When you think about social media activism what do you think about?

Thousands of young South Africans marching upon the Union Buildings, demanding the free education that was promised to them two decades ago? Awkward celebrities holding placards on the red carpet; the solemnity of #BringBackOurGirls absurdly juxtaposed with the frivolity of an awards show? Your aunt overlaying the French flag over her Facebook profile picture before continuing to clog your newsfeed with GIF recipes?

Social media activism is widely regarded as the laziest form of activism, culminating in the derisive portmanteau “slacktivism”. In many ways the title is earned: signing a petition, sharing a post, or changing your profile picture requires minimal time investment and no effort beyond a click. While being an activist requires actual commitment to a cause (even if only for one protest), being a social media activist just requires an internet connection. It’s easy to see why it’s considered with disdain.

When it comes to slacktivism, there is one example that outshines every other: #KONY2012.

Remember this?

Debuting in March 2012 with a documentary built on shaky foundations, the video about Ugandan militia leader, Joseph Kony, reached 100 million views and 5 million tweets within a week. Within a month, $5 million had been raised amidst scepticism of the filmmakers’ charity, while the director was arrested for public intoxication and masturbation. By April — the month supporters were urged to take to the streets — the campaign had been forgotten by its once loud (obnoxious, even) proponents. In Sydney, out of almost 19,000 people that agreed to attend an event via Facebook, 25 showed up.

Visualizing how quickly we lost interest in #KONY2012.

When I began thinking about this piece, my preconception of social media activism was largely shaped by the notion of millions of people retweeting, sharing and hashtagging from the safety of their computers. When a social cause begins to trend on social media, I often remove myself from the conversation, almost embarrassed to partake online when I know full well I won’t be out in the streets protesting. Neither will most of the impassioned online warriors in my social media bubble, but they don’t seem to feel the same shame.

But by that logic, a movement should only be as powerful as the number people who physically show up in the streets, regardless of the social media score.

But, by that same logic, surely even a movement as powerful as #BlackLivesMatter should be considered within the framework of slacktivism? While thousands of people protested, millions of people tweeted about it. To put that into perspective, if only the people who marched tweeted, the hashtag would have just scraped into the trending topics and clung on for a few minutes before disappearing into the ether.

The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was created in 2013 in response to the shooting of seventeen year old Trayvon Martin, then remained relatively dormant until 2014 when, in the space of a few short months, five black men were killed by police officers on camera, starting the #BlackLivesMatter movement as we know it. “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “I can’t breathe” entered the cultural lexicon — not because of those who look to the streets, but because of those who took the fight to social media and forced the world to pay attention.

Because of the power of social media, #BlackLivesMatter was tweeted 41 million times within a year and protests went global, with marches in Ireland, South Africa, France, England, Senegal, Canada, Germany and more.

It becomes even harder to deride social media activism when you consider it in all its forms: It encompasses everything from spreading political beliefs to disseminating information to galvanizing the public into action. It’s impossible to sweepingly dismiss when you consider the crucial role it played in the Arab Spring.

Facilitated by Facebook, a wave of protests that began in Tunisia in 2011 quickly spread to Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Egypt. Four governments were overthrown in the protests, and another two in the aftermath. A Yemeni protestor jointly won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize and Time Magazine awarded their Person of the Year title to “The Protestor.”

If the inherent goal of a movement is to enact tangible change, surely this is what success looks like.

But in the years that followed, democratisation failed in all but Tunisia; Libya, Yemen and Syria became failed states; hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and millions more were displaced in what would quickly become the biggest refugee crisis since World War ll. In what is known as the Arab Winter, conditions are at their worst — and this time, governments keep a strict eye on activists’ social media accounts.

While the Arab Spring is easy to classify as a catastrophic failure, attempting to neatly classify other movements is more complicated: Is it the number of social media engagements they receive? The level of mainstream news coverage they get? The amount of donations they raise? The social change they enact?

To return to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, there have been instances of massive success.

Before the age of social media, mainstream news didn’t address racially-motivated police brutality in America. For someone who is neither Black nor American, it was easy to look at America as the land of the free because that’s the story the media told. With the advent of the public becoming their own filmographers and broadcasters, the truth couldn’t be swept under the rug any longer.

In forcing Americans to address their racial inequality, further success followed: Black Panther was released; #OscarsSoWhite forced The Academy Awards to acknowledge their lack of diversity (although whether they addressed it is debatable); and television series such as Black-ish, Insecure and Master of None have made strides in representing people of colour as fully-fledged three dimensional characters. Fourteen years ago, no one even questioned why there were no black characters in Friends.

These are all important things.

But nonetheless, none of the policemen who killed Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Dontre Hamilton, Jerame Reid, Charley Leundeu Keunang, Tony Robinson or Freddie Gray were indicted. If you skim the news, it almost looks like police brutality in America is an artifact of a bygone era — we’re so much more woke now.

The good news is that it’s almost true. The bad news is that it’s almost true.

The Washington Post’s Police Shooting Database shows that from 2016 to 2017, the total number of black men killed by police was down 4% from 2016. Despite this, two more unarmed black men were killed in 2017 than in 2016.

I keep coming back to #BlackLivesMatter because it’s a brilliant case study in the power of social media activism, and how that activism translates into tangible changes. It’s groundbreaking that films like Black Panther and Get Out were not just made, but massively successful. And while they aren’t directly related to the activities of #BlackLivesMatter, it’s impossible to ignore the sociopolitical climate in which they were made.

But it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that the American people voted into power Donald Trump. The number of hate groups (Neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant) rose with him.

It’s impossible to ignore the fact that, despite #BlackLivesMatter demanding police be fitted with bodycams, one unarmed black man has been killed by police in February 2018; there is no body cam footage.

Do you know his name?

This can all seem discouraging — change is slow and ambivalent. We take two steps forward, and one step back. Sometimes we even take two or three back. With new movements such as #MeToo and #GunReformNow, the issues are so deeply entrenched and formidable to overcome that even today’s successes do not guarantee changes into the future. We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg and it will take years before we can, in retrospect, decide whether a movement was successful. We could despair in this. Or we could celebrate the small victories as they happen. But either way, we shouldn’t turn our backs and do nothing. Rather, our frustration should urge us to persevere, online and off.