A bunch of Social Media Blogs and Journalists are reporting that there is a viral Social Media Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, in which women post the colors of the bras as a Facebook status.
It’s a neat idea for a story, but its not true.
Aside from the fact that this viral campaign isn’t organized by any Breast Cancer Awareness non-profit or an advertising agency, and its a really bad idea for a Breast Cancer awareness campaign [ a) it’s more appropriate for lingerie designers, b) it dilutes the association with pink that the Susan G. Komen foundation has been fighting for ] one only needs to do a quick web-search to discover that this is really a weeks-old chain-letter meme that is constantly morphing and getting hijacked.
A week ago, someone posted a question on [Answers.Yahoo.com](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ahbp.aJJpkF6aYN1JYX.rdIjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20091229223537AAHTqYE) , and a respondent copy-pasted the text as it appeared then:
> right girls let’s have some fun. write the color of the bra you’re wearing right now as your status on fb and dont tell the boys. they will be wondering what all the girls are doing with colors as their status. forward this to all the girls online
Several other respondents confirmed this was the letter in that posting, and this is only one of dozens of similar explanations of this across the internet dated last week.
At some point over the last few days, someone decided to hijack the meme and make it a little more socially responsible – and they added the Breast Cancer bit to it. It’s nice, and its sweet, and its a great way to turn around a stupid internet joke into something serious. If someone looks at a one of these Facebook status postings today, no matter the author’s intent, they’ll associate with a tie-in to Breast cancer, since that’s what current media coverage states.
Nevertheless, the meme is not necessarily about Breast Cancer awareness. It’s currently getting interpreted as such, but only some participants share that intent.