On Content, Character, and Clicktivism

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, the internet is going to be flooded with all sorts of thinkpieces about the inauguration and what it augurs, about the life and legacy of MLK, and how those two things do or do not intersect. There are so many historians, political scientists, and sociologists more qualified than I am to weigh in on these things, but what strikes me as the most interesting aspect of this cultural moment is the (potential) seismic shift in the social media landscape that is happening at this same time.

While we’ve never used TikTok personally or as a business, we’re aware of how volatile the last 72 hours (and weeks leading up to it) were for both users and content creators. As a company that’s cultivated a decent following on Instagram over the last six-plus years, we’re paying attention to the backlash Meta is correctly receiving for some of their new policies about fact-checking and moderating content overall. Regardless of how anyone feels about any of these or other social media platforms, there are at least two universal truths: multiple generations have become relation on this technology to connect to one another and large swaths of the population use these platforms to virtue signal for both like-minded followers as well as those who are opposed to their values.

There’s no doubt that social media is problematic, both in the sort of toxicity it helped cultivate and in the insane reduction of attention spans over the better part of the last two decades. At the same time, there is undeniable value in connecting with family, friends, and likeminded folks around the world, especially during a time when people are feeling lonelier than ever. Increasingly, the problem has been not only the monetization of personal data but also the manipulation of cryptic algorithms, which determine which content you’re seeing and what you’re not.

Putting aside the challenge for our relatively new and resource-constrained business in reaching audiences should a sea change occur in the current media landscape, one of the bigger questions the volatility with TikTok and the Meta boycotts are creating is how we will be able to preserve never mind build communities when the tools so many of us have become reliant on (flawed as they are) give way to an even more chaotic and anarchic constellation of less popular apps and old-fashioned media. Our fear is that leaving these tools—horrible as they can sometimes be—will lead to even greater feelings of isolation, a further erosion of a sense of community, and an almost medieval version of ignorance where information is passed around like a neverending game of telephone.

Scary as some of those propositions are, there’s something that bothers me more about this week’s Meta boycott: the practice of virtue signaling, which is much easy and far more rampant online than it is in real life.

There will no doubt be people who either temporarily or permanently leave the platform and go gently into that good night, but so many users will share arch diatribes about why they’re suspending or deleting their accounts, convinced that both the message and the act of going dark for a week or longer is going to somehow change the trajectory of this world for the better.

Sadly, it’s not.

Since the aughts, there’s been a sizeable chunk of the internet guilty of “clicktivism,” which is, sometimes, one of the most annoying symptoms of virtue signaling. I’m not sure how true this is, but as an elder millennial, it feels like some of the early Change.org online petitions in reaction to the War on Terrorism led to this phenomenon where folks truly believe that clicking a few buttons and sharing these sites via email or, later, social media, was going to lead to the sort of change that well-intentioned young people thought possible.

After twenty or more years of people trying to use their voice and fight the good fight online, it’s clear that individuals are getting the immediate dopamine hits of venting or feeling validated by like-minded followers and friends, but if there was any evidence that this kind of online activity was moving the needle in a positive direction, we’d probably have way more evidence of that by now, which leads to the last piece of the equation (and also ties back to one of the most-recognizable MLK quotes), the notion of character. 

Many years ago, I had a CCD teacher who first introduced me to the somewhat cliched phrase that character is what you do when no one’s looking. To this day, I haven’t found a more practical or reliable definition of the term, nor have I always been proud of what I see when I self-evaluate using this same yardstick.

Eight years ago, I was that virtue signaling, angry progressive, and I was so entrenched in my beliefs about the possibilities of clicktivism that I clung to my job at a failing green tech startup because I was so enamored of the idea that we could leverage these hyper-capitalist tools to usher in a more sustainable future. But the VC-backed company I was working for could never deliver on the win-win-win promise of doing good for the user, the planet, and the corporate or municipal clients who were underwriting this program. Meanwhile, I was feeling more and more alone in my own life.

Looking back on how much has changed for us personally and in the world at large over the last eight years, it’s impossible to know if the sort of positive change many of us yearn for will be facilitated with internet-based tools or not (or if we can even return to a more analog-driven life, and if that’s even possible). But as folks are getting back onto TikTok, getting off of Meta, or just shaking their heads at the whole mess, we’re going to keep focusing on what we can actually do.

Sometimes that’s inviting people to gather in our space for a common cause.

Sometimes it’s listening to a single guest’s story at the bar.

Sometimes it’s nothing.  

If we’re going to be the change we want to see in this world, though, we’ve got to start by assessing the quality of our own character and focusing on putting in the work that will deliver actual, tangible change—something more than likes and shares. Who knows what that actually looks like? We certainly don’t. Over the course of this year, though, we’re going to do our best to find out.