Voluntourism

In a recent podcast episode, Eliza Rubin mentioned „voluntourism“ (see episode #28 for her explanation of the term). Here, I want to apply the concept to the web / internet / online space – so basically: virtual voluntourism.

In my opinion, this is what happens when someone asks people to visit a particular web address to perform some kind of supposedly good deed. For example: „Visit itunes and rate this podcast“ or „Visit facebook and like our page“, or maybe „post a comment“, „send us an email“ or „follow me“ or whatever.

I don’t need to visit google or gmail or whatever someone wants me to visit. If you like google or some other website, then that is perfectly fine with me – but don’t ask me to care about sites you seem to be fans of. You can be a fan of whatever site all you want, but don’t ask me to share your point of view. Anyway: If I were to do so because you asked me to, it would be meaningless.