Once again facebook users are launching a campaign of cryptic status messages to raise awareness of breast cancer.  This year it's in the form of, "I'm (your birth month) weeks and I'm craving (your birth date)!!!" with an accompanying table of numbers and candy associated with months and dates respectively.

I understand that this is fun and the intentions are good, but what I don't understand is how this actually helps anything, or what it has to do with breast cancer.  And we all know what good intentions pave, right?

Firstly, how does being cryptic, or deliberately not telling half the populatiion (men), help to raise awareness of anything?  By the way, men can get breast cancer, too, so it's even less productive to exclude them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_breast_cancer).  Disguising a confusing and exclusionary message as a cutesy "game" isn't going to raise awareness of anything, at least not in a positive way.

Secondly, being flippant about pregnancy, in the name of breast cancer, not only doesn't make sense, it has the potential to hurt those who a) are infertile, b) have lost a baby, and c) have, or know someone who has, breast cancer.  Let me clarify that last one: breast cancer is not a game.

Thirdly, this encourages people to divulge easily deciphered info that's often used as security questions.  Perhaps not a biggie, but about the only thing definitely accomplished by all this.

My message to those in this game, "If you want to spread awareness of breast cancer, do it!"  Tell people about where to donate.  Tell them about volunteer opportunities.  Talk about information resources and organizations that help breast cancer sufferers, survivors, and their families.

Here, let me start.  In Canada:

Cancer Research Society - http://www.src-crs.ca/en-CA

That's a 1-stop organization for all of those options.  I challenge all of you to donate just $1 to them or a similar organization; imagine what could happen if each cryptic message was transformed into one dollar of real support!  Everyone can afford $1, so I don't want to hear any whining about poverty as an excuse to do nothing.  Put your money where your status is, I dare you!   (I donated $5.)