On Friday we heard that Alicia Keys’ “Buy Life” campaign to raise a million for her Keep a Child Alive AIDS charity, had raised less than a 1/4 of its goal of one million after three days. As part of the campaign, celebrities including Lady Gaga, Ryan Seacrest and Kim Kardashian pledged to die “digital deaths” and stay off Twitter and Facebook until a million was raised. When I checked yesterday, just 1/2 a million had been raised since the campaign begun last Wednesday, December 1. Some outlets pointed out that Usher was the only celebrity to break rank and start to tweet again prior to Buy Life reaching its goal.
Today, the BuyLife.org website suddenly jumped from 1/2 a million raised to a little over a million. Now doesn’t it seem suspicious that it took them over five days to raise the first 1/2 million but that they were able to raise another 1/2 million in under a day? When I checked last night they were just over $500,000 but less than a day later they’ve suddenly reached their goal. Now, I think it was a noble cause, but as we covered earlier it was executed poorly. Instead of just calling time on this campaign it looks like they’ve fudged the numbers a bit. (Or maybe the celebrities got itchy fingers and pitched in the dough themselves.) Someone overestimated the amount of money that people would pay to be privy to the mundane thoughts of a bunch of overpaid narcissists. Usually we just get it for free. The silence was nice while it lasted.
Update: Thanks to Michael for sending me the tip that the campaign was saved by a wealthy benefactor, “Brooklyn-born billionaire pharmaceutical executive Stewart Rahr” who chipped in $500,000 to restore the celebrities’ “digital lives”. According to the NY Post, “Celebrities were so frustrated with the time it took to raise $1 million for Keep a Child Alive’s “Digital Death” campaign, they persuaded a wealthy savior [Rarh] to give them $500,000 so they could get back on Twitter.” I guess we can’t expect them to pay for it themselves, now can we? Keys’ husband can’t even pay his taxes.
Aw, it’s over *already*? >.< I hope for the sake of the cause that *someone* pitched in the money that’s mysteriously appeared in their fund numbers. It was incredibly ego-tastic to think someone would pay to hear what they had for lunch or what club they went to last night, or who they shagged in the back seat of a limo. x_x
When I first heard about this fundraiser, I was turned off immediately. The reasons were very well explained in your blog. It’s a great cause but I don’t care if any of them tweet again. I don’t follow any of them & do not plan a starting now.
You’re correct about them being a bunch of narcissists with mundane thoughts. They should have done a tweetathon so people would have been tempted to donate so they’d shut up. They would have banked on the first couple of days.
By the way, the pics are horrendous! Dead is not so glamorous-especially death by AIDS.
Over on Dlisted, they say some pharmaceutical billionaire made a $500k donation. At least it’s a good cause, and we don’t have to see that cheap Kardashian sex coffin pose anymore.
you know ppl like kim k wouldn’t drop a dime on this new gig of hers, i just looked at her blog and all her delusional fans think SHE raised all that money. Then I googled Stewie Rah and found out the real truth. I was hoping they’d stay in their dam coffins, they make me sick!
I am glad the charity will get its money, but I can’t help but wonder how much of that $1 mil will go towards paying for the expensive and ridiculous coffin photo shoot and accompanying hair and makeup artists, wardrobe, set design, assistants, etc.
honestly, if this charity is so important to these particular celebs…they should’ve generously donated personally as well as inconspicuously. as if!
to hold themselves ‘hostage’ for a cool million dollar ‘ransom’ is beyond tacky.
really have to wonder what the billionaire is getting out of it on the backside…
The whole thing is a huge farce, as are most of the “foundations” etc… that celebrities (and others, but celebs lead this trend). They create foundations, trusts, etc…that are supposed to “create awareness” for things that most of us already know exist, like breast cancer, and horrible conditions in African countries (I’m looking at YOU, Bono). How much does it cost to “raise awareness”? How is this measured? Not to mention that once established, the goal of all of these trusts, foundations, etc…is to remain in existence in perpetuity, so really their only goal is to exist and keep feeding the fund that is there. I already know about AIDS, and am certainly not going to give someone like Alicia Keys more money to take glamourous? photos of herself and her friends, much less to read what any of them have to say on twitter.
These kinds of things are part of what give charities a bad name.
@#2 – You’re right. I hadn’t even thought about that aspect of things…. Death *isn’t* glamorous, especially not death caused by what they’re trying to ‘raise awareness’ for.
They would’ve made much more of an impact if they had at least shown a realistic image of what illness does to people and their families, instead of the made up glamour-shots with photoshopping out the wazoo.
Dumbest charity stunt ever. These people make SO much money. Why cant they donate it themselves? Jeez. *eyeroll*
Sigh. What Mia135 said. Alicia, Kim and the other twatters could have achieved their goal a lot sooner had they come up out of pocket themselves but why do that when you can solicit others to donate their hard-earned money?
You know what I think is so offensive to me about this whole campaign, besides a dead celebrity in a box still managing to pose, is the idea of a bunch of celebrity’s “people” sitting around discussing how important that celebrity’s tweets are and how much people will miss them when they’re gone. It is beyond obnoxious and the only people who could possible percieve this as anything but embarrasing is the delusional stalker/fan.
I agree with Mia135. When I first heard about this, I thought but how much money is it costing to take these pictures? And I think its nice that they want to get regular folks like us involved, but relying solely on our support obviously didn’t work like they expected. They would have reached their goal much faster if they donated like $50,000 each.
There’s more to it than that. Donations stalled at about $184,000. The “dead” celebrities themselves donated the difference to bring it to $500,000 and the wealthy billionaire matched the half-mill.
Honestly, if anyone has the money to donate it’s these twits anyway so it sounds like a win-win situation to me. They just couldn’t stand the fact that more fans didn’t want to pay up to read their stupid tweets.
Agree with everyone’s posts. How much did this stunt cost and how can you have the fucking gall to solicite money just so you can “tweet” as if any of us give a shit. I’d rather take 50 dollars and donate it to the local homeless shelter or animal shelter than feed these people’s ego.
Not as popular as they thought they were huh? I might be going to hell for this, but this cracks me up. Any idiot could see this was going to happen!
Self-important twats! Next time, dumb-dumbs, just donate directly to charity and let everyone know what you’ve done. Idiots.
That billionaire needs to be declared mentally incompetent.
LOL. the first thing i thought when i saw that headline was that they fudged it. well hopefully the donation was real. still, i find it hilarious that they had to resort to begging a billionaire to make up the 1,000,000. “ohhh nooo i’ve been off my twitter for a week, please, i need it back i’ll do anything!!!” ugh. they really think so much of themselves. i have lost respect for EVERYONE on this campaign, (even gaga, i expected better from her). i’m really offended about the photos in particular, its like they’re not even trying to hide they’re shameless self promotion by posing all sexy and glamorous (and photo shopped…fat ass kardashian we all know you dont look like that!!) in the name of AIDs. stupid concept, stupid photos, and the big EPIC fail at the end. hope they learn a lesson.
I found it VERY suspicious as well, but am glad to here a large contribution is what put them over their mark.
I participated in this by not using Facebook or Twitter and saw how slowly they were raising money, much more slowly than they had anticipated (especially with all of the “Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters alone could raise the money” remarks).
Whether you agree with how they raised the money or not, you had to be glad that they did raise the money. Keep a Child Alive now has one million dollars more to help those they help, and that’s a good thing.
One can only hope this was a blow to their ego anyway.
#15 It’s alright most of us are going to hell with you cause alot of us find it funny so you’re in good company 🙂
Bummer. Wish they’d stay dead much much longer.
what the hell is this twitter thing? I do not believe this.
I’m glad they raised money but I also wonder how much they spent on those ugly photos and advertising this. Also, Kim is so rediculously photoshopped… how is it that Gaga looks bigger in the waist than her, and Gaga is seriously about 20 pounds thinner than Kim? I really wish someone could get their hands on the originals.
Wonder how much of that mill will be consumed by ‘administration fees’?