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Surprised at how split the answers are on this. I’d generally choose the first answer. For most tough problems, I expect there are a handful of “hardcore contributors” who do most of the work, and some “wannabes”/“cheerleaders” who don’t help or hurt much.
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Think of a big problem you care about solving. Some people only pretend to care, but aren’t really motivated and aren’t contributing to solving the problem. Is pretend support:
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In social activism, I sometimes see claims that performative, passive support is actively good (“raising awareness”, “shifting the Overton window”) and sometimes that it’s net harmful (“greenwashing”, “corporate PR”, “slacktivism”).
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Managing this passive energy is an active management skill. Whether shallow commitments lead to greenwashing or useful-in-aggregate contributions depends largely on how the core deep commitment people learn to hack and manage the crowd.
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The real danger is not the passive slacktivists, but the deep ones being too weak to resist takeover by sociopaths driving towards entirely different agendas. Think billionaire metal straw maker who wants to take over the ill-informed anti-plastic-straw movement for own ends.
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I have a couple I can't share from consulting gigs, but the open-source movement probably qualifies. The top leaders have successfully organized varying tiers of participation energy and resisted complete corporate takeover.
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