Generally I love Twitter for the roundup of short snippets it provides ranging across my interests. Unfortunately once October comes, my Twitter feed is full of pink trivia and photos of people doing ridiculous things, wearing silly costumes and selling rather odd merchandise. The excuse is "raising awareness" of or fundraising for breast cancer but in reality so much of it trivialises and minimises. Moreover it contributes to division in the cancer community when one group of cancers hogs the limelight.
It isn't helped by the fact that some of the accounts posting or re-posting these can be found posting useful stuff too.
In the last couple of days there have been pink chocolates, alcohol and shoelaces, scratch cards and invitations to text details of pink landmarks; not to mention the photos of people in Very Peculiar Clothing grinning inanely.
Of course, even in October Twitter is a mine of useful information and signposts to interesting events and articles. Hidden away are things I really wouldn't want to miss from the cancer research and public involvement communities, as well as those completely unconnected with health issues, but I have to work so much harder to find the good stuff.
So here is a photograph of the real colours of October:
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