Feeding thyself

There's something about Free Rice that bothers me.

The site consists of a vocabulary game; it says for each word whose synonym you get right, "we donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger".

It launched on October 7 with 830 grains of rice donated; so far today, 77,126,310 grains of rice have been donated.

Aside from the odd food aid is bad for Africa line of debate (see UN food aid 'causing chaos and violence' in Somalia for example) there's something distasteful about saying to a mostly-Western audience hey, play this game if you're bored at work--and if you do well, fewer kids in Africa will starve.

The site feeds into the whole Africa as playground for the West mentality--Africa is where we go to feel better about ourselves, to experiment, to show we're good people; no matter the intentions, it's also what we reference in opposition to 'us'.

Plus the site has a smarmy presentation method--you're playing for grains of rice. A graphic literally shows a food bowl filling up as you get each word right (they get progressively harder). It all makes me feel as if I'm throwing pennies at a beggar.

Also, the site syntax is incorrect--for example, it asks: "chomp means:
bite
heartache
kindling
currency"

Well, actually, chomp doesn't "mean" any of the other words--it has a similar meaning to bite, but if chomp meant bite, they wouldn't be two different words.

The economic model for the site is based on ads, of course; but really, like most things tying the West to Africa, the site is run off narcissism.

Uncredited rice field image found online