Some of you may have heard of RickRolling:
“Rickrolling is a bait-and-switch practice that involves providing a web link supposedly relevant to the topic at hand, but actually re-directs the viewer to Rick Astley’s 1987 hit single “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The URL is often masked or obfuscated as a randomly-generated shortlink to conceal its true source from the experienced users. Whenever someone clicks the link and unintentionally summons Rick Astley’s song, he or she is said to have been rickrolled.” – source
With the end-of-the-year wrap up, the TIME cover is making lists of conversation starters for 2012. Many of the articles are linking to various posts on this blog.
The normalization of breastfeeding is a cause we will always support. People try to make light of the issue because it is grossly misunderstood in our culture. Many counties in the US are denying adoptions, removing children from homes, and shaming mothers into hiding. Their crime? Breastfeeding a child past infancy. This is all because it is such an unfamiliar concept in the West. When rights are being taken away because of ignorance, we as a society need to stand up and stop it.
That being said, the sensationalism coming from the media’s coverage of the TIME cover definitely served a purpose. Even though it wasn’t something we would have chosen, nor would any of us label our parenting style as “extreme”, the true experts (various biologists and anthropologists) on this topic have been given a national platform to speak freely about the normalcy of various healthy parenting practices. We were coming into this as a second generation “attachment parented” family. We have personal experience that made us happy to share why it works for our family. I feel we have been able to convey this message to receptive people who would have otherwise been unfamiliar with our parenting practices, and because of this I believe we are are not needed anymore in a national discussion.
We’ve decided to make the most of the coverage we are currently getting by replacing all content on the linked posts with a Waterlink explanation and a link to Waves for Water to donate to the project.
Mollie gave the concept a name
Why Water?
Water is relevant to all topics, including mothering. We have personally witnessed our friends and loved ones dying in Ethiopia of water related diseases. It is a human rights issue we all should be outraged about.
So, whether or not people hate or love the persona they have given to the woman on the TIME Magazine cover, they hopefully will care about this issue when they are redirected back to something very time sensitive and a problem that is easily remedied if everyone joined in to do their small part.
While we believe in spreading the news about our water project, we understand others are called to serve in various other ways.
Anyone with pointless link-backs to their blogs- we present you with the idea of CharityRolling:
Pick content for a website/cause/charity you support and paste it into your post in exchange for content another website is linking back to. Whether or not you decide to completely discard your original post or duplicate it elsewhere is up to you.
Let’s use our blogs for good…And admittedly, it is a pretty funny bait-and-switch.
