14th
Donation Spam
That could be a way to catalyze donations, consciousness of or support for anything. Create a form of “socially conscious spam”, where the goal isn’t for the user to purchase V!agr@ or enlarge their penis, but to give money or get behind a particular cause.
On website, launch irritating popups that only go away once you commit to a $2 microdonation. Email newsletters that require you send $1 to Darfur in order to unsubscribe.
Exploring Tumblr today, I accidentally ended up getting a funny little ribbon on the bottom-right corner of my avatar. This signified that I had donated money to Haiti relief, which I hadn’t done. To remedy the situation, I tried to remove the ribbon. This proved to be impossible. Left with no other options — except hypocrisy — I gave some money to Doctors Without Borders.
A bad user experience created a good outcome. Go Tumblr!
PS: I really do wish I could easily remove this ribbon. It’s not a big deal, but I just don’t like:
- Joining some faceless online army for any reason
- Changing — or even noticing — my avatar. Avatars are like small, mean mirrors that pop up on your computer screen with minimal warning. I guess this is rooted in deeper issues.
- Gestures of support that inevitably conclude. Remember when Iran had that election and everyone on Twitter made their avatar green? I don’t see any more green avatars. At this point, a green avatar would be ridiculous and dated. But I would hate to be the Twitter user deciding who, for the sake of aesthetics and timeliness, changes their avatar back to normal and in so doing essentially withdraws support from Iranian dissenters.
PPS: I might have donated money anyway, even without the ribbon! But we’ll never know. The events that transpired rendered impossible any understanding of my own actions; forever — at least in this particular case — closing the door to self-knowledge.
