Countering Slacktivism Through the Subscription Box Model
This post is part of a series where we’ll explore how technology can change our perspective by writing and designing novel products every week this year.
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Every now and then we find ourselves wanting to be part of a new thing — whether it be a new city, a new subculture, or even a new relationship.
Usually, however, we immediately get lost. The deluge of new things leave us to reconsider whether the new passion is worth pursuing. The first step to getting involved is the first step to falling out of love.
The plethora of monthly subscription boxes reflects our attempt to make more accessible the infinite subcultures that pervades our world. Simultaneously, it taps into our penchant for laziness. Continuing to replace your toothbrush or water filter is so much easier when it’s delivered to your door.
But though there are many subcultures, there are also universal ones. Civic engagement, for example, is a culture we should all be enveloped in.
Slacktivism
Adjacent to subscription boxes, the internet has made it all too easy to create a pastiche of civic engagement. A like for this cause, a hashtag to support this vision, a comment to refute someone wrong on the internet.
Slacktivism, or if you’re more risque: moral masturbation, is the action of signaling virtue without causing much change. Like fake designer goods, it's dangerous because it tricks us into thinking that we have something that we don’t — and as a result, we miss out on the real thing.
By using the model of subscription boxes: easy to join and continuing engagement, we can encourage a culture of civic engagement.
Agora
Agora is a subscription service that sends out weekly civic engagement experiences (e.g. volunteering and canvassing events) every month to help you connect with your local city and the people in it. Additionally, more than just a volunteer opportunity search engine, Agora helps you to build deep relationships with people in your community by placing you in both a persistent cohort, and rotating ones. Finally, it helps you keep track of your impact by continuing the conversation past the event.
Subscription
Unlike other platforms, Agora simplifies the process of connecting by removing the barrier of searching. Instead of having to search for your next event every time it comes to mind, Agora automatically sends a custom-tailored list of events for you to participate in throughout the month.
Since you automatically receive an invite to the event, you’re more likely to stay consistent with your engagement. Engagement with your community already takes time, so reducing the time spent around it is important.
Additionally, by having a consistent roster, Agora can distribute volunteers in a more equal manner. A organization’s success should not be contingent on its popularity and marketing dollars. By becoming a central hub, Agora can help organizations of all sizes find the number of volunteers they need. From your perspective, this is beneficial since it introduces you to new organizations and causes that are related to your known passions.
Cohorts
More important than just connecting you to an organization, Agora connects you with other people. Unless you’re extremely extroverted, volunteering at a new organization can be daunting. To solve this, Agora puts you in a core group of people of the same experience level to be with you at every event. Familiar faces can ground you in a new situation. In fact it dovetails nicely since relationships are welded through shared experiences. As a result, this strategy will create a close-knit community that keeps you even more engaged through the built friendship.
At the same time, just as it is important to build a deep relationship, it is equally important to connect with other people and diversify perspective. To that end, at every event, your group will be paired with other groups.
Nobody wants to disappoint their friends. By focusing on connecting people, Agora increases the likelihood of continual participation. Another way to put it: the effect is two-fold: a benefit for each individual — helping you to meet people, and a benefit for the community — helping them get consistent volunteers.
Profile
It’s easy to say that you want to be more engaged with your city or a cause, but it’s a lot harder to commit. Having a consistent opportunity to be involved with friends lowers the barrier of participating, but at the end of the day participation is on the individual. Knowing you are making a difference is a powerful motivation.
Seeing a list of places where you’ve volunteered at helps you recall the missions you’ve participated in. Seeing that you’ve kept your promise and put action to where your heart lies is empowering. Consistency is at the core of the real change that engagement can bring, not only in individuals, but also in the causes that they participated in.
More importantly, profiles themselves can be a community builder. When you volunteer somewhere, you have the opportunity to make that information public. In demonstrating your participation you encourage others to do the same. On the flip side, when others participate after you, you can see the mission continues further, reminding you that you’re part of a larger endeavour.
Through the feedback loop created by all users, we inspire non-users to join in. Before Instagram, taking photos of food was uncommon. But as more people joined the phenomenon it became normalized. What if persistent civic engagement becomes normalized?
Future Avenues to Consider
So far we’ve described how to get people to be more engaged. But we should also consider the entire lifecycle, since we’re building for long-term engagement and results.
For example, we can consider how Agora can be used on the organization’s side. By quantifying how consistent a person is involved, we can increase the trust between volunteers and organizations. With the increase in trust, organizations can provide greater and more satisfying responsibilities for the individual, while at the same time accruing more helpful volunteers.
Similarly, one of the biggest apprehensions with volunteering in a new place is the looming question as to whether helping would contribute meaningfully. Providing a platform where users can provide feedback to opportunities can solidify the value that an organization provides for the larger community and the individual, as well as helping institutions improve their practice. Though Yelp doesn’t make the food and experience at a restaurant better, it does solidify the restaurant’s value and encourage others to come.
TL;DR
At the end of the day, civic engagement is just means to an end. It’s a tool to help build stronger communities. This is especially important today, where transience and personal gain is the norm. It’s easy to forget that we’re part of something bigger.
More than just a way to find a place to volunteer, Agora aims to build deep and positive communities through persistent engagement. Agora does this by providing sustained opportunities to help people commit to being a positive agent. Additionally, it helps participants forge deep meaningful relationships with other volunteers and organizations. By focusing on people’s connection, we create a sense of rootedness and investment that help people feel like they belong.
“Community is constituted by physical proximity, shared concerns, real consequences, and common responsibilities” — Sherry Turkle, Alone Together
P.s. Yes, one can argue that writing an article on Medium is Slacktivism.Yes, in a way this is a digital Service Club. Go Interact Club!
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Illustration by Pablo Stanley.
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
