The Real Thing ©

Constantly posting and tweeting and sharing, what is your effort really worth? Its just another click in the hundreds of your day (and anyone else’s); another bit of noise filling someone’s feed for them to scroll mindlessly past, flick over, ignore, adding to their desensitization, contributing to their disconnect, alienating them, but providing you with some gratification for ‘spreading the word’. But its so noisy out there – who hears?

Who’s to say any of your 1000+ friends even read the content? The blurb with the link? Its just another black-faced child, or tumbling forest, or murky ocean, screaming protesters, smoggy powerplant – everyone is sick of it. Surely then, isn’t it really missing the point?

But you’re helping to raise awareness!

Do you actually know this? Could you be doing more? Whats another banner, another photo, another petition, in the literally thousands of flashing, coming, going images we see online and elsewhere, every single day?

If ‘raising awareness’ or effecting change are real priorities, why do you only give these things the same amount of time – or really,  far less time – than you give #instagram, or #facebook or #candycrush, #catvideoes or mastering today’s #picoftheday?

Everyone should sign your petition for animal rights, but did you know:

Unilever – who cunningly claim that they ‘are committed to ending animal testing everywhere [we] operate’ – were recently implicated in abuses on animals.

Worse, these ‘tests’ weren’t even to test the safety of their products, but merely to make gratuitous claims regarding their health benefits, driven by the en vogue #superfoods craze.

Despite them saying they’re against animal testing, Unilever (as well as Nestle) were reported by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in 2013, as having ‘killed heavily pregnant rabbits, pigs and mice’, also ‘bleeding some animals to death’, and ‘injecting others with deadly bacteria’, for the purpose of their tests…

Keep clicking #share on those petitions though, while you still buy Nestle’s water, their coffee, chocolate, icecream – even 30% of Body Shop, Maybelline, Diesel and all the other brands under the L’oreal banner are owned by Nestle; and you still buy Unilever’s Dove soap, Ponds cosmetics, Axe deodorant …

Do the companies you support use their profits to build products that use animal testing?

Would you buy them still, if they carried imagery on their packaging – like cigarette companies in some countries are now forced to do – of the tortured, mangled animals used to ‘test’ and ultimately, sell you their products?

Think about it

Everyone should sign up to protect the Amazon, but did you know:

Pepsico recently had their product Pepsi True pulled from online stores, owing to a huge protest against their irresponsible policies relating to the hugely controversial production and use of palm oil, which is causing massive amounts of deforestation in South-East Asia, and also threatening local Orangutan and Sumatran tiger populations (close to the point of extinction).

Other companies (Nestle, Mars, Kelloggs, P&G, Ferrero, Unilever) producing the foods you snack on while you retweet that latest change.org petition, have ‘pledged’ to ‘move towards’ ‘zero deforestation policies’.

The obvious questions remain: How do ‘socially conscious’ corporations behave like this in the first place? How long will it take, and how committed are they when obviously, stopping at nothing to secure their bottom line was formerly company policy?

You’re worried that not enough is being done to protect our waterways – #sharethispetition – but did you know:

Your favourite soft drink manufacturer Coca Cola has been accused of draining groundwater supplies in their Indian production plants and further, dumping the resulting toxic waste in the surrounding waterways.

This isn’t the first time they’ve been accused of such practices, and the fines imposed on them in such countries are literally barely equivalent to the money Coca Cola would make in one second.

They’ll surely do it again – but will you stop buying what they sell? – Or just keep reposting images of the poverty-stricken and downtrodden, and asking the world whats wrong, like you’re not a part of it?

Think about it.

You cry out that governments should ban GMO foods, but:

The following companies have and are investing millions into research and development of GMO foods and the GMO industry:

Coca Cola (which includes vitamin water and smart water et. al)

Pepsico (which includes Tropicana, Naked Juice and Ocean Spray et. al)

Nestle

Kelloggs

Kraft

Heinz

Campbells

– All these companies include dozens more subsidiaries – many of them neatly disguised – and arent required to notify the public in the frequent case of a corporate merger.

But will that motivate you to buy local, raise and produce your own food, cook from scratch or avoid processed, packaged food? Even just occasionally? – Or will you just keep #sharing those petitions..

Spend some time researching the brands that you use:

If you don’t think that boycotting these companies will make a difference, why do you think that a blip in someone’s social media will? 

You post and post about saving the environment:

So why do you always drive? Why don’t you curb your water usage, your electricity usage? In Australia, even the big banks are investing in coal mining – using your money – a hugely, environmentally destructive practice.

But still, you buy more things you don’t need – like your Ralph Lauren: responsible for massive deforestation through clear-cutting forests in Brasil, Indonesia and elsewhere – where they plant single-tree plantations, and pulp them with toxins to turn the wood into a white fluffy powder they can then weave and sell back to you at massively inflated prices.

You pay them back – with interest – adding to the trillions, empowering the banks, the corporations, contradicting your armchair activism……..

There are always choices, but its becoming harder and harder to hear through the noise of everything fed to you, and so much easier to just regurgitate and recycle your ‘feed’ – #Delicious…

And consider a plastic water bottle:

• 2 gallons of water is needed to purify 1 gallon for consumption;
• Fill your bottle ¼ full, and that’s how much oil it took to produce it; The plastic lid on the bottle top isn’t recyclable either, and is ending up in the ocean. – A recently found dead albatross in Hawaii, had 119 bottle caps in its stomach #howpretty

Imagine if the corps automatically posted on your behalf every time you went against your so-called ‘beliefs’? Would you be embarrassed? Would you feel a fool? Would your ‘socially conscious’ efforts seem dissolved?

#wakeup

Why wont you think twice about these choices, but you will think twice to post and repost? – Socially conscious speak from one side of your mouth, complete hypocrisy from the other/Look how aware I am/Look how unaware I am.

You may believe in raising awareness and contributing to the collective consciousness – don’t stop now – so surely its time to take your beliefs a step further?

Move outside of your lifetime of habitual, repetitive, convenience-driven behavior, and put your money where your mouth is!

In a world ever-filling with noise – in the biosphere and the digisphere – people are tuning out. And actions speak louder than words.

Next time you buy something, think about the effect your purchase is contributing to. Picture the last screaming, grief-drawn face you posted, the last smouldering forest; the last squealing pig, suffering chicken, bleeding cow – and put your money where your mouth is.