Tread Heavily

I am going to be totally honest here. I have always been a little bit irritated about all of the ‘Breast Cancer Awareness’ hype you see around town, the Internet, and the media. Where are the brown ribbons for prostate cancer? Where are the testicular cancer walks? You don’t see the Cojones Crawl or anything do we? I always felt (unjustifiably) like men’s issues were getting the shaft. After all, no one in my family has ever had breast cancer, but we’ve lost a couple to other kids.

This has often been a bone of contention between me and my wife, as she lost her grandmother (to whom she was very close) to breast cancer. It just wasn’t personal enough for it to warrant my support, my time, or my money.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve backed off of the us-vs-them mentality when it comes to donating to good causes. I realized it all came down to who has the where-with-all to go out and drum up support. If men want to start the Testicular Trot, it is up to men to do it.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that people on Twitter were changing their avatars to incorporate frozen peas. I don’t remember who it started with, but I do believe I was watching when it all went down. I heard the stories through the Tweets and I went to Susan’s blog – Boobs on Ice. Something about her story really hit home with me. It wasn’t that I knew her personally, but I became caught up in it out of a feeling of sympathy, compassion, and community. I think the sense of community came first — someone was hurting and we needed to support her. The compassion came next and that grew into sympathy, even though it was not asked for or even necessarily necessary. I changed my avatar, adding the peas and even started helping others make them with my basic PhotoShop sills. It is my way to contribute to the cause beyond the support I gave to the fund.

The best thing about all of this is that the community is growing because of what people who were outsiders see from their point-of-view. The cause and the fervor has crossed boundaries and has been picked up by the local press and today, a story appears in the local addition of the Washington Post Online.

Read the full story here: How Frozen Peas Started A Movement

Go now and Digg the Washington Post story!

At the base of all of this, you aren’t talking about a person’s struggle with a disease, you aren’t talking about making people aware of a cause. You are talking about a virtual community that is showing real love and compassion for one of its own. If that isn’t the true essence of Social Networking, I don’t know what is.

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Filed under: Twitter, Just me