Mr. Harmon Returns from One Place to Another
Africa needs T-shirt-oriented campaigns
April 29, 2010
In the past two days or so, there’s been a bunch of discussion in some parts of the Internet about something called 1 Million Shirts. You’re supposed to send in your T-shirts and they’ll give them to people in Africa who don’t have T-shirts. The guy who started it apparently makes a living with his T-shirt-oriented website, and this project was a way to serve the world with his skills at making websites about T-shirts.
There’s been a lot of response on the Internet (great wrap-up here), almost entirely from people who have spent a lot of time working on development in Africa, which makes his response seem all the more… odd.
It all kind of reinforces my belief that there’s something really dangerous about putting all your eggs in the “social media discussion makes everything better!” basket. What was a nice, if misguided, idea is now something that people are putting a lot of emotional energy into, and maybe it’s all kind of going in the wrong direction.
Would he be just as interested in using his ability to game social media to work on something less T-shirt-oriented? Is it better than nothing? Should we punish people for being self-promoters or should we find ways to help them self-promote in more mutually beneficial ways?
Apparently there will be a conference call tomorrow. I’d love to attend, but I don’t want to.
Is the “big limousine” in this song a hearse? Is it?
