Likewise, there’s a distinguishment to be made with water-cooler tut-tutting and feigned empathy on the level of the internet. Facebook raises this fake humanism to a new level, I believe, and it’s that so many don’t even think before they join these groups that truly alarms me.

The populist cry of “something ought to be done!” has been with us for centuries. People around braais across the country profess “They must do somrthing about this”, and office break rooms positively ring with the murmured agreements and nodding heads of people united in the belief that “it’s terrible, the things they are doing.”

The only thing that has changed is the forum; the sentiment remains the same.

Yes, there will be lots of verbal caremonkeys, but the fact that FB groups (especially on fuzzy caring topics) spread like HIV in a whorehouse, means that a few people who genuinely care but don’t know how to get involved, will get the details of real world opportunities and take them. I am not defending all FB groups – god knows there were enough lets-condemn-xenophobia-into-oblivion groups, but there were also some that existed to communicate the situation on the ground to people who were interested in helping. Those groups did result in a few dozen people helping out who wouldn’t have otherwise been able/willing to. Yes, those volunteers came from a sea of ignorant folk, who thought that they had somehow cared from their keyboards, but that bunch would never have gotten involved even without FB groups. If putting up with giving the fool classes a sounding board to care by typing means that a handful of real heroes will emerge, that seems like a price worth paying.

As for this phenomenon not being dangerous. Weeell, perhaps not in the “they’ll never do any real good now” sense, but rather in the horrendously tainting effect it has on the thought processes going on in these poor folks’ heads. I consider ignorance to be a dangerous thing any time, which should be remedied with some sound thinking ASAP.—-

Mr/Mrs/Ms/Sgt/Comrade –
I dearly love and enjoy bludgeoning hippies with billy clubs. Unfortunately it’s illegal, and I really can’t be arsed. I’d rather just make a facebook group ;)

1. Not so much a disagreement: one thing you forgot to mention was the reason for people starting the groups in the first place. Firstly, there is the prospect of becoming the leader/initiator of a grand humanitarian movement, ‘cause if you created it, it must mean that you care more. Secondly, there is simply the age-old facebook craze of trying to create a really big group. People take great pride in being the creators or even officers of a large group (I’m surprised facebook does not give out badges or achievement awards for creating big groups).
2. I would disagree with you that this is a dangerous phenomena – I think of it as being rather meaningless and boring, like most acts on facebook. You should remember that the majority of the people who join these groups are the type that wouldn’t have done anything anyway, and the rest probably won’t be stopped from doing something merely for creating a group.
Whatever happens on facebook is simply mildly amusing act that has little correspondence to real life. Just because you have friends in facebook doesn’t mean you care about them in real life, and just because someone isn’t a friend of yours in facebook doesn’t mean that you don’t care about them in real life (now you work out the analogy). Facebook is primarily a numbers game used to prove your self-worth and popularity, and secondly its a semi-useful communication tool (to justify my use, of course).
3. [Awaits stone-throwing]. On a related, but more hypocritical and more sensitive note, I don’t see too much difference between the joining of groups on facebook and the sickening proliferation of blog-mongering and forum-spamming that has taken over the web. Sure, these may include intellectual, rational, and passionate responses instead of the mob monkey-type seen in facebook, but it hardly makes it any better. The reason why people right blogs is surely to express some point of view and to hopefully (but futilely) convince others that this point of view is correct. The ability to write any kind of intellectual (or in many cases, pseudo-intellectual) article has become a penny-a-piece… But what I do believe is happening, and this is dangerous, is that the former activists/lobbyists/ralliers/protesters have taken to the chair and are now trying to shout out their message through cleverly constructed writing. Sadly, most of these people get ignored. The one’s who aren’t ignored hardly manage to convince the opposition camp of their case, but rather end up creating even further polarised mobs.
Not that I’m saying there is anything wrong with real intellectual discourse – far from it, this needs to drive our opinions. But, we only need a limited amount of that. When it gets to the point that everybody is thrashing out their opinion on a keyboard, and not on the street or in an aid camp, we arrive in the same pathetic position where nothing gets done, and nothing changes… we become talkers rather than doers. The point that I’m making, though, is that a large proportion of what we observe of internet-based community behaviour is rather meaningless self-satisfaction. You can only limit this to facebook phenomena if you blindly believe yourselves to be protest-gods.

Enough of that, anyway. Now my Saturday morning rant urge has left my fingers, I’m going to go out and play in the rare bout of sunshine.
Hmmm…. Maybe I should post this on facebook too, more people would read it…

This post is no more or less effective than the sort of behavior you protest. You may as well follow your own advice and go and gleefully bludgeon people chained to the Chinese embassy.