Why I Don’t (Fully)Believe in #ViralHashtags

This October, it will be a whole two years since Weinstein was put to the wall and a whole (new?) light was shed on what happens before the red carpets unfold and after the red curtains fall.

#MeToo was more than a digital campaign.

It was a storm that took over the world and expanded way beyond the blue borders of Facebook and Twitter, way beyond hashtags, way beyond pixelated words that vanish into thin air the moment you scroll on.

And before #MeToo, there was the famous #IceBucketChallenge, and, well, before that, hashtags weren’t the social warrior anthems they are today.

Undoubtedly, all of these huge campaigns meant something to the world. The fact that people are facing trial as a result (or, better said, in connection with this) says a lot.

Even with all the mad success of these campaigns, I don’t believe in #ViralHashtags. There, I said it.

But let me expand a little too.

The Unaware Awareness

OK, my poetic self may have gone overboard with that headline for a bit, but hopefully not too much. Not enough to deter you from reading this onwards, that is.

Let’s take a closer look at the two most influential social campaigns for the digital media: #TheIceBucketChallenge and #MeToo.

The Ice Bucket Challange started as a, well, online challenge that was meant to bring awareness for ALS, or Lou Gherig’s Disease. And it did. For some reason, people throwing ice buckets over their heads and nominating the next persons to do it worked.

And oh, my, the digital marketing sucker in me loves just how beautifully this all worked out in the end. In a shockingly short amount of time (just little over one month), the association that started it all collected no less than $100 million in donations (more than five times the sum they had collected prior to the Ice Bucket Challenge).

Like everything nice in the world, the Ice Bucket Challenge was met with a s***storm of criticism as well. Some of it made sense. Some was just plain and simply the Internet doing what it does best: chatter.

Some said the challenge could pose serious health risks. And it probably did (come on, dumping ice water on your head cannot possibly be OK, especially if you suffer from certain conditions).

Others said that the challenge itself had nothing to do with ALS in general. And it didn’t. But if I have to be the Devil’s advocate, how the hell would they have come up with an ALS-related challenge to catch on as rapidly as the ice bucket one did?

The ice bucket challenge transcended social statuses, countries, languages, and everything in between.

With all of this, though, I am still highly skeptical about this kind of campaigns. Yes, I am genuinely happy they collected the money and helped with research for those who suffer from Lou Gherig’s. And yes, the Millennial in me sparks up a little thinking that, hey, the world did come together for once.

But how many of those who participated in the challenge actually learned about ALS? How much awareness was really raised? If you walk down the street and ask 10 random people about ALS, will they remember the ice buckets, will they remember what it was all about, or will they remember nothing at all?

The world watched it all unfold from the comfort of their houses. Beyond the screens and the pixels, though, I’m afraid that not much really happened. Money happened, and that’s nice, sure. But somewhere, deep inside, I think ALS was rather trivialized in the wake of the whole virality of the campaign.

And that’s plain and simply sad.

The False Sense of Change

The #MeToo movement started waaay before the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Sources say that it started in 2006, on MySpace, when activist Tarana Burke started to spread the use of “Me Too” as a way of promoting empowerment through empathy among black women who had been sexually assaulted.

Let me rewind this for you a bit.

Two thousand and six. MySpace.

How much did you hear about it before Alyssa Milano and Harvey Weinstein?

I’ll shut up a bit, just so that you can hear the crickets in the background.

It literally took more than one decade and a high-profile scandal for Me Too to actually take on. For people to openly talk about sexual assault and sexual harassment at unison.

I will underline this again. It took a very high-profile scandal, in Hollywood, for the whole thing to become famous.

I am not sure how many of the average Jills shared their story through the #MeToo hashtag. Thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands.

And that’s empowering and grand and it made me believe once again that hey, we can actually come together as one.

But when the doors close, when nobody’s sharing anything online, and when all the lights have gone out, all the problems these #MeToo stories have been talking about are still there. Harassment is still there. Sexual assault is still there. Sexual discrimination is still there, at high levels and low levels, for the famous and for the unfamous, for the rich and the poor alike.

And I cannot help but wonder, how many women are out there, scrolling down on Facebook, forced into submission and silence, thinking they are simply not strong enough and not good enough to share their story, or simply scared numb into shoving their stories deep inside, where no screen lights ever get?

My assumption is that most of the women who go through this have watched the glamor of Hollywood unleash its power into the world once again, alienating mere mortals into re-embracing their misery on silent mode.

And with all the empowerment and all the hashtag support and clicktivism, they are still out there, in pain, struggling to make every day go by.

For all those millions of women, #MeToo was not inclusive. It was exclusive.

And that is, once again, extremely sad.

The Problem Is Not Online

There are two different worlds.

There is the one made out of pixels and blue screen lights.

And there is the one made out of flesh, and sweat, and tears.

I love my digital world as much as the next person — or more, given that I constantly re-surface into digital marketing like a mad Phoenix who just doesn’t learn her lesson (and loves doing it). I’m a digitarian at heart and I genuinely believe the internet is where true change is sizzling.

But when it comes to real-life social change, I’m afraid that, at this point at least, we’re only just starting things and never getting to the end of them with all these viral hashtags.

It’s easy to type a comment and click on a little heart reaction.

It’s hard to call a friend and tell them you’re there for them.

To get them out of their shell and help them move past the pain and the suffering.

It’s easy to be a clicktivist.

It’s hard to be the one who takes action.

The online has proven, time and again, that it can expand beyond social media into real life. But for that to happen to its fullest extent, it needs a nudge.

And you, and I, and everyone else, we are all indebted to society and the gods of Internet to give it that little push.

So, for lack of a better and more uplifting ending, I’ll just leave you with this awe-inspiring piece of digital art Canva helped me make:

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