Let's Stop Fauxporting

Fauxport: Action characteristically similar to slactivism; using emotion as currency.

I must be a horrible person.  Last year on July 20th, I put no mention of where my thoughts and prayers were on social media.  Nor on December 14th.  And it's not because I wasn't engrossed in exactly what everyone else was, not that I wasn't feeling the same sense of "loss," shock, disbelief, and a feeling that I wanted to do something positive to somehow compensate for the horror that had happened just like most of the rest of the county.  I only say most because there are some who felt the events of those days much more fully than most of us will ever understand.  And while the support that they'll receive from their immediate communities, people they know, and perhaps donors that they don't is vital to those people coping with their loss, the fauxport from the rest of us is not.

When you think about it, all fauxport does is inform your social media base that you are up to date on current events. Of course our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims in Aurora and Newtown!

Granted, yesterday's injury to Kevin Ware was a horrific incident.  The timing of the injury coming in the Elite 8 is a terrible loss for the team and makes for a great potential fairy-tale.  But Magic Johnson's legendary Game 6 performance in the 1980 NBA finals was born of similar circumstances.  The nature of the injury was gruesome to see on national TV. But it's hardly the first time a compound fracture has been televised for us all to see (just run a YouTube search on football broken leg, but not on a full stomach).

And don't get me wrong, anyone who was at the Moorpark Boys and Girls Club Gym around 5:10pm on February 18, 1995 knows that I empathize with Mr. Ware, both from the season-ending injury perspective as well as the insane amount of pain perspective.  It sucks, I know.

Fauxport is a very tempting trap that I believe many of us fall into.  It's an extension and mutation on the ever-fake quick salutation of, "Hi! How are you!?!" We don't want to seem callous, so we convey positive emotions when confronted with the negative situation.  But with social media Fauxport, we aren't directly conveying those positive emotions to the proper parties-- we don't even actually know those parties.

So if we have no connection to the party affected by a negative event, yet simply express only our support of that party (which is clearly sympathetic and no normal human being would disapprove of) for our own network to see, then isn't that support simply self-serving?  Is it not, as my Best Man would put it, "Fake Hustle?"

I'm not saying our hearts aren't in the right place, but I am saying that fauxporting is a bit shallow and misdirected.  Let's stop fauxporting people we never have or will meet and have no affect on our lives other than the current event that they are a part of with sentiments that are obvious and provide no value.  Let's start supporting our neighborhoods and our communities....you know, those people that live right across the street from you and you have no idea what their name is.  Let's convey our positive sentiments with those that are close to us and with whom we can actually interact; not just remind everyone on the interwebs that we're good people and heard about the recent tragedy.