Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Showing Up is not Participation

You might remember not all that long ago that the Middle East experienced a surge of protests and demonstrations in favor of democracy?  Now, what do you remember most prominently about that?

Take your time.

Odds are, you recalled how it was hailed as a social media revolution.  Your confusion is understandable, because that is all the American primary media outlets could focus upon.  It’s not exactly a secret that the larger media outlets haven’t really understood how to wield social media since it’s very inception; the attempts to fit them together have been awkward, at best.  Yet social media has captured the attention of the people, and this has not escaped corporate notice, so the march of badly-integrated half-attempts continues unabated.  Naturally, when social media was used as a tool to co-ordinate something that big media companies did understand, they rushed to embrace it and tried to subtly co-opt it in the same stroke.  Subtlety is not something big media does well, however, and the result was a complete shift of emphasis from the people who were making things happen to the glorified message board that was helping coordinate efforts.

To read most of the reports and articles from that time, you would think Twitter had single-handedly sprung the latch on the cages of the repressive regimes.  The heroes were somehow not the brave men and women standing up for their rights, but the programmers and American capitalists who gifted them with social media, setting them free.  In actuality, we were barely spectators.  Content to watch from the sidelines, we re-tweeted and then patted ourselves on the backs at having played a pivotal role in their success, as if it were on equal footing with being out there putting our freedom and lives on the line.

Fast-forward now to the occupy movement, and you might notice something odd.  It isn’t a reversal placing us in their shoes.  True enough, we’re the ones in the streets, and yet we’re still just re-tweeting.  Somewhere along the line, we seem to have fallen victim to a Venn overlap of arrogance and entitlement, a fallacy that one need merely show up to have positive results.  This isn’t even wishful thinking on par with Field of Dreams, it doesn’t seem to expect any input of effort at all.  No planning, no goal, no demands, no suggestions for a solution – the Occupy movement has done nothing but show up and hope that that will somehow be enough.  The funny thing is, Occupy has succeeded in gaining the notice of politicians.  The smug, righteously-indignant masses have bravely marched up to reclaim the political process, cell phones in hand to showcase the event to the world.  The governing body has turned to us, with an expectant air, and asked what we want.  Silence fills the air, broken only by muttering and shuffled feet.  It’s almost lazy, apathetic, and rather embarrassing. I’m almost ashamed that this is the best we can muster. Really, if we can’t be bothered to figure out what we want out of this, what makes anyone think the politicians are going to do anything about it? How would we even know if they did?

It’s time we rejected the social media definition of ‘participation’.  Simply showing up is not enough.

Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting that you start some sort of myopic rebellion, loot, riot, or anything else criminal.  Just get a coherent plan before you organize a march on Washington.