Pretending to care

Why do internet challenges make people feel like they did something?

Town mayor partakes in “Ice Bucket Challenge” photo courtesy of ABCnews.com

We were all so shocked when we found out the Amazon Rainforest had been burning for two weeks with no news coverage. So why is it that once we did find out, we stopped caring ourselves?

I feel like in today’s society, it’s more of the norm to draw attention to something to make it seem like you care, rather than actually do something about it. All social media was for a week straight was petitions and links and videos to draw attention to the forest fires in the Amazon. But that’s all it was, attention.

People cared more about the hashtag on their post than they did the damage of the fire. We’ve seen this before with many other internet trends. The ice bucket challenge was one that particularly bothered me. The ice bucket challenge was to support ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) aka Lou Gehrig disease.

In 2014 when this challenge surfaced, it was a choice to donate money to research or pour a bucket of ice water over your head to recreate the feeling of what it was like to be debilitated by ALS. My best friend died of ALS that summer, and it was annoying to see people taking a challenge that was meant to draw attention to the disease, and turn it into a fun thing to film and post online. Towards the end, it seemed as if people saw it as a trendy thing to do, rather than know what the reason behind the challenge really was.

The Norte Dame Cathedral was another example of a trending hashtag. I feel that the main postings of this building, while it was burning, were people who had been there before with the “I fEeL lIkE i WaS jUsT tHeRe” captions.

People send “thoughts and prayers” from behind a keyboard and think they changed the world. If you are so lazy as to just post a hashtag and go on with your day, you’re not doing anything to solve the problem. People want likes, but not responsibility. So next time you see a hashtag, please do your own research and take action. Don’t let yet another hashtag be out of sight, out of mind.

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