For this project, I chose to take an activist stance because learning about the corruption of the fast food industry made me extremely disheartened. What made me the most upset was that those who were in poverty do not have an option and were limited to these foods that they can afford. I thought about the strength of numbers and how if everyone who could afford to stopped eating fast food in hopes to better the ingredients used, the decrease in profit would be so massive that food cooperations would be forced to make the changes to make an income.
This sounded like the perfect solution; a strike! My intention wasn't really to illuminate these corporations, which I know I couldn't have possibly done, but they were to better the ingredients so that those in poverty didn't have to subject themselves to such rubbish. But I had one major problem, how do I accumulate such a large amount of people to be apart of this "movement"?
I turned to social networking because I knew how effective it could actually be. In fact, I personally knew of a girl who made it on the New York Times because of a Facebook group she made to convince her parents to un-ground her. I figured that if they got so much popularity off of her Facebook group, which was frankly insignificant, then maybe I could actually receive as much popularity and support for making a page that matters.
So with bright eyes and an overly optimistic attitude, I created a Facebook event named "NO FAST FOOD FOR A WEEK". I made this group for such a limited time because I knew that it would be a struggle for some people to give up Fast food completely. I invited friends and told friends to invite their friends and so on. I spoke to friends personally to persuade them to join or to at least tell someone about it. I even promoted the event on other social networks including my Tumblr blog where I asked followers to please join and reblog the advertisement. I reached out to other Tumblr bloggers with a lot more followers than me to do the same as well. I admit, I probably could have done more to get the word out there but I do believe I put a significant amount of effort into this group.
Once the seeds were all planted, I patiently waited for the whole thing to come together, make it on the New York times and change America (or at least raise more concern about the topic in America) forever. I checked the group constantly seeing how many people were apart of this movement. It turned out that the amount of people "attending" were only 10 more than the When I logged on to my Facebook about two days after I made the group I get a notification regarding it. Once I go and check it, I see a wall post stating "Fuck this". I was a little taken back but I immediately deleted the wall post.It seemed to be to late though because the amount of people not attending started to surpass the amount of people who were.
I got more and more criticism about the group from people who either didn't care, loved fast food, or were upset with my way of going about protesting. I believe that most people from SOF thought I was just doing this for Andy's class to get a good grade, but the truth is I actually did care. But in retrospect, I felt really moronic to believe that making a Facebook group that only made people change for a week was going to do anything. I had to take into account that people are realists (which I am clearly not) and also that not everyone knew as much about the Fast food industry as I did. I also did not give myself nearly enough time to properly promote this "strike". It brought me to tears once I realized I alone can not make such a positive impact on this country but for the approximately 150 that did join the group, I was glad that I could make a little speck of difference in their lives. Maybe those who will avoid fast food this upcoming week will discover new places to eat that they really enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment