National Right to Life posted a wonderful, poignant, and likable defense of life today, and you can breathe a sigh of relief: it works, beautifully. Not only is it relevant and lighthearted while delivering an important message, it does so without trying too hard.
And — they did it in the heart of where the Internet lives these days: BuzzFeed.
The list of 16 milestones in an unborn baby’s life begins with the miracle of life and ends with birth, using as its messengers a lineup of Hollywood, reality t.v., cartoon, and other “cultural icons” (Honey BooBoo?).
The list includes:
1. At the moment of conception, you had a unique set of DNA that never previously existed in the history of the world. YOLO.2. Your hair and eye color and facial features were also determined.3. By 22 days after conception, your heart was already beating and for some, with a different blood type than their mother.4. At 6 weeks after conception, you had detectable brain waves.5. By 7 weeks, you were swimming.6. By 8 weeks, every major organ was in place.7. By 10 weeks, you could hiccup.No, seriously.8. By 12 weeks, you could suck your thumb.9. And you looked like this.10. By 15 weeks, you developed taste buds.For real. You had developed adult taste buds.11. By 17 weeks, you could experience REM sleep.12. By 20 weeks, you could feel pain.13. Over the next few weeks, your mother felt an increase in your movements.14. If born premature at this stage, you could survive.15. In months 7-9, you could open and close your eyes.16. Then at 9 months, you were born. (Obvs)Happy Birthday!
They didn’t post the “meme” in the heart of friendly territory, they went to heart of the battle. BuzzFeed’s pages often teem with pop culture fluff and the ever-popular cat videos, but their captive audience is one we cannot cede. Through the “BuzzFeed Community,” anyone who signs up to be a contributor can post content.
…Which didn’t exactly sit well with a certain writer at The Guardian, who penned a now much-ridiculed piece detailing her shock that BuzzFeed would allow such content in its “community” section — a section created specifically to allow members of the community to post what interests them.
The Guardian’s Fruzsina Eordogh wrote of her consternation over today’s piece and an earlier one posted about Planned Parenthood, fuming that BuzzFeed “won’t even admit any wrongdoing” and hadn’t offered an “apology for offending and confusing its current readership.” It’s quite entertaining to read Eordogh’s encounter with a viewpoint other than her own, I recommend it. A commenter on Eordogh’s post summed it up:
So the internet’s biggest procrastination tool should apologise because it runs an open platform where someone published something you don’t agree with? Not inciting violence, or promoting racist groups, not terrorist-linked, just “not what I think”.The anti-family planning brigade are ridiculous, but so is the premise that “someone on the internet is wrong and so someone must apologise to me”.
As for the National Right to Life’s post, already people like Jonah Goldberg are noticing, applauding the “pro-life insurgency” on his twitter account.
RTL hit it out of the park. Reactions like Eordogh’s show how unprepared they are for any challenge to their way of thinking.
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