Quote:
Originally Posted by rhyds
The problem is that young people have been told that the way to change anything is to whinge about it on the internet rather than actually doing something productive about their situation.
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This.
Missus is subscribed to 38 Degrees, a petitioning website, and she gets pompous emails from them at least twice a week, pushing their latest cause célèbre, always filled with self-important lines like "it's vital that 38 degrees members act now ...". Of course "acting" essentially comes down to sticking their names and email addresses on yet another petition. And as the Internet has made mega-petitions easier to compile, so the attention threshold whenever a petition is presented to el gov gets higher and higher.
We saw something of this in Scotland last year. The not inconsiderable movement of twentysomethings who were such a visible part of the Yes campaign seemed genuinely to think that they were entitled to win it, just because their social media campaign was so visible and so noisy. Many of them seemed genuinely astounded when the result was No. It was as if they had no idea that there are large numbers of people who don't bang on on social media, but who quietly come out and vote when asked.