Bragging as a form of encouragement

I wonder what would happen if it weren’t considered bragging to tell people about our generosity. Do you think people would see what others are doing and feel the need to “keep up” by being more generous? Would that be generosity in the wrong mindset?

A while back I did this Twitter For Food thing and announced on Twitter that I’d skip lunch and donate $10 to hunger relief instead. I got some semi-negative responses about showing off, but I wasn’t doing it to be proud. I wanted to show other people how easy it is to help.

Today is World Aids Day and, of course, it trended on Twitter with all sorts of people “raising awareness.” But I wonder how often anyone actually acts on that awareness. Then along came Merlin Mann in all his wonder:

Roiling emo outrage over the Human Condition gets way more credible if you quit fucking around on the internet and go DO something.

So, here I am, wondering what to do. Because I do donate money to a fair number of causes and have volunteered countless hours of my time over the years. But I don’t tell people how much I give or to who, really, because that’s common courtesy. And I wonder what would happen if I threw that common courtesy out the window, and others did too, so that we’re using social networks to tell people what we’re actively doing to help instead of just “raising awareness.”