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[av_heading heading=’To the slacktivist, with love’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY ROMA GONZALES
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DEAREST fellow internet user,
Thank you for taking two seconds of your time to like the post about this people in this remote mountain community. Since the 4.5 million likes and 1.3 million shares about them online, they have remained exactly where they are. But at least that one like is equivalent to one respect, right?
And I know it’s not just the marginalized people you care about. It is great that you have signed the online petitions for protecting the Amazon rain forest from mining corporations and for the cleanup of the garbage in the Pacific Ocean. The five minutes you took to fill in the online forms mean so much more than just you throwing your garbage properly and starting a waste segregation system in your own home.
Oh no, no, that is not slacktivism. Slacktivism is supporting political or social causes without real involvement of time and resources. By clicking on these campaign links, trying to read them and then retweeting or sharing, you are spreading awareness!
Perhaps one day when we join a game show, we can use all that awareness and then donate the jackpot money to our charity of choice. For the meantime, let it all sit in our brains the way some of our government employees sit in their furnished offices. At least, you now know that ALS makes its sufferers feel as though they have been poured over with a bucket of ice. Ain’t it cute that you have the flag of France all over your face!
How worthwhile it is also to engage in political keyboard wars! How passionate you are about the Philippines! Nobody could have guessed that based on your preference of language, clothing brand and corned beef.
Your eloquent and passionate online criticisms against this cause and your staunch defense of that politician allow us to glimpse the extent of your Machiavellian genius. What better way to describe such political talent and knowledge? How much more credible and nation-serving you will be if you only had the chance or the initiative to actually start an outreach or a movement in your community? One can only imagine.
It is impressive how you have the audacity to post strong comments and share links of articles that you haven’t even finished reading up to the end of the second paragraph – only deducing what the write-up is about based on its title and then trying to spread the word and force it down everybody else’s throats because everybody else is misinformed or ignorant!
And your certainty that all the things you read in the Internet (that is mostly partial to your biases) is true, what force inspires that?
Perhaps to try to even listen to the other party and keep an open mind would expand your knowledge? Perhaps a civilized exchange of facts and opinions would be possible? After all, that is what we want to see in our leaders. After all, don’t we want as much peace as we can in this mad, mad world?
Actions speak louder than words, right? And clicking and typing are actions, right? They’re enough to change and save the world, right?/PN
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