Performative Activism in the Age of Screenshots

Solidarity has become a commodity, measured in likes and shares. But when the trend cycle moves on, where does the accountability go?

The black square. The flag in the bio. The urgent reshare with “this is important” but no additional context. We’ve developed a new language of activism that lives entirely in the digital realm, where caring about an issue means broadcasting that you care about an issue.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with raising awareness. But somewhere along the way, the performance became the point. The screenshot of a donation (amount conveniently visible). The carefully worded statement that took three hours and a friend’s review to post. The pile-on quote-tweet that demonstrates you’re on the right side of history, at least for this news cycle.

Real organizing is boring. It’s unglamorous spreadsheets and tedious phone calls and showing up to the same meeting week after week. It doesn’t photograph well. It doesn’t go viral. And so we’ve created a parallel universe where the appearance of activism substitutes for the actual work of change.

The trend cycle moves fast. Today’s urgent crisis is next week’s old news. And when the hashtag stops trending, when the infographics disappear from the feed, what remains? Did anything actually change, or did we simply perform change convincingly enough to move on with clean consciences?

The cruelest irony is that this performative activism often drowns out the voices of people actually doing the work. Organizers who’ve been fighting for years suddenly find their message diluted by thousands of people who just discovered the issue exists. The discourse becomes about who’s doing activism correctly, rather than about the issue itself.

Maybe the first step toward real solidarity is admitting that most of what we do online isn’t activism at all. It’s signaling. And that’s okay—as long as we’re honest about it. As long as we don’t let the performance convince us we’ve done enough.