image:: Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat

I saw this article by Thomas Roche linked to on Twitter, where he finds the genesis of the cartoon character-end child abuse meme. He doesn’t like how the meme, which started as celebrating an artform, took on a life of its own by morphing into the support of a specific cause. It sounds like he’s pretty peeved::

“Such epic asshattery is a the confluence of good-natured light-hearted celebration and rampant, infectious shallowness. It cheapens the cause of child abuse prevention and, just as importantly, it draws a connection between comic books/cartoons and childhood, where none should exist.”

He goes on to criticize how this One Click Activism doesn’t really do anything, which echoes Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change” critique of social media social activism [see criticisms of Gladwell’s article on this blog here]. Both Gladwell and Roche take a dim view of these “consciousness raising” efforts because they do precious little “real” work as diversions. Gladwell sees identity-driven social activism as being at cross purposes with the more hierarchically organized variant::

“It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”

While Roche wants to shame everyone participating in what he sees as a shallow, identity-feeding enterprise::

“But Facebook Activism isn’t just stupid; it’s dangerous. It convinces people that doing next to nothing is actually better than doing nothing at all. And you know what? It’s not. If it’s better to light one candle than curse the darkness, is it the same, but less of a hassle, to just call up a photo of a candle on your iPhone? Seriously. Ask yourself. Is that the kind of person you want to be? Someone who can’t even be bothered to strike a match?”

I disagree.

First, I think a lot of naysaying regarding social movements has everything to do with discontent, simmering in the zeitgeist of these times in North America. The federal parties in Canada are lucky to get support of 30% of voters and many in the US are disillusioned with Obama’s promise of change and the Tea Partiers are advocating their own variant that isn’t necessarily in synch with the Republicans. I feel the Gladwell and Roche articles resonate with those skeptics who are critical of what they see as feel-good do-goodery.

Could there be something to these criticisms? After all, what is the point of just getting people to slap an image on their profiles.

The problem with this discontent is that it’s based on a zero-sum mentality and a conjecture that none of it matters, as opposed to the possibility that some of it might matter—a lot. The zero-sum angle assumes that these efforts are taking the wind out of the sails of more concrete efforts. I think these are apples and oranges. The attention received by being a meme that goes viral may seem like a bunch of wasted effort, but a more useful way to see this is that it raises consciousness and may motivate key people to do more organizing or mobilize resources in this direction. Is this likely? Maybe not in most cases and causes, but it’s a possibility and and a possibility borne out of the power of the Internet. In fact, I would argue that with Web 3.0 that the gaps between memes, activism, and results will be narrowed. So, pissing on the idea categorically is premature.

On my r h i z o m i c o n blog,  this post on Nestlé’s handling of social media criticism and attacks on Facebook for their use of palm oil in Kit-Kat bars shows how activism interfaces with corporations. In this facepalm tale of corporate woe, social media and the old guard media {OGM} converged to raise awareness of the issue that palm oil destroys wildlife habitat. Nestlé allegedly altered its practices due to activist pressures, so while the corporation was touting a greener approach to palm oil, Greenpeace wasn’t buying it due to practices of an Indonesian supplier, Sinar Mas, and an anti-Nestlé, anti-Kit-Kat video was circulated and hammered with—wait for it—copyright infringement. Did it matter that people were changing their Facebook profile images and posting critical comments on Nestlé’s Facebook wall? Nestlé thought so and requested users to stop doing it.

I’m not buying the arguments that social media activism merely feeds the ego or is dangerous because it takes efforts away from more real endeavours. I’m of the mind that if it increases awareness through resonance and meaning and increases motivation by just a fraction of those touched by a meme, it’s far from useless or dangerous.

Roche is seeking a stronger connection between the meme and outcomes. I can appreciate that, but when he expresses his frustration with the government and the public regarding the social ill of child abuse, his argument turns into what I see as an elitist political treatise::

“Do you want to know why kids are being abused in the United States? Because no system exists to prevent them from being abused. Do you want to know why no system exists to prevent kids from being abused? Because some very vocal Americans seem to spend much of their time being terrified that some kid somewhere who’s not their kid will get something for free, up to and including a life without abuse.

Violence against children has been endemic throughout all societies. We in the Western world had a chance, last century, to make great strides toward eliminating it. We chose to fight wars, cut school lunches, privatize national parks and pay lower taxes instead. As a result, we march into a new decade in which the kids of the world are as helpless as ever.

And legions of people out there are exactly upset enough about that to upload an image of Danger Mouse.”

I think this makes huge assumptions about anyone supporting the meme. Maybe it’s cynical of me to take issue with him on the grounds that my take is that he doesn’t get or doesn’t like how the mobilizing of the masses works. It works by making a cause “cool”, e.g., Obama 2008, and if you’re fighting something that’s cool, you need to make it uncool, e.g., adding social stigma to smoking. I say cynical, as it pretty much means that we as a society are often driven by what’s cool—or at least by things that resonate with us through meaning, no matter now tangential it is to anything “real”.

Twitterversion:: Is the attack on the cartoon-child abuse Facebook meme warranted or does Thomas Roche just not get the big picture here? @ThickCulture @Prof_K