Big Bad Bully America

The United States’ position as top contender of the industrialized world is the very reason why it sucks. Because Americans no longer have to fight for their survival, they’ve begun to fight against it.

Although there are times when there is, like, “nothing to drink” despite the virtually endless flow of clean water from our sinks, and other times when you have like, “literally nothing to wear” despite the 50+ articles of clothing in your closest, most of us can agree that our basic survival needs are met on a daily basis.

But we’ve had it too good for too long, and the implications are becoming hard to ignore. Rather than fending off starvation, we suffer from an obesity epidemic.

While adolescents in developing nations band together for survival, we see our youth bullying each other to the point of suicide. Prolonged prosperity has invited a whole new realm of issues that are difficult to define and even harder to fix.

Like mentioned, one of these difficult-to-define and hard-to-fix problems is bullying. In a typical bully-victim relationship, the bully, usually someone higher on the social ladder (a position achieved by instilling fear, probably due to “advanced” physical size (ahem, obesity epidemic)) preys on victims because of a perceived physical, social, or financial ineptness (or because they have pudding snacks). Why the bully engages in such aggressive behavior is not quite understood, but it is certain that it lowers the self-esteem of the victim, making them more vulnerable.

But in all seriousness, bullying is becoming an increasing concern. On Sunday, a 16 year-old boy from Corpus Christi, Texas, committed suicide after years of torment and no effort from the school district to stop it. The school denied that bullying was a problem, despite community parents who spoke up and claimed to have withdrawn their students from the school because of unrelenting torment. This is just one of the dozens of cases that has made national spotlight this year, and just one of millions instances of bullying itself.

From an evolutionary perspective, bullying could be explained by Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” hypothesis. But we don’t have to fight for our survival anymore because it is practically guaranteed by our modern society—our psyche just needs to catch up with reality.

The autonomy allowed by our society creates a false sense of independence, people undermining the role other people play in our lives. They think independence is buying their own groceries, but where would they be without markets in the first place? Because mass collaboration is no longer needed to survive, there has been a mass disintegration in order to “thrive. ”

Psychologists argue that humans are social beings in the first place because we needed each other to stay alive. Men hunt and protect. Women gather and make babies. But with the autonomy allowed by our current industrialized society interdependence is less pronounced. Fueled by the idea that we no longer need to each other to get by, have we subconsciously began to divide, doing what we can to retain our allusion of power we hold over others?

What is bullying if not a magnified version of the social stratification of America—an elitist group leveraging their power on a vulnerable lower class? The recent Occupy Movements come to mind. It’s driven by a group of people who feel victimized and immobilized by another group, whose dominance is vague yet unyielding. There have been countless acts of physical aggression against the lower class in reaction to their pleas for equality. Earlier this week, around 30 people were pepper sprayed outside of a Santa Monica College trustee board meeting protesting proposed higher course fees. Two of the victims were a mother and toddler in the crowd. Like bullying in school, this is one of countless examples.

Our prolonged prosperity has us fighting to ensure individual success, not collective. And when this is reversed, we will see an end to the complex issues our society faces. We will be able to reap of the benefits of being on top when people think it how they could help our whole population, not only themselves. If we were all working together, bills for universe healthcare would pass. We would petition to have education programs expanded, not cut. The wealthy would except their social responsibility as the breadwinners and happily pay more taxes to provide more for the millions of people who live below them.

In order to stop sucking, we have to start sharing. 

STOP KONY: A New High For Social Media, A New Low Gen Y

What does it take to get Gen Y invested in a global crisis involving the abduction of thousands of children and their subsequent conversion into soldiers and sex slaves? Branding and celebrity endorsements, of course.

This is not an attack on the STOP KONY movement or the unprecedented support the campaign has inspired. I doubt neither the authenticity of the cause nor its supporters. But, what presents a new high for social awareness exposes a new low for my generation: the most viral video in history owes its success to social media and celebrities.

Reaching over 100 million views in two weeks and dominating the virtual worlds of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, the STOP KONY Campaign speaks volumes about how we communicate, but it’s not saying anything good. Although it is groundbreaking that millions of people have been united by a common cause, they weren’t lead there by global awareness or empathy, but by the delivery service of social media and the presumptuous pull of celebrities.

It would have been near impossible to miss the STOP KONY video if you were anywhere near the internet during the month of March, and even harder to ignore its message.

How did this video become viral so quickly? The Invisible Children selected 20 “Culture Makers” to endorse and promote the cause. The list ranges from Gates to Gaga, Bono to Bieber. A range of celebrities who combined audience covers nearly every media niche. The culture makers updated their social media sites with links to the video and pleas to repost. It worked as planned, and the video had millions of views with hours, and 100 million in a few weeks. People listened.

From the get-go, the video captures its audience with slick production and a heartfelt story. The plot involves an innocent toddler slowly learning about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a group of Ugandan children telling their stories, and a bunch of young adults, like you and I, taking a stand. Emotion-provoking songs by upcoming artists fill the background noise and it ends with a strong call-to-action.

But, the call-to-action is asking the viewer to contribute by buying an “Action Kit,” which contains posters, a t-shirt, stickers, and a bracelet. Everything is nicely designed, trendy, and loudly promotes the cause. Buying this kit and sporting its contents is pretty much the extent of your support. All you have to do is buy and wear, the money going to Invisible Children to find Kony and rebuild the lives of the Ugandans affected. This message speaks loud and clear to Generation Y, who gets to feel the satisfaction of making a difference without exerting any tangential effort.

With the rate at which the video spread, it’s unlikely many people did much research before reposting, meaning they validated its truthfulness by the celebrity supporters and sheer number of hits. The new connectivity permitted by social media allows a message to spread quickly, but without any valor. The difference of being in the know or not is a matter of clicks, not a pursuit. But more awareness, in terms of numbers, is not necessarily an advantage. With large numbers comes a diffusion of responsibility. The more people that know about a particular misfortune, the less each individual feels the need to take action. Thinking “someone else will do it,” they justify their passive attitude and simply share the video.  The “awareness” reached by social media may in fact be a detrimental paradox.

External factors grabbed the audience, with empathy coming second. In a globally aware and humanitarian society, people would have already been concerned with this ongoing tragedy and been inspired to help by the empathy born from sharing the human experience. Instead, the millions of supporters were initially attracted by celebrities, and drawn in further by a video difficult for anyone with a conscious to disregard. What about the misfortunes without an eye-catching brand identity and celebrity endorsers? Should they take the backseat due to lack of appeal?

The people behind the campaign really know how to make us tick. They seem to have a better idea of how to influence the masses than the government. Using tools proved effective by social psychology such as good design, groupthink, a loud call to action, and clear instructions to reach the goal, the STOP KONY movement was ingeniously devised. It might even be one of the most influential campaigns since Nazi Propaganda.