Save the world, but don’t hurt yourself trying

Not really

Nowadays, it’s extremely common to see chains on Twitter and Facebook. They’re quite similar to the 90′s version of chains that asked you to resend this email to all your contacts or Microsoft would kill Hotmail (Wouldn’t that have been nice?), but where the 90s chains have left off (threats of impending doom) these new chains encourage you to do so (You don’t want to see the Tazmanian Devil extinct, do you?).

Today’s spam chains make the reader believe that “Every time you ReTweet this, ${company} will donate 0.01 cents towards ${noblecause}.”. At the end of the day, the company gets millions of RTs, donates a 20 usd and calls it a day, and millions of users think they did something noble. And they’re wrong.

But what made me write today isn’t ${company} donating towards ${noblecause}, but users believing that changing their picture to green, orange or a cartoon will make a difference in the world.

Change your default facebook picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on facebook. Join the fight against child abuse, and invite your friend to do the same.

I'm guilty of a few of these

Wait, what?! How does changing your profile picture help abused kids? Oh, right. It doesn’t. You need to actually take action beyond RTs, Likes and changing your picture to actually help a child, and that requires an effort.

Want to raise awareness? That’s fine. But awareness only gets you so far. You need to actually look for the cure.

Sold for $1000USD to John Katzman, A.K.A @1_Fast_TC

That right there is the kmobs Android Beanie. And while the hat’s awesome, and kmobs is a great guy, the only reason it went for $1000USD is because of the cause: Komen for the Cure, a foundation researching a cure for Breast Cancer, and because the Android Community is great.

In TechCrunch’s “The Times, they aren’t a-changin’” Paul highlighted:

“The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece. The next biggest Darfur charity on Facebook has 22,073 members, who have donated an average of thirty-five cents. Help Save Darfur has 2,797 members, who have given, on average, fifteen cents.“

Thirty-five cents. Fifteen cents. Nine cents. That’s the average donation, and it’s only because lazy members think that “Liking” the page made them think they were helping the goal, when in fact, they probably dragged it down while thinking they helped towards the “noble cause”.

So the next time you want to save a tree, a cow, a child or your favorite TV show, don’t just retweet. Do something. Donate towards the cause, plant a tree, report abusive parents, donate toys to abused children (‘Tis the season to keep on givin’ after all), do whatever you want, but Do something. Don’t just ‘Like this’.