Public concern is approaching an all-time high, after another day passed where a Facebook user hasn't changed his cover picture or posted a status denouncing xenophobia and condemning the series of hate crimes that have recently hit South Africa's population.
According to everyone on his friend list 24-year-old Jake Henderson has not changed his profile picture to a picture of a bleeding Africa, taken the effort to condemn the attacks in a lengthy post that contains a hashtag, or even posted a link where other people but him can donate to Aid groups working in the affected areas.
"It's certainly troubling," said a source close to Henderson who agreed to speak to reporters under anonymity. "When I heard about the attacks, the first thing I did was let everyone be sure I was firmly against the butchering of Nigerian immigrants. I mean, without my profile picture being 'xeNOphobia', what's to stop everyone suspecting I might be in favour of burning ten-year-old Malawian children to death? What's to stop my friends and family thinking I'm an insane racist psychopath who secretly revels in the saturation of violent imagery our newsfeeds are experiencing?"
This is not the first time difficult and dark questions have been raised about young Henderson's potentially terrible political motives. According to other facebook users, they've never seen him denounce many other obviously-terrible and universally reviled hate crimes and acts of barbarism.
"Really, I don't know what Jake's deal is," said another member of his friendgroup. "To this day, I've never seen him publically condemn homophobia, racism, or the various examples of ethnic cleansing and genocide that pepper our world's history. How can I be sure he doesn't have a closet full of Nazi regalia if he doesn't let us all know using one single picture that he isn't an antisemitic dick?"
And according to machete-wielding xenophobes on the street, decisions like Henderson's can have dire consequences.
"I walked past this group of friendly, hard working, differently-accented people who live in my area and the first thing I did was check my phone to see how much public outrage there was against xenophobia," said one 21-year-old KZN dweller. "Unless this unknown person living halfway across the world lets me know that he's against the senseless slaughter of innocents, well, how can we possibly expect me not to lynch some lazy job-thieves?"
Alas, just like with those photos of emaciated Somali children, or pictures of bald-headed children, until people like Henderson do their part to stop xenophobia, it - just like world hunger, famine and cancer - will continue to ravage our world.
