The Hollow Megaphone
Performative Activism: More Con Than Pro?
Imagine it's June, and your feed is an endless sea of black squares. Your favorite burger joint, mattress brand, and cousin Chad are all "taking a stand". But two weeks later? Radio silence. What happened?
Good ol’ performative activism.
What Is Performative Activism?
Performative activism is when someone appears to support a cause for social brownie points rather than because they genuinely care. It's activism for the camera. It's signaling "I'm one of the good ones!" without actually engaging in the messy, uncomfortable work real change requires.
Coined in modern usage by scholars analyzing social media behavior, performative activism skyrocketed during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. It’s been around way before Instagram, however.
How It Shows Up
Social media virtue signaling: Posting a hashtag or infographic, but not changing behaviors offline.
Corporate bandwagoning: Companies tweeting support for Pride Month while funding anti-LGBTQ+ politicians.
Celebrity PSA’s: (Looking at you, "Imagine" video.)
One-off donations: Dropping a few dollars, making sure everyone knows about it, and never engaging again.
Historical Examples
1960s Civil Rights Movement: Politicians often "supported" civil rights in speeches but dragged their feet (or actively blocked) real policy change.
Environmental "greenwashing": Since the 1980s, major corporations have publicized eco-friendly initiatives while simultaneously committing ecological crimes in the background.
Pinkwashing during the Iraq War: U.S. marketing highlighted women's liberation under American occupation as a justification for war, masking the broader destructive impact.
Why Performative Activism Happens (aka: “The Psychology of Why Humans Are Weird”)
1. Social Identity Theory: Humans want to belong to groups they feel good about. Supporting popular causes = higher status.
2. Moral Licensing: After performing a "good" act, people feel licensed to behave badly elsewhere ("I posted #BLM so it's okay if I ignore systemic racism at work").
3. Low-cost signaling: It's easy. A post takes five seconds; organizing, voting, or changing your habits? Way harder.
4. Dopamine Hits: A 2020 study in Nature Communications found that online likes trigger reward centers in the brain. Activism that nets praise? Literal brain candy.
The Collateral Damage
Performative activism isn't just harmless noise; it actively hurts.
Compassion fatigue: When activism feels endless and hollow, people emotionally burn out faster. According to a 2018 study in Clinical Psychological Science, repeated exposure to overwhelming social issues without a sense of efficacy leads to numbness and withdrawal.
Mistrust: When activists are seen as performative, it delegitimizes real grassroots efforts. (Thanks, Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner.)
Stagnation: Real structural change gets lost in a sea of "awareness" without action. Awareness is step one, but if you never take step two... well, you just stood up and sat back down.
So What Do We Do Instead?
Reflect before posting: Is this helping, or am I self-soothing?
Take offline action: Vote, volunteer, donate thoughtfully.
Center marginalized voices: Support activists already doing the work.
Accept discomfort: True activism often feels bad because it forces growth.
In a world screaming for justice, maybe what we need isn't a louder megaphone. Maybe we need quieter, steadier hands—-the kind that are too busy doing the work to worry about applause.
Because history remembers the builders.
Sources:
Crockett, M. J. (2017). Moral outrage in the digital age. Nature Human Behaviour.
Pfattheicher, S., Sassenrath, C., & Schindler, S. (2021). The Downside of Frequent Exposure to Collective Victimization: Compassion Fatigue and Reduced Helping Intentions. Clinical Psychological Science.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations.
"The Psychology of Virtue Signaling," The Atlantic, June 2020.