Billionaire Bails Out Celebrity “Digital Death” Campaign After Donating $1 Million To HIV/AIDS Charity

Scores of your favorite Facebooking celebs will live to Tweet another day after a generous billionaire stepped in to donate a cool million to Alicia Keys’ Keep A Child Alive charity — subsequently saving Keys’ ill-fated “Celebrity Digital Death Campaign.”

Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, and Elijah Wood were among the stars who logged off their Twitter accounts five days ago, vowing to remain “digitally dead” until fans donated a total of one million dollars to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaging regions of India and Africa.

Imagine the celebs’ surprise when their Twitter followers were less charitable than expected. After five days the campaign had only raised $300,000 toward its $1 million goal. The stars became the butt of jokes on the Web, TV and radio. What gives? After all, the celebrities all have millions of fans. Lady Gaga boasts 7.3 million followers on Twitter, alone. Justin Timberlake has 3.6 million, and Seacrest has 3.7 million. Their popularity — or lack thereof — was questioned, as was their fans’ desire to keep them digitally dead.

(Maybe next year Alicia will have the good sense God gave a billy goat and hitch all of her charity efforts to Teen Messiah Justin Bieber and his crazed legion of Beliebers. Those hormonal tweeners won’t last 24 hours online without a single Tweet from their beloved Biebs. They’ll be tossing their college funds at the AIDS effort faster than you can say “One Less Lonely Girl!”)

Luckily a mega-rich guy came to the rescue! As the campaign stretched into an embarrassing fifth day on Monday afternoon, pharmaceutical mogul Stewart Rahr donated a bucketload of spare change, pushing the grand total to over one million dollars and freeing up the stars to resume broadcasting their all-important opinions and product plugs to the good folks of the social network.

God Bless Us Everyone!

(We’ve got five bucks that says either the guy was friends with one of the silenced stars, or he owns shares in Twitter!)

Either way, nobody needed bother resurrecting Usher. After agreeing to play dead for the campaign, the “Daddy’s Home” crooner somehow forgot all about it and Tweeted no less than four times less weekend.

Way to stay devoted to the cause, Ursh.