Instagram's Aesthetic Activism is Toxic

Instagram's activism seems to have all of the looks and none of the substance. In this video I talk about a page called Impact that embodies the perils of aesthetic activism

[qqq]

Reminds of this guy tweeting "Men stop killing women" Sure because someone who is deranged enough to murder will read the tweet and will go "Ok guess I won't do it"

[poota]

i hate the 'if you stay silent on this you're a part of the problem' shiz because no, just because i haven't posted an 'activist' post that's limited to 5 words with hello kitty on it to my story doesn't mean i'm not aware and i'm not educating/donating etc emily

[coffeeparfait]

the 'womxn' thing is stupid because, even if they are trying to include transgender women, it still makes them feel like something else apart from women. So if you wanna refer to women, just say women. 'womxn' isnt helping anyone

[ukulelevillain]

My friends and I have taken to calling this “pastel activism” when we talk about it lol

[anaadacosacositas]

Impact be like: 🌟💫💖22 women die in a week because of domestic violence 🌟💫💖

[pikalove]

Another big problem online is when people guilt trip others into sharing. Like “if you scroll past this you are part of the problem” “share if you are against xyz” as if simply putting an image on your story actually does anything. Most people who do real activism don’t try to get popularity by telling everyone and how they have suddenly fixed the problem.

[SoujanyaCS]

performative activism helps people feel better about themselves while doing little. often people on social media are in their own echo chambers, they're not even really spreading awareness here. glad you took on this topic

[isabelateixeira]

These aesthetic posts aren’t even made to reach the audience they claim to help, they’re just made to soothe the egos of “activists” who use their pet causes as steps to self gratification.

[cannedsaladsoup]

what i absolutely hate about people saying "google is free" when their opinions are question is not only the fact that google can give you biased results like you said, it also just feels like an excuse to shut down the conversation because their own opinions aren't very well founded. It's like chucking someone in a massive library with no map and expecting them to learn the nuances of children's psychology.

[neptunenix]

I know it's a different scenario, but these performative posts remind me of when people post generic positive messages such as "I love you" and "You are valid". Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I don't see how those messages can have an impact when they're posted by complete strangers who wouldn't know you from a bar of soap. It's all just a facade so the person posting the messages can have an excuse to stroke their own ego.

[marmelaota]

What also frustrates me are "activists" that get angry when people don't get something immediately and ask questions and then they like "educate yourself! You're ignorant!". Not that long ago I watched a video and underneath someone was questioning why it was problematic and seemed to be genuine about it but they got as answers that they should just Google it and inform themselves, etc. But if your willing to enter a conversation and learn from others isn't that also informing yourself? If I now ask the question to a YouTube community in the hopes they can give me a collected short answer or If I'm putting the same question into the Google search bar and get vague answers from different gossip websites... Both is putting an effort in. Also maybe the person who asked the question was already informing themselves on the side.

[fairy_floss]

I saw an aesthetic Disney mulan picture captioned with ‘save palestine’ posted by a zodiac account wtf-

[Exclusivesociety]

I live in a liberal-bubble, where progressive ideas are spread around to the point where my whole social media feed is filled with these kinds of posts. While these people are my friends and I identify as a leftist, I disdain the idea that any nuance or complexities for topics deserving of them are completely eradicated in effort to make it palpable to a young, naive audience.

[ghost_fueled_scarecrow]

I remember seeing an Instagram post with Timmy and Tommy from Animal Crossing teaching the reader how to deflect tear gas from police during riots and to this day it's the single most dystopian and horrifying thing i have ever witnessed with my own two eyes

[OrdinaryThings]

nice man. about time someone pointing this out with clarity. good work!

[xiuxiu]

its infuriating how accounts like that turned stuff like acab and blm into an aesthetic

[kilgoretrout]

This kind of "Instagram activism" never talks to the people their message should be directed to.

[ZNA_Productions]

Notice the tick analogy has a pretty fatal logical pivot too. In the analogy, enough ticks have limes disease that you don't need to clarify "not all ticks", but she pivots instead to "enough women have been assaulted" rather than the actual corollary equivalent "enough men are rapists", because of course the proportion of men who are rapists is WAY too small to assume men are rapists by default. Which of course, is exactly why we clarify, "not all men".

Imagine her using this logic against a race rather than a gender. "Enough people have been assaulted by a black person that we we don't need to clarify 'not all black people'". Something tells me she'd never go there. It's not "in".

[mymedsstoppedworking]

Activism used to be about Activism, now this days it's all about the aesthetic...

Edit: Ok maybe some of y'all didn't get what I meant, OBVIOUSLY there's still people who do it for change but there are some who just take advantage of it to grow their platforms.

[AnaMaria-wwiy]

I’m autistic and I’ve saw someone on tik tok say “is *blank demographic* ready to talk about *this conversation*. Then when in the comments people are saying “yes I’m ready to learn about my problematic behavior that I’m unaware of so I don’t harm marginalized people” everyone (including the person who originally “opened the topic”) shamed them and said “well why don’t you understand! I just said it! (Keep in mind this was a 30 second clip of literally just that sentence)

Then when people said “I’m sorry I’m autistic and I want to understand but these things arent obvious to me as they are a neutrotypical (because of the nature of autism)” the creator of the video said that we “didn’t really care” and were “evil” because “there’s nothing more that needs to be said”

As if I or anyone else can turn off our autism? And now I wanted to understand how she’s been hurt for being marginalized and she came full swinging out the door with the most hurtful thing I’ve ever seen someone say in response to another Autistic person. And I’m not going to sit there and listen to someone who’s thinks that my autism means I’m “evil” bc im not required to allow someone to be ableist to me. This was over a month ago and it still hurts it still bothers me, what’s more is that other people (of her personal demographic) were cheering her on for calling autistic people evil for seeking understanding. She said other hurtful things but that’s what hurt the most.

It’s so confusing to me how she literally said “are you ready for this conversation” and then was angry at people who just genuinely in good faith wanted to have that conversation. Why did she say it that way then? I don’t know.