Bell used various CNN articles for his research.
Tuesday (Sept. 17) marked the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. The once large scale, social media-driven movement has now become a forgotten memory, even for the young people who fueled the protests. In more common terms, the movement is your Facebook friend and you see that it is its birthday, so you delete it since you haven’t spoken in a year.
For those who can’t remember (or those who never cared enough), Occupy Wall Street was a grassroots, social media movement bent on raising awareness about the greed going on within the financial institutions of Wall Street… and about 100 other things. Still can’t remember? It was that thing where a bunch of people camped out in that park in New York City, but they weren’t homeless. The movement spread like wildfire on the Internet and around the globe.
Occupy “insert location here” movements were everywhere. One even took place in Columbia, S.C. and some folks compared the movement to the Arab Spring. The movement was focused on the “99 percent” and wanted everyone to be a part in the decision-making process for the group.
The group had good ideas and a good visions, just far too many of each. The movement encompassed protest for just about everything wrong ever. The groups also had a massive communication problem, despite being founded over social media. There was also that huge problem about a lot of the protesters being young—and not necessarily poor—activists. Despite all of these little issues, Occupy Wall Street managed to capture headlines and attention around the world.
Yet, today it’s all gone. No makeshift tent cities in parks. No radical Facebook event invites and nothing trending on Twitter. Why is that? The communication and group agreement hurdles? The court and police crackdowns on the camps? All of these factors of course contribute to the end of Occupy Wall Street, but the main reasons come from two things: a better economy and boredom.
Hiring has gone up in the past two years and the consumers are spending more money. Why protest good things, right?
Even though it is gone and basically forgotten, Occupy Wall Street pawned a whole new breed of young activists, utilizing new technology and social media to spread awareness about issues affecting their lives. Regardless of what you thought of the movement you have to admit: this is the first time you’ve heard about it in a long time.
