There are enough issues in the world. Let's not fight about which causes to support.
By Henry Adeleye on November 20, 2015
As we all know, the world can be a crazy place. There are a lot of negative things that happen all the time. Some, admittedly, get more press coverage than others. Some get more social media coverage than others. And some get more hashtags than others. There are countless reasons for this. It is what it is. But just because someone supports one of the causes that gets more coverage doesn’t mean they oppose any of the less covered causes. There's no need to bash people who put up pictures of the French flag. It's not a zero sum game.
Mark Zuckerberg caught some slack for Facebook not offering the temporary Facebook profile picture option for other tragedies in the same way they did with the French flag in the wake of the Paris attacks. But should he be obligated to spread awareness about everything that goes on? At what point would that lose its effectiveness? Some would argue that awareness in and of itself doesn’t do much anyway, but there's no harm in showing solidarity.
The point is, if you want to bring attention to a cause you believe in, the responsibility to get the word out about it is on you. If it is to be, it is up to me. And by "me" I mean you. No one will ever feel more passionate about a cause close to your heart than you do. And it's wrong to expect or assume that they will. If the things that matter to you don't get the recognition you think they deserve, you have to ask yourself what you can do to change that. There are a huge number of organizations that were started by one person who decided to take a stand. Why not you?
If a restaurant goes out of business, they can't blame their customers. It's up to them to figure out how to better hold people's attention. If a teacher feels passionate about education, he or she can't expect the random guy working on Wall Street to lead the charge to change things for the better. If a person feels strongly about the removal of snowflakes from the side of a red coffee cup, they can't expect the coffee company pretty much built from the ground up 30 years ago by its Jewish CEO to feel their pain. Again, it's up to the person who has the skin in the game. With the advent of social media, the power to do more with less has never been greater. There's so much you can do to help your cause, if you're willing to put in the effort. But getting upset at people who choose to support their own cause instead of yours is not the way to achieve that. Let people post the flag.