A Bad Name

Some time ago I shared some thoughts in this space about the fracas between the American Cancer Society (ACS) and an atheist group calling itself the Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB). If you weren’t with us in October, the problem started when the FBB offered to sponsor a team in the National Relay event the ACS puts on each year, and provide matching donations for whatever the team made, in exchange for being named one of the National Sponsors of the event. This, as I noted at the time, was farcical. The FBB was asking for the same level of recognition given to major corporations (Delta Airlines, Wal-Mart, etc.) that sponsor hundreds (or in some cases, thousands) of teams nation-wide for fielding a single team – or, if you prefer, demanding the same recognition for raising a few thousand dollars that a real National Sponsor receives for fundraising efforts that bring in millions each year…

When the ACS politely declined this demand, and suggested that the BFF instead join one of the regional Relay events, these so-called humanists started screaming about being discriminated against because they were atheists, and accusing the Society of only wanting donations from Christians. They then began pushing this nonsense far and wide across the Internet, attracting the sort of people who don’t like organized religion, enjoy a fight, or like to stir up trouble, including a fair number of trolls (who know a good spectacle when they see one). I even got a bit of push-back when I suggested that this was a particularly reprehensible attempt to generate publicity by creating a scandal. It’s a tactic that can be made to work, and can be cost-effective, depending on the issue and the organization which is using it, but I’ve always felt that the risk of backlash makes its use unwise. In this particular case, it can be argued that the tactic gave both the FBB and atheists in general a bad name – at least for the few days before it submerged into the great cesspool of Internet news…

This seems even more likely when you consider the more recent activism by unaligned atheists on the Internet, as reported by Reuters last week. A large atheist group on Redit decided to band together and raise money for Doctors Without Borders – each member chipping in whatever he or she could spare. In about 24 hours they had collectively raised in excess of $180,000 using firstgiving.com, without demanding any special recognition for any group or agenda. Many of the individual donations were tagged with messages like “Good without God” (or, in at least one case, “Good without Zeus”), but none of them were reported as requiring that the recipient group do anything in particular – except continue travelling around the world helping people, of course, and even that was more of a polite request than an actual demand…

This type of activity is usually referred to as “crowdsourcing,” and we’ve seen it used for a variety of business and social applications recently; it’s an excellent way of using a potentially huge pool of collective knowledge and experience to solve problems, gain information, or simply ask people for their opinions on social or business issues. Attempts to use this technique to raise money for charity or capital for small business ventures have met with mixed success, possibly because it is difficult to reach enough people on line, or perhaps because people on the Internet tend to be wary both of scams and of people pushing an agenda. But apparently it is possible to get a large group of people who are generally believed to have a humanist agenda to rise up in support of an actual humanist cause, if you try…

From a business standpoint, these events would appear to confirm that the theories we’ve been hearing about using Internet connections – and social media sites in particular – to spread information or shape public opinion are correct. Whether they are used for good – to heal the sick, feed the hungry, or bring understanding between people – or for evil (to defraud, take advantage, or push a selfish agenda) is up to us…