At roughly 8 pm tonight (or I guess I should say August 31st, since this will undoubtedly post the next day,) The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog mentioned a campaign where a vaccine is donated to a child in an underdeveloped country for every comment made on participating blogs. Known as the Shot@Life campaign, they feature a different post every day for a month, from different bloggers.
Which is to say, they did – this was for the month of August. At 9 pm, I’d received the link from her. And I’m happy to say that I managed to comment on every post before midnight rolled around (not even sure if that was the deadline or not.) Granted, these could barely be called comments, at least by my standards – I am not of the Facebook generation and, when I decide to respond to a post, it’s because I have something meaningful (to me, anyway) to contribute. I dearly hate the five word, vapid approval comments. I did little more than that just now – 31 comments in three hours, and that was after reading each post – but I did at least manage to address the content itself in each. [And as I just discovered, The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog made it too!]
Do campaigns like this really accomplish anything? Is this more an advertising gimmick than a worthwhile pursuit? Why require comments? Just fucking donate the vaccines and quit playing games. It’s all kind of stupid, really, but it certainly can’t hurt to participate. I just despise the ploy where some company claims to donate .05 cents (yes I wrote that correctly) to some cause for every product they sell, as if this is a magnanimous gesture on their part rather than an attempt to manipulate greater sales. The best thing to do in such situations is to buy the competitor’s product and donate a dollar directly to the cause itself. Or, to any cause which can be found easily on a sidebar someplace…
But I also have to say that I really, really dislike parenting blogs. Seriously, they’re not profound, insightful, surprising, or thought-provoking (not like slug sex, for sure) – they’re almost always overrun with the trials and joys of parenthood, as if this is something new or unique. It’s cool to be proud of your kids, commendable really, but even as a shared experience it doesn’t offer much. Others may like such posts, and that’s fine – I just find them tiresome.
Still better than music blogs, though…