Celebrities quit Twitter & Facebook to raise $1 million for charity

The likes of Lady GaGa, Alicia Keys, Khloe and Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest, Elijah Wood, Serena Williams, and Swizz Beats are going to quit Twitter and Facebook on World AIDS Day, December 1st and never log on again until Alicia Keys’ charity Keep A Child Alive raises $1 million to help those affected by AIDS.

Keep A Child Alive celebrity ambassador Alicia Keys, who welcomed her first child, son Egypt in October, launched the Digital Life Sacrifice campaign and asked her celebrity friends to support the effort:

Once I got people on the phone and I was able to paint the concept for them, everybody was in,” Alicia Keys told The Associated Press.

In addition to logging out of the world’s most famous social networks, the celebs have taken part in the “last tweet and testament” videos showing them in coffins and representing their “digital death.”

What do you think about Kim’s digital death poster? Looks pretty creepy to me.

It’s really important and super-cool to use mediums that we naturally are on. It’s so important to shock you to the point of waking up,” Alicia Keys added in her message. “It’s not that people don’t care or it’s not that people don’t want to do something, it’s that they never thought of it quite like that. This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention.”

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? It’s about love and respect and human dignity,” Keep A Child Alive co-founder Leigh Blake said.

Once $1 million is raised, the celebs will get back to their digital life. Leigh Blake believes that Lady GaGa’s fans will make sure Mother Monster gets back to Twitter very soon and even says “GaGa is going to raise it all by herself.”

She’s got a very, very mobilized fan base and that’s beautiful to watch I think (and) she’s able to draw their attention to these issues that are very important, you know, and that people follow it and act,” Blake explained.

FYI, Lady GaGa has more than 7 million followers on Twitter, Kim Kardashian has almost 5.5 million, her little sister Khloe has more than 2 million followers, Justin Timberlake has over 3.5 million. If we imagine that each of their fans/followers donates $1, the sum will 20 times exceed the requested $1 million. Amazing!

Learn more about the Digital Life Sacrifice campaign and how you can help @ KeepAChildAlive.org.

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1. Name: Mark Says:
   December 1st, 2010 at 3:07 am

   That’s cool but also scary. Aren’t they get frighten being put inside a coffin? Horrible.