Argh argh argh these are the ones that drive me the most bonkers. I’ve seriously considered posting on my own status “look, for anyone who cares, these girls are posting the color bra they’re wearing today. It’s supposed to raise awareness for breast cancer. No, I dunno either.”
“Confusing the boys” is NOT going to help you raise awareness. For ANYTHING.
One of the reasons I hate these memes is because at least four other friends are going to post the same thing. Then I’ll be seeing the same bullshit status update from about five other people on my feed.
I also hate the ones that ask a question, but then say something like “if you post an answer in the comments, then you HAVE to repost this on your own page.” No. Fuck that. It’s my facebook page, I can post whatever I damn well please.
I had the next worse thing - a constant FMLer (as in Fuck My Life, if you’re lucky enough not to have seen this meme). Before I blocked her from my feed, I’d get fairly regular updates along the lines of:
“Have too many TV shows to watch tonight. FML”
“So tired, but have to get on a train to go on holiday in five hours. FML”
“Can’t decide which cake to eat. FML”
Related to the OP: I had to post recently about a charity event for a children’s hospice we’re doing at work. My wording was thus:
“Remember when you all changed your picture to cartoon characters? Here’s a chance to put your money where your mouse is and do something that will actually help kids - [link]”
Of course, being the insufferable git that I am, I doubt my attempt to raise awareness will garner significant support…
I don’t know if this applies to you, but I think for me it goes back to how I was brought up - my mother in particular always said “Never let the left hand know what the right is doing” - i.e. do charitable things for the sake of doing them, not for credit by boasting about them. To me the slacktivism is the complete opposite of this: do something totally meaningless that makes no difference to the cause you are supposedly supporting while gaining the credit by appearing to care and implying that those who don’t follow your sterling example don’t care.
In some ways I think maybe my attitude is a bit old-fashoned - if I donate £10 to a charity they get £10. If I donate £10 and post to facebook that I did and even one of my friends does the same, they get £20. And maybe some of these “awareness” campaigns do encourage people to do practical things to help worthwhile causes. But it still goes against the grain for me to boast about being charitable and I doubt many of the reposters do anything other than update their status.
The breast cancer ones are particularly irritating because there can hardly be a person in the western world who isn’t “aware” of breast cancer. Bowel cancer on the other hand rarely gets any facebook campaigns, despite killing a considerable number of people.
