In Your Facebook!
In the never-ending quest to help spread the word about StalkMarket, I've been spending a lot of time looking at various forms of digital media. This includes participating in a few social media sites such as Facebook. As anyone who is active on the site knows, it has become a popular platform for people to keep in touch with friends, colleagues and former classmates, so it is easy to amass a long list of "friends" quickly. If you've spent any amount of time on Facebook, undoubtedly someone will have sent you some sort of virtual "gift". Often, the sender either "buys" the gift by making a very small donation to a particular cause or funds are generated via advertising revenue somehow attached to the process. I've had a few people send me virtual plants lately and asking me to return the favor with a message that reads something like "Together We Can Stop Global Warming."
On the one hand, I don't want to discourage people for doing anything and everything they can to help promote environmental stewardship. On the other hand, it is going to take a lot more than sending each other virtual plants on Facebook to save the planet or even make a noticeable difference.
This being the case, I've decided to adopt a new personal policy when it comes to saving the planet via Facebook. If someone asks me to send them a "virtual world" gift for an environmental cause, I'm going to ask them to first agree to make a "real world" green lifestyle change. For example, they could promise to not drink bottled water for a year or bike to work one day a week or whatever they like. If you think about it, there are thousands of simple things that someone can do to make a meaningful difference. There are even several suggestions of things people can do right in this blog including:
- Starting a home composter
- Putting pressure on your local government to handle waste responsibity
- Taking your own mug to Starbucks (or supporting coffee joints that promote commercial composting)
Dean Rodgers
Amen, brother!
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Your idea of promoting a real world change in behavior for every virtual gift is brilliant. In fact, I'd probably use the "What am I doing right now?" part of Facecbook to promote or suggest some behaviors to change as you've done here in your blog. Getting ideas in front of people at their moment of interest (as they're looking at your Wall) will help them realize what you truly value.
Great idea. I'll probably follow it. Meanwhile, we're buying wind energy, have only environmentally friendly cleaning products in our house, and plastic bottles are a thing of the past for us.
Thanks for the reminder of the Starbucks cups... one last vestige of thoughtlessness...
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Dean, I found your site through a comment on Fast Company's site and couldn't help but "click here". You are an excellent copywriter, and have either practiced a lot, or have a natural talent. I hope that this project of yours gets a wide audience, and I will begin doing this myself as well!
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Thanks for the kind words.
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I'm checking out (lil) Green Patch before I participate - glad to read your thoughts on the topic.
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