Buy Life

I applaud the effort and reasoning behind Alicia Keys' "Keep a Child Alive" campaign. But, that's as far I'll give her credit for. For those who don't understand (basically I'm addressing all three or so of my readers), Alicia Keys and an array of other celebrities including Ryan Seacrest, Justin Timberlake, Elijah Wood, and 2/3 of the Kardashian sisters (and this is just naming a few) are "dying" for those with AIDS/HIV. Sorry if that sentence is hard to read. By dying, they are basically giving up their "digital lives" until fans donate $1,000,000 to revive them. So, no Twitter or Facebook.

I wanted to blog about this sooner, but I figured that I would let some time pass to see how it goes. As it's turning out, these celebrities will be in their digital coffins for quite some time. It's been a day and $164,380 has been raised.

You might be thinking that's a good amount. One day in and they already passed 1/10 of the goal. Well, consider this. The launch of this event should have sparked enough donations to to push past 2/10 of the goal. Why? That's when the advertising is freshest in all our minds. They were either planning on the cause spreading by word or they didn't plan far enough. These celebrities deactivated all means of social media advertising. Honestly, who gets the news from TV or newspaper nowadays? Well, I still like to watch the news and occasionally pick up the New York Times, but most of my news comes from the internet. And so does many American teenagers/young adults who would be supporting these celebrities.

I honestly don't care much for the "digital lives" of these celebrities or any celebrities for that matter. I don't have a Twitter and I don't follow them on Facebook. Plus, I'm sure other people have better things to do than fret over the lack of Tweets from Ryan Seacrest.

If I could offer them an alternative, it would be this:

Keep the donation process as it is. However, add on that every purchase of one of their songs or albums (assuming they are a musician) on iTunes would have that money go towards this fight against AIDS/HIV. If they don't produce songs that we buy, they can sell personal merchandise like T-shirts for $15-20 each. This would give their fans a greater incentive in helping out. We still haven't climbed our way out of the recession. Not everyone can spit $10 minimum out of their wallets for nothing in return.