I was listening to pray the other day by JB when I wondered. Rockstars always seem to sing about people in need but they do not do anything to help these people. Does anyone else think that this is hypocritical?

Rock stars like who exactly and what songs?

The people I hear who ask for donations also make donations: Oprah, Travolta, Madonna, Brad/Angelina, Lady Gaga, Ellen Degeneres.

The people who don't ask more often than not doesn't donate also.

I think theone is referring to songs/events like "We Are the World", Live Aid, Band Aid, Farm Aid, etc. - all those concerts in the 80s that were meant to raise money/awareness for the poor/hungry around the world.

I guess you wonder if some of those musicians were truly being charitable or were they just hopping on the bandwagon for their own publicity.

ooo. well, while I'm sure some are doing it as a publicity stunt, others seem to be really into trying to help the poor.

There's different ways to do it besides donating your own money to a cause, such as getting people people to donate for said cause. After all, celebrities could have just urged people to donate to a known organization and leave it at that.

Instead, some of these people not only encouraged people to donate, but set up events/cd just for the occasion to make raising money easier since now the fans really can't ignore you demanding asking for money.

Skimming from wiki:

band aid's singer ended up getting nominated for the nobel peace prize, is chairman of a charity group, signed up to be a counselor for a non-profit organization that teachers people how to be leaders, etc.

Also keep in mind, not all rock bands are going to announce that they donated money.

I'm sure there a lot who do it quietly because they don't feel the need to let the world know. I mean why should they announce it? Isn't just helping a charity enough?

Some bands, I think, just do it to boost their image.

@theone:its not always seems like that,,
i knew some rockband are also donated to people who in need,,and i think they sing their songs to confey their thought to all people and make us to do (moved) something (like:help, donate, care etc),,

I believe that it is a great thing to make music for charity, but some famous people make me wonder as well.

Some of them are extremely rich, more then they can ever spend in their life, yet they only donate a fraction of it (and you can say the same of normal people, we COULD donate a lot more).

Every year, we have a bog charity project in our country. Radiobroadcasters lock themself up in ahouse made of glass on a square in a city for a week. They only drink or eat nutritious fruitshakes, and they play music non stop (in shifts)
They only play requests made by listeners, who donate any amount of money. People also spontaneously start selling home made pancakes and such to collect money. Famous people often start things to collect money, they make an album, and all the money goes to the project, or you can bid on a meet and greet,....
During that week, everyone (and I really mean everyone- grows closer to each other, you say hi to strangers on the street, come together and sing with the songs, .... They do a better job to fullfill the christmas spirit then any santa did in history in my opinion.

I can't really remember where I am going to, but this is real charity in my eyes, a whole country does nothing else but collecting money for a week long (some companies even close that week for that reason).
This is real charity in my eyes, and every year, we collect over the millions, which is a lot in a small country like Belgium

@Yannes- Exactly.
@all- Donating half the wealth of one concert makes no difference compared to the money you are making on that particular song

@theone: and what's wrong with that? At least they are donating. And the money gotten from those concerts is sometimes upward in the millions. I say that makes quite a difference compared to someone who only donates a buck.

@KTC I think that what she tries to say is, that if you earn 2 million dollars, and give 1 million dollars to charity, you could have given a lot more, because you don't need that extra million dollars anyways. But indeed, that bunch of money helps a lot more then that 1 buck

@Theone

Actually, a lot of artists get more money from concerts than from CD sales. The record company and others get a good chunk of the CD sales.

So by donating from concert sales, the charity is more likely getting a lot more than if they just donated from what they got from CD sales.

@yannes: why should they give more? Is there some kind of donation requirement?

how many people here actually donate and donates their entire earnings [from what I can gather is a 'good' amount]?

It sounds incredibly petty/greedy/etc. to say 'thanks for donating, but you suck because you didn't donate enough'.

@KTC- I'd like to say one thing. The rockstars have enough to live on their whole life. Enough said

@Theone


So just because they have a lot of money, they should just give it away? That's pretty ridiculous thing to say. They earned the money, they can decide what to do with it.

@theone: i agree with mopiece. It's absurd to expect them to just give all their money away.

And, it's again saying: "thanks for donating but you suck for donating that little." even if it could have been a couple million.

People generally won't respond well when you criticize them about how much they donate. If anything, it'll make them even less incline to donate.

I think it would be more prudent to just be grateful that anyone donates at all.

I had a personal experience with this. I was having bubble tea with my girlfriend when this obnoxiously effeminate, pseudo-metrosexual male entered and started begging for money for some random charity.

He was waved away by some people he approached at the door and decided to pester me more, possibly to make up for it.

He thrust a laminated card at me and started talking about his charity, helping poor children build houses, it sounded noble. I listened for about 10 seconds, smiled and politely refused handing his card back to me. He had the nerve to REFUSE his own card and continued to yap.

I refused him politely a second time because I could see that he was passionate.

He *again* refused to take back his stupid laminated card and kept talking.

This was my day off. I'm supposed to be spending a nice day out. My coconut smoothie was melting. I was not please.

I took the card, placed it on his clip board and said, "No thank you" and promptly turned away from him, back to my company.

As he left, he gave me a look, placed his hands on his hips, tilted his head and said "SELFISH" and continued onwards to the center of the cafe. On his way out, I gave him a death stare, because he was clearly smaller than me and I couldn't swallow my pride. He noticed and asked "WHAT?"

The dialogue that followed next cannot be reiterated on this site. However, the main points were as follows:

1. You are a useless middleman
2. You are a hypocrite and a failure
3. You should get a job

However, the relevant notion is this:

The people who tend to be the most vocal about their altruism are the least altruistic and make the least difference in the lives of others. In the case of what happened with me, what we had is an example of a failure of society who, in trying to cope with his inability to amount to anything, tries to buy a sense of self-worth using the money of others.

This is why when I donate, I donate directly to charities not to part-time hires or volunteers.

@Kleptin- Exactly my thoughts. People who shout about stuff rarely do what they shout others to do. As for the charity collecting, in my country, you have a lot of this and mostly it's fake. As for my family, we give charity to the maids who work for us as they have only one meal a day. ( Ours has 8 daughters, 2 sons, 5 handicapped cousins, a grandmother and father and a husband who does not work due to old age.)

@theone: yet the difference between the shouting/not doing and these people, is that the charity concerts are for charity. They are doing exactly what it says on the tin.