I hate “Awareness” campaigns.

Don’t think I am ranting about people who support a cause. Assuming you aren’t donating to “People Against Dogs” or the Westboro Baptist Church, donating money is a great way to give to someone in need without having to get sweaty building an orphanage.

What I can’t stand, however, is donating to campaigns who’s only purpose is to inform people that someone else needs donations. These organizations literally exist for the sole purpose of raising awareness about an issue. This may have been a great idea pre-Internet, but these days all it takes is a little trip down Google lane to get all the information about an issue you could ever want. Why spend millions of dollars a year raising awareness when all it takes is a website and five minutes?

Breast Cancer awareness is the biggest culprit here. I’m pretty sure that everyone but five people in Alaska (if you are one of those five people, click here. Also, welcome to the 21st century!) have heard of breast cancer, know that they need to have a doctor check out lumps and know that exams save lives. We don’t need a multi million dollar campaign to tell us this. Those are millions upon millions of dollars that aren’t going towards curing cancer or supporting victims of cancer or buying big screen televisions for cancer; all that money does is say “Hey! Cancer! It’s bad!”

That’s where my primary issue lies. Awareness takes money from Progress. Rather than getting somewhere, we are just standing in a circle talking to each other about the problem while it kills us. We buy t-shirts and bumper stickers and pretty much anything that says “I ❤ Boobies” on it and all that money just funnels into more t-shorts and bumper stickers and commercials that tell us about why we should love boobies.

Now, before the influx of “My mother/aunt/daughter/post-op brother-in-law died of cancer! How dare you make fun of them!” emails/comments, let me clarify: Breast Cancer, like all cancers (including especially funny bone cancer), is no laughing matter. Cancer claims thousands of lives every year and is a very serious illness in our society. I just think that we shouldn’t waste our money informing each other and instead put that money to better use beating cancer.

Preferably in a dark alleyway. With a lead pipe.

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