Hey you Phds, MDs, JDs, software engineers, and various gifted and privileged people: There's this popular idea that social media has no power to influence people and therefore you shouldn't bother.
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This is bollocks. It's a lie you tell yourself in order to justify your complacency. Truth is, there has never been a more powerful way to effect change in the world.
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Imagine what we could do together. It starts with a single tweet. When you see injustice, point it out. Retweet somebody else's tweet about injustice or about a solution.
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Still skeptical? Imagine what Thomas Paine could have done with twitter.
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Ask yourself what you are doing that is more important than working toward justice in the world. Speech is powerful. This dumb website is the most powerful speech platform in the history of the world. Use it.
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Speech is powerful & this platform has potential to create massive cohesion (look at use in Libyan revolution), but it requires more than people tweeting about injustice and RTing what they perceive as creating a desirable policy mandate.
I don’t know what that ‘more’ is, though
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I assume there are smart people thinking about this, but I’m yet to see a sociologist or network theorist explain the mechanics of social media for social change, understandably.
Lots of people are talking, but it’s spinning wheels, without the structure or friction for movement
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Probably also worth noting that the Libyan rev. ended up being an unmitigated disaster.
So getting a powerful and positive result is still mostly a theoretical.
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Are you saying the odds are against us? Dude. Unthinkable. Thomas Paine would have shriveled in his pants.
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I see your point, but it wasn't a comment about the character of the activists.
In Thomas Paine's time, the Gutenberg press was centuries old and the written word's use in revolutionary activity even older.
Networks were made by spooks, for spooks. We don't yet understand them.
I'm not saying "don't use the Internet," but I think some healthy skepticism about its usefulness for effecting positive change is fair.
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Sorry for the snark. I'm traumatized by the political circus here in the US and took it out on you. Your point is valid. I'm making a narrower point about twitter, refuting the notion that "nobody cares about my political views as their minds are made up," which is utter tripe.
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All good. I didn't take it personally.
Yeah, that is a point that does deserve refutation - but the social isolation on here is bad, man.
I suspect it'll become some sort of established hard problem in social media - if it isn't already and I just don't know about it.
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