I am not going to lie. I was planning on sitting in the back row and sleeping, which I did – for about 10 minutes of the lecture, until something was said that really caught my attention.
“Everything is connected….It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. You have to get involved.”
It made me think about the term ‘get involved’ and it’s relation to social media. Many a- time have I scrolled through my news feed to reveal pictures of sad puppies with captions such as ‘Lyk if ur agenst animal cruellty’. Pictures like these have thousands of likes, but how many of these people are actually actively involved with an organisation that helps disadvantaged animals?
I have had a similar problem whilst trying to raise money for the Worlds Greatest Shave. (Which is happening this weekend, feel free to donate!)
This is how goes down:
1. I would post a link onto my Facebook encouraging people to donate.
2. The link would get 20 likes.
3. I would sit at my computer eating noodles and watching Naruto for what seemed like hours, eagerly awaiting a notification from the Leukaemia Foundation telling me I have 20 new sponsors.
13 episodes and 2 batches of noodles later I realised it wasn’t going to happen. Thus we arrive at the clever title: Like, Click, Share: Action without Action. Why is it that we are willing to share photos about a cause rather than actually physically doing something about it?
The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all. - Leo Rosten
