It's all a bit like high school. It seems like the biggest thing in the world when you're in it but in reality it's very silly and unimportant. We can make huge social change through social media! That's the mindset and it's really quite incorrect. If the actions you take only exist within the social media world than they will stay in the social media world. People talk about how social media is helping candidates win elections and influences voters to make a difference. That's true in a sense but it's actually not quite right.
What is actually making a difference is that you are connecting with people who already share your opinion and notifying them to go out into the real world to do something. Essentially you're doing a quick and far reaching text message. It works and works well but it's not doing what people think it does. People who use it to accomplish their political goals like to say they accomplished so much with social media. However, it was a combined effort through rallies, door to door campaigns and social media that made things happen. The social media aided a real life event and made it better. Changing your profile pic and blasting some opinion on your wall accomplishes little. Opinions are rarely going to change in a social media setting.
Say you're in a stadium with thirty-thousand people and you're hanging out with your closest friends. You're going to mainly be hearing what they have to say because their in close proximity. The remaining thousands having conversations will just be an indiscernible rumble. If it's "wear your most politically charged t-shirt day", you're probably wearing the same or similar t-shirts as all of your friends. Now, say a person from the fringe of your friends group walks by on the way to the hot-dog stand wearing a different t-shirt. You'll exchange some words, maybe argue a bit but you're not going to sit down and have a debate about your views in the middle of the noisy stadium. Especially since you have ten to twenty of your friends there to pitch in their two cents on the matter. In fact, you'll probably both say some dumb stuff because it's chaotic and uncontrolled to begin with and possibly tell that person to go stick his head in the toilet. There won't be any sudden changes of opinion. There won't be really any change at all.
Now, say you're in that stadium and someone puts a message on the jumbo-tron that everyone who thinks cats are awesome should go out to the parking lot for free kittens. A giant chunk of people will leave and go get a kitten. That is the power of social media. It's not to be underestimated but it's not the miracle working thing that people have grown to think it is.
</end rant>
1 comment:
...I'm here for the free kitten.
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