Slacktivism: "Like this if you think disasters are bad!"

[Written Thursday, November 14]

Last Friday, Typhoon Haiyan commenced its path of devastation in the Eastern Philippines, savaging structures and homes with torrents of water and wind, literally tearing families apart, drowning thousands, displacing thousands more. This was a true nightmare.

And the nightmare is still ongoing.

Satellite image of the super typhoon. Monstrous.

To put the storm in perspective, Haiyan was 3.5 times stronger than Hurricane Katrina, the storm that ravaged the Gulf Coast, most famously New Orleans. Despite as many as 700,000 Philippine natives heading warnings of the impending disaster and evacuating their homes, over 2,000 people have been confirmed dead and some officials believe as many as 10,000 have perished.

On top of the tragic body count, thousands upon thousands of people have lost their homes, livestock, possessions, crops -- their entire way of life.  As one tearful resident of the village Guiuan told CNN, "Everything, everything's gone."

One of the many horrifying scenes of Tacloban, the capital of the Philippine province of Leyte.

Sometimes, "everything" includes family. One man (among hundreds of others I'm sure) desperately searches  for six of his family members among the wreckage. He recounts his horror to ABS-CBN. "We all got separated from each other when the strong waves hit... We got separated. I couldn't even hold on to my child."

"I couldn't even hold on to my child." Can you even imagine?

The storm has prompted millions of people into action, doing their small part to help: donating, volunteering as operators, helping with searches, distribution of supplies, etc. But it has also prompted millions more to passively tweet things like, "Thoughts and prayers going out to the victims of the Philippines!"

"Help! Food. Water." They clearly need more than our thoughts and prayers.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this gesture. Actually, it's admirable. It shows that humans are caring, empathetic, and sensitive to death and destruction. But it's only a gesture. That's the problem.

I recently read about this study on 'Slacktivism.' I encourage you to read it but for those of you who will inevitably neglect to do so, I'll summarize. Or rather, Kirk Kristofferson, PhD student at British Columbia's Sauder School of Business will do it for me with this quote.

   "Our research shows that if people are able to declare support for a charity publicly in social media it can actually make them less likely to donate to the cause later on."

That's bad, bad news for charities. This implies that people who "like" the Red Cross on Facebook are actually less likely to donate to it because they publicly declared their support of the organization. I like to call this social hypocrisy: Saying you do something over social media and then proceeding to rarely, if ever, do that thing in your life. The motivation for this is simple. When someone posts something over social media, the public has access to those claims and they think, "Hey, that dude's a super nice guy." The poster feels good about himself because he displayed good intentions and revealed his admirable nature. What's more, he likely posted this in private, on his phone or tablet or computer. No one is there to see his words manifest as actions. Thus, feeling accomplished and free from any obligation, the poster goes on to never do what he said he would.

I would say most of us are guilty of this -- myself very much included. I've tweeted the tweets, retweeted them, "liked" the Facebook pages, and made all the admirable gestures and emotional sentiments we come to expect following a tragedy. But I never once donated a dime or volunteered an hour of my service to these tragedies.

                   

Not until the words I couldn't even hold on to my child started resonating and reverberating in my head, unable to be ignored, much less forgotten. So, for the first time in my life, I decided to act. I donated money to the Philippines Red Cross.

It felt pretty great.

This post hits on another prevalent theme in my life right now, something I'm learning about, practicing, getting better at, in my pursuit of becoming a physician: altruism. There's a lot to be said about this word and what it means, too much for this post alone.

The most important thing about altruism is that it has been critical to humankind. Hunter-gather societies had to be collaborative, they had to share food, had to work together to take down game, drag it back to their camp, skin it, cook it, had to stick together to fend off predators. Otherwise they wouldn't  have survived, and I wouldn't be typing this right now, and you, Faithful Reader, would not be reading it. Humans thrived by being altruistic. It's literally in our DNA. So why have we gotten away from that principle? Why aren't we more altruistic?

One possible (and likely) answer to that latter question might be due the nature of our "altruism." I think we -- and by "we" I mean "me and my generation" -- are less traditionally altruistic. What I mean is that we as a whole don't act more selflessly for the good of other people, but instead we find other ways to be "altruistic." I would argue that the satisfaction of "liking" or creating an altruistic Facebook page/post or tweeting/retweeting an equivalent tweet rewards that person, gives them a certain satisfaction that in turn makes them less likely to actually act on their altruistic instinct. On top of that, clicking your mouse a couple of times is considerably easier and less financially and metabolically expensive than going out and helping those in need. It's like having your cake and eating too: A gleeful disposition for feeling like you did something meaningful while expending little to no resources.

This is a problem. This is not true altruism. This is slacktivism.

I'm not pressuring you to follow my example and donate now. I'm not saying "look how good I am for giving money, everyone!" I'm not calling you out. I am only making a sincere request. Please don't be a slacktivist. We are all in this world together. We all come from the same ancestors. We occupy the same delicate earth. We could have just as easily been ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan or Hurricane Katrina as those humans who were. And I think we owe it to those unfortunate humans, those most distant relatives, to help them in their time of need. Not because it feels good, not because your religion compels you, certainly not because it will elevate your public status or moral standing, but because they are human, and so are you.

Edited by Ken McGurran

Why I Love Snapchat

Many of you who know me well are well aware of my mild disdain for social media (which seems hypocritical since I have Facebook, Twitter, and a blog). This is particularly true for image-heavy fads like Vine, Instagram, and Pintrest. Initially, I found the idea of a "selfie" to be inherently vain and slightly abhorrent.

Then I downloaded Snapchat. Oh, the selfies that ensued...

You Faithful Readers must have heard of Snapchat by now. It's an app that allows you to take fleeting pics or videos, accompany them with a limited amount of text or crude digital paint, and send them to any number of your friends for a designated amount of seconds (1-10). Once time runs out, however -- and herein lies the beauty -- that image or video, innocent or incriminating, is lost forever. Just gone. Period. (Unless your friend(s) displayed quick enough reflexes to capture a screenshot of said Snap.)

My reflexes failed not in capturing this precious Snap of my friend Joel.

This is truly an ingenious idea, and a fad I never thought I would succumb to. Nonetheless, the more Snaps I send, the more enthralled I become with that seductive app, for several reasons.

Reason #1: Silly, yet intimate.

I am not a silly person, instead tending toward introversion and introspection. That's not to say I'm never silly or don't like to have fun in the more traditional sense of the word, nor do I think that silliness is always inappropriate. In fact, I think acting silly from time to time is greatly beneficial to one's life.

We all know that laughter is the best medicine, but also I think that showing a silly side of your self -- giving friends and family a glimpse of just how silly you can be at the expense of your pride or dignity -- demonstrates the extent that you value to those friends and family. What I'm trying to say is that by acting silly through Snapchat, you're intimating to your friends/family that they are close enough within your social circle to see an embarrassing side of you, in turn causing them to value you as a friend more, making them more likely to reciprocate said silliness, and thus strengthening the social bond between you.

        

This is Drew. He's something of a Snapchat prodigy.

Through Snapchat, I've been able to show my friends my capacity for ridiculousness, something I normally don't display in public settings. In return, many of my friends Snap me back in equal (and often greater) silliness, causing me to feel closer to them. It's refreshing and fun, and since those images people send disappear forever afterward, there is no limit to how silly (or vile) Snaps can be...think of the implications! [Note that these points I'm making are based solely on my intuition/experience and are not (to my knowledge) backed by research.]

    

Certainly not my most ridiculous -- those snaps have thankfully been lost forever.

Reason #2: Face-to-pixelated-face communication.

Going along with the first reason, I feel that Snapchat is just an inherently more intimate way to communicate for the sole reason that it involves visual imagery. When you send a simple text to someone, emotion and nonverbal communication are "lost in transmission" so to speak. Even when you're on the phone, you still can't see the person you're talking to, creating a sense of distance and separation. This depersonalizes the conversation, thus resulting in a less intimate exchange. When you add even a low quality, ephemeral image to your text, the conversation becomes much more personal, enhancing the social connection between you and your friend.

Just look how much Brady misses his "boyz." So sincere and cute...

This might be Snapchat's greatest asset: the simulation of face-to-face communication. Snapchat allows users to simulate emotions (like excitement, sadness, cheerfulness, rage, etc.), make funny faces, or create videos that explicitly show what they are up to (instead of just texting back "Nothing much, what're you up to?"). All of this serves to enhance the intimacy of this digital conversation beyond what a text or phone call can offer. One shining example in my personal life attests to this: My old friend and neighbor now lives in Bismarck, and I used to never seem him and rarely talked to him since he moved there. Now, with Snapchat, I "see" him almost everyday and feel almost as close to him as I did back in the good 'ol days.

Again, these are only observations made by me (and most likely many others) through extensive experience with the app and not backed by any research.

Reason #3: All fades, given time.

The third reason is undoubtedly what led to the explosion of Snapchat's popularity in the first place: Time limits. Having a set amount of time before that Snap fades into oblivion allows people to express themselves in ways texts or picture messages never could. People can communicate secret information without fear of being found out because once time's up, that savory piece of gossip or address to the exclusive party will be gone forever.

Furthermore, the time limit hearkens to our more...sinful nature. I won't even begin to speculate on the number of lewd, incriminating, sexually charged Snaps that have been sent since the app's creation (none by me, I assure you), but I imagine it's an obscene figure. Nevertheless, couples can communicate more freely and explicitly than ever before, which no doubt fuels each others' sex drives and in turn leads them to be more sexually active, which is usually a good thing for relationships. On the other hand, I'm sure many screenshots have been taken of these revealing snaps, promoting blackmail, exposing infidelity, and ultimately leading the destruction of relationships. But I think the pros of the time limit outweigh the cons. In general, this sort of "anything goes" mantra that Snapchat boasts eviscerates any limit to creative and experimental communication, which I believe is a good thing.

Overall, I think Snapchat deserves a fair shot from anyone with a smartphone, and I hope I did a good job of persuading you of its value. Continuing my recent them of openmindedness, I ask you all to give it a try, see what you think. You (probably) won't regret it!

Drew certainly hasn't.

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Edited by Ken McGurran