I’ll start this off by saying that, sure, I can be an insensitive jerk sometimes. I know, I know. Please don’t stand there with your mouth agape and that look of shock in your eyes but it’s true. But, let’s look at something that happened on Facebook yesterday:

• Women were posting their bra color in their status message
• It was supposed to be only one word and no explanation
• Evidently this was done in order to promote breast cancer awareness
• This meme was only to be performed by women and no explanation was to be shared with men

This, in turn, caused quite the kerfluffle. People didn’t know what was going on and the question ‘why are people only posting colors as their status’ kept popping up. Honestly, the number of times I saw people wondering what was going on I was sure that people were going to start running into the streets screaming in fear much in the same way that Orson Welles got people to panic when he first broadcast ‘War of the Worlds’.

So, big ups. Good on you. Nothing like seeing solidarity amongst a population. I can’t even argue with the premise of a virtual flash mob that made me think of boobs. Ladies, you deserve a Budweiser ‘Real Men of Genius’ commercial. Except you aren’t men.

Here, however, are my problems with what happened yesterday:

• Breast cancer awareness month is October. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to do this then? Sure, there isn’t any moratorium on when slacktivism can occur, but this probably would have had more impact when EVERYONE was urged to become more aware
• This was to be shared among women and no explanation was to be shared with men. How, exactly, does withholding information from approximately half of the population promote awareness?
• The lack of explanation when people asked was just as infuriating. Again, how do you promote awareness of a cancer that claimed about 40,000 women last year when you don’t explain what is going on?
• Other than the entire ‘we’re doing something mischievous and raising awareness’ aspect of the entire thing, I didn’t hear one peep about anyone reminding women to perform a self-examination.

Perhaps I’m being a dick for questioning the integrity of the whole Facebook/bra color thing by calling it a meme. Maybe I just don’t understand because, as I’ve seen several women post ‘I didn’t get the memo’. However, as someone who has friends with breast cancer, who have survived breast cancer and who have died from breast cancer I just don’t get the point of yesterday’s exercise. I was not made more aware nor was I any more informed.

What, exactly, did it accomplish?