By now even the dullest of an individual knows of the plight of the 200+ Nigeria girls and most have gotten their info from some form of social media, the #Hashtag, if you will.

Monday I dedicated the day to post on Nigeria and Boko haram to help my readers grasp what was actually happening……..and I hate to say it but my endeavor was a bust….probably because I did not use the #Hash tag……….and as a result few read my posts and those that did appeared to be disinterested.

I am not a big supporter of social media….I do use Twitter but for news sources only and I do not trust facebook so I do not have an account……I tried to reason why NO one seemed interested in my post or my analysis……..and then I read something that I agree with totally……

You’ve no doubt come across the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, designed to draw attention to the plight of Nigeria’s kidnapped girls. DA Lovell has, too, but after a few initial retweets, she’s giving it a rest, she writes at the Root. The problem is that hashtag activism like this might raise awareness on a superficial level, but it also gives people “a false sense of accomplishment,” writes Lovell. “It makes us feel as if the job is done, thereby keeping us from taking a course of action that may be more effective in the long term.”

So what’s a concerned citizen to do instead? Lovell suggests taking the time to truly educate yourself about what’s happening in Nigeria and neighboring countries, or at least start following people and groups that “are doing work on the ground so you know what’s happening even after Twitter moves on to the next trending topic.” Problems like this need substantive changes, and a mindless retweet doesn’t cut it. At Campare Afrique, Jumoke Balogun sees a bigger problem: All those tweets give the US and other Western governments that much more excuse to expand their military presence in Africa, and “this is not good.” But at the Independent, Felicity Morse rounds up the good and the bad and comes down on the side of hashtag activism because of its ability to get the mass media to focus on a neglected subject. It’s a force that “is only going to get more powerful in the future,” she writes. “It’s not to be sniffed at.”

I hate it but I feel like the American public is just not sharp enough to handle more than one issue at a time……..and then i think about something a friend in Mali told me when I was there so many years ago…..”No one cares about sub-Saharan Africa but sub-Saharan Africans”…….I now realize what he was saying…so sad.