Yesterday, Oct. 20, 2010, was Spirit Day, a day where people were encouraged to wear purple to raise awareness and support for teens who took their lives because of anti-LGBT bullying.
As a gay man, I support the cause, and I support the ideas and drives behind the movement. What saddens me is that GLAAD and other LGBT organizations aren't capitalizing on the momentum built from this one day and turning the positivity and activism into movements beyond YouTube videos, changing your avatar color, and getting people to pick out a particular shirt color for the day.
Bullies, jerks, and assholes don't give a shit if you change the background color of your Twitter page or make your avatar so purple you look like Grimace. Real awareness isn't raised because a single tweet with the hashtag of the day is floating by at the moment.
Awareness comes through sharing news and stories, not just a status update. Activism comes through action and sacrifice, not you sitting in front of your webcam at home and saying it gets better. We use social media to sell more crap than ever before. Can't someone can figure out how to use it to make the world better beyond having a bunch of people retweet the same message mindlessly?
If you're going to make a social media awareness campaign, go for it. Just give me something I can do to make the world a better place beyond changing the color of a few pixels on my computer screen. It's the least you can do to make your campaign effective in the real world.