Rejecting Clicktivism
The world is in desperate need of a cultural revolution. While some of us slave to produce objects we will never be able to afford, others toil to consume luxury items they do not need. Neither lives a fulfilling life, neither is happy and both play a role in the continued desecration and evisceration of the earth. Consumer society is founded in this vicious cycle that chains some to the factory workbench and others to the screens in cubicles. It is an increasingly inhumane cycle that is spiraling out of control, dragging humanity into the abyss of climate wars and cultural insanity. That much we know. But what remains unclear is how to change the situation.
One answer that has come to dominate all others is that the future of activism is online. Dazzled by the promise of reaching a million people with a single click, social change has been turned over to a technocracy of programmers and "social media experts" who build glitzy, expensive websites and viral campaigns that amass millions of email addresses. Treating email addresses as equivalent to members, these organizations boast of their large size and downplay their small impact. It is all about quantity. To continue growing, they begin consulting with marketers who assure them that "best practices" dictate crafting a message that will appeal to the greatest number of people. Thus focus groups, A/B testing and membership surveys replace a strong philosophy, vision for radical change, and cadre of diehard supporters.
It is no wonder that their campaigns soon resemble advertising: email messages are market tested and click rate metrics dominant all other considerations. In the race for quantity, passion is left behind. But with each day they find it harder to elicit a response from their "members". Soon, they hit the pitiful online-activist industry average: less than one in twenty of their members are clicking on their emails, the rest just hit delete. (It is a well-known secret within Bay Area progressive organizations that a 5% response rate is the norm.) Thus, despite their massive, gargantuan list size, they can only count on rallying a minuscule response for any of their actions. To increase click rate, they water down their messages and make their "asks" easier and "actions" simpler. Soon, the "click to sign" deception is rolled out and simply opening an email link is treated as signing a petition. And yet, while their membership list grows larger, the active portion of their base disappears. And what is worse, as well-meaning digital activists soon discover, they are being outdone by disingenuous advertising campaigns posing as true agents of change.
Thus, we find ourselves in the bizarre situation where the celebrated international climate change organization TckTckTck with 10+ million members and 350+ partner organizations – including Greenpeace, 350, WWF, OXFAM etc – is covertly run by Havas Worldwide, the world's sixth largest advertising company. Havas' clients include Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, BP and the rest of the ones who are to blame.
By turning activism over to the technocrats, we've done a great disservice to the noble tradition of rabble rousing that has brought humanity every egalitarian development. We've exchanged the difficult process of engaging in real world struggles for the ease of sending emails and clicking links. And I say this knowing that digital-activists agree and a new generation are only too eager to offer their services, hawking themselves as the pioneers in the cutting-edge field of turning email addresses into bodies on the street. But we must resist their claims to expertise and their successes defined by quantity. The way forward will not be through the mediation of the screen.
Activism, when properly conceived, aims at revolution by striking at the root. It deploys an essential critique of society that cannot be resolved, or recuperated, without a major cultural shift. Each era must find and hone that critique and with persistence use it to repeatedly attack the prevailing social order. The essential critique of our generation is the mental environmentalist perspective which understands consumerism to be a plague upon the earth supported by pollution of our mental ecology by advertisers.
The future of activism is not online; it is a spiritual insurrection against pollution of the mind. And that begins with turning off our screens.
60 comments on the article “Rejecting Clicktivism”
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The Ghost in th...
This article is idiotic and entirely without substance.
Adbusters is a brand and its appeal lies in its high production values and sense of aesthetics.
If you took these same articles and distributed them in a poorly designed and photocopied 'zine format, or just put them online on a blog with an over-used template, nobody would read them. The only thing that garners this blog any attention is its association with Adbusters and blackspot as brands.
So for you to turn around and imply that NGOs and charities turning to branding organizations to get better results is an inherent wrong is deeply hypocritical. Especially when you use "expensive" as an unqualified pejorative.
It's also irritating that you dismiss the entirety of the Internet because of low conversion rates, which are consistent throughout all mediums. Maybe you should dig up some data on the number of subscribers to Adbusters vs. the number who write letters, or actually participate in actions, before you start throwing stones at email campaigners.
What's even worse is your ignorance of the activism that the technocrats have engaged in to protect the Internet as a means of creating scalable models of horizontal organization. The open source movement is the best example today of a working (and thriving) anti-capitalist economy.
The things this movement has produced are by themselves a more powerful critique of the "efficiency" of capitalism than you've ever managed to produce in words. Linux and Apache, both free in cost and free from predatory corporate power, are the foundation of a technology that has destroyed more corporate power in the space of a decade than an entire century of anti-capitalist activism ever did.
Decades of shouting about the desolate wasteland of commercial popular music accomplished nothing, but Napster (brought to you by those damned technologists) brought the entire recording industry to its knees in the space of a few years. Decades of building independent media institutions was nothing but an annoying, harmless gnat to the corporate media. Now, thanks to the Internet, the New York Times is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat only by the desperation of the interests it serves.
And this previous state of ineffectiveness is what you apparently would like to return to.
I guess you think it'd be better if next to no one outside of college towns could ever get their hands on any kind of radical literature. I guess you'd prefer it if teenagers in the deep south never had the opportunity to even hear about something like Adbusters from the comfort of their stifling, oppressive homes.
Good luck with that.
The Ghost in th...
This article is idiotic and entirely without substance.
Adbusters is a brand and its appeal lies in its high production values and sense of aesthetics.
If you took these same articles and distributed them in a poorly designed and photocopied 'zine format, or just put them online on a blog with an over-used template, nobody would read them. The only thing that garners this blog any attention is its association with Adbusters and blackspot as brands.
So for you to turn around and imply that NGOs and charities turning to branding organizations to get better results is an inherent wrong is deeply hypocritical. Especially when you use "expensive" as an unqualified pejorative.
It's also irritating that you dismiss the entirety of the Internet because of low conversion rates, which are consistent throughout all mediums. Maybe you should dig up some data on the number of subscribers to Adbusters vs. the number who write letters, or actually participate in actions, before you start throwing stones at email campaigners.
What's even worse is your ignorance of the activism that the technocrats have engaged in to protect the Internet as a means of creating scalable models of horizontal organization. The open source movement is the best example today of a working (and thriving) anti-capitalist economy.
The things this movement has produced are by themselves a more powerful critique of the "efficiency" of capitalism than you've ever managed to produce in words. Linux and Apache, both free in cost and free from predatory corporate power, are the foundation of a technology that has destroyed more corporate power in the space of a decade than an entire century of anti-capitalist activism ever did.
Decades of shouting about the desolate wasteland of commercial popular music accomplished nothing, but Napster (brought to you by those damned technologists) brought the entire recording industry to its knees in the space of a few years. Decades of building independent media institutions was nothing but an annoying, harmless gnat to the corporate media. Now, thanks to the Internet, the New York Times is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat only by the desperation of the interests it serves.
And this previous state of ineffectiveness is what you apparently would like to return to.
I guess you think it'd be better if next to no one outside of college towns could ever get their hands on any kind of radical literature. I guess you'd prefer it if teenagers in the deep south never had the opportunity to even hear about something like Adbusters from the comfort of their stifling, oppressive homes.
Good luck with that.
Anonymous
Wow, he clearly hit a nerve with this article! The problem, as I see it, is that the left has been taken over by the ideologues of technology who cannot stand any critique. They are entirely blind to their own co-optation and the damage they are doing to activism by taking it out of the hands of everyday people and turning it over to an overpaid group of hive-mind programmers who deliver meagre results.
Anonymous
Wow, he clearly hit a nerve with this article! The problem, as I see it, is that the left has been taken over by the ideologues of technology who cannot stand any critique. They are entirely blind to their own co-optation and the damage they are doing to activism by taking it out of the hands of everyday people and turning it over to an overpaid group of hive-mind programmers who deliver meagre results.
Wrench in the M...
"The open source movement is the best example today of a working (and thriving) anti-capitalist economy."
If this is true, it is very sad. Some of the biggest and worse companies are huge supporters of open source. Just because something is open source, does not mean it is anti-capitalist. Quite the contrary, in fact!
And software is just one side of the question. The hardware we run these so-called "anti-capitalist" softwares on is all owned by capitalists... Not sure that is the future I'm looking toward.
Wrench in the M...
"The open source movement is the best example today of a working (and thriving) anti-capitalist economy."
If this is true, it is very sad. Some of the biggest and worse companies are huge supporters of open source. Just because something is open source, does not mean it is anti-capitalist. Quite the contrary, in fact!
And software is just one side of the question. The hardware we run these so-called "anti-capitalist" softwares on is all owned by capitalists... Not sure that is the future I'm looking toward.
The Ghost in th...
Open source software incorporates many of the core ideas of collectivist anarchists- it's essentially a gift economy, functions on mutual aid, is common property, and is not subject to artificial scarcity. Moreover, it's designed in a way that requires its distributors not to restrict its distribution.
The primary means that capitalism uses to justify itself is scarcity, and capitalistic software companies still create imaginary scarcity (copying is illegal even though software is intangible, etc.) in order to turn a profit. Since open source software explicitly denies the ability of anyone to do this, how can you argue that it's still capitalistic?
The Ghost in th...
Open source software incorporates many of the core ideas of collectivist anarchists- it's essentially a gift economy, functions on mutual aid, is common property, and is not subject to artificial scarcity. Moreover, it's designed in a way that requires its distributors not to restrict its distribution.
The primary means that capitalism uses to justify itself is scarcity, and capitalistic software companies still create imaginary scarcity (copying is illegal even though software is intangible, etc.) in order to turn a profit. Since open source software explicitly denies the ability of anyone to do this, how can you argue that it's still capitalistic?
The Ghost in th...
The point of the open source movement is that the license structure guarantees that these tools will remain in the hands of everyday people in perpetuity, and that anybody can use them. The fact "some of the worst corporations" use open source doesn't stop you from using the same tools to destroy them.
The fact that you're intimidated by technology does not mean that you're incapable of grasping how it works, and thanks to the Internet, the knowledge is right there for the taking, if you're so inclined.
And about that hardware problem- we're working on it. Google "open source hardware" for resources.
Neither of you managed to address the other part of my critique of this article, which is that technology makes radical politics (not just "activism") far more accessible, and therefore far more likely to succeed.
The Ghost in th...
The point of the open source movement is that the license structure guarantees that these tools will remain in the hands of everyday people in perpetuity, and that anybody can use them. The fact "some of the worst corporations" use open source doesn't stop you from using the same tools to destroy them.
The fact that you're intimidated by technology does not mean that you're incapable of grasping how it works, and thanks to the Internet, the knowledge is right there for the taking, if you're so inclined.
And about that hardware problem- we're working on it. Google "open source hardware" for resources.
Neither of you managed to address the other part of my critique of this article, which is that technology makes radical politics (not just "activism") far more accessible, and therefore far more likely to succeed.
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