apophenic-ocelles:

prokopetz:

Thesis: the narrow focus on public performance over substantive action in certain activist circles has less to do with cynical schemes to game the system for progressive brownie points, and more to do with the fact that many folks basically think social activism is a form of ritual magic. Popular histories give us images of Great Men making speeches and leading marches and circulating petitions, and completely erase all the ground-level infrastructure that made all that stuff work; the end result is that a lot of folks seem honestly to believe that bringing about social change is a matter of performing the appropriate symbolic actions and waiting for reality to reconfigure itself accordingly.

This is, IME, exactly how a lot of people think reality works, whether or not they realize it. It’s not just Tumblr, or movement orgs – it’s the prototype narrative we’re presented with in both fiction and education. It’s how successful movements get portrayed after the fact.