It’s all very nice and well-intentioned to create activist-oriented hashtags like #YesAllWomen, but it’s also completely ineffectual. The current era’s total lack of involvement in anything that requires actual movement has only worsened as social media has become an integral part of everyday life.
The epidemic of apathy in the twenty-first century has only further been compounded by how easy everything is. At least in the Western world, the struggles people face are minimal and any major or catastrophic events all seem to happen remotely. We’re so far-removed from any real conflict that it’s difficult, apparently, for us to give much of a shit.
Granted, Twitter is one of the most powerful mediums to quickly get a message across, but its messages are also among the most meaningless. In addition, it’s something of a challenge to take motivational hashtags seriously when the sole purpose of the outlet appears to be enabling celebrity spats.
Whether or not Twitter as an entity for change and revolution will ever actually come to fruition is something only time will tell. But it’s very likely that while we spell out our so-called radicalist hashtags, another bomb will go off and another injustice will be done.
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