Performative Activism - Tumblr Posts

I'm convinced anyone who honest-to-god rages at that post is just someone who feels very impotent and useless off the computer, so they're hardcore compensating by trying to look and feel like they're doing as much "activism" as possible online. Either that, or they have zero understanding of how basic human psychology works and in turn, they don't realize that if people didn't have spaces where they didn't need to constantly be on guard about getting slapped with activism onuses, everyone would burn out. And be useless even if they were able, occasionally, to dive into that stuff before. Not to mention, everyone has a limit. Someone dealing with depression, a death in the family, MS, and the stress of a move has enough shit on their plate and they don't owe anyone an explanation re: "why they don't reblog that post, otherwise it means they're contributing to genocide". Hell, nobody owes anyone an explanation because Brenda, being stressed and pissy and raising your blood pressure about something does not mean you can actually help anyone, and also, half those mutual aid posts are scams.

I know a lot of people were tripped up (apparently) by how I worded it, which in hindsight was probably my fault because I did write it while I was pretty pissed off myself.

But yes, the general amount of people who read it and still insist on either bending over ass backwards trying to nitpick every single possible nuance or immediately launch into accusations and flag waving is just... Disappointing, really.

The whole world is never going to agree on everything, but it is actually very sad to see just how many people have been sucked into the cycle of forced activism, guilt manipulation, setting themselves on fire to keep others warm, ect.

I do hope in the future they allow themselves to let go a little and understand that mentally and physically we are simply not capable of being 'on' every single second of every single day. It helps nobody, and actually, a lot of today's activism is performative and signalling rather than actually effective or influential.

Its people loading up videos of candles on their phones instead of actually lighting real ones.

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of the online "activism" we see isn't.... Actually activism. Its not actually doing anything. There's no outcome from it. Spamming 'FREE PALESTINE' under cat videos and celebrity photos from their holidays doesn't actually accomplish anything. Its just making you feel like you've done something.

Especially activism on a global, actually at war scale like Gaza. It doesn't help anyone. People aren't being freed from hostage camps because user dontlookawayfromwar spammed a tagline under a baking video with an audience of 400 and called the content creator a cunt for not mentioning Gaza once while telling people how to bake scones.

Its likely an unpopular opinion; but modern internet culture has actually ruined activism, compassion and how we understand influence and real change. We are so out of touch with what is actually helpful and what is just virtue signalling and running on a hamster wheel of performative activism. The internet is a communication tool. You can't build a wall with a spoon and you can't stop a war with Tumblr posts telling people they're awful for having family dinners that don't revolve around dead bodies and human greed.

Agree or disagree: a lot of people seem to be more concerned about looking like an activist who's doing activism rather than about actually helping the people who need help?

Nuanced agree.

I do think that for a lot of people there's a significant concern about how they're perceived by their peers, and that it fuels a lot of misguided "activism" but this stems from fear rather than something like laziness, deliberate manipulation, ect.

It ties into what I talked about on another post where people also place misguided responsibility and demands on people they deem as "capable" or "obligated." And where some people are also just point blank dickheads about moral signalling and knighting.

If you're constantly facing harassment and pressure to be seen as doing X, pretty soon you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to try to prevent it by doing X in an overly visible, performative manner. You're going to want to stop people coming after you by visibly waving a neon sign saying "I'VE DONE THIS THING!"

We saw it with the social media blackouts. We saw it with spamming Free Palestine and Palestine flags. We saw it with the BLM logo. We see it with Facebook profile banners.

Being Known As Not A Bad Person becomes almost tantamount to actually not being a bad person.

But then, of course, you've also got the other side of the coin where there's people are genuinely do just want the recognition and clout of being deemed as an activist and a good person over actually wanting to be an activist and good person.

(Like that female influencer who was caught pretending to pick up trash, and the man who goes around shoving a camera in homeless people's faces and forcing them to perform for his audience if they want help.)

I think if we as a society were less concerned with forcing people to prove to us that they're not bad people and that they're Actually Doing Something, a lot more would actually get done.

who the fuck gives a single shit if someone on this website thinks voting for kamala is ‘selfish’ or that it’s wrong to vote ‘just because you will benefit’. fellas is it selfish to want to continue to have access to vital healthcare. is it selfish to want a president that isn’t a fascist and a felon and misogynist and a sex criminal. is it selfish to prioritise your own employment rights when your job is the only way you can keep your health insurance and keep a roof over your head and put food on the table. is it selfish to think that out of the two candidates available it’s preferable to pick the one that might achieve a ceasefire instead of the one that will definitely escalate the genocide

i do think there is a degree to which certain kinds of Instagram activists have convinced themselves that traumatising themselves in solidarity is a useful form of activism. "I'm having nightmares and crying so much I want to be sick because of all these videos of dying children but I can't look away while people are getting hurt" I mean don't you think you'd be able to help more if you weren't having nightmares and crying all the time?? don't you think this is a one-way trip to burnout? don't you think maybe increasing the amount of trauma going around is counterproductive? I dunno bro there's something to be said for bearing witness but there comes a point where you gotta look hard at yourself and go "am I helping, or am I just making myself suffer so I don't feel guilty for not suffering while somebody else is experiencing bad shit"

"If you're queer why don't you support the war (genocide) on Gaza? Palestine is homophobic!!!" I don't know, maybe because people shouldn't be murdered on mass for living in a homophobic country? Maybe because a government being homophobic doesn't justify ethnic cleansing? Maybe because queers in Palestine aren't going to feel "liberated" by the IDF murdering their children? Maybe because I'm not a fucking racist???

Be serious, there are so many homophobic countries. Would you condone murdering polish civilians for living in a homophobic country? Would you cheer at people in Florida having to carry their children in plastic bags? Would that be for the greater cause of queer liberation? Or is it only justified when it's brown people and Muslims?

How dare you expect queers to be "grateful" to the Israeli government for committing literal fucking genocide.

a good chunk of internet leftism is just puritanical bullshit masquerading as woke and progressive which has thus developed into callout/cancel culture and respectability politics, encouraging a narrow, black and white worldview while discouraging critical thinking, creating insignificant and performative activism, and prioritizing discourse and public image over meaningful praxis

I think you're right, and want to draw specific attention to the "I"m a good person" part of your analysis.

I have written about this before (very long post here--not necessary to read and contains trigger tags, but I'm adding it for completionism), but a really important part of leftist antisemitism is the calming of a baseline insecurity about their own moral value.

For some stuff I didn't discuss in that linked essay: a lot of USian cultural Christianity is defined not by Puritanism, but by a misinterpretation of Calvinism.

Calvinism has an entire theological framework, but the most important part is that no one on Earth can ever know if they are part of the elect who go to heaven or one of the many people who go to hell. While many flavors of Christianity provide reassurance that the individual won't go to hell thanks to baptism, ritual, conversion, prayers, etc., Calvinism denies all of these reassurances. This was supposed to redirect people from obsessively worrying about hell. Culturally it had the opposite effect.

The brainworms in the center of the skull of every USian are, basically, the question: "Am I a good (enough) person?"

Being a Good Person is conditional--after all, you might pretend to be a Good Person all your life only to not be part of The Elect, and hence you were faking the whole time. Being a Bad Person is permanent and earns you eternal condemnation. Being around Bad People greatly increases the chance of you being a Bad Person, because you cannot save Bad People. They were bound to hell before they were ever born. You must therefore root out all the Bad People to prove that you are Good.

While many leftists pay lip service to ideas of restorative justice, forgiveness, and psychological healing from religious trauma, they don't mean a word of it. They just say that because that's what Good People would say, and more than any political goal, they want everyone to think they are Good People. This allays the baseline anxiety of whether or not they are going to go to hell--whether that is a literal hell, or for the skeptics, the dread that after they die, everyone will find out all those little shitty things they've done throughout their lives which will retroactively make them Bad People and cancel out their Good People status forevermore.

Antisemitism is portrayed as a right-wing problem by leftists because Bad People are antisemites, and to be associated with Bad People means they're not The Elite Good People, and the very thought of that is more frightening than the thought of death.

If admitting you made a mistake is worse than dying, then of course, you'll do and say anything at all to avoid admission, including, as we've seen in several violent cases, dying.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this but it IS super weird to see so many leftists

get told they're being rampantly antisemitic

fact check (which is a good instict!)

realize they've been hitting Antisemite Bingo with every post they make

...and instead of going "oh shit, I didn't realize it was that baked into all of society, I really need to listen to more Jews about this and do better not to perpetuate hatred towards them"

they go "well, I do all of this, and I'm a good person, so those filthy Jews Zionists must secretly control the media!"

It's especially weird when they know better than to do this to any other minority, but somehow when it's Jews it's acceptible as long as you call them Zionists before hate-criming them.

This is probably why the denial is so high, though. They HAVE to believe leftist antisemitism isn't a problem, because if they believe it's a problem then THEY are the problem, and that interferes with their mental image of themselves as Righteous Revolutionaries.

to the pro-pals still mad rafah and gaza and palestine are no longer trending and tumblr that isn't tankies cares about fandom again and isn't even putting little palestine flags on their fanart

a very seethe and cope that your little trend is dying

who the fuck gives a single shit if someone on this website thinks voting for kamala is ‘selfish’ or that it’s wrong to vote ‘just because you will benefit’. fellas is it selfish to want to continue to have access to vital healthcare. is it selfish to want a president that isn’t a fascist and a felon and misogynist and a sex criminal. is it selfish to prioritise your own employment rights when your job is the only way you can keep your health insurance and keep a roof over your head and put food on the table. is it selfish to think that out of the two candidates available it’s preferable to pick the one that might achieve a ceasefire instead of the one that will definitely escalate the genocide

Me when I'm in a being a nuisance under the illogical idea that what I'm doing is productive competition and my opponent is a person who replies to all 125 Instagram comments passive aggressively correcting people's pronouns as if this is YouTube and they can retroactively edit them, as if new commenters are going to look at their replies before commenting, and as if making their own stand-alone comment wouldn't be more effective in informing people.