Even Park admits that she did not intend for The Colbert Report to be canceled. Park stated, “I don’t think it would have gotten attention if not for such overt, pushy demands. It wasn’t like ‘Apologize Now, Colbert.’ I don’t think it would have really caught on.” So-called “hashtag activism” is completely based on inciting outrage without telling the whole story. It is difficult to explain the context of an argument in 140 characters. Therefore, campaigns by hashtag activists are shortlived and largely ineffective. Suey Park is a certifiable master at provoking mass response. Instead of people reacting online to a racist joke made on a television show, they were reacting to an inflammatory and biased tweet created by a single activist. Park’s brand of “activism” is aimed as much at her own self-promotion and “hashtag activism” as it is at combatting racism. Fleeting and ineffective campaigns like Park’s are guilty of partially discrediting campaigns against real, long-term problems. Racism is a real problem, and white, liberal comedians like Stephen Colbert need to stop using racist stereotypes in jokes. While Colbert’s satire is meant to make fun of racists, such jokes often prompt viewers to laugh at racist stereotypes, which is counterintuitive. Park’s brand of “activism,” though, has shifted the focus of the response from her message to her method. Not only did Park’s method detract from her anti-racist message, the rac-
ism aimed at Native Americans, which the original joke meant to criticize, was lost in all of the social media outrage. As writer Jacqueline Keeler, who is of some Native American descent, put it “If our allies did that much twittering for us as they do for a satirical skit, redface would be banned from stadiums tomorrow.” #CancelColbert was certainly not the first social justice campaign to use social media to gain fifteen minutes of fame, only to slip from the minds of the majority of Americans a few short weeks later. The Kony 2012 video premiered on YouTube on March 5, 2012. The video, which was watched by at least 110 million people, illustrated why young Americans should care about the atrocities committed against children in Uganda by Joseph Kony. The campaign ultimately presented the goal of capturing him by the end of 2012. Much like Park’s hashtag, the Kony 2012 video provided little context or background knowledge about the situation at hand. The video failed to mention, for example, that the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), the main terrorist organization demonized by the campaign, had moved out of Uganda to other African countries years before. Just as #CancelColbert was supposed to combat the real problem of racism, Kony 2012 was supposed to combat the very real problem of child soldiers in Uganda. The images of suffering African children and confident white people
ready to save the day captivated millions of viewers for an incredibly short time. Most people did not do anything more for the cause than share the video on their Facebook accounts. Unfortunately by the time the November Kony-catching deadline rolled around, people who had shared the video had seemingly forgotten about the campaign. Kony 2012 was arguably aimed as much at the self-promotion of leader, Jason Russell of the company Invisible Children, whom we now remember for a meltdown that led him to run naked through the streets of San Diego. Similarly, Suey Park’s hashtag activism has done more to promote her own name than to end racism. The Internet allows the world to be more connected than at any other point in history. This opens up the possibility for people to be more culturally aware than ever before. The catch, however, is that the Internet has a habit of forgetting the context of the very social problems they try to combat. Social media, as it turns out, is not the best platform for social activism. Campaigns like #CancelColbert and Kony 2012 only stick in the public’s minds for a few short weeks at most. Park’s hashtag, Invisible Children’s video and many other now-forgotten social media causes lost their messages in their methods. In the end, a hashtag will not end racism and a viral video will not save the child soldiers.
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