The need for an Online Social Revolution

(Image: www.marksanborn.com)

As many have noticed lately, there is a group of online activists who have something to say (sometimes discussing important and meaningful issues and sometimes nothing outside of a reflection of serious egos). Our online activism is reaching a substantial level. We discuss politics, human rights violations, feminism, historical debates, civil wars, economics etc. And we are generally writing, which is a good start. What concerns me though is the issue of the focus on the need for political change as a stand-alone need. Yes, we all know that the government has to go one way or another and we agree that these guys have messed up big time. But do we also know that during the 20 plus years of the NCP rule, very worrying phenomena have emerged (specifically in relation to our online friends) i.e. Ego mania, social/online bullying and Credit Hunger?

These are things that will definitely not automatically disappear with the end of the NCP. Have you noticed that when someone makes any effort to raise an issue or work on change in the country online, she or he gets a multitude of criticisms and attacks like they shouldn’t dare come into the space of the few elite who know how to say the right things and use the right medium? These are sure tell signs of egomania. I am sure you or a friend of yours has been subjected to this online battering! So you post your opinion on a political matter, your nice friends click the like button and give a few cheers; then the rest sneak in and start their public Facebook/twitter bullying! You get asked, do you know what you are talking about? What are you doing that makes you worth writing this opinion? Of course you think this way and that’s because you are the descendant of this and that. Give us your CV of activism. It’s endless and to be honest real scary! Ok so I may not write well, I may not be doing more than you, but at the end of the day respect the fact that in my own way I am “doing” something here! We are all in this together.

This brings me to the issue of Credit Hunger; well that’s a whole other issue in itself. We complain and rightly criticize opposition parties for their immense inattentive egos. But what have also been emerging lately is our alternative political activists who all believe they are alone in knowing the right track for Sudan and what “needs” to be done for democratic change to happen. That bunch press the delete button on all things that look like “political parties” and decided to re-invent the wheel, which is a philosophy and approach in itself; but if opposition leaders got their egos after decades of working in politics, shouldn’t we be worried about our egos that are getting bigger after less than 5 years of online political activism?

So I leave the question to you, how do we plan on dealing with the new social landscape of online Sudan once, and hopefully very soon, this country gets rid of the NCP? How do we plan on bridging this gap? How do we learn to actually “listen” to one another and really know that we are in this together and we can’t do this alone? And how do we dare move from our laptops to the actual streets of Sudan, where all the real action is?

Dalhia Al Roubi is an Advocacy and Communications Specialist living in Khartoum.