Hope for Caroline

Recently, a five year old named Caroline (Calle) was diagnosed with DIPG ( Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma), an inoperable brain tumor. Only 200 children in the US suffer from this disease so Calle’s family is hoping to raise awareness for this, and possibly getting the miracle they so desperately need (right now if no cure or treatment is found she only has about a year to live). 

So if you could all join their facebook page and reblog this post so as many people as possible can learn about this that would mean a lot to us, Calle, and her family. We want to help Calle and her family get the coverage needed to make their dream of spreading awareness come true. Please help guys and thank so much.

Pray for Calle. 

I’m not exactly surprised by the IDF running a Tumblr and Flickr account because an appreciable part of their military is young and not exactly active in combat, and overall social mobilization is the historical norm there, but I would hope that people recognize how crass the Kony-esque campaign approach to political events on the Internet is becoming. This isn’t exclusive to this week’s events either. Its something that I have been guilty of.

Its extremely easy to become desensitized to grave situations whenever groups are issuing minimalist posters on their exploits, nifty hashtags and distracting Twitter brawls. I’d actually go as far as to tie this into criticisms of fast reaction gifs to Presidential debates as well. It does make information more accessible, but we’ve also produced a culture of cause porn that people seek out and later dispose of whenever the issue seems overplayed. 

Worst of all, because Twitter has become a barometer for trending issues, there is sometimes misrepresentation and a manufactured shift of public sentiment. It does nothing to really crystallize the importance of issues with people, nor does it do much to assure that the general public looks in greater depth. Its much easier to be an expert on all issues, but unfortunately the emphasis on greater understanding is lost.

Yesterday I screencapped two Tweets between the Alqassam Brigades and IDF. That alone drew more attention to the conflict than any article, PDF or media I ever shared before. Of course I’m not citing this out of any sense of entitlement or expertise (goodness knows that I lack it), but it really illustrates what items hold with audiences that want to focus on particular subjects versus those that translate to a vaguer, more marketable scale. It also speaks for the lack of commitment we have to various causes. These are learning moments where we can reach the greatest number of people, and yet the catalyst required is nothing short of disappointing. We have to adapt to the world and modes of information present today, but even great advances have their setbacks. The ease through which we can create flashy campaigns makes participation so easy that it lacks any real commitment to the causes we’re supposedly addressing. It also makes me wonder if those who are more informed are not sometimes disingenuous in their strategies. I always leave preferred approaches to an individual’s discretion, however, and realize that my own biases should always be noted.

Ultimately, the onus falls on people to make commitments to causes they feel are of import, because media personalities, politicians, and organizations are simply adapting to demand. Your demand. You cannot allow yourself to become desensitized. You cannot forget that you are hashtagging matters of life and death. You have to affect change where you can and devote energy to actually learning.