Taking time off from the first crop of papers and projects, Syracuse students may have noticed the growing genre of purposeful ‘groups-with-souls’ on Facebook. Could it be that the site hitherto known as a forum to declare that one attended ‘public school… bitch’ and to announce a fondness for vintage Nickelodeon programming has suddenly grown a conscience? Be still, my heart!

Carrying the banners for a wide spectrum of causes from abortion rights to awareness of the Darfur genocide, there is a group for just about any political or charitable position imaginable. It would appear that our generation has a new tool in the fight against societal complacency. Yet I refuse to join the swelling ranks of these groups.

I offer as an example the most prominent such group: the self-explanatory ‘For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur.’ This is a noble idea at face value. On closer inspection, it is in fact the height of pretension and superficiality. The creator of the group, Marek Grodzicki of New York University’s network, set out three objectives for his group.

‘Cuz [sic] so many people ask …,’ the groups description reads, two of its key goals are to ‘get Darfur some attention’ and ‘Inspire to [sic] people to donate on their own to any charitabl [sic] organization.’ Grodzicki also posts that the group aims to ‘raise money (groups over 300k exist, 300k=$300 here, hopefully this will be bigger).’

That’s right, folks. The group’s error-ridden constitution states that its entire raison d’tre is to raise $300. With that money, Grodzicki should be able to send at least one video iPod to the Sudan. He might even have a little money left over for festive gift wrapping. And they say the developed world isn’t charitable.

Some will say that even poorly constructed gestures like this have powerful symbolic value. Unfortunately, this claim only holds weight if such gestures actually translate into some meaningful action – something a tad lofty for Facebook, which is essentially a gussied-up phonebook. I would argue that putting such serious issues as the systematic extermination of entire villages together with groups like ‘I Hate Ugg Boots’ is tasteless at best and, at worst, downright offensive.

Joining this or a similar group will likely do little more than bolster the creator’s curriculum vitae and give Mark Zuckerberg even more advertising revenue.

I still believe in the awesome potential of the Internet, but real world change requires more effort than clicking ‘join.’ It also requires and a hell of a lot more dedication than $300.

David Medeiros is a sophomore political science and English and textural studies major. You can e-mail him at dmmedeir@syr.edu.

Published on September 28, 2006 at 12:00 pm