Do you really take responsibility though?

If a celebrity does something good, and nobody is there to see it, should they fire their publicist?

There’s a lot of emphasis on appearances recently. Actually, it’s not that this is a recent problem, it’s that there’s so much more scrutiny of our actions and inactions now. Each of us has a platform, each of us is a brand. Where we might have remained silent on an issue in days gone by, or admitted we didn’t have all the information, today whether we’re qualified to have an opinion on an issue is less important than whether we express the right one.

And because appearances are so important, “the right one” simply means whatever most clearly signals affiliation with the “correct” group or ideal. The celebrities who appeared in this video didn’t ask themselves what it means to “take responsibility”, or whether they can live up to the promise of “no longer allowing an unchecked moment”. They didn’t question what “standing against hate” means in the context of ending racism, or even whether it helped anybody in any way that they appeared in a video dripping with fake sincerity so that the world might see how virtuous they are. They didn’t feel that they needed to. All that mattered was that they were seen to feel a certain way.