Students mobilized...on Facebook

At last, student activism has been reinvigorated.

"Now's the time to give them constructive criticism and to let them know that we're not going to go quietly in the night. We're here to stay, we want significant change. Let's work!"

What single issue could mobilize 360,000 high school and college students (and counting) in about two days' time? Not the rising cost of higher education. Not genocide, or a bloody civil war and occupation. And warrantless wiretapping? Though that poses a much more significant threat to personal privacy, it's got nothin on ::gasp:: changes to Facebook. Jake's on it:

The response has been overwhelming. The entire community is rising up and creating groups upon groups criticizing the new features, which are called "minifeed" and "newsfeed". Walls and discussion forums in the new groups are bustling with rapid chatter. People are placing anti-minifeed messages in their status updates and profiles, as well.

The massive "Students against Facebook News Feed Group" is like a microcosm of the larger political sphere, with representatives from every faction lining up, offering their two cents about the change that rocked their world (or didn't). You've got net-evangelists starting a discussion entitled "WHAT REALLY MATTERS IN LIFE (it's about God, y'all)," and my personal favorite, the archetypal "love-it-or-leave-it" conservative:

P.D. (Grand Rapids CC) wrote:
grow up, shut up, and if you want, LEAVE FACEBOOK. no one is making you stay.

a la South Park--"If you don't like america, then you can git out!"
I'll admit, it's pretty impressive. Jake concludes:

This is the single greatest spectacle of youth activism I have ever witnessed.

Knowing Jake, there's probably a little more than a hint of sarcasm in that. I think he's right to be cynical though, that there doesn't seem to be much else in the real world worth celebrating on the student activism front. Though this perfectly illustrates the power of netroots activism, I can't help but feel discouraged. Internet activism (while it can't replace the real thing) has huge potential, but only if people have their priorities straight, and there's clearly something seriously wrong in that department. Maybe I'm just nay-saying. "Always nay-saying...everything I create!"

I'm willing to bet that the majority of these students are far more active in online networks than in any organizing around real issues and policies impacting their communities at the local level, much less at the national or international level. Why? Because it's easy and requires only a mouse click or two. Sadly, that's no replacement for honest-to-god organizing in the flesh. And thanks to the way MSM reports it and what it chooses to prioritize(you knew it had to come back to that), what's really happening is no more real than what happens on the internet.

Remember that Le Tigre song, "Get Off the Internet"? I don't need to tell anyone here how the web is a powerful tool for organizing. There's no doubt about it. It democratizes communication and the flow of ideas (though the digital divide must be narrowed to improve access for less priviledged communities), and that's why the net neutrality fight is such an important one. But the song's got a point:

It's about how demoralizing "cyber-activism" can be...I think it’s really important that people remember not to become isolated in their apartments or in their offices with their e-mail and understand that there is a real place for activism that isn’t so language-based. People get so involved in online discourse that it sort of becomes meaningless -- it’s kind of like being in a hall of mirrors or something. That’s what that song is about to me -- it’s about actually remembering what your priorities are.

"Get off the internet! I'll meet you in the street!"

...or I'll just sit at my laptop for another 48 straight hours.

****

Okay, ONE LAST THING and I've said my peace.

Perhaps there is something to be said for Facebook as a surveillance tool. If anything, this is what users should be holding its owners accountable for, instead of something like the "news feed," which on relative terms does little to change the actual database, besides cluttering an otherwise pretty straightforward interface. Sure, now you can know the moment when someone breaks up and friends someone new, or messages someone, or scratches their ass. But investors' links to CIA information gathering projects on? Meh. And though Facebook denies trasmitting information on students, one can't help but be weary:

One lucky Oklahoma student who posted an unsavory comment about President Bush received a friendly Secret Service visit. Saul Martinez, a sophomore member of a “Bush Sucks” Facebook group, responded to another student’s assertion that his pet fish would make a better President, posting a comment along the lines of “Or we could all donate a dollar and raise millions of dollars to hire an assassin to kill the president and replace him with a monkey.” Four months later, Martinez found himself being questioned by a secret service agent who thought he might be a trained assassin.

You know the CIA's got some serious issues if it's relying on Facebook.

But just keep it in mind next time you join the "Bush sucks" group. If there even is a Facebook tomorrow.