Linsanity has all but gone by the wayside. Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin had one of the best opening four?game stretches in NBA history, and then, all of a sudden, he shrunk back into relative oblivion and has since been forced - like every other professional athlete in New York - to endure the bipolarity of the city's media and fans.
Lin, who is out for the season with a torn meniscus in his knee, might very well be a trailblazer for future Asian Americans with aspirations to play professional basketball, and that's great, especially because nowadays people obsess over diversifying absolutely everything. But he's too turnover?prone and streaky to be a starter in New York, and let's face it, Knicks fans - the most fastidious, mercurial bunch in all of sports - don't even lavish some starters with positive attention, much less the bench players.
The dirge for Lin's departure from newspaper headlines rings hollow for many fans who just want the Knicks to make the playoffs. Even as a cultural phenomenon, however, Linsanity was relatively short?lived. Both the shock value and dazzling performances are gone, and the excitement generated within the Asian community has mostly fizzled out, too.
It was an interesting spectacle, though, sort of like an unplanned social experiment. And in many ways, it was important - in the way that solidarity and rallying around a cause are important.
An alternative view is that Linsanity's immediate wake proved the harbinger of a more troubling social trend. While it did not polarize the American public, Linsanity demonstrated how rapidly certain occurrences can gain serious traction. That rings a bell, doesn't it? It should. It's Kony2012.
None of us should have been surprised at the fact that the Kony2012 video went viral. The proliferation of social media has given rise to the technology?age pulpit, a platform from which myriad individuals voice their sometimes ludicrous and pharisaical opinions. So, when Kony2012 took the Internet by storm, these expert ethicists lapped it up and proceeded to lecture everyone else about its gravity.
The same people who professed their concern about the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army also, unfortunately, neglected to do research on the nature of the video. It would later come out that Invisible Children, the sponsor of that infamous video, has mismanaged donations and that the video blatantly ignored many of the ongoing human rights abuses in Uganda.
Blind activism certainly isn't anything pernicious. To some extent, though, the failure to probe beneath the surface reflects a lack of critical thinking that has pervaded American society in more substantial ways. If you don't believe me, watch a Republican presidential debate.
That being said, our susceptibility to appearances could very well provide a powerful tool for people who try to advance a particular cause with a partial or complete disregard for the truth.
Jeremy Lin is a basketball player. What he accomplishes or fails to accomplish over the course of his career will likely not influence the framework of American society. Still, his meteoric rise to stardom offers a perfect case study for something like Kony2012.
Even when he began to put up numbers characteristic of a backup point guard, Knicks fans continued to back Lin because of his great story. Even when the ugly truths about the Kony video surfaced, people still supported the "cause" because, well, how could someone possibly lie about that?
It's difficult to stomach, but the prospect of an America ensnared by putative "good" causes is very real, since our collective inclination to examine events thoroughly and hear opposing views has attenuated drastically with the advent of technology.
I believe very strongly that Kony should suffer for his actions, but the truth - the whole truth - should not be sidelined for simplicity's sake.
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Sam Gold is a freshman who has yet to declare a major. He can be reached at Samuel_L.Gold@tufts.edu.
