Post from the comments: “Let’s go give away some oranges”

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Yesterday, Chris Brogan wrote about Secret Fight Club, adapting the concept of Fight Club to social media for social change.

My first response? The first rule of #SecretFightClub: No one talks about Secret Fight Club!

In a comment on Chris’s blog, I suggested that “eTyler Durden is gonna be so annoyed. I suggest you change your soaps and don’t eat soup for months.”

The irony is that, given the reach of Chris’ blog, many people WILL of course be talking about SFC, though perhaps even more will simply keep on spreading that good will silently.

“Buying free plates of bacon at the bar” isn’t a bad metaphor at all — I can’t forget when someone did just that at the #140Conf — but passing out oranges to the homeless catches something closer to my heart.

A member of my family always carried oranges in Philly and Baltimore growing up, where there are major homeless populations, most of whom have major Vitamin C deficiencies.

Instead of giving them money, he passed out oranges. A few homeless people became upset, since they wanted $ for whatever other cause, but most were incredibly grateful.

Chris Brogan passes out oranges all the time.

He posts portraits of independence on his blog, tweets  about worthy causes, explains how he tweets, writes about favorite children’s books, pastors or software he likes.

Some cynics might say that’s name dropping or crass brand mentions, like the unfortunate choice of Magic Johnson to mention KFC five times during MJ’s memorial.

I don’t buy into that.

In the social media world, regardless of what digital outpost you’re on, sharing information and being helpful is the best and most important form of digital currency we have to share.

Instead of beating each other up to escape the banality of corporatized modern life, in order to FEEL something, we are all collaborating on building a global network of digitized human experience, caught on video, pictures or memorialized in 140 characters or more.

I’d say thank you to Chris for risking eTyler Durden’s wrath but I think it’s possible he’s playing him here. He remembers how long many of us have been at this online.

Do you remember when we all passed around The Hunger Site and everyone clicked to give rice? I do.

And guess what? That website just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

FreeRice gives away rice if you play simple word games. And charity : water just celebrated a similar digital success, borne on a wave of social media good karma.

The netizens using and sharing those ideas represent precisely the kind of Secret Fight Club I’m both proud to belong to and recruit others to join.

Let’s go give away some oranges.

Note: This post first appeared as a comment on Chris Brogan’s blog. I decided it was worth editing and posting here. I’m following Chris’ example when he posted “On Public Radio” as a surprise guest post on chrisbrogan.com.