We send our sincerest thoughts and prayers using, “#PrayFor”, then go on with our day. Some of us watch the news, then tweet here and there about current events like when politicians partake in a heated political argument on Twitter.
By tweeting a universal hashtag, we have contributed at the minimum by letting others know that “France, we are with you.” On our timeline, we’ll read heartwarming and tear-shedding tweets about change and hope for a better world. Later, we’ll probably tweet the same message, believing we helped fix the world. The next day, we wake up, the Kardashians forget to eat breakfast and the media goes berserk. The pattern does not fail, we forget about what’s outside our million dollar bubble as soon as the relevancy diminishes.
The sad truth is that there will be another major act of disparity. Perhaps against our own nation, or a neighboring one, and we’ll find ourselves asking the same question once again: “Where is the change?” The heartbreaking truth is that a tweet does not save the world and it certainly does not terminate terroristic threats. However, there’s always hope. The tweets help, go viral, everyone now knows, blasé blah and we all connect via trending hashtags. The problem is our nonstop short attention span. Our tweets are endearing like hot chocolate for XMAS, however they do not fix a thing, furthermore, they do nothing but inform. What we’re missing is that next step: initiative.
This goal is probable through us, society and popular sovereignty, figuratively speaking. We have the masses in our hands with the ability and access to make just about anything go viral. Sometimes we forget how much power we actually have to make a change. We control what we receive based on our satisfaction, remarkably parallel to the law of supply and demand. To extend our activism, there’s an alternative to the ordinary “retweet-to-support” form of activism: The World Cup.
The World Cup is one of the few events that brings the globe together. Everyone comes together to support their nation or neighboring countries in exchange to see them win. It’s truly a euphoric event. Everything and everyone is in unity. Not to mention the World Cup receives millions of views, far more than any other televised event, and is the perfect medium to take the tweets to another level. This is an opportunity to mark a bigger impact on racism and terrorism. Reach the masses through advertisers and official representatives of the World Cup. There is a fine line but a huge step between twitter activism and activism with a purpose. Take initiative, grab attention and get your word out: that’s a change.
