Slactivism is the name for clicking a Facebook like button, sharing some cause on your social

media, signing an online petition, or taking some other action that accomplishes nothing

in the real world, but makes you feel good for having done something.

Does slactivism actually help anything?

Or is it even possible that it has a measurably harmful effect?

Slactivism is up next, Unskeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Slactivism Raising Awareness

Slactivism is a portmanteau of slacker activism.

Everyone likes to think they're being an activist.

The internet is bursting at the seams with ways to make this easy.

Click a Facebook like button, sign an online petition, retweet a shocking photograph.

Such forms of armchair activism almost never accomplish anything.

At their best, most of them are waste to your time, a pointless click of the mouse.

But at their worst, they can steal millions of dollars from armchair activists who are

persuaded to donate actual money to what they're told is some useful cause.

I remember a day in the 1980s when I was driving through a depressed area of Los Angeles,

and there was a billboard advertising, Speak Out Against Racism, with a 976 phone number.

These are premium rate phone numbers where the owner receives a portion of the caller's

bill for the call.

Out of curiosity, I noted the number and called it later, and all it was was a solicitation

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