What does it mean if I change my Twitter profile picture to green?
Does it mean I support democracy in Iran?
Does it mean I care enough to do something, even if that something is small?
Does it mean anything?
I have uncomfortable feelings about campaigns like this – as well as what they say about certain aspects of digital ambassadorship. My niggle is that the easier it becomes to do things, the less they mean. ‘Action’ used to mean getting off your arse and moving your limbs and vocal chords. Now it’s wearing a digital badge. A badge that tells people, “I care”. But in the age of Facebook, where I can “join a group” by clicking once and not reading a single word, what does this gesture really mean?
[I'll be very honest. I can't claim to do anything better or more valuable than take part in campaigns like this. I don't have better solutions and this isn't a right/wrong discussion. It's just something that feels important enough to question and think about - especially when trends show that people interact with more and more things but for less and less time. Now I'm going to be working with Barnardo's, I'm becoming more and more conscious about how good causes can garner support. And what that support really means.]
One argument is that things like this green-badge campaign simply raise awareness. That the wearing of the badge is the surface and that beyond this surface, the campaign prompts people to dig deeper, find out more and maybe even do more. The argument would continue to say that, like any campaign, only a minority will be activists and that it can only be a good thing to harness the volume of the less interested masses for pure awareness. And boy what awareness. Only about 5 people I follow on Twitter have gone green, but I see one of them every few minutes.
Awareness, however, is pretty bloody high about events in Tehran.
One of my problems is that I can’t shake the feeling that making such a shallow (read: easy, commitment-free) gesture is simply an announcement/reminder that I’m actually not doing anything at all; its meaning tangled up with all the other little badges and apps that I have played with and which now swirl about in a soup of transient support in my subconscious.
We are socially motivated creatures. And we know that we can enhance our social presence disproportionately to the effort it takes to do so. One click and every friend or follower gets an eyeful of you and your ‘beliefs’. It’s democracy for Iran today. It will be “which character from The Wire are you?” tomorrow (Lester, btw) and and who knows what the day after.
Perhaps the problem lies in campaigns like this inadvertently masquerading as something more. It feels like a ‘movement’ and yet it’s really not. It’s just a bit of presence, magnified gently by a hoard of people whom are (presumably) otherwise passive to the cause. Maybe this pretense is in fact in our own preconceptions. But preconceptions are hard to shake. And if they’re real, the compromise to the gesture’s meaning is real.
On the other hand, I’m doing nothing. Maybe I should think less and do more – I just feel uncomfortable jumping on bandwagons that feel like they’re more about the ‘supporter’ than the cause. More about not not doing it, than doing it.
But maybe it is for us after all. Maybe joining together in this Pantone coalition is just a way for us to feel as though we’re doing something. An illusion of influence for the helpless. Which isn’t necessarily all bad.
Sorry for the brain dump. Helps me to make sense of my own thoughts. Love to hear yours too.
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