There are a lot of posts on Facebook and twitter about cancer, autism, the tragedy in Haiti, the civil unrest in Iran. And these are all important things that we should be aware of. Same goes for the AIDS ribbon, Violence Against Women ribbon, and all other campaigns. I have no gripe with these campaigns or the intentions behind them. I come not to busy Caesar.
The problem is that awareness, while admirable, should never be the goal. Awareness is the starting point. It may create a great sense of community to all put something in your status that condition X is really bad, and that people should copy and paste this, and then say that X% of people won't do it. But what does that change? It's an action that cost you nothing and gains nothing other than the appearance of a chain letter.
Let me give you a practical example: During a part of the morning the Sun shines between two office buildings and right into the line of sight of my desk. If I look up, I'm looking directly at the sun. My eye sends a message to my brain that it is in pain and if something is not done soon then it may incur permanent damage.
Now, what should I do?
You say, "Well G, since you're not an idiot in the clinical sense, you would either move your head or your would get up and draw the blinds so to eliminate, or at least control, the situation you find yourself in."
Exactly correct. I would take ACTION. AWARENESS only changes things when it leads to an ACTION.
Now, let's take an actual use case and run it through this algorithm. There was a recent campaign on Facebook where women would change their status to the colour of their bra. There was no announcement to the outside world of this - it was purely viral. This was all in the name of raising breast cancer awareness. So what happened was a lot of statuses like this:
Blankity McBlank black.
and the comments thread of each status had one of the following:
- Other women saying their colours also - they were "in the know" so to speak.
- People not getting it and trying to play along with a game they didn't know the rules to - The Mornington Crescent effect.
- RARELY: Someone explaining what it was about.
So what you had, in effect, were a lot of people saying colours, a lot of curiosity and eventually some enlightenment.
And then....what?
Any time you do something, always ask "And then...what?" Even if it's simple, just ask, think it through. Always ask what you're going to do with the net result of whatever action you've taken. I got an orange juice. And then...what? I drank it. if I didn't drink it, there'd no point in getting the juice. In the case of the Sun and my eye, I can keep doing the same thing every day or try to move my desk or do something so it's not an issue.
Ideally what should have happened the next day would have been this.
Blankity McBlank Yesterday I posted my bra colour for breast cancer awareness. 192,370 women in the US were diagnosed last year. Today I donated the price of that bra to the Cancer Society. You can do the same here.
The awareness raised would have been turned into something tangible: money for research and treatment. Something that would change a life.
Some might (and will, and have) say that I'm very negative, that it was just something people did and it hurt no one. And this is true. But cancer is not something nice. Cancer sucks. Cancer wrecks you, and the treatment can wreck you more. We can wear ribbons and try to put happy faces on it, but we'd be fooling ourselves.
Because it was really hard for me to put on a happy face when my father was getting treatment for his prostate cancer. And it was pretty hard on me when I found out that my uncle had the same. And I've lost two of my most beloved aunts to cancer. And I grew up in a house full of smokers.
So yeah, I got that goin' for me.
Now you're aware of my situation. What ya gonna do about it?
For a start: go here
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