performative activism: the social justice trend cycle

Another example of performative activism is when people only pretend to care just as long as it fits their narrative such as randomly calling people "Zionists" (not understanding the meaning behind the term properly) just because of the brands that they use eat drink wear etc. but all of a sudden they only care about the self-inflicted deaths of their favorite celebrities (I'm not going to give any names as examples since there are too many well-known examples) and try to shield themselves away from this harsh reality by infantilizing themselves and only caring about these big issues if they are used in a fictional setting

this is what i always try tell my friend's! Like they always stop caring about whatever terrible thing is going off after it becomes "less popular", and they get board of it

Most Asians blame Asian hate on white supremacy when a majority of people who commit hate crimes on Asians are actually black, but people tend to turn a blind eye to that?

George Floyd should not be looked at as a hero just because he was black and killed by the police. He assaulted and robbed a pregnant woman at gunpoint I don’t feel sorry for him…. Being black doesn’t mean you deserve sympathy if you do evil you get repaid with evil. Facts don’t 2 fucks about feelings

I love you ❣️❣️❣️❣️ you too good....

1.50x Thanks

regarding the beginning of the video, I wanted to say that the fact that human beings physically can not actively advocate for every single cause out there is NORMAL, and that expecting "proper activists" (I saw that expression in the comments) to do so is unrealistic and leads to
1. activist burn out (which is a very real and harmful thing, and given the state of our world this is the last thing we want because activist burn out=less activists) and
2. what I know as "activist purity" (this is a bad translation from French, sorry), i.e. the will to be absolutely perfect as an activist (spoiler: it is impossibe notably because we live in a ✨society ✨and that you physically cannot tackle every issue when it comes to social justice/climate change/conflicts) because otherwise what you say or do is discredited which is super counter productive.
(this was written before she tackled that topic lol but since we didn't talk about it in the same way I wanted to keep what I had written)

However I do agree with the part on the role of media (media literally control our society tbh)

I am a bit uncomfortable with the way the fact that perfomative activism could have more negative than positive outcomes was tackled though. Something I would like to stress is that performative activists are entirely responsible of their acts, and that even if an action seems genuine, one should research about the issue in question especially if they are not concerned by that issue. Even if it seems genuine. Not being concerned by an issue means that you do not know how it works and what will be the consequences to your actions, so acting without researching on the issue and situation first is problematic (and a main problem regarding performative activism, among much others). So yeah, to sum it up I would say that I felt like performative activists were victimized (as in "it's so hard to be an activist and to figure out what to do") and I am uncomfortable with that kind of thinking, especially when it's about social justice (I can elaborate on that if needed), so imo keep in mind that any action has a consequence and that anyone should research or at least get in touch with the community they try to help to make sure they are doing the right things (+ by speaking with said community one can make sure their actions actually help the community and match the community's needs!)

Yes.

Plus people has time to care during the early pandemic

Most of your type of activism is just virtue signaling and racism and misandry among other things

Reminds me of "voulentourisim"

May I suggest posting clips of this video on TikTok - it's so needed over there right now.

mindfulness

How come you didn't do a search for "5 year olds raped by sub-humans on October 7th"? Seems only fair.

I think you were veryy BEARable 🐻🐻🐻

So much more pertinent now.

I think the best we can do is be deeply informed on these issues and learn about the ways we can help in our offline lives (boycotts, divestment protests, less water use, whatever) and then commit to them.

We don’t need to worry about the rest of the world just save the west 🤔

The points brought forth in the video are good, and salient, and much needed in the western context. Few caveats: While activism is not a trend, some urgent issues do need broader support that just the people who singularly care about them, e.g. in BLM and ongoing genocides - this is the way to organise masses and create pressures on the powers that be. You may not be able to invest time all year round in these issues, but you do still care about them. People who truly care about things like social, environment and other justices understand that these issues are interconnected a lot of the times. So, when you deeply care about one thing, it spills into another automatically. These issues do not occur in vacuum so while the efforts one can dispense in all these connected issues may be limited, it does not mean one does not care about other issues and it is simply a performance.

2024 and it’s still free Palestine 🇵🇸

@hasanAbi THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T BOTHER LISTENING TO ANYTHING THAT HASAN SAYS, HE CHANGES HIS BELIEFS BY THE SECOND. AT FIRST HE SHIT ON CELEBS FOR PERFORMATIVE POSTING AND NOW THAT HIS OBSESSION RAE AKA HIS ONLY ACCESS TO PUSSY DID IT HE LOVES IT. HASAN HAS NO MORALS AT ALLLL LMFAOOOO

I don’t care about Palestine

amazing content!!!!

your approach to this topic is amazing. I couldn't put my thoughts into words but you did very well.

This is me on 2024! I have similar stance with you in this video, however i think it’s still important to have some stance about social justice, because people still tend to be ‘abstain’, ‘neutral’, ‘apathy’, and avoiding the hard topic. but i do agree it’s not always necessary to show it at social media that you care, as it tend to lead on residual trend cycle, shaming, and judgement!

interesting to watch this two years later after the coverage of Palestine has skyrocketed

This video could've been made today fr, very insightful video fr - would recommends peoples to do as an alternative to start small in yo communities with a prominent issue n shit and go from there. Talk to shit to the local gov, conduct a book club, mutual aid, smthn fr, these are the best of times but the worst of times. Also read book! They are lovely and can lead to lovely actions.

True two years ago, and just as true today. But I will say that intersectionality demands that we learn about more than one issue to avoid the errors of previous era’s social movements. Furthermore, I think it could be good to ask folks to dig deeper and work outside their comfort zone. After all, climate change and trans-antagonism and demonizing immigrants of color and rolling back reproductive freedom etc etc are actually completely interconnected. I agree that we’re ending up with a lot of performative activism, but if it’s because it’s a side effect of building movements that are respecting intersectionality—and teaching more folks to see our struggles for what they truly are—then I’ll take it!

Even today this remains true. We need to stop treating current events and human rights issues, like geopolitical conflicts, genocides, and wars as spam fodder, infographic aesthetics, or trends.

I’m here from spamming TikTok comments with end genocide . I guess I’ll stop

How ironic is it, that in Feb 2024, this pp vs is beef is still going on and you have ditzy, quirky influenzas posting about this as a trend.

Lol.

While I support Palestine, after going to a recent March where a whole bunch of spicy libs from nonprofits got involved, I distance myself from it because it is becoming more performative and trendy and people stop caring about local issues

2024 and I had to check the upload date... we're still talking about Palestine-Isreal...its crazy because some people like this is necessarily new...

Yeah we gots to move around alot cos I say stuff like this.

I got Barbie dolls if U wanna do a witch trial for the one with short hair? We can do anything cos my mom has two jobs

2 years later and the cycle continues still

rewatching this now parallels a lot of what i'm currently thinking with the most recent israel-hamas war. i know that this video was short and sweet so it may be unreasonable for me to say this, but one thing i think you missed is the factor of anti-semitism. there's absolutely nothing wrong with condemning violence, but whenever israel takes some sort of military action, it blows up because it's also an opportunity for people to hate their favorite scapegoat: the jews. not trying to say it's antisemitic to condemn violence conducted by israel, it's just a fact that the world jumps at the chance to talk about it because it involves the world's only jewish country

Don't talk about India's internal things you have no human and birth right to talk about India's internal things 😎

to me perforative activism is going to a big protest

hi😊

Hey I know this is a bit late but I just wanted to give my 2 cents


While I agree that more people should have one topic to genuinely dive deep in and take more action on, I think that performative activism does have its place in making an impact. The people who do it may not have a genuine care for the subject but they do spread awareness about it, and I think that that matters more for the people who are actually directly affected by said social justice issue. Personally, having people spread awareness about these topics is better than staying silent because you are not educated enough because most of the time there is undeniably a side getting oppressed and silence only feeds into what the oppressor wants. In the end, performative activism is still activism and though, true, it is superficial and the people involved don't genuinely care about the matter, I think morals can be ignored, since what really matters is that people know about what's happening. Silence encourages ignorance. And ignorance doesn't help matters, it may actually be the reason why these things continue happening.

Really amazing vid. Thank u❤

If more people thought like this then the social fabric of America might actually change for the better. I see people of all political backgrounds make themselves look stupid by being loud, misinformed, and regurgitating the rhetoric of whatever the latest "in" issue is.

This was food for thought. I might need to re-examine my approach to a few issues.

As a Palestinian who lives in Palestine, I have things to point out.

Palestinians have been under the Israeli occupation since 1948 with ongoing various opressive actions from the Israeli army(which is considered as one of the strongest armies in the world) upon the Palestinians who don’t even have a proper authority, that’s why it’s not a “conflict” rather than “ethnic cleansing”.

It’s not okay to apply selective empathy towards certain groups and ignore others,even us Palestinians we do support people who’ve experienced oppression in any form and we share about them. However, we see a lot of people try to raise awareness about Palestine because there are very limited news channels that shows the truth as it is,in addition to that the META apps supports the Israeli part and marks anything related to Palestine as “sensitive content” or “harmful communities” and takes down A LOT of accounts as a try to lower our voices, therefore, the Palestinian case remains a “trend” to a large extent of people. So we consider activism on social media and sharing awareness as an essential way of resistence.
I’m writing this comment a year after the Israeli forces murdered the journalist Sherin abu Akleh while covering jenin camp in Palestine, that’s why we share daily about Palestine, because there is daily oppression towards kids,women,men,journalists or whoever is Palestinian to them.

yeah. i had friends/acquaintances go to Palestine to defend peoples houses in 2015 and it absolutely altered the course of their lives, including ending two. The Palestine/isntreal conflict has been happening since before most of us were even born, maybe all of us truly. It honestly disgusts me to see the cycle happen, specifically with Palestine, because no one takes the time to educate themselves on whatever social issue they are using as an aesthetic now. and it makes entire groups of people, both correctly and incorrectly labeled activists, to be scoffed at and created stereotypes that activist means someone who doesnt know what the f they are talking about.

but that isnt an activist. thats a loud mouth attention seeker if they drop it as soon as its cold. tbh that makes me almost as angry as my friends getting bl*wn up bc this is obviously SERIOUS. people do NOT understand that other people ARE REAL. otherwise they would not pick up and drop causes like they are trends.

truly, when we say two sides of the same coin -- we mean it.

love your videos!! thanks for educating us..

You're pretty asf with dark hair wtf

Nice flannel

Amazing video. Hank Green also talked about this in his "Sad Gap" video!