Let’s Start a Trend! Let’s Be Famous!
Celebrities used to be made on television, now they are made on Youtube. News networks use to report about revolutions, now they use Twitter. In our modern age, technology and social media have enabled defining moments for many people. Before Youtube, kids used to say they want to be doctors, firefighters, and teachers. Many of the kids I know now wants to be Youtube stars. Youtube have given many people fame, but it is also an effective way to circulate news evidence.
On the realm of the internet, becoming viral is a big deal. Many of us remember how the Harlem Shake became huge, as well as Gangnam Style.
Besides those silly viral videos, there’s the revolutionary aspect, where people trend #blacklivesmatters, #kony2012, #yesallwomen and so many more. Behind these meaningful hashtags, stand millions of internet users who believe in the same cause. These hashtags change the world’s view on different topics, we need to view social media in a different light, rather than seeing it as a waste of time.
I was shown a documentary called #ChicagoGirl and it’s about a Syrian teenage girl in Chicago, who helped organize people online and offline for the on-going Syrian revolution. In the documentary, she explained that she used to use her social media for leisure. However, since the Syrian revolution started, she became the hub of connection for the people in Syria. She helped bring people together for protests, upload their videos to social media, and delete their accounts when they were capture. This documentary shows the importance of social media and how digital technologies could inform the world about social revolutions, be a hub connection to all those people, and how people could use social media to their advantage.
Rather than saying social media has the power to change the world, it would be more suitable to say, “people know how to use social media in their own way”. If we look at all the trend and viral hits, it’s not that the social media platform make them viral, it’s the people that uses the platform, who viewed it, liked it, and shared it. It’s the power of sharing through social media that made a topic becomes a trend. So just keep sharing!
