real heart. This perpetuates our insatiable villain complex, the desire to immediately hate on any celebrity who doesn’t post about a tragedy we care about; in our eyes, this automatically makes them a bad person. Celebrities begin choosing to support which side their fans care more about rather than the one they truly care about. It becomes a game, a test, one that exacerbates the ingenuity of social media. Social media has not been dragged down to reality. It’s fake. It always has been. Only now, its fakeness is perpetuating injustice.