I haven’t watched much of the footage from Haiti, not because I don’t care, but because I don’t have cable tv. This hasn’t stopped me from reading about it, thinking about it, and wondering what responsibility we in the West have for preventing these kinds of disasters or what we can do now to help.

The two most straightforward ways remain the same for every type of disaster. They need donations of either your time or your money. I chose money, but only a little bit and then felt bad about my donation and its usefulness or lack thereof after reading an article on Gawker criticizing the “netiquette” of using social media to promote your cause.

Basically, the writer claims that doing anything on your blog, your Twitter, your Facebook, or whatever other social media you happen to use is a meaningless empty gesture that does absolutely nothing to promote the cause. I strongly disagree. He gave the example of turning your Avatars green during the last year’s Iranian protests as a sign of support as a meaningless gesture, but forgot to mention how most Twitterers changed their location to reflect Iran so that Iranians in Iran could mask their tweets in order to hide their locations from the authorities.  

He then went on to criticize last week’s “What color is your bra?” awareness campaign on Facebook. Agreed, that probably wasn’t the most effective method to explain breast examinations or to raise funds for breast cancer research, but it was absolutely free and  probably reached more people more quickly than a public media campaign.

In my mind, the writer went too far when he mocked those who announced they had made contributions to Haiti. Times are hard for all of us, and those of us who are taking the time to donate a little to help the people who really need it deserve the right to feel a little proud. As one of my Facebook friends said, her donation probably is not going to help the residents all that much now, but will help buy some rebar so the buildings don’t all fall down in the future. Additionally, when I read my friend’s status report about her donation, it spurred me on to donate myself, which is something that I hope my friends will do after reading my status report.

And, if some dude who who happens to write for Gawker doesn’t like it, he can go “F” himself.