A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about Mike the Tiger (for those of you South Louisianans living under a rock, he’s the beloved LSU mascot currently being treated for Cancer). It bothered me that everyone cared so much about the supposed “ethical treatment of Mike” that they forget that he is being taken care of by some of the world’s leading specialists. But then, just as I was about to publish it, it stopped. Everyone simply stopped talking about it. No one cared anymore. The gigantic spew of activists all became silent. So, in an effort to not create waves, I decided against its publication, relieved that people stopped talking about it.

My only issue is that the same exact thing happened not two weeks later when Harambe, the Silverback Gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, was shot in a successful attempt to save a child who had fallen into the great ape’s sanctuary. People were outraged that zoo officials made the decision to kill Harambe. Social Justice Warriors around the country banded together and created Facebook pages for PETA and reblogged Tumblr posts about how the child’s mother should be put to death, a life for a life.

With few exceptions, these were the same people who went to Mcdonalds and ordered a 20-piece McNugget the next day. These same people who cried out against the precious life of a gorilla drove past at least three dying, homeless war veterans in the streets of Baton Rouge on their way to P. F. Changs. The very people who nearly rioted on behalf of this ape’s untimely death are now silent, and honestly, it makes me sick.

It is one thing if you truly care about this issue enough to do something about it; if that statement applies to you, then this article does not. Continue to protest, continue to stand up for what you believe in, and continue to fight for what you believe is right. But if you do not truly care about something, do not pretend like you do. Stop feeding into the hype of a social issue and pretend do genuinely care about it for 126 hours before you decide it’s no longer the cool thing to do. It is insulting to those who truly care and it’s downright annoying to everyone else.

The world gives us two options: we can feed into the current issues of everyday life and look for things to annoy us in order to give us a sense of deeper, more meaningful purpose, or we can go out and actually find our purpose. It is easy to sit behind a screen and type, rather than act on those things we pretend to find appalling. But if you’d actually like to make a difference in the world, stop focusing on the things you pretend to care about and actually live.

So to wrap this up, put in perspective to my greater existential self, I did not truly care about the death of Harambe the Silverback Gorilla. And let’s be honest, unless you went out and became an animal right’s activist, neither did you.