Jun
4th
Wed
4th
Came across an excellent post on the PRWatch blog, part of which I’ve excerpted for you:
“Slacktivism” (alternative spelling “slactivism”) is a fusion of the words “slacker” and “activism,” and UrbanDicationary.com defines it as “the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.” It refers to ersatz acts that people perform that they have somehow come to believe are full of meaning, like slapping a magnetic ribbon on your car to “support the troops,” wearing a colored rubber wristband to “fight cancer,” or refusing to buy gasoline on a certain day to protest high gas prices, instead of, say, actually changing your lifestyle to use less gas.I was about to highlight the quote and hit my “Send to Tumblr” bookmarklet until I realized the painful irony of this action. The main reason we set up our tumblr blog was to quickly share snippets of the Internet among ourselves. I tend to post mainly quotes about politics, corruption, and links to cool organizations and services. But that’s where my involvement ends. By spreading this information around, I’d like to think I’m doing something “good” (infinitesimally small as it may be). But am I really? Are you? From my visits to many other tumblrs, I can say that most people use their sites to reblog or highlight quotes, links, vids, etc. Not many of us post original content. What are we doing? Are we just filling the net with more infojunk?