Why Show Support By Actually Doing Something When You Can Make A Half

Currently Listening To: Atlantis To Interzone (Crystal Castles Remix) by Klaxons
I was pondering this while roaming the Magic Kingdom, and was reminded while perusing myspace today. The thing that reminded me on myspace was a bulletin I saw about loving your mom. That's a good cause, right? Moms do a lot of work, and they need a lot of appreciation, most of which they don't get. But the last line had something to do with "If you don't repost this, you obviously don't care if your mom dies or not". TOTALLY unnecesary. You got this nice, "always consider what your mom does for you" little piece of glurge, and then BAM! The obligatory repost threat. I cannot, cannot, cannot stand the repost threats. I don't care if I'm threatened with a year of bad luck, eternal damnation ('appreciate Jesus' posts) or 'you don't love your mom' hanging over my head, it just gets old. That is the one thing that keeps myspace from achieving interweb greatness in my mind: the plebes.

...But that's not the worst. What REALLY got me on about this rant is the Red campaign. You've probably seen the (red) shirts and iPods and countless other goodies you can buy. I will say, the idea behind Product Red is incredibly noble and worthwhile. Fighting AIDS and malaria and TB in Africa is a great cause. But everything else they stand for isn't. And when I say "everything else they stand for", I mean "being a stuck-up asshole in love iwth him or her self". People who own these shirts and iPods and whatever else get the feeling, upon recieving the item, that they and they alone have just saved the world. While the rest of us were just sitting on our asses reading whiny diatrabes on the internet, these people were out there making a difference; these people BOUGHT A T-SHIRT. That means they care. Oh yes, they care. Caring isn't directly donating money to these causes, no sir! You do not care unless your money goes to two places. Ten percent goes to these dying children in Africa, while the rest fuels sweatshops in southeast Asia (those kids don't matter) and the pockets of the shareholders of the GAP and Apple (and yes, I a ma hypocrite, considering I own products from both). So while you sit there in your living room, these people are doing something: they're sitting in THEIR living rooms wearing t-shirts.

If you need a product to make more tangible the fact that you care, you're in it for all the wrong reasons. Charity isn't meant to be trendy. It's meant to be charitable.

And in much less important/relevant news, I was rudely forced to update several accounts today. Both my blogger and my flickr accounts forced me to update to the most current... things. The beta thingy. What can I say, I tend to resist change. Frustration abounds. I'm not sure how I feel about this new Blogger.