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Digital Top Stories
Lady Gaga to stage digital death for World AIDS Day
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 29 November 2010
Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Usher will all sign off their respective social media profiles later this week as part of a fundraising effort for Alicia Key’s chosen charity Keep A Child Alive. The deal is they won’t return to Facebook or Twitter until $1 million has been raised. Personally, I think we should all call their bluff and not donate a penny. Children may die, but at least there’d be less tedium on Twitter.
Though such a solution does fail to recognise that Keep A Child’s work to support families affected by HIV and AIDS in Africa and India is rather marvellous and definitely deserves some high level fundraising support. Perhaps if we all donate $2 million Gaga, Timberlake and Usher could commit to quit social media permanently?
The charitable social media boycott is timed to coincide with World AIDS Day on Wednesday. Participating celebrities have all also recorded videos where they lie inside a coffin and announce their (albeit temporary) ‘digital deaths’.
Keep A Child Alive co-founder and president Leigh Blake says the videos are tongue in cheek, but pose an interesting question, saying: “We’re trying to sort of make the remark: ‘Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying [from AIDS and HIV]'”.
