This Wednesday, Lady Gaga will kill herself, at least figuratively. She and other celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian, and Ryan Seacrest are ending their "digital lives" — that is, quitting their Facebook and Twitter accounts — until fans donate $1 million to an AIDS charity. Texting the name of the "dead" celebrity to 90999 will donate $10 to Keep a Child Alive, a charity set up by pop star Alicia Keys to raise money for HIV and AIDS sufferers in Africa and India. Should fans pay to bring celebrities back to the internet?
This is guaranteed to succeed: "Where we once had sponsored silences or fasts," says Mark St. Andrew at Cream, swearing off the internet is apparently now a "sufficient hardship to endure" in the name of a good cause. The involvement of Lady Gaga and her millions of fans more or less "guarantees the success of what promises to be a short, sharp effective fundraising scheme."
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