Feed The Poor & Improve Your Vocabulary At The Same Time

[Rakhmetov]

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program. Our partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

“Addictive, yes. But . . . each correct answer results in the donation of rice to help feed the hungry around the globe. Perhaps that qualifies the game as a good addiction . . . one with redeeming qualities, something that’s, oh, didactic and edifying.”
- Kansas City Star


http://www.freerice.com

[BuddhaInBabylon]

this is awesome.

[M-26-7]

That site is an insult and it would not be much of an exaggeration to call it the antithesis of leftism.

[Reznov]

Just wondering, but has anyone here on RevLeft actually know if this is true?

[mlgb]

That site is an insult and it would not be much of an exaggeration to call it the antithesis of leftism.

why?

reloading the page generates ad revenue for the site and that is what funds the donations. the game is just a gimmick to get people to keep reloading the page.

also, getting wrong answers still donates.

[Burn A Flag]

Our tour guide at the UN mentioned this so it's probably true. Some friends and I have been using this site since.

[Animal Farm Pig]

I am the master of world geography!
http://i33.tinypic.com/2ntfskk.png

[Reznov]

Does anyone actually have any sources in which the rice was actually delivered to one of these places or to some type of organization?

[Tenka]

I view this as a waste of time, but surely every single grain of rice extracted from your mental faculties is appreciated by the less fortunate.

Edit: I also have ad-blocker. CHARITY CAN SIT ON IT.

[Blackscare]

Part of me thinks there must be less degrading ways to get food to the starving than making a game dependent on short-attention span westerners making themselves feel better for wasting time.

The other part of me thinks that things like this are dangerous because when you base things such as philanthropy (which is in itself a dubious venture) in totally trivial actions, people will feel as if they are contributing for doing the most inane shit. Which in and of itself lowers people's chances of becoming more conscious and actively fighting for a better world. Distracting people with trivial bullshit that strokes their ego is a great way to keep them from becoming active. Of course this is but one of many such distractions.


Another part of me remembers being in HS computer class and playing this, and at least it helped a little bit.


In and of itself the website isn't bad. But it is symptomatic of an approach (that may or may not be intentional) that trivializes real humanitarian/social awareness.

[Rakhmetov]

Part of me thinks there must be less degrading ways to get food to the starving than making a game dependent on short-attention span westerners making themselves feel better for wasting time.

The other part of me thinks that things like this are dangerous because when you base things such as philanthropy (which is in itself a dubious venture) in totally trivial actions, people will feel as if they are contributing for doing the most inane shit. Which in and of itself lowers people's chances of becoming more conscious and actively fighting for a better world. Distracting people with trivial bullshit that strokes their ego is a great way to keep them from becoming active. Of course this is but one of many such distractions.


Another part of me remembers being in HS computer class and playing this, and at least it helped a little bit.


In and of itself the website isn't bad. But it is symptomatic of an approach (that may or may not be intentional) that trivializes real humanitarian/social awareness.

You can't become conscious if you are near starvation and don't have an extra-reserve layer of fat in your body to help you to think with.

[M-26-7]

Part of me thinks there must be less degrading ways to get food to the starving than making a game dependent on short-attention span westerners making themselves feel better for wasting time.

The other part of me thinks that things like this are dangerous because when you base things such as philanthropy (which is in itself a dubious venture) in totally trivial actions, people will feel as if they are contributing for doing the most inane shit. Which in and of itself lowers people's chances of becoming more conscious and actively fighting for a better world. Distracting people with trivial bullshit that strokes their ego is a great way to keep them from becoming active. Of course this is but one of many such distractions.


Another part of me remembers being in HS computer class and playing this, and at least it helped a little bit.


In and of itself the website isn't bad. But it is symptomatic of an approach (that may or may not be intentional) that trivializes real humanitarian/social awareness.

I appreciate your post. I think you've outlined the relevant issues quite well. So all I want to do is to bring some perspective.

This website donates 10 grains of rice for each correct answer. In other words, you could play for an hour before you've donated half of one meal for one person.

The effect of any material aid provided by this website is infintesimal. If donating rice is your thing, it would be at least twenty times as effective to get a minimum wage job and donate the proceeds of your first hour, rather than playing around on this stupid website for an hour. So, the fact that it "trivializees real humanitarian/social awareness" (a conclusion that I fully agree with) is a tremendously bigger impact of this site than the material aid it provides. Especially so, since the material aid provided is so small as to be negligible.

The word "radical", as we all know, means going to the root of the problem. That is why I said that sitting and clicking on an internet page full of adverts to donate a small trickle of rice through a United Nations charity, and claiming you are doing any meaningful good, is the antithesis of being a radical. It is the antithesis of going to the root of the problem of world poverty. And hell, it isn't even a moderately effective form of charity (as I pointed out with the minimum wage example).

Really, how anyone calling themselves a leftist could not see any problems with spending their time trying to donate 10 grains of rice at a time - all paid for by advertisement dollars - baffles and dismays me about the state of the left in the developed countries. I'm considering becoming a Third Worldist because of this thread and the responses it's been getting.

[Reznov]

So, once again, does anyone have a source of this grains of rice being brought to helping feed people in need?

[Rakhmetov]

In its first six months of operation, FreeRice donated over 42 billion grains of rice. One month after the inception of the viral marketing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing) program, users had earned enough points for one billion grains of rice. The United Nation's World Food Programme stated that this amount could feed 50,000 people for one day.[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rice#cite_note-3) Thus, approximately 20,000 grains of rice provide enough caloric intake to sustain an adult for one day. Using this calculation, enough rice is donated to feed about 7,000 people daily.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rice#cite_note-totals-4) Since its inception, as of March 28, 2010, FreeRice has donated over 80 billion grains of rice. This is enough to provide food for 3,850,000 people for one day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7088447.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rice

[The Red Next Door]

Something is wrong with this, but I can not find the words. What if everyone get the question wrong? Do they still get the food?

[Rakhmetov]

If you get a word wrong try again. You are not penalized for the wrong word choice. Keep trying and look to the right of the screen and you will see the rice bowl being filled with rice.

[Red Commissar]

This is a way for them to raise funding to acquire humanitarian aid.

The fact that such an organization is reduced to this is sad. The capitalists are fine with giving things to their big industrialists and the military-industrial complex, but can not be assed to help with world hunger.

Simply put the site is not the problem, it's the conditions that led someone to propse the site as a way to raise resources to acquire grain.

[gorillafuck]

This is ridiculous, they should just give them rice. People with computers need to play a game just so starving people can get food. That's fucking disgusting.

[leftace53]

Yea, if its "free" rice, why not just give it to people who need it?

I stumbled across the game about a year or so ago, I found it a fun little trivia game, and only realized after a few rounds that they donate rice according to my answers. Its pretty silly that I have to play a game in order for people to be fed

[mlgb]

This is ridiculous, they should just give them rice. People with computers need to play a game just so starving people can get food. That's fucking disgusting.

the money to buy the rice is coming from the add revenue generated when the game refreshes the page. its not like the people running the site have a huge warehouse of rice that they have hoarded up and will just let it rot for shits and giggles if you don't play.

that the world is in such a state that someone even considered making a website like this is pretty ridiculous, but the existence of the site itself is not.

[gorillafuck]

the money to buy the rice is coming from the add revenue generated when the game refreshes the page. its not like the people running the site have a huge warehouse of rice that they have hoarded up and will just let it rot for shits and giggles if you don't play.

that the world is in such a state that someone even considered making a website like this is pretty ridiculous, but the existence of the site itself is not.
I understand that, I mean the suppliers are the bastards.

[Rakhmetov]

At least we can do something to send rice to peasant populations and other hungry people. It's not a cure-all but it is something to alleviate some misery.

[thesadmafioso]

At least we can do something to send rice to peasant populations and other hungry people. It's not a cure-all but it is something to alleviate some misery.

Do we really wish to just "alleviate some misery" though? In the grand scheme of things, is making capitalism slightly more tolerable the best route that the leftist movement can take to further its larger objectives? I am going to have to take a stance much like that of Vladimir Lenin after natural disasters had struck rural regions of Russia in the late 19th century, in which he objected to humanitarian aid on similar grounds, and rightly so. Much like Lenin in this instance, we must take into account the gravity of a issue like world hunger, and the system which allows it to persist. To bring about its end and to bring about positive change in the long run, opposition to such futile acts of humanitarian relief is necessary. They exist more to serve the purpose of bettering the image of western superpowers on the world stage then to truly fight what they claim to be fighting.

Yes, in the short run you could argue that such humanitarian action looks good for the leftist cause as well and does help people in a more immediate fashion, but really we are doing little more then that. I would hardly consider such a minuscule benefit to our public image and such insignificant actions with such minimal positive effects to be worthy of our support.

[Adi Shankara]

It's kind've like blackmail in a way, isn't it?

"play our game and get these answers right--or some african village will starve to death!"

if they cared, they'd just donate the food outright. it's not like we in the West don't have endless caches of grain and rice already.

EDIT: just in case anyone doesn't know, there are 7000 grains of rice in cup. you'd have to play this game for a few hours, maybe even a whole day, before you provided a single meal.

FURTHER EDIT: some good people learned how to create a script that automatically answers the questions at lightening speed, donating enough rice to feed 8 people a day, if run at full capacity:

http://smokyflavor.wikispaces.com/RiceMaker

and according to wiki, this could feed 720 people if run across multiple threads!

[M-26-7]

It's kind've like blackmail in a way, isn't it?

"play our game and get these answers right--or some african village will starve to death!"

if they cared, they'd just donate the food outright. it's not like we in the West don't have endless caches of grain and rice already.

They don't have the food yet. It's generated by advertising dollars; the banner ads are placed on the bottom of the screen as you click answers. So they only get the food when people answer the questions and thus see the ads.

This is not a new concept, actually. It's more or less a direct copy of the concept of The Hunger Site (www.thehungersite.com), which has been around since 1999.

Years ago, I liked the idea of The Hunger Site and I made it a habit to use it for about 20 minutes every day. Then, as I moved to the left politically, I became increasingly disgusted with the whole concept of the site.