It's popular because it's effective.
In terms of achieving actual aims - not really.
Kony 2012 is a perfect, textbook example of vacuous meme activism (as the article discusses).
If you want to actually make lasting, positive changes to the world? Absolutely worthless.
If you want to self-promote for the sake of e-fame, real fame, money, power etc, smash hit.
Guess which one most Twitter activists are actually interested in.
I think this is an incredibly premature statement to make if this is really a form of activism that's only been around for ~5-10 years or so.
Typical HN though, we love to play the role of enlightened politicos looking down at the unstrategic masses.
But it hasn't - TFA even includes an example from centuries ago.
> Typical HN though, we love to play the role of enlightened politicos looking down at the unstrategic masses.
Typical HN though, we love to assume we're the first people to really understand a topic.
> TFA even includes an example from centuries ago.
Oh, you mean the abolitionist example? Yeah, too bad those guys never achieved any lasting, positive gain.
You can't have it both ways.
That is the question being answered by this article. It suggests that it is effective at pseudo-activism but not real activism.
To stay away from politics and stick to the programming domain, the phrase "structured programming" was chosen because who would want to say they're for "unstructured programming". It worked, the languages and language features we use today were largely shifted away from goto-heavy code (and computed goto in Fortran and some others) because of this kind of meme activism.
It is way more often people who did not cared about activism who complain about lack of it due to memes. Like, not everyone has to care about activism, but it is odd to claim it dont exist anymore.
Is internet discussion as implemented on HN the pinnacle of what can be achieved by humanity? This seems like a worthwhile topic of discussion.
An even better example I think is this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27581414
That exchange blows my mind, the irony (and other things) is off the charts. Occam's razor would suggest Hanlon's razor as a satisfactory explanation for that conversation, but I am very skeptical.
Memes can make everyone involved think. And then if some start talking, common basis for solidarity can be found.
If you ask me, memes are doing a lot to generate the fertile ground needed for greater class awareness and solidarity.
Lots of noise in that, but it is the signal that adds right up.
In any case, there is no stopping any of it. I would bot even try.
One can generate better ones and contribute to signal. That is also effective.
Not the word “effective”.
> A few weeks ago, in the midst of the latest Israel-Hamas conflict, Andrew Yang, a mayoral candidate in New York, tweeted in support of Israel. The backlash came fast, and by the next day, #YangSupportsGenocide was trending on Twitter. The aggressive public shaming worked: Yang backtracked and issued a follow-up clarification. And now, politicians with progressive constituencies will likely think twice before publicly expressing support for Israel.
Being the key. Does not imply that meme activism was effective at doing anything but making people think twice out of fear of shame, not out of reasoned principles.
The entire point of the article is that this style of pseudo-activism debases activism, as a whole.
From the article.
If there was already widespread support, it would already be an establishment position.