# i pit a certain fac\[e\]book womens group and thier "awareness campaign"..... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 9, 2010, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243 "2010-01-09T03:20:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2010, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/61 "2010-01-09T22:30:34Z")
[Link.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokes) > [@torie](#): > > You’re conveniently ignoring a instance of when it did. ---
**Author:** ![Xan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ac8455/32.png) [@Xan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2010, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/62 "2010-01-09T22:33:00Z")
> [@torie](#): > > Several of my friends used the game as a jumping off point to post links to several resources where you could sign up to donate money or time. I’m willing to bet they weren’t the only ones. No one on my friends list did that. ---
**Author:** ![torie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@torie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/torie)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/63 "2010-01-09T22:36:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > [Link.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokes) K. > [@Xan](#): > > No one on my friends list did that. Well, I’m sorry everyone in the world didn’t. It doesn’t mean that for some people in some places, it didn’t do just a tiny bit of good. Even if it didn’t, it didn’t do any _harm_. At least people had a bit of fun. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/64 "2010-01-09T22:43:13Z")
> [@torie](#): > > K. > > Well, I’m sorry everyone in the world didn’t. It doesn’t mean that for some people in some places, it didn’t do just a tiny bit of good. Even if it didn’t, it didn’t do any _harm_. At least people had a bit of fun. Would they have had as much fun without the specious link to breast cancer? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2010, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/65 "2010-01-09T22:50:49Z")
I don’t believe this really began as an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer. I think it originated as either an attempt to get women to talk about their lingerie in public or an attempt to determine whether women would voluntarily share fairly intimate information over Facebook just because it was the current trend. If it was sincerely intended to raise awareness of breast cancer than it’s got to be one of the stupidest and least effective ways of doing so ever devised. Most of the people posting colors on my Facebook friends feed obviously didn’t have any idea it was supposed to be related to breast cancer or even to their bra color. Many of those reading these status updates are likewise UNaware of what it means. I had to Google to find out what was going on, and the first few results I got were only about bra color and said nothing about breast cancer. I changed my status to “Lamia is not posting her bra color, no matter what the current fad is” yesterday and several of my friends replied thanking me for explaining what the color thing was about. Even after I found out about the supposed breast cancer connection, I can’t say my awareness was raised. It’s not like I’d never heard of breast cancer before. I now know the colors of several friends’ bras, but I know absolutely nothing about breast cancer that I didn’t know a couple of days ago. The only thing this has really made me think about is the Stuff White People Like entry on [awareness](http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/18-awareness/): > [@](#): > > Raising awareness is also awesome because once you raise awareness to an acceptable, aribtrary level, you can just back off and say “Bam! did my part. Now it’s your turn. Fix it.” > > So to summarize – you get all the benefits of helping (self satisfaction, telling other people) but no need for difficult decisions or the ensuing criticism (how do you criticize awareness?). Once again, white people find a way to score that sweet double victory. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2010, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/66 "2010-01-09T23:19:01Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Would they have had as much fun without the specious link to breast cancer? No; nor would they have the smug feeling of moral superiority that can be had so cheaply these days. ---
**Author:** ![dre2xl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/34f0e0/32.png) [@dre2xl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dre2xl)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/67 "2010-01-10T00:15:53Z")
Well, ultimately, for all the complaints about this being useless, the stated purpose of the campaign, “awareness” part has definitely worked. I doubt there is an Internet savvy person who doesn’t know this month is breast cancer awareness month by now. Edit: addendum: I did do a quick check. I’m betting most of my female friends did as well. If this catches one case of cancer – well – good. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/68 "2010-01-10T00:32:09Z")
> [@dre2xl](#): > > Well, ultimately, for all the complaints about this being useless, the stated purpose of the campaign, “awareness” part has definitely worked. I doubt there is an Internet savvy person who doesn’t know this month is breast cancer awareness month by now. > > Edit: addendum: I did do a quick check. I’m betting most of my female friends did as well. If this catches one case of cancer – well – good. Thank ghod they went this route, instead of doing something vague and mysterious…like reminding people directly that this was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![dre2xl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/34f0e0/32.png) [@dre2xl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dre2xl)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/69 "2010-01-10T00:34:39Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Thank ghod they went this route, instead of doing something vague and mysterious…like reminding people directly that this was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. :rolleyes: The way it got spread was via a Facebook e-mail to female friends, along the lines of, “let’s do this fun little thing for breast cancer awareness month and also to stupefy your male friends.” I got several of those e-mails on that day. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/70 "2010-01-10T00:50:21Z")
> [@dre2xl](#): > > I doubt there is an Internet savvy person who doesn’t know this month is breast cancer awareness month by now. Hmmm, I wonder if this counts. I did not know this. Until this post. ---
**Author:** ![Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nicolas_Bourbaki)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/71 "2010-01-10T00:53:11Z")
How th’ fuck is this MORE retarded than having an anything _awareness month_? It was viral, dude. Welcome to web 2.0. If you ask me, what marginalizes breast cancer is the fact that we gave it National Oatmeal Month’s sloppy seconds. The only way to really raise awareness is to make a whole new month from scratch. Write your congressman (or change your facebook status) TODAY about adding Breastober to the calendar! ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/72 "2010-01-10T01:14:00Z")
> [@dre2xl](#): > > Well, ultimately, for all the complaints about this being useless, the stated purpose of the campaign, “awareness” part has definitely worked. I doubt there is an Internet savvy person who doesn’t know this month is breast cancer awareness month by now. > [@Ludovic](#): > > Hmmm, I wonder if this counts. I did not know this. Until this post. Same here. I thought it was in October. Wait, it IS in October. I was genuinely confused for a moment there, but see [here](http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_6x_National_Breast_Cancer_Awareness_Month.asp) and [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Breast_Cancer_Awareness_Month). So if the goal of this color status business was to promote awareness of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month then it’s done a pretty poor job of it. Google tells me that January is actually Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, so maybe we gals should have been posting the color of our underpants. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![dre2xl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/34f0e0/32.png) [@dre2xl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dre2xl)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/73 "2010-01-10T02:41:07Z")
LOL. I been taken. 😃 Still, it was for a good cause, and from the sounds of things, it did do some good. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jacquilynne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jacquilynne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacquilynne)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/74 "2010-01-10T15:21:12Z")
Despite the existence of copy and paste, internet memes are a bit like a very large game of telephone. It’s hard to say what the motivation was of the person who started the meme. It may be that they genuinely had a useful awareness message to pass along via PM, and adding the bra color / status thing was meant to help the spread. Certainly a whole bunch of friends who do not otherwise spam my Facebook inbasket did so in this case, so it worked on that level. On the other hand, if there ever was one, the advocacy / awareness message was largely lost and though I got several different versions of the request to post my bra color, none of them had more than a one liner about breast cancer in them with no real information. Of course, it also may be that somebody just wanted to see if they could start a meme and added the breast cancer awareness line because they knew it would get people who wouldn’t otherwise participate to post. At this point, nobody knows who started it, what their reasoning was, what their original message was, who altered it along the way or much of anything else. The end result was a silly little game that didn’t actually hurt anybody and probably didn’t actually help anybody, either, but hey, might have. Within the span of goods and evils (and there are definitely both) associated with the Breast Cancer Industrial Complex, this one is pretty much purely neutral. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/75 "2010-01-10T16:55:03Z")
> [@jacquilynne](#): > > At this point, nobody knows who started it, what their reasoning was, what their original message was, who altered it along the way or much of anything else. The end result was a silly little game that didn’t actually hurt anybody and probably didn’t actually help anybody, either, but hey, might have. I guess that depends on what you mean by “hurt”. It didn’t cause physical harm to anybody, but some breast cancer survivors or friends/family of breast cancer victims might have been offended to see the disease trivialized by a “silly little game”. It’s also rather insensitive to women who’ve had mastectomies, as [this blogger and breast cancer survivor](http://www.blogher.com/name-awareness-fb-color-meme) explains. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/76 "2010-01-10T19:44:58Z")
Feces. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/77 "2010-01-10T19:47:33Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I guess that depends on what you mean by “hurt”. It didn’t cause physical harm to anybody, but some breast cancer survivors or friends/family of breast cancer victims might have been offended to see the disease trivialized by a “silly little game”. It’s also rather insensitive to women who’ve had mastectomies, as [this blogger and breast cancer survivor](http://www.blogher.com/name-awareness-fb-color-meme) explains. And other survivors and their friends and family felt that the awareness of the cause and show of solidarity was inspiring. If you are so thin skinned to find posts on Facebook offensive, you really need to stay off Facebook, where people post all sorts of offensive things (my favorite was the person I hid due to being an anti-vaxxer). ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/78 "2010-01-10T20:42:10Z")
> [@MoodIndigo1](#): > > Indigo. > > So, what colour is your jockstrap, guys? Sort of a yellowish brown? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/79 "2010-01-10T21:00:50Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > And other survivors and their friends and family felt that the awareness of the cause and show of solidarity was inspiring. I was responding to a claim that this “silly little game” didn’t hurt anybody. The woman writing the blog I linked to is somebody, isn’t she? I didn’t say that no one could possibly have enjoyed it or that all survivors/loved ones would be offended by it. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2010, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243/80 "2010-01-10T21:16:00Z")
What, women should avoid talking about their bras because a breastless woman might get offended? Look, sometimes shitty things happen to people and it sucks but the world moves on. It’s nice that her friends worked really hard to keep the knowledge that other women still have boobs but really, she’s going to need to adjust to the fact that people still wear bras, talk about bras and may even post their bra color on facebook. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-a-certain-fac-e-book-womens-group-and-thier-awareness-campaign/524243.md?page=5)