Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, and Usher to Die for the Cause

Twitter streams across the world are about to lose some star power. On Wednesday (Dec. 1), celebs including Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian, Janelle Monáe, Swizz Beatz, Jay Sean, and more are taking part in the new campaign Digital Life Sacrifice where they will sign off of social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter on behalf of Keys’ charity Keep a Child Alive.

The digital protest is intended to raise money on World AIDS Day, with participants signing back on to their respective social networking profiles when the charity raises $1 million. Many have filmed “last tweet and testament” advertisements where they laid in coffins to represent their “digital deaths” in preparation for the big day.

“It’s really important and super-cool to use mediums that we naturally are on,” Keys tells the AP of the digital protest. “It’s so important to shock you to the point of waking up. It’s not that people don’t care or it’s not that people don’t want to do something, it’s that they never thought of it quite like that.”

The new mom believes that shutting down celebrity profiles will have an immediate impact. “This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention,” she explains, hoping that others will take their favorite celeb’s lead. “It just doesn’t have to be just because you’re a celebrity or something like that. It can be anybody.”