People seemingly tend to believe what they read on the Internet, too lazy to do much further research into a topic showcased in big, bold letters in the headline of an article. Due to people’s laziness and quite often accepting what’s on the Internet as truth, a lot of us carry around false information, confident in its validity because this information was published online. Perhaps we don’t question what is being fed to us by the media nearly enough. So why not start our line of questioning at a particular image often portrayed by different sources of the media—the selfless reasoning behind why environmentalists fight to save the environment. Now, environmentalists, I don’t doubt, are avid advocates of maintaining the environment in a healthy way and lovers of nature, but could there be more behind this cheery look of a stereotypical good citizen? Environmentalists are very enthusiastic about helping the environment, some more than others…one made my friend cry once because she didn’t throw her food in the recycling bin, but in the trash bin instead, and another I personally saw hug a tree at the end of a field trip in the woods and cry, weeping “I love you, tree!” There are the extreme, borderline pushy environmentalists like the one my friend encountered with the recycling bin and then there are the chill, laid-back type of environmentalists. But don’t be fooled by the chill look of the latter environmentalist…because behind that lazy smile and those gentle eyes hides a frantic person—one jittering like someone who had five too many shots of espresso, being an absolute nervous wreck—just lodged in the back of the environmentalist’s mind, waiting to come out when a tree nearby is cut down. There’s a reason behind this locked away fear, though. The media makes it look like environmentalists want to save the environment because they genuinely care about Mother Earth’s wellbeing and want to see living things flourish, but perhaps this is just a cover-story to hide the real incentive just hiding behind the leaves and branches of the forest, hidden away from the public’s view. What if environmentalists are just very superstitious people that hold a lot of weight to the phrase — “Knock on wood”? Suddenly it is winter and the leaves of the trees have fallen and now the truth has been revealed—environmentalists don’t want people to cut down trees because then there is less available wood to knock on when they are out and about and don’t want to jinx themselves. Could having the media plant within the brains of people this motive of supposedly wanting to see life flourish benefit the environmentalists in two ways? Could these positive and humanitarian motives of environmentalists that the media inspire be not only hiding the true incentive of environmentalists, shielding away how superstitious they really are from the world, but also make them appear as responsible, caring, “good citizens,” as well?
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Oxford Emory chapter.