Faux-lanthropy: CALA BOCA GALVAO – Save the Galvao Birds Campaign

#1 Thing You Need to Learn from this Post:
The World Cup has spawned one of the funniest faux Twitter fundraising campaigns: Cala Boca Galvao.

A More Detailed Exploration:
To help save the endangered galvao bird of Brazil, just tweet “Cala Boca Galvao” and 10 cents will be donated to the cause. Or, not.

It was bound to happen. Our seemingly unending need to spread awareness of important social issues has led to a spontaneous prank by a loose network of Brazilians on unsuspecting Twitter do-gooders.  Watch for yourself:

In case you’re wondering, “Cala Boca Galvao” is roughly translated into “Shut up, Galvao.” Who is Galvao?
According to the New York Times, he is “Brazil’s leading sports announcer, Galvão Bueno, a man who, to the ears of some Brazilians, is a bombastic cliché machine.”  With the start of the World Cup, many Brazilians will be uttering these words many times over the coming weeks.

This faux-lanthropy campaign illustrates the power of networked people working in loose coordination with each other.  What started as a trending topic on Twitter led to a couple creatives to concept and produce the video (in 32 hours with no sleeping). Others have added their creative touches including a poster.  It’s snowballed into one of my favorite memes of the year.

One second to tweet. One second to save a life.

Genius. Pure, networked comedic genius.

If you want to join in on the fun, just tweet this out: 
Help #bra Save the Galvao Birds.  http://bit.ly/galvaocpn