Thursday, August 20, 2009

Eyes GREEN with rage

So, eons ago in my past, I earned the nickname of "The Raging Cynical Bastard". It wasn't so bad when I was called this behind my back by my friends. It was when they were openly calling me it to my face that I felt I should perhaps tone things down a little. And I have. But now I want that back. And look, a healthy outlet. Blogs.

So, I start my first post in my attempt to reboot both an old persona and a dead blog.

Now I realize the normal phrase is "Eyes red with rage", but no. Today I see green.
As in green Twitter icons.
And I am just as guilty of this. So let me paint the picture.
Months ago, it was the in thing to do to give your Twitter icon a green over lay, to show your support of the women fighting for Democracy in Iran. This amazing and radical movement was all over Twitter. All over the news. Hell, I saw it in certain comic strips for a long time too.
But, one pop star pops out of the ranks of the breathing and BOOM! all's forgotten. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying said person was not hugely talented and love or that he shouldn't have been memorialized. My point is the popcorn ADD nature of our society. For quite sometimes the only trending topics you could find on Twitter was the Iran Women's movement. Today... Avatar the fucking movie.
It seems to me that "causes" are the new chic thing. But it's like a group of people running around an area covered in holes. Each hole has someone struggling to get out. The group of people run over to one person, start to pull them out, then just as quickly, someone yells "Hey! There's someone in THIS hole too!" and the first person is forgotten as the group runs over to start pulling out the new person.
I'm not arrogant enough to think that this movement will fail without twit-storms, but I had to actually dig a little to find any news. And I wonder how many people marching around with green twitter icons, and who get so loud and vehement about what was going on and how wrong these women were being treated, I wonder how many of them know right now what's going on. Or when was the last time they thought about those same women.

I have changed my Twitter picture to no longer be green. Not because I no longer think that what these women do is important. I wish them the best of luck. They are strong and brave, far more so than I am, and quite capable to champion their cause. But I am guilty. I don't care anymore. I don't read the news about them, I don't support their cause in anyway. I don't make others aware of it. I am a tag-a-long. I often times barely have time to care about issues directly related to me.

I commend those who want to champion a cause. But please, I beg you, pick a cause, or two, or however many you are TRULY able to commit your time and efforts to, and really champion it. Not just while it's trendy and cool, not with ADD like interaction, but until the end... its or yours. And while I am talking about sticking with a cause, perhaps I can encourage any reader I have to start close to home. Champion the cause of your family, of your friends, of your children, of your community... whatever it is around you that needs attention. And if you have time and ability to get behind something outside of that, stick to it.

4 comments:

Daniel Monett said...

Oh, and for those curious about what is going on in Iran: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/19/chadors_in_the_cabinet_cant_cloak_irans_misogyny/

Elly said...

yeah, I never did go green. I didn't feel equipped to care all that much. even though that realization made me feel guilty. But at least I was honest...

Alii Silverwing said...

I flat-out refused to green-ify my icon. It felt, even then, as if it was a mass 'Yay! Cause! Let's support it!' There was no information about the whole thing. It was spurious, easy, and it felt so no-fucking-clue liberal (and I mean that in the nicest way) that I would have felt guilty for making my icon green at all.

As it was, I didn't even realize it was the 'women's Rights' part, or that green might have represented the opposition more than the side you thought you were fighting for. The whole thing was ill-advised and every person who changed their icon with the one-click tool made me shake my head in sorrow for the fact that they weren't using their brainmeats.

Sadi said...

As one of the people who did greenify, the point of turning the icon green was to show support for the people protesting (not JUST the women, though the women were the most-talked about because it was so unusual to see women being vocal in a place like Iran) and raise awareness, which it did. I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with saying, "Hey, we see you, we see what you're trying to do and we support you." I don't think anyone turning their icons green was hoping to "champion" a cause. And I think it's tragic that Michael Jackson's death eclipsed something as important as the elections in Iran, but again, there's a difference between saying "The world sees you and what you're doing" and saying "Hey what can I do to help" you know? One of the most important things ABOUT the Iran elections was exposure. It means that maybe next time they have an election, the whole world will be watching for fraud, which will make it harder for that fraud to happen.
Basically, I think it's unfair to call people who turned their icons green band-wagoners, or stupid, or insincere. There was a time when what happened in Iran would have gone completely unnoticed by the world. The fact that everyone was talking about it is a HUGE, major step in terms of world-politics, and it isn't fair to diminish or demean that.