AKA armchair activism, AKA passive-aggressive picketing, AKA keyboard marching, AKA
ironic insurgency.
Fauxpaigning is standing on a soapbox when you can't be fucked finding a soapbox, lifting your
feet to stand on a metaphorical
box you don't have, raising your voice, or dealing with crowds. Especially when your Macbook is like, RIGHT THERE.
Fauxpaigning is what hipsters, indie kids, or any 20-something attempting to appear
cool and aloof to the opposite sex do to appear politically active, but without having to do anything at all.
Due to the effort factor and risk of losing
one's trademark
cool by actually getting out there in the name of a cause or believing in something, fauxpaigning is limited only to tweets,
facebook statuses, and
trolling comments on the Guardian, Huffington Post and the Daily Show websites, much to the annoyance of everyone else whose brainspace and eye-real estate is corrupted by such lethargic drivel.
More often than not, fauxpaigning takes the form of preaching your political outlook to everyone who you are online friends with.
Said friends no doubt have a similar political outlook, thus creating a large, self-sufficient, symbiotic circle jerk of electronic affirmations where no minds actually get changed and nothing decent is being achieved.
Fauxpaigning is effectively combated by
trolling. Not to be confused with the current Occupy movement, which is actually doing something. They're just not quite sure what it is yet.
"If 1000 men with 1000 facebook friends sent 1000 politically-themed status updates, you'd have the same effect as the Million
Man March. Times 1000."
"... I'm sorry, what?"
"
People shouldn't be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people, especially if their status that quotes this has over 10 'likes'."
"Time to hit the fauxpaign trail!"
"You mean stay in your room and masturbate?"
"YES"
"During times of universal
facebook, telling the twitter becomes a revolutionary act."
"I've had a hard
day fauxpaigning, yet I still feel so empty and hollow. Oh well, Community is on."
