Creating a Facebook™ Club
on Breast Cancer Awareness
Does Not
Spread Awareness and Will Not
Lead to a Cure
As I’m sure many of you know, I’ve spent my entire life trying to convince people that my opinions are right and that theirs are wrong. Among the many video game reviews, artistic perspectives, religious battles, and life choices I have made, none have been harder to impose on people than my views on trivial Facebook clubs that are out to serve no purpose other than to badger badger badger. In my life, I’ve persuaded vegetarians to eat meat and lesbians to give men another chance, but I have never convinced one soul that creating a Facebook club on Breast Cancer Awareness does not spread awareness and will not lead to a cure. Where did I go wrong? Let’s explore.
It all started one week in October, when I was manually deleting spam in my PSU webmail because they can’t find a computer science student here that’s good enough to create a spam block for the University. As I came to page nine of junk email I noticed that there were about twelve Facebook Club invitations, and all of them pertaining to “Spread Breast Cancer Awareness.” I went to these club pages, and found all of them to be nothing more than a shallow attempt by ignorant undergrads to feel good about themselves for being aware of breast cancer. No one had anything interesting to say, and everyone seemed to post with a smiley emoticons J.
Most of the messages were on how they knew someone (who knew someone) that died of breast cancer. Well now I’m sure they will rest in peace because you created a club in their memory. A club. You know, like a treehouse or intramural sport? The first problem I noticed was the shallowness of emotions running through cyberspace as they mourn their dead family or friends. For instance, here are a few select quotes from the front club page of GIRLS GONE WILD-- BREAST CANCER AWARENESS, created by Dr. Steven Williamsen of FGCU:
save my sweet rack is a cool shirt idea but how about flashing for the cure
dude i will bare my breasts for this video
The idea is that this is semi-serious. If enough people are serious, we might make this video and sell it for charity.¹ Oh, so it’s semi-serious, eh? Does that mean if you don’t go through with the project than it’s okay because you were only semi-serious? I’m sure you won’t, because fads die, and your time and dedication to your lil’ facebook club took about 1/100th the time it’ll take me to write this paper (appx 90 seconds.) None of your students or colleagues are going to go through with it either Dr. Williamsen, because you’re nothing but an online predator trying to seduce minors via facebook.
I’m a modest man, and I can say undoubtedly that was the best Breast Cancer Awareness Group on Facebook, because it has the most forum posts since Pink October, nine. That’s the problem with Facebook and the Attention-Deficit Generation; they jump up and down to support something without any emotion, dedication, or commitment; and the Internet is not a good tool to reverse these habits. If you want to start a group against breast cancer, start an organization, not a club.
Wordplay led me into episode two of Breast Cancer Awareness; I created the foil-group “Anti-Breast Cancer Awareness.” It always bugged me—why would we want to support breast cancer awareness? I bet you people who suffer from breast cancer want to be reminded every minute that they have it, don’t you? Why don’t you badger all your aunts and mothers about their illness over dinner every evening? I bet they’ll praise you for your awareness.
My psychology is different, and I think it’s safer on the psyche: Help those who already have breast cancer to momentarily forget their illness and try to enjoy life while they’re still alive. Matthew Oliphant is moron. For all you gung-ho breast cancer supporters, he was the one who came up with the big idea of telling people to make their websites pink during the month of October so people would be reminded of breast cancer. What was he trying to accomplish by this? Was he trying to make everyone who had breast cancer miserable for one month out of the year or was he trying to tell women that they should check themselves only once a year? Did you know that this was initially a JOKE he made when he sent all of his co-workers a website that was overly pink? He was dicking off at work one day showing all of his co-workers how stupid a website looks in pink. When he tried thinking of a way for money to appear, he realized that October is the month for Breast Cancer Awareness, and posted the following quote in his blog and on the forums:
…maybe we should pinkify our sites for Breast Cancer Awareness Month which is October. Somewhat in the vein of Dustin’s Get Naked Day.
That’d be sweet to get 200+ 9r member sites (and hopefully influence others) to go pink for a month. Could publicise it, get more traffic, accolades, etc. Plus raise awareness of Breast Cancer research, raise money… ²
PLUS raise awareness. Nice plus, Matt. Make sure you get more traffic first though; raising money for research is secondary at this point. You are using breast cancer to your advantage as a way to accumulate more hits on your company’s web$ite. Matthew-- you are an asshole.
Why am I constantly receiving hatemail from people on Facebook telling me to burn in hell? I have already generated more attention to breast cancer than any of the other clubs—maybe they’re just jealous. Any publicity is good publicity, and now that you have something to get angry at (me) it’ll increase your emotional level towards breast cancer deeper than you have ever imagined. The breast cancer clubs on Facebook are too shallow to accomplish anything, and now that you have found a face to associate with cancer, you can get mad at it. It is tangible. It is a human being. Before you we’re just randomly clicking “accept” in your inbox in vein of good character. Go ahead, take it out on me, you can thank me as your google-ing for the cure.
Pop quiz—what are the three most popular cancers? 1. Prostate. 2. Lung 3. Breast. Which months are lung and prostate again? Upon google searching, to my surprise, I found out that lung cancer is actually November. Fuck. My birthday is in Lung Cancer Month. I better start smoking. I don’t want my favorite month to be associated with any cancer. Again, with the badgering—stop creating awareness months. If you aren’t aware of cancer by now you’re probably living in a third world country or have been in a medically induced coma for the past twelve years. Speaking of which, are there awareness groups doing anything to support research in those fields?
By now you may have asked, “What about donations, asshole? Some organizations actually accumulate money.” I’ll begin by saying that big greedy America likes to have these things called “Tax write-offs” Next, I would like to address the American dollar. Most of this paper was spent finding a figure on total donations. I couldn’t find one figure on research money donations. Not even an estimate. I did, however, come across the following statistical figure:
88% of women diagnosed with breast cancer 5 years ago are still alive. Of those diagnosed 10 years ago, 80% are still alive; of those diagnosed 20 years ago, 63% are still alive.³
I’ve also read that for too many years, breast cancer was considered each woman's private trauma instead of the national public health emergency it is. Let’s talk emergency and the billions of dollars spent on the Middle East. The scientists and doctors working on finding a cure are paid by the government (directly or indirectly). Where YOU should come is not sitting on your ass thinking about breast cancer. Get up, write a letter to your damn congressmen, and tell them to eat shit and stop wasting money on killing people. If this seems like a vague tangent, it’s not. The money you donate compared to the money lost by you for not taking an active part in the global community is negligible. Go ahead donate a dollar; I hope it makes you feel better than actually doing real work for the national public health emergency. 88% of breast cancer victims will survive within the first 5 years. The conflict in the middle east has been going on for over 50 years. The US alone has been spending billions since 1980. Look at the whole picture next time before you boost your ego over a dollar. See also: stem cells.
This is not a joke like Matthew Oliphant’s website, or semi-serious like Dr. Williamsen’s Facebook club, this is real, like Andrew Seaton-Elliott’s concern for mankind’s standard of living. Don’t be a prick and think you’re high and mighty for being on some Breast Cancer Facebook Club—you’re not. Don’t molest children. Don’t go telling me to die when you supposedly want to save lives by posting a few messages on some forum about how your aunt died. You want to feel good about yourself for looking like you’re doing something without doing shit at all—and that’s why you hate me, because I called you out on it. Get bent, and start taking an active role in the govern-mental fight against plain cancer.
¹ Williamsen, Dr. Steven. Facebook Club Creator “GIRLS GONE WILD… BREAST CANCER AWARENESS” http://psu.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2217378936
² Oliphant, Matthew. “How Did This Come About?” http://pinkforoctober.org/?p=5
³ American Cancer Society, Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2005-2006.
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