Well-known celebrities like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Usher, Serena Williams, Jennifer Hudson, and Elijah Wood have stopped updating on their Twitter and Facebook accounts.
And it looks like they left a last message and testament video before they departed. Their last tweets direct fans to buylife.org where there are pictures of them resting in coffins.
On 1st December, they have taken part in ‘Digital Death’ as part of World Aids Day to raise awareness and garner donations to save millions of real lives affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India, and we can play a part in buying their digital life back. They will only rejoin the social networks when US$1 million has been collectively raised for the charity Keep a Child Alive.
A question we should really ask ourselves: Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity when there are millions of people dying in the same place that we’re all from?
“It’s so important to shock you to the point of waking up, It’s not that people don’t care or it’s not that people don’t want to do something, it’s that they never thought of it quite like that. This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention,” says Alicia Keys.
How do you find this campaign? I thought it was pretty smart – not only do they not have to reach out to people, but in fact is leveraging on an audience that is already there; they are fans who are enthusiastic and desperately want their favourite celebrities’ updates back. Just two days into the campaign, $183k have been raised – it proves the campaign is pretty substantial. I am guessing if Justin Bieber had been involved in this, #BUYLIFE might be a trending topic by now.
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