Walking around handing out flyers, promoting what I think is a great cause, at the busiest time of day, and at the busiest intersection on campus, ought to be pretty rewarding. To my dismay, I found it precisely the opposite. If there was any shadow of doubt regarding the disinterest of the student body in civic activism, it was removed by my unsuccessful attempt to attract attention to a potentially serious problem.
I am working with an activist group called Watershare to gain public awareness of the negative aspects of water privatization in North America. So I ask you: where has the love gone? Why is it that I can stand in the freezing cold, handing out important information, only to see the majority of students throw the flyers away after the woeful realization that they weren’t free passes to a nightclub? Not only is there a disinterest in activism today, but almost a passionate disinterest.
I’m led to wonder if this is the reason that many activists have brought their causes to the Internet. Activism on the Internet may not only provide reach and speed, but may also allow for increased comfort and confidence. Not having to face the resentful looks of people, and not having to watch as students actually walk around the Chinese food truck to avoid you and yet another handout, is really quite pleasant. This may sound like a melodramatic exaggeration, but I assure you—these things happen! On the Internet, they don’t, because they can’t.
Awkwardness is avoided, and in addition, there is a good possibility that people will accidentally encounter your website en route to their desired site. I finally understand why I have been receiving random e-mails from unknown senders. They are being sent by people like me, who, in a desperate effort to be heard, have resorted to various features of the Internet—mass e-mailing being one of them.
Perhaps it is fair to say that people don’t particularly care about issues that they don’t see affecting their lives in a direct way. Professor Deibert, director of the citizen lab at the Munk Center, has labelled us the E.A. (entitlement apathetic) generation. At first I thought he was being pessimistic, but I am quickly seeing that he has valid reason to think this way.
So where does this lackadaisical attitude stem from? I for one don’t know, and I have bitterly decided not to blame anyone for the disinterest (except for Nokia and Sony, for the development of portable, technological devices that allow people to ignore others). However, I hope that if activism on the streets has hit a dead end, then people will at least give it a fair chance for survival on the Internet.
