Looking to win a pair of airline tickets to anywhere that Virgin America files? No, it wasn’t really high on my list of things to do this week either. However, it is the prize that will go to whomever wins Global Geek Week. The contest encourages folks to upload videos to Youtube (announcement video embedded below – due this Thursday at midnight, pacific). They are also encouraging the geek community to donate funds to various charities in the name of geek.

Now I’m all for a good, rousing week of geek self-referential adulation. And using the attention that they’re getting to drive funds to worthy causes is nice. But my cynical, seen-too-many-PR-stunt-mind wonders if this is an honest geek movement or just something cooked up by “social media experts” at Virgin America. Do they really value the contributions that geeks can make toward the world? Or do they think we’re just a bunch of sheep who can make any pandering piece of video go viral (and thus giving them plenty of free press in the process).

The focus of the campaign seems to be off as well. The reward is to go to people that answer the questions “How do you geek out?”, “What makes you a geek?”, “How are geeks going to make the world a better place?”. But its easy to talk about grandiose ideas in fluffy terms. Why not look to reward those geeks in the trenches who have moved beyond the talking-head phase and are actually implementing things in the real world?

Global Geek Week is a great idea. Let’s highlight the makers, the doers of things in order to inspire others into following suit. But this implementation of it seems to be little more than marketing cotton candy – neat to look at, tasty on the tongue, but containing absolutely not greater substance.