Ribbons

Today I saw a news story plugging one of those myriad magnets of ribbons to stick on your car in order to show your support of whatever. This proved to be a straw that broke the camel's back sort of thing, so I will now explain to all of you how buying one of these things means you are a complete idiot. Enjoy!

Here's how the whole ribbon thing got started. Way back when, some people got together and noticed how ignorant the world in general was about AIDS. So they came up with a clever little system to deal with this. You learn all there is to know about AIDS, then you go buy a little piece of red ribbon, which costs you next to nothing, and pin it to your jacket. Then when someone walks up to you and goes "Hey, why the heck do you have that ribbon on your jacket?" you explain to them the whole concept here, and point them at where they can learn more about AIDS, thus propagating the whole thing until everyone is brought up to speed. This is pretty much the founding principle of advertising here, and it clearly worked out pretty darn well, because I have never met someone who doesn't know all there is to know about AIDS, or who doesn't get the general gist of these ribbons. Great. Mission accomplished. There is no reason to continue wearing these ribbons, unless you live in some area where people are still totally in the dark. I repeat. No reason.

Now, two things happened which are Bad. Somehow, some well meaning but ultimately very stupid people somehow got it into their heads that wearing these ribbons somehow caused money to go towards AIDS research. "If I wear this," they think "it will help rid the world of this terrible illness!" FALSE. Totally false. The reason to wear them is to start up conversations where you can explain to people how you can't catch AIDS by hanging out with people who have it, thus alleviating the pariah treatment victims were getting back in the 80s. As mentioned earlier, this is no longer needed, and wearing a red ribbon at this point in time does absolutely nothing for anyone, except in the boonies as stated above.

The second thing which is Bad is that people got it into their heads that the same gimmick would work for everything. Breast Cancer? Let's fight it with a ribbon! War widows? Another ribbon! It's raining! Quick! Another ribbon!

There are a lot of things you could help with in the AIDS ribbon fashion, but none of these other ribbon things make the list to my knowledge, and you'd need a new gimmick, not a new color. Heck, let's start some now. Go find a translation of the Khoran, read it, note how it doesn't actually say anything in support of killing followers of other religeons, walk around wearing those springy-eye glasses, and explain the whole thing to anyone who asks why. Or wear a bandoleer full of markers and spread awareness of uh... how passing laws that allow gay couples to visit eachother in the hospital have absolutely no impact on their church's ability to say they're icky and can't get married there. Seperation of church and state works in favor of the religeous types here. I'm serious though. Do these things. Let me know how it works out for you. I know it's silly, but that's kinda the operating principle. If you pick a different cause than these, pick a different wacky accessory too please.

Getting back on track though, slapping a magnet or a sticker on the back of your car with a picture of a ribbon, or any color or combination of colors, even if it also says "Support X" or "Help Raise Awareness of Y" benefits absolutely no one except the company that produced it... and people who make their money by exploiting idiots tend to be huge scumbags, and they don't donate their profits to charities for the record.

While I'm being so socially concious here, I'm tempted to explain the whole "support our troops" bit, or the point behind the 2nd Amendment, or something else like that, but I'm pressed for time, so let's just go with this. That Alone in the Dark movie IS in fact "based on" the game of the same name, despite all evidence to the contrary. It's also by the same person as that House of the Dead movie. So, if you know anyone who's paying money to see it, you're obligated to punch them in the face.