Whatever Wednesday: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

You know what I'm talking about. It's EVERYWHERE. You go on Facebook and your newsfeed is flooded with videos of people voluntarily dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads. You go on Twitter and your timeline has links of videos of people voluntarily dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads. You go on Instagram, and oh yes, you see 15-second videos of people voluntarily dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads.

Photo from Wikipedia

But don't worry--this is all done for a good cause. If you get nominated by a friend (or an enemy who wants to see you get drenched with ice cold water..you never know), you have 24 hours to replicate the challenge done by the nominator. The challenge is to either donate money to the ALS Association, OR, as punishment for not donating, pour ice cold water from a bucket over your head. At least, that's what I originally understood the mechanics of the challenge to be. But from what I've seen lately, a lot of people have been pouring water over their heads but are still making donations. I think that's pretty awesome.

When I first came across this challenge, I thought it was a really cool campaign to raise awareness of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis disease, also known as the Lou Gehrig's disease, and get people to donate to fundings for its treatment. I personally did not know anything about this disease at all prior to the Ice Bucket Challenge, so I'd have to give props to the now-viral challenge for putting that out there for everyone to be informed that there is such a disease. You can read more about ALS here.

It wasn't until late last month that I began noticing the trend that is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It picked up its pace in the popularity race when I saw that different people every day were doing it and flooding my newsfeed. With each scroll on my feed, there was at least one person who was either doing the video, or being nominated for the challenge. There's no escape!

Articles of both positive and negative feelings toward this trend have been making its rounds on the Internet. I have read a fair share of both sides, and I'm somewhere in between. I think it's absolutely amazing that because of this challenge, The ALS Association has received $22.9 million dollars of yesterday from all the donations brought in. Twenty-two point nine MILLION dollars. MILLION! It is also fantastic that this phenomenon has increased awareness among people, who would otherwise be clueless that such a serious disease exists. I believe these points make for a strong argument in support of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Plus, it's fun seeing people get dumped by water, especially if it's a celebrity or a whole cast of your favorite show (did you watch the challenge done by the Grey's Anatomy cast? Hihi pretty cool)

Photo from the Jackson and April Facebook page!

On the other hand, I feel as if some of these challenge participants are doing this popular challenge because that's exactly what it is--popular. It's what's trending, it's what's in, it's what's "cool" (pun intended) on social media right now. I don't mean to sound all judgmental and accusatory since I really don't know what people's true motives are, but I know you kinda get what I mean. Any trend that goes viral on the World Wide Web is bound to be followed by the huge netizen population.

Another perspective that was pointed out that critiqued the challenge comes from this article(click) I read by William MacAskill. Basically, the point he was trying to get across was that as great as it is that the ALS Association is getting literally millions of donations from participants of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, this tends to overshadow other charities and causes that may have the same value and urgency as ALS. E!News has written an article on why some critics aren't that excited about the challenge. You can read it here.

I understand both positive and negative sides to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I support the challenge because along with funds, awareness is also being raised. And as I've mentioned, it's kind of fun/funny to watch the videos, especially when things don't exactly go the way as planned...Exhibit A right here(click).

However, I also do get where the negative points are coming from. In my opinion, maybe a good alternate would be to do the challenge, BUT--for a charity or a cause of your choice. If you get challenged, you can prepare a short spiel about the charity (or cause) you picked, before getting soaked and frozen. This way, there is variety with every video, and a chance for other charities and associations to be at least funded in some way. The more varied it is, the higher the chance of people being informed of other good causes they can donate to.

Because when you analyze it, this challenge has gone viral not because ALS is well-known, but because people are posting videos of themselves getting doused in cold water. That's the hook, really. If instead of ALS, the challenge was for some other uncommon disease like, say, the Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infracts Leukoencephalopathy or CADASIL (betcha didn't know that existed! I didn't... I had to Google that), the challenge would still spread like wild fire. Why? Because people will still post videos of themselves getting doused in cold water, to spread awareness and raise donations for CADASIL.

There you go. My two cents on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I think it's healthy to at least consider both sides. Don't get me wrong, if I get nominated, I will actually probably do it haha, but maybe add a charity of my choice? Does that mean double the bucket? I might have to reevaluate this...

What's your take on this whole challenge?

Love,
Laura