Doing Charitable Activities on Social Media

Back in the earlier days of social media and YouTube, we used to see posts and videos with friends and colleagues doing charitable work. Over the years, these videos have dwindled and I'm not exactly sure why. I think it may have been in part because of the social backlash a lot of these people received. I know that there are a ton of people that don't approve of people displaying their own benevolent acts on social media these days. It's okay to post about others doing good things but it's distasteful if you post about yourself.

I believe the thought behind the backlash is that they believe the intentions of the people posting these acts are self serving. In the end they're still helping people, though. For some reason, when we're doing good deeds for others, it should only benefit the unfortunate. I think this is something that we should focus less attention on any residual attention other than the person that needs help. How are we giving individuals crap about helping others when we don't bat an eye at large corporate donations to charitable institutions? I still see advertisements of large companies helping people in dire situations and I never even see any vandalism toward these advertisements.

I think people should stop stigmatizing individuals that post their good deeds on social media. Perhaps this world might be a better place if we start promoting to kids that it's actually okay to help people. Don't act as if kids aren't easily influenced by social media either. By stigmatizing individuals from helping others, we can have two different outcomes. One they might help people and not post which is good but you might not have some kids not helping others altogether. We need as many people helping out as possible.

Yes, people might get big egos from the attention that they receive from their posts but as long as they continue doing the good deeds, I'm okay with that. Who are we to tell a person if they should feel good or not from doing good things for others? We might have people that wouldn't normally ever do charitable work actually help people for "likes" on social media. This isn't a bust because that person would have otherwise never helped. A helping hand is better than none.

As social media influencers become increasingly persuasive, perhaps it can cause a movement with more people influencing others to help out their community. This is a new byproduct of popular social media posts.

Instead today we have popular posts about some sort of challenge where people do cool or idiotic things to build their social reputation.

There's another aspect where some believe it's exploiting people of unfortunate situations for personal gain. If someone is in an unfortunate situation and gets help why would they complain about this? People can tell you if they feel uncomfortable with your help and if that's the case, yes I agree you should back off in those situations.

The backlash could also bring up an issue where those that are needy are embarrassed or being taken advantage of and refuse help. If anything we shouldn't make people be embarrassed to receive help. We shouldn't make them paranoid of receiving help either.

If someone posts their good deeds on social media, how does it really affect you anyways? It's really none of my business if the person felt good or bad when they helped anyone. They did something that they perceived as nice and that's good no matter what. Maybe down the line their attitudes about social media will change as they continue to help people out. It could be a gateway for themselves to become better people.

So in the end, I don't really think it's any of our businesses if someone benefits from helping others or not. Look at the big picture rather than that individual. Someone was helped and their lives maybe better because of it. We should stop being crabs in a bucket and support each other's endeavors, especially if the purpose is to help people out.