Metric probably could have put a little more thought into their “Haiti Relief” t-shirt

Helping the people of Haiti in their time of need is a great thing to do, and you’d have to be a pretty cynical person to question the motives of someone who does so. Unless they choose an obnoxiously self-serving way to do it, like Metric apparently did with their recent t-shirt.

The Daily Swarm, who admittedly kicked off a beef with Metric by publishing this in July, called the group out again last week over their new t-shirt, which says “Help I’m Alive / Haiti Relief / Love, Metric” in big block letters. “Help I’m Alive” is the name of a single that the band released in 2008.

“This very special Metric Haiti Relief Shirt is available as an exclusive Pre-Sale,” according to the band’s online store. “Proceeds from every T-shirt purchased will be sent directly to the Canadian Red Cross Haiti relief effort.”

Greg Ipp, who wrote the original offending article as a guest blogger, did some digging [Update: By which I mean "read the band's initial press release"] and apparently discovered that nine of the fifteen dollars spent on every shirt will go to the relief effort, and the other six will cover costs. “How about you guys show us that you’re not profiting off this?” he asked. “Even marketing yourselves based on branding attached to a relief effort like this is bad form. Really, why not remove the branding and just sell the damn thing for the sake of helping people?”

“I don’t think anyone’s taking issue with their putting their band name on the t-shirt,” said a subsequent commenter. “It’s the fact that the play on ‘Help, I’m Alive’ is flippant in an *amazingly* ugly way. I think most sensible people’s stomach’s are turning at the tacky, wink-wink play on words, and (in my case at least) how BLINDINGLY self-absorbed/myopic you have to be to think ‘hey, people are doing so poorly they wish they were dead. that’s reminds me OF THE NAME OF MY SINGLE! I bet people would get a real kick out of that!’”

The shirt doesn’t seem to be available through the group’s online shop at the moment, although another Haiti shirt without the name of the band or the single can be purchased. Maybe the band decided to pull the original shirt and replace it with something more tasteful [Update: Yes, that's exactly what they did, and good on them]. Either way, it looks like your money will go much further if you send it directly to the Red Cross instead.

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