Kim Kardashian was dead.

Well, I guess it’s unfair to just focus on her. Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Usher, Alicia Keys, and Elijah Wood were also dead. They weren’t dead in the traditional sense, though. They were “digitally” dead, which means they’d given up Facebook and Twitter until poor schmucks like us raised a million dollars to help fight HIV/AIDS in Africa.

And that’s all well and good, but why should these celebrities be panhandling people when each one of them could donate a million dollars themselves and still have enough money for their 20th ivory back scratcher.

How sad is our society that in order to care about a cause, celebrities have to hold not updating their twitter over our heads. Maybe it’d be different if they were offering actual pieces of wisdom, but they’re not. It’s all shameless self-promotion and other indicators of a person with no hint of a personality. Here’s a sample tweet from Ms. Kardashian herself: “I am dedicating this day to my friends!! I have the most amazing friends EVER!”

Does it really matter if we lose tweets like that on the Internet? If you go on any sorority girl’s twitter I’m sure you could find the exact same material.

And what bugs me is the word they use: Sacrifice. “Ryan Seacrest sacrificed his digital life to save real ones.” More like Ryan’s agent thought it was a good PR move. None of these people are saints, and I hope anyone who reads this doesn’t think so either. If these celebrities were such good people and so charitable, then they would cut out this ridiculous middle man and donate the money themselves.

Ryan Seacrest is worth 45 million dollars. And you know, I’m not asking these celebrities to donate everything and live in poverty, but Seacrest and his 22-year-old girlfriend could easily drop two million toward a cause.

Really, all of us should be cutting out the middle man as well. Instead of donating because it was essential to have Lady Gaga’s tweets on hand, we should be donating money to the charities themselves. We should be finding out information about the cause and the epidemic, not deciding what trendy shirt size we should buy to show off our care.

And then there was also this idiotic meme going around Facebook where people were changing their profile picture to a thing from their childhood to raise awareness of child abuse.

Wow, after seeing your picture of Doug Funnie, I am now aware that children are being abused. Thank you for showing me the light!

Don’t you realize how dumb that idea sounded? It’s whatever if you’re just showing everyone that you used to watch “Arthur,” but if you legitimately thought you were making a difference by doing this, then you are delusional. It’s all an exercise in futility.

When did caring become a fashion statement? When did charity become a trend? It’s sad that every day children are being beaten and abused, and we were making light of the situation by changing our profile picture to Beavis and Butthead.

If you really care about raising awareness, go to www.endabuse.org, or www.childrensdefense.org.

And if you’re donating money to stop HIV/AIDS, do some more research about it. Donating money to a cause you know nothing about doesn’t make you holier than thou, it just means you’re doing PR work for yourself. These are serious times and serious topics. Don’t donate because of some Z-list celebrity or Facebook trend, donate because there are people suffering out there. Usher doesn’t care, but you can.