If the last few months has taught us anything, it’s that we still care. You only need to look at a Facebook feed or what’s trending on Twitter to see we care. We care about our leaders, about refugees, about politics, war and inequality – social indignation is rampant. We care about bees and global warming and cute fluffy animals.
Most of all we care about each other. There’s a huge amount of passion out there.
What’s dangerous though is where we put it. There’s no shortage of awareness – of some very real problems in among the conspiracy theories – but the biggest threat to humankind is our apathy. It’s the way that when our blood really starts to boil, we’d prefer to click to send an automated signature to a petition and then share our outrage on social media rather than actually do anything about it.
In 1970, when Gil Scott Heron wrote The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the world was a very different place. Society still reverberated from the civil rights struggles of the previous decades, students and unions were active and powerful, and even if you didn’t necessarily have a chance of winning you’d still go out and fight for your right to be heard.
The idea of revolution and people power was very real. This is the world I was born into, where the physical fight for freedom and liberty was in living memory.
Consumers are driving the next great social change via their wallets, and no amount of advertising, PR, or marketing budget can overcome the power of consumers committed to purpose.
My recent post on demystifying digital transformation got me thinking about how differently my parents’ generation used their energy and channeled their outrage. Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, when people protested nuclear weapon proliferation, they took to the streets. It was a case of put up, shut up or march. Without social media, there was no other real option.
It says something that two of the most active people then, Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, are ones we champion today as showing real authenticity.
Not long ago they were dinosaurs, crusty old irrelevancies with a history of protest and dissent, but their passion for truth is something in very short supply among the politicians, lobbyists, and spin doctors who rule the corridors of power.
Small wonder they’ve picked up so much support. They’re like a tall drink in a hot country. Worth waiting for. Welcome relief that means we can stagger on a little while longer. The challenge they face though is whether they can galvanize people sufficiently to get them to the polling booths in the real world.
The insidious side of social media is that while it allows us to spread awareness and have indignant conversations about modern society’s various failings, it’s all talk.
Bread and circuses, the opiate of the masses, whatever you want to call it – you’re right. Sure there are amazing social tools like Ushahidi, which help bring clarity to crisis, but as long as we’re only sharing outrage on Facebook, nothing’s gonna change.
There will however always be a place for direct action. The Junior Doctors’ strike in the UK – and its support from the public – has shown that when government simply can’t be trusted to do what it says it’s going to do, it’s really the only option remaining. Otherwise, if we live in a world where we share outrage online, maybe we should vote online too – at least it would be easier to get people to the ballot.
