Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Vanity or raised awareness? Considering the no make up selfie

Anyone close to the UK facebook environment will have been spammed with no make up selfies these past 24 hours. Using the principle of the neknominations that caused an insufferable amount of debate last month, someone had the idea to take a selfie without make up, nominate others to do the same and get a lot of bare faces out there in order to raise awareness for breast cancer. Considering that nobody was ever going to participate in this if it meant posting pictures of clevages I think that is a sweet little idea. I feel naive for thinking the no make up selfies were going to get on my nerves. That was before each and every person decided to comment on what they think is the best way to raise awareness, and of course for most people it's not the no make up selfie. Gosh...

Obviously, because people are annoying and love complaining more than just leaving things be, the no make up selfies caused even more rage on my news feed today than the neknominations last month. Excuse me for thinking that someone's stupid idea on facebook doesn't need to be commented on by each and every member on social media. If someone thinks it's fun to down a pint and film it I couldn't care less although I obviously think it's stupid. No make up selfies are making neknominations look like a beginner's problem though. My news feed is littered with people complaining about the vanity of the selfies and people making the same joke about them over and over again. So I get it, half of my friends participate for whatever reason, whether it's vanity or a philathrophic ambition, and the other half abuses those who did. 

I genuinely don't have a stance in this. I neither took a no make up selfie nor laughed about those who did. It is absolutely clear to me that this is a PR stunt to put breast cancer on the radar, and obviously a very successful one, too. It could have been "take a photo of a strawberry and upload it to facebook to raise awareness for breast cancer" or "change your profile picture to a photo of Eddie Murphy to raise awareness for breast cancer". Fact is, with the amount of people participating, one little thing was achieved: awareness for breast cancer was raised! Nobody's talking about anything but breast cancer awareness and what's the right way to raise it. Are people just stupid or did they miss that however ridiculous this idea might be the plan totally went through and everybody's now thinking about breast cancer? 

What I find way more annoying than seeing 1001 selfies is people not getting this and complaining about how the people taking a picture haven't donated yet, or people taking the selfie and stating how much they've donated already. So I have to pay before I upload my selfie? Hell no! I donate but I don't donate to every issue I would like to change. Because I can't. I have no money right now and I haven't donated money to cancer research before but I am still entitled to raise awareness for the issue because it's in my heart just as much as in many others. I love dogs but never gave a penny to a shelter, and I won't do that as long as people are starving at the same time. I have never donated money to Kenyan kids either but I still want them to have a better life. If anything I can do will make people think about it I will do it, even if I'm not giving anything myself. I went to Kenya and built a school for them, taught there and brought clothes with me but never spent a single penny on them. Why not? Because it wouldn't have done anything. Upon my return though my story hopefully encouraged people to sponsor children. Mission accomplished!

Besides the fact that I don't give a crap at all about why people do what they do on facebook I just can't help but be more annoyed at people having to talk everything down that has ever happened in the world rather than just waiting those one or two days until the hype comes to a natural end. In real life it's always better to say nothing if you can't say anything nice and on social media it shouldn't be different. As far as I'm concerned people can take no make up selfies all the time, out of vanity, to raise awareness for cancer or to sell butt plugs, and it wouldn't annoy me. Post your breakfast, lunch and dinner if you enjoy it; it's everybody's own decision. If someone actively takes part in a cyber community to raise awareness for an issue close to our hearts I don't mind the way, shape or form. The only thing we know is that whoever's idea this was, it worked. There will be more donations, more check ups and more awareness as a result of this, and for that I can live with two days of bare faces... and annoying complainers. 

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