Over the past couple of weeks i’ve been pretty disappointed by people’s reactions to the use of social media. The first instance, of course, was Kony 2012. The charity Invisible Children used social media as a catalyst for making a cause go from being barely heard about to being at the top of everyone’s Facebook and twitter feeds in the matter of hours. I saw the video pretty much as soon as it was released because 8 of my friends had shared it on Facebook. In the first 30 minutes. By the time I had got home from work I had close to 30 friends sharing the link. In 5 hours. That’s pretty amazing, and a great show of support. There’s a LOT of controversy over KONY 2012, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t. At the end of the day someone tried to do a good thing, and it saddens me that people are so quick to take something positive and turn it into a negative. Whilst following the reaction to Kony 2012 on my own Facebook, I noticed comments that belittled the video and anyone who shared the link. They may not be directly funding the charity just by sharing a link on Facebook, but it’s a hell of a lot more than the people who are using their time oh so valuably to bitch and whine about it. I understand why some people wouldn’t agree with the approach the producer used for the video, and that’s fine, but please pipe down and keep it to yourself and stop making everyone who wants to help in their own way do so without being infected with your guilt trip!
So, I got over moaning to most people about this, but THEN, I saw a photo of Freddie Flintoff attempting to complete a series of World records for Sport Relief, one of which was to get 30,000 people to ‘like’ a photo in an hour. Even for Sport Relief, an all round good egg of a charity with no selfishness entailed, there were STILL people angrily commenting that simply ‘liking’ the image was not helping the charity at all. To be fair, this was a very small minority of people, but still, what’s wrong with people?! Is everyone really so high up on their moral horses that they can’t lighten up and understand that sharing is helping? Even if I didn’t donate money to Sport Relief (which I actually did) by sharing it I have reached the whole of my Facebook in a matter of seconds. They may well have seen it and based their donation purely on that image. We’ll never know, but it’s possible, and it’s better than updating my status with what I’ve just had for lunch.
Anyway, I’ll end this here as I could moan forever about this. Sometimes people do stuff that’s good (or they intend it to be good). Accept it. And whether you like it or not social media has become the most dominant platform to get your message across to the whole world in click of a button. And that’s just the way it is!
