A video of a woman in California pretending to help board up a store window went viral Monday after it was shared on Twitter. “This lady stopped someone boarding up a store in Santa Monica so she could hold the drill for a picture, then drove away. Please don’t do this,” the post read. Commenters including a staff member from The New York Times identified the woman as Fiona Moriarty-McLaughlin, a writer for the conservative Washington Examiner.
In the video, Moriarty-Mclaughlin can be seen taking a drill from a volunteer, posing with it to have her photo taken, then proceeding to run into her Mercedes-Benz. The video prompted extreme backlash, resulting in her deleting her social media account. Viewers are calling it an example of “performative activism,” a form of activism in which individuals post or pretend to support a cause in order to gain a following or make themselves look better to others. It’s a form of hypocrisy, because these people don’t actually care about the cause. Continue reading.