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."
