Is this message really an “action alert,” or a thinly-disguised end-of-year fundraising pitch?
Did an actual person write this, or did they let AI crank out this entire message?!
Ugh, and why do their calls to action almost never match the gravity of the messaging that surrounds them?
Inspired by my actual experiences and reactions to several weeks’ worth of insufferable, formulaic post-election emails and texts, this video is a lightish-hearted take on the serious problem of unserious activism.
Because they are so convenient for organizations to produce and for recipients to consume, clicktivist campaigns are the primary M.O. of the advocacy wing of Groupthink, Inc. Ever-so-efficient, shareable, and traceable, clicktivism helps organizations grow their email lists (and thus, their small-dollar donor base), spread their messaging, and generate vanity metrics that can be used to convince credulous high-dollar donors to keep funding their operations. Though relatively new and/or naive advocacy professionals may genuinely intend for their clicktivist campaigns to make a positive difference in the world, their actual impact frequently misses that mark.
While clicktivist campaigns occasionally succeed at moving their named targets to take some kind of action, the primary target of these clicktivist campaigns isn’t the named target— it’s you, the recipient. It is well known among advocacy pros that email petitions and other clicktivist actions have very limited utility. They are comparatively (yet not consistently) more effective when aimed at corporate targets who are more sensitive to PR concerns than elected officials, especially in past cultural moments when progressives had more cultural cachet, and back when social media was newer and it was harder to spread content. (For their part, elected officials are somewhat sensitive to constituent feedback, but typically put more stock in phone calls, handwritten messages, and in-person communication than mass-generated form letters.)
In one sense, clicktivist campaigns and organizations are victims of their own success. They were born in the earlier days of the Internet, before the advent of built-in sharing tools or social media platforms optimized to easily spread content. Back then, if you managed to get lots of people to contact them, politicians and companies were more likely to assume that a high volume of emails/petition signatures was a genuine signal of a potential brand threat.
But for multiple reasons, that signal has become mostly noise over the years. For starters, it’s gotten much easier to spread content. Funders have over-invested in clicktivist groups with entire teams dedicated to waging three-clicks-or-less “action” campaigns, diluting their value. And activists have demonstrated that their willingness to take an easy, performative action doesn’t necessarily translate into a willingness to do the work required to unseat an elected official or boycott a product or company. (I have literally watched activists buy products on Amazon to protest Amazon.)
But while clicktivism’s impact on public officials and corporate leaders is increasingly unreliable, the effects on supporters receiving these messages is much more consistent. Each clicktivist campaign is first and foremost an opportunity to attract, retain, and (further) indoctrinate supporters with talking points that reinforce an organization’s preferred perspective on an issue, building a sense of identity with (and sometimes, even dependence on) the org sending the message. Because humans base our self-perceptions in part on the actions we take, the act of “taking action” (however trivial) with an organization reinforces our sense of ourselves as the kind of person who shares whatever brand identity the organization projects. The fleeting feeling that I am a good person who is part of The Solution™ is positively reinforcing. That inclines us to do other things consistent with being that kind of person, like sending the organization money and defending them against criticism online.
But of course, fleeting feelings fade over time. Because clicktivist campaigns are poorly suited to making the massive changes their alarmist messaging leads us to want, over time they can help fuel a sense of anxiety and hopelessness. For complex, existentially important issues like the environment, we all know deep down that we can’t truly “take action to save the planet!” while scrolling social media on the toilet. Clicktivism is a completely unserious approach to issues like these, and our awareness of that reality eventually supersedes whatever temporary feel-goods we get from clicking and sending a message that’s likely to be ignored.
But what these tactics are effective at is spreading certain ideas and ways of thinking, making them ideal for cultivating groupthink at scale. In so doing, they help fuel the divisiveness that has become the hallmark of our contemporary political culture. People are conditioned to identify with their “side,” and its often-distorted worldview, through the repetition of its messaging via mass media campaigns paired with clicktivist rituals. While clicktivism can’t do much to change our physical environment, it can help change our mental and emotional environment, for better or (typically) for worse.
That’s what makes these tactics especially dangerous when applied to issues like gender ideology. It is disturbingly easy to influence people to adopt destructive viewpoints that lead them to make terrible, irreversible decisions for themselves and others through the repetition of bad ideas, particularly when coupled with social pressure to seal themselves off from constructive feedback and information conveyed via an out-group they’ve been conditioned to demonize.
Anyway, here’s hoping you get at least one chuckle out of this little video! And as we head into a new year, perhaps consider decluttering your mind and your inbox by unfollowing and unsubscribing from organizations that devote most of their communications resources to emotionally manipulating their supporters.
Share this post