This Is a Call to Action!

The group of tweeps behind #BreastCancerRealityCheck would like your help in creating a #CancerRealityCheck tweet storm on World Cancer Day (Sunday, Feb 4, 2018)!

Background: If you are unfamiliar with #BreastCancerRealityCheck, a short description:

The hashtag was suggested to be used on one day along with tweeted facts about the breast cancer experience that are generally not featured in the pink victory ads and feel-good stories featured in October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month). Things such as pictures of mastectomy results to offset the generally provocative and sexualized images used in BCAM ads for example. Or honest anecdotes about some of the lingering side effects of treatment which are generally not spoken of in the dominating narrative of “winning/beating/surviving”. Searching the tag on twitter can give a broader picture of some of the truly innovative tweets using this hashtag. For a broader more in-depth story, see Cancer Realities page.

Goal: We’d like to expand the reality checking to ALL cancers. Most cancer ads and feel-good news stories follow the general victory narrative similar to the BC format. It’s as if the pink ribbon narrative created a template—but so many of us with cancers of all kinds just cannot fit into it! Note the rash of think pieces that erupted after (American) Senator McCain was encouraged to “fight” his terminal brain cancer DX. The lack of knowledge and understanding about the realities of cancer on display stunned our community. Our goal is simple—change the cultural narrative and show what getting cancer is REALLY like—how it differs for each individual. (We are so NOT a monolith).

Processes: Given our experience with #BreastCancerRealityCheck, we’ve already established some of the groundwork. Here is what we did in October: we targeted the “fairy tale” angle that seems to be divorced from reality for many of us with breast cancer and set up a Thunderclap with this message: “Breast cancer stories are NEVER pink fairy tales. ~1,430 die per day. Tweet your truth!” We created a simple image that worked with our idea of reality—the burning ribbon. We opted to have the hour after the Thunderclap occured as the time we encouraged people to tweet the most in an effort to get the # trending. Of course we wanted the # used all the time—but if we tried to get as many people to tweet in that small concentrated time, in hopes of reaching the thousands of tweets needed to trend.

For our inaugural #CancerRealityCheck event we’ll create a tweet message to augment , or perhaps contrast, the smiling booklets in oncology office. ~8.2 million died worldwide in 2012, and most cancer deaths are from lung, liver, stomach, and bowel cancers (most recent stats from World Cancer Day) and we would like to drive that message home!

We need your help! What are some realities you’d like to share? Tweet your truth! Encourage others to do the same, and to spread the word of this event! We’ll set up a Thunderclap shortly, to take place on Sun, 4 Feb, 2018.

Remember it’s the amount of TWEETING and the amount of people RETWEETING your tweets that will get us noticed AND (this is important) ONLY use #CancerRealityCheck on the tweets as this will help to trend – using any other hashtags will diffuse and dilute the message on the TRENDING board! These are the bare bones of what is involved in getting the storm going. We encourage ideas to make this bigger and likely to get noticed—media coverage is desirable.

We look forward to working with you.

Author: Cancer Curmudgeon

Oct 2010 diagnosed with Stage 3, HER2+ Breast Cancer. Completed treatment Jan 2012. Waaaaaay over pink. Applying punk rock sensibility to how I do cancer. View all posts by Cancer Curmudgeon