UNICEF are running a campaign called the Tap Project. Basically, it entails participants downloading to their smartphones a piece of software that will monitor how long they can go without touching said smartphone. These people are sponsored for the amount of hours they manage to go phoneless, and accordingly a child in Africa gets clean water for a proportional amount of time (one day for every ten minutes).

OK. So far; so centre-liberal. It sounds like the same old sop serving to make people in the West believe that they’re somehow alleviating the injustice they actually perpetuate every day by their very existence, as if the supply chain that produced their phones didn’t cause immeasurably more suffering than any well-meaning charity stunt could ever counterbalance etc., etc. However, it becomes clear that the UNICEF Tap Project is actually a whole lot more perverse than all that if we turn to who, exactly, is sponsoring these marathon efforts of restraint.

In the case of most charity sponsorship endeavors — a fun run, say, or even Live or Band Aid –– the principle is that the sponsored act, whether it be a middle-manager from Swindon’s triathlon dressed as a penguin, or a millionaire musician’s performance of a crowd-pleasing tear-jerker, becomes a focal point for the coalescence of a lot of money that otherwise would not be pooled. Everyone chips in so that Andy will shave half of his head or Dave will lie in a bath of baked beans, and a child in Mozambique gets the vaccine he needs to not die tomorrow. In the case of the UNICEF Tap Project, though, the sponsors are “Giorgio Armani Fragrances and other generous donors” (N.B. the loathsomely ass-licking qualifier). People and companies who alone have sufficient capital to provide as much clean water as they please to the global south are only going to do so if people in the West refrain from using their phones. Does this situation not effectively amount to these beneficent superiors taking the position of a fickle emperor lording over his domain, and arbitrarily deciding whether some people live or die on the premise of some other people doing or not doing something else?

Imagine the court of King Armani, in which said monarch sits on a gilt throne surrounded by knights and courtiers while a family of enchained peasants are dragged in. These peasants are being kept in the dungeon at King Armani’s whim, and he cannot decide whether or not to give them bread and water for the next few days. On the one hand, they are clearly starving and unwell. On the other hand, the ability to withhold this vital means of sustenance from these paupers makes King Armani feel like a big man. He is at an impasse, and to reconcile the dilemma, he calls upon one of his lesser courtiers. “YOU THERE!” he shouts. “Y-yes, your m-majesty?” stammers the courtier, after feverishly looking around to ensure that King Armani is not addressing anyone else. Beside King Armani there is a bronze plate from which he was just being fed grapes by a nubile virgin. “Catch this!” declares King Armani, throwing the plate to the courtier, who fumbles and almost drops it. “If you can balance that on your head for more than ten minutes,” says King Armani, “I will provide these peasants with water. If you cannot, well, they will go thirsty!” “But y-your m-majesty . . .” begins the courtier, who has absolutely no desire to have a dehydrated family on his conscience. “BUT NOTHING!” bellows King Armani. “DO IT OR THEY WILL SURELY DIE!”

Accordingly, the courtier balances the plate on his head. “ON ONE LEG!” demands King Armani, and the courtier raises his leg. “WHILE RECITING THE ALPHABET BACKWARDS!” demands King Armani. “Z . . . Y . . . X . . . W . . . V . . .” lists the courtier, falteringly, and then “U . . . T . . . R . . .” before immediately realizing he’s made a mistake. “No! No! I mean S!” he says, but as he does so, the plate falls from his head, clattering to the ground. “HA HA HA!” bellows King Armani, and, without looking at the peasant family, dismisses them with a wave of his hand. The peasant children sob as they are dragged out by burly guards, but King Armani just smiles wryly. “Let them drink tears,” he thinks.


 
 
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