We interrupt the retelling of last week’s travels with a personal rant on the topic of those multi-coloured charity wristbands. Generally the wearers tell us that they like to advertise the causes they’re interested in, whether it’s poverty, bullying, cancer or whatever. Personally, I see them as a kind of charity bling, proclaiming to the world “I am considerably more charitable than yo!” with the implication that the wearers are somehow better people.
I think it’s bad enough that problems such as cancer and famine are dependant on charitable donations and I believe that charitable donations, if made, should be made discretely.
Saying that though, I can see it from the charity’s point of view; they don’t care whether people donate out of feelings of charity, guilt or hubris as long as they hand over cash. But I still find the wristbands terribly gauche.
technorati tag: wristbands
2 Responses to “The Wristband Generation”
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I agree charity should be a personal thing, not a public thing. If you only give money so you can brag about it to others, its more like buying status than giving charitably.
For some of the campaigns – e.g. Make Poverty History, where it was all about sending a message – I think wristbands are a good idea. I presume the donations were token ones to cover the cost of the band. But others seem to be purely charity – which I don’t really see the need for. Surely the charity is better off if you give it the money without requiring a wristband in return.
Wasn’t there this thing where it’s degenerated into a schoolyard Traffic Light Party?
I thought i saw an article about how Youf (be it school/college/Uni) were using each bands colour to designate if they were single, straight or a variety of other personal aspects or likes or dislikes.
This promotes wearing 4 or 5 at one time as a sort of fashion statement.
Sad.
Ok- the Charities would be getting money from all these ijits, even if it was for the wrong reason.
But still! Talk about weird corruption.