Digital Life Sacrifice has celebrities Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Elijah Wood, Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest and Alicia Keys “dying” on Facebook and Twitter accounts on December 1 for World Aids Day.
According to the Associated Press, “celebrities have filmed ‘last tweet and testament’ videos and will appear in ads showing them lying in coffins to represent what the campaign calls their digital deaths.”
The site BuyLife.org declares that the celebrities will die on December 1 but “you can buy their lives back.” The goal is to raise $1 million for Keys’ charity Keep A Child Alive, which supports treatment and care of children with AIDS and their families in Africa and India.
Lady Gaga has more than 7 million followers on Twitter and almost 24 million fans on Facebook. She and the other celebrities will sign off of their social networks until $1 million is raised.
“We’re trying to sort of make the remark: Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying in the place that we’re all from?” said Leigh Blake, the president and co-founder of Keep a Child Alive.
It is a creative way to leverage the large number of social network celebrity supporters and draw attention to a very worthy cause. I wonder if this high-profile action will have the secondary effect of making people think about their own digital legacy and what would happen to their social profiles if they died.
In the press release, Alicia Keys called for more people to give up their social network activity as part of the campaign. “It just doesn’t have to be just because you’re a celebrity or something like that. It can be anybody.”
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More/Source: http://www.deathanddigitallegacy.com/2010/11/29/celebrities-declaring-digital-death/