Many years back, before the boom of TikTok and pre-Covid days where people are not as immersed or addicted to social media, my friends and I had a conversation about whether there is true altruism.
Because whenever anyone does any good for others, there’s always an element of benefit or advantage for oneself as well — whether it be earning karma points, earning one’s way into heaven, feeling good about oneself, ego boost, image boost, resume boost, and the list goes on. However, back in those days, even if someone wanted to do good to gain fame or boost image / ego (i.e. increase social capital), it’s a hundred times harder to go “viral” online, and even harder to get onto mainstream media (MSM). Unless you’re a popular Youtuber or blogger with massive following (this is definitely revealing my age range haha).
But with the lockdowns and boom of TikTok (TT) globally for the past two to three years, it’s been so much easier to go viral and even gain the attention of MSM who’s been grabbing contents from social media for viewership. It doesn’t matter if you are a 13-year-old or 59-year-old who decided to record a video from your day to day life and post it on TT from some random city in this world; if the conditions are right and you’re blessed by the TT gods or something, BOOOM the video goes viral within a day or two.
With this level of accessibility to just about anyone, with or without any following, as long as you are someone who has some common sense, knows how to Google, is street smart or is highly adaptable and observant… you can definitely churn out contents that might get you attention very easily. One of those themes a lot of people have been jumping onto the bandwagon is *dengdengdeng* — “Performative Activism or Charity”. :) The lowest hanging fruit of gaining viewership, because those content meet the elements of Newsworthiness (in the angle of Journalism), I guess? Actually no, it’s the second or third lowest hanging fruit. The first being rage-baiting, but we are not going to touch on that again here.
Maybe I have to be very clear what type of content I am actually referring to as well, because not all online activism is performative. Of course majority of people who share causes or do good deeds aren’t looking for fame or attention. What we are looking at here are videos where people record themselves doing good deeds with unsuspecting strangers who may not have consented to being recorded or do not know they have been “used” to boost someone’s social capital. Putting aside the content creators’ potentially disingenuous agenda and motivation in showing off their good deeds, who is that video benefitting exactly? Or rather, what was the intent of that content?
A few hours ago, I read a thread of arguments in the comments section of the news that Evan Peters had won Golden Globe for his performance on Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer series (objectively, if we just take into account his performance, he really did earn it. But at what cost though because he seemed to have lost some “shine”, if you know what I mean). His speech ended with, “It was a difficult one to make, and a difficult one to watch. But I sincerely hope something good came out of it.” One group of people said “what good could have came out of it?”, while another group disagreed because they hold the opinion that it raised awareness on systemic issues like racism and homophobia in the police force. So coming back to people who take videos of helping the less privileged (or animals / environment/ etc) for clout or for viewership — IF their content ends up raising awareness, or helped bring attention to issues on a larger scale, will that then negate whatever self-serving agenda they had in the first place?
So… where do we draw the line or do we even have to? If content creator’s agenda is self-serving, method is borderline or straight up exploiting the ones who need help, BUT they manage to meet the perfect conditions for viral videos time after time, reach the masses, gain traction, and raise awareness… do we then accept that as a perfectly acceptable way to “do good” (this is another topic for another day too, because what is good or bad)? That’s far from altruism, but it does its job.
Or we, as a society, still prefer sincerity, actual down-to-earth work, and genuine human connections when it comes to charity and activism? Even if it means the level of awareness might not have that far of a reach as compared to a creator with infamy or the right formula?
Or maybe when we come down to a personal level, could we do good without self-serving agenda?
i.e.
- Share information for awareness, but don’t shout out what we’ve done
- Be acutely aware and donate whenever we can, if we can. Or help out in our own ways (e.g. through actions like recycling more, or calling for help when we see someone/an animal in distress, etc)
- Be fully aware of our intent. Are we doing it for the right reasons — that is something only we will know
To be honest, I have no conclusion to this brain fart of mine. It’s just been on my mind for a while and I needed to put it down somewhere. This is also a grey area that will never have a single objective truth that is shared by all. So I guess, food for thought?
Side note: I don’t think we can really say any good deed is ever 100% non-self serving, because there’ll always be that part when we feel good for doing good or we are hardwired to want to earn brownie points for our afterlife, you know? So the ratio depends on each individual :)
