By Jonathan Wong
Sports Reporter
jonwong@sph.com.sg

 

A memorable scene in David Fincher’s brilliant film The Social Network occurs when Mark Zukerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), while staring at his laptop, tells his lawyer that he’s checking in to see how it's going in Bosnia.

“Bosnia? They don’t have roads, but they have Facebook,” she replies with mock bemusement.

Perhaps she is right, and there appears to be no restrictions to what social media is capable of. It transcends barriers, the physical ones at least.

But what has also made itself equally apparent is the rise of digital activism and its extensive reach, where online protest groups are appearing at a faster rate than a Justin Bieber-tweet.

Everyone seems to have a cause now - one online report claims that there are over 620 million Facebook groups, or an average of at least one for every user who’s signed up. And social media is providing them with the virtual soapbox with the widest audience; it currently has more than half a billion active users, says Facebook.

The latest row to hit Singapore and clutter the online forums has been one woman’s rant about the presence of heartlanders in Holland Village on live radio which has, quite understandably, sparked a furore.

The subsequent fall out has culminated in a planned “Singlets, Shorts and Slippers Day” demonstration later this month. Last year, another protest (and I use this word with hesitation) was organised, this time with printed t-shirts and coffee-drinking as a satirical device.

It suggests a troubling trend.

Unhappy about something? Log onto Facebook and vent on cyberspace before forming a group as part of your campaign against the perceived injustice.

While I’m not against this concept, or attempting to quash it - there are noteworthy ones and raising awareness for them can be a thankless task – I wonder about a culture so quick to hand over its endorsement for a collection of causes without due consideration.

It takes so little effort to add your dissenting voice nowadays. Instead of scrawling signatures onto petition parchments or nailing wood to placard, the “Like” and “Join” button is just a click away and available to anyone who can spare the few seconds in between surfing YouTube and harvesting their FarmVille crops.

Is this what protesting, in this wired age, has become?

It seems to have made hardcore activists of us all, latching on to any and every cause. At what point does it end, and when has a person subscribed to enough beliefs worth fighting for?

Feed a Child with just a Click? Check. Anti-War, Pro-Kittens? Check. Don't Print! Save Paper to Save Trees? Check. Save Our Sheep! Stop The Woolly Bully! Check.

Paradoxically by its sheer number, these protests groups are falling victims to being labelled frivolous and trivial. Critics will add that they serve no practical or tangible purpose in society.

Their message, it seems, is similar: Why go out and try to make a difference in the world when protesting about it from your armchair and laptop will suffice?

In Abraham Lincoln’s speech to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1839, he said: “The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

He was speaking not of inappropriate clothes or pricey coffee, but of values like loyalty and integrity.

Now, surely that’s something worth stepping out of your home to protest for.