Tuesday, March 14, 2017

This year's blue dress white dress?

Okay, you giraffe you, you had me going.  I thought you were going to give birth three weeks ago because the experts told me that “while they couldn’t predict” the time, you would be going in to labor.  No doubt.

I feel a little duped.  I talked this over with a few people over the last few days and some also feel duped, and some not so much.  I mean, she is a pregnant giraffe, and she will give birth, but why the rush to view? It’s right here that the question hangs heavy. 

To raise awareness? To raise money? I’m a cynic in so many ways and to raise money hit me like a ton of bricks after the first night, when the camera feed mysteriously went down based on claims of inappropriate content for a matter of hours and reappeared “at the request of so many” of the viewers with a “donate now” button added.  Maybe like some of you, I became immediately suspect.  “That giraffe ain’t close to birthing no baby” was my initial thought, and told my husband there was something up and it wasn’t daisies.
  
Followed by sanctioned and licensed t-shirts, emoji apps, disclaimers and email flooding.  I became a bit angry, a little disappointed and a lot embarrassed that I watched that dang video for a couple hours the first night, and came THIS close to getting wrapped up in the hype.  I stopped watching and did a check-in every other day or so for the next week, did not watch at all week two and now, into week three, heading in to week four, I really don’t care so much.  I mean, I love giraffes, but, I don’t need to see it, you know?  No baby, but gee, here’s the cute zoo keeper with his daily check-in.  I was near outraged at his “Hey, people, there’s no predicting when this might happen but in the meantime, here is another way you can contribute”.  Now, to his credit, and he did claim to be totally transparent, it’s a for profit facility.  While he was hawking goods for the giraffe for the zoo he was also correcting information and educating us on n’ere-do-wells making a profit from unlicensed products.  He didn’t want us to be duped, after all, but make no mistake, the zoo operates to make money.
   
So, as we head in to week four, we now know that there were no signs on that first night (or the next twenty nights) that the giraffe was about to give birth – in fact, no signs at all, except what was shared with us about how big she is.  Well, yeah, she’s a giraffe, she’s HUGE generally.  The fact there are now features added to the live feed, such as the donate button or the opportunity to link to their store to purchase a licensed t-shirt, a REAL t-shirt mind you, or a coffee mug is certainly not a crime. 

I was miffed, I really was, for a hot second.  I didn’t like, as I never like, feeling manipulated.  When I tune in, and I admit, I do…there’s part of me that wants to see that baby giraffe poke it’s feet out…I watch without comments or goofy emoji faces floating by me which usually means going right to the zoo’s camera feed.  But, the other night I landed on the Facebook page instead, on one of the TV channels camera feed and got a bit caught up reading a couple of the comments.  A story from a nurse, working midnights, with a patient having trouble getting to sleep and how the giraffe story eased her anxiety.  The story of the man taking care of his dying mother, and how the giraffe gave them something to talk about, to distract his breaking heart.  The young mom, home from work with a sick baby…


I forgive you, zoo, for manipulating the facts a little bit, and for not being as transparent in the beginning as you should have been.  You knew that giraffe wasn’t ready to give birth…the whole ‘waxy nipple” alone tells us she wasn’t ready yet. However, people want to purchase t-shirts or pay for an emoji app or to donate directly because the story has brought us joy, distraction, commonality, but, most of all hope, for a brighter day.  

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