SOCIAL MEDIA

25 August 2019

Fair Weather Activists | Opinion

Buffed Tailed Bumble Bee


When I first wrote this post, I wrote it from a place of frustration and I have tried to edit a little bit so it isn't so much of a judgmental rant but there are some points that I get annoyed with and I think it's perfectly fine to express that on my own blog! I was growing more irritated with social media's cultivation of what I like to call "fair weather" activists or people who just jump on the bandwagon, how it's important today but gone tomorrow and to a degree that's fine but when the cause is relate to the environment or the planet I couldn't help but get a little bitter!

A little while ago we all became very aware of face wipes impact on the sewage systems and the impact they have just being in landfills never decomposing because facewipes are pretty much plastic, they aren't biodegradable. We then saw this huge surge of people saying they no longer use wipes/ they didn't realise the impact until they saw it on social media and this is when we are at our best, when we are sharing knowledge and educating others. It really gained momentum and even I gave up facewipes and I'm glad I have but after a while the noise died down and everyone stopped talking about it. Then I see the same people who were shocked about facewipes starting to use sheet masks which are pretty much identical in composition to facewipes - so all of a sudden the environment doesn't matter or is it just sheet masks are equally as popular on social media? (Attitude much?) I'll see people harp on about how important bees are and then choose to put artificial grass down which doesn't impact the bees as such but impacts all other small insects that live in the grass and, lets face it, you're just slapping down a great big piece of plastic in your garden. 

We even saw it with Pride this year, I saw so many brands update their logos to rainbow colours but how many of those companies actually donated any money to any LGBTQ+ rights? Pride is definitely more that just a rainbow but of course brands didn't want to miss out on the popularity and the visual connection to something much bigger than them

The thing is I understand, we as consumers, live our lives for convenience, we want to do anything that makes our lives easier which is why we have created the problem ourselves (with the help of supermarkets and good marketing teams). I understand that when we see things so plain on social media we want to do better, we want to do good but fall back into everyday habits. I have to still remember that adopting a few smaller changes it better than doing nothing and that it's so easy to sit on my phone and critise other people when I'm nowhere near perfect, heck they may even be people critising me for various things! 

Maybe I should stop thinking about what others are doing or just simply unfollow some people?

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