I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere over the last 50 years the majority of people in the world lost their mojo when it came to fighting for change. Didn’t matter whether the issue was big or small, even bad customer service and poor quality flourished because of the divide and conquer realities of slow one to one and the high cost of mass communication.
People grew tired and weak from being browbeaten into submission to the point where apathy set in when it came to believing in, mobilizing and exercising their power as an individual within society.
The ability for people to communicate, organize and take action around an issue or idea had become very slow, difficult and costly. Even more significantly, the poor results often seen by those who actually made the effort led many to accept “Is it really worth the bother?”
So as long as you weren’t trying to take their house, car or TV set many just accepted the status quo, letting the few rogue change agents, often branded as “wackos” fight the good fight for everyone else.
Enter the rapidly accelerating and soon to be pervasive use of social media and all of the above inertia and apathy is being blown away faster than you can say Michael Moore!
Just consider the below points:
- Social media has potential to connect all people in the world in the very near future on a one to one and more importantly one to many basis.
- Cost to communicate messages, organize, raise funds and take action on any issue or point of interest then becomes truly negligible.
- Major social media influencers then become the catalysts and facilitators of change.
- Ability to document and share in real time the positive impact and clearly demonstrate results, and actual ability for individuals to ignite change, will mobilize more and more to wake up from the slumber of apathy.
Right now social media driven change is just a snowball starting to roll from the top of the hill, set to increase in size dramatically and grow geometrically with every revolution in internet communications, social media tools and the rapid proliferation of fixed/mobile internet devices to the point of ubiquity.
So what are you going to try and change today?
Jeff Ashcroft
Jeff,
Good article. I am struck by the power and immediacy of social media and the rise of inbound marketing. I think that snowball will really start to pick up speed!
Mark
Jeff,
Good article. I wonder how we’ll measure the change’s impact in the future though. Will we base it on tangible results like metrics (ex. number of people who “like” a cause), will it be measured intangibly where people actually stand up and do something (which may mean performing an action offline), or a combination of both? Something to ponder.