We took a tour of Meetup HQ on Monday which culminated with Scott Heiferman, their co-founder and CEO, leaving us with a few gems of knowledge. The two concepts that stuck with me were:
- DIO or Do It Ourselves a core value for Meetup that recognizes that people are powerful together.
This concept made me think of the existing connections within my community and how it has gained mainstream media attention. One of the recent occasions where the Afro Latinx community garnered attention was at the beginning of Black History Month when Juliana Pache started the hashtag #BlackLatinxHistory to highlight Afrolatinx figures who contributed to Black History Month. This hashtag went viral, many news organizations covered it,and AJ+ even made a video with her.
- “The heart and soul of a movement or a culture is spontaneous.”
When Heiferman said this on Monday, it really resonated because a lot of the activism that we see today isn’t like a Meetup where it’s planned in advance. Many are spur of the moment events. It made me think that there might be an element of spontaneity that plays into social capital and civic engagement. I feel that’s one of the reasons that hashtag activism is popular, because participating in it is a somewhat spontaneous act.
We had an interesting discussion during our Community Engagement class on May 2nd. We spoke about Robert Putnam’s article “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America.” While debunking many of the possible reasons for the the decrease in social capital, Putnam concludes that the main reason is television. His reasoning is based on correlations, time displacement, and the effects on children.
This piece feels a bit dated, because during the time Putnam wrote the piece, television was a leisure activity that reduced participation outside the home.
I think that growing up with a television has probably skewed my opinion, but I don’t believe that tv is the sole reason people have less social capital and their civic engagement has decreased. It sounds similar to the way legacy media treats the audience as mindless sheep.
Our discussion moved on to trolls, assholes, and creating a civil internet. I believe that we can hope for a civil internet and encourage diverse voices, but it’s difficult to foster that without getting trolls involved. You can block and report trolls but there isn’t a clear way to stop them. I’m not telling people to tolerate harassment, but trolls are an unfortunate breed of keyboard warriors that we have to deal with.
Also, some of the bashing is necessary, and I’m referring to calling out people for misogyny, institutional racism, the patriarchy, cultural appropriation and other societal issues.
Discussion questions
- What were your key takeaways from the visit to Meetup HQ?
- Do you think television led to the disappearance of social capital in America?
- Is there anything that we spoke about during class that you would apply to your community? and how?
