Fitting altruism and stupid fun in an ice bucket
MANILA, Philippines - Celebrities, athletes, and CEOs dousing themselves with ice water to raise awareness and research funding for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) may sound weird and incongruous, but that’s exactly what’s been happening on social media for over a week now. What began as a challenge between two ALS patients has now become a viral sensation akin to the planking and Harlem Shake crazes of Internet yore, except this one has people like Bill Gates and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver as participants and millions of dollars already raised for charity.
The awareness part, though, is a bit sketchy. What is now known as the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” actually started as just an “Ice Bucket Challenge,” which had become a minor Internet trend as early as July, as popularized by The Today Show’s Matt Lauer who accepted a challenge made by golf legend Greg Norman. An ALS patient named Pat Quinn got wind of the gimmick and challenged his friend and fellow ALS patient Pete Frates, with the intention of using the trend to raise ALS awareness. It worked: it quickly spread in Frates’ hometown of Boston and now, countless of Vines and Instagram videos later, it’s all over the Internet, with “ALS” permanently attached to it.
The idea, or at least the original one, was to challenge people to either pour ice water on themselves or, if they weren’t up to it, donate money to ALS research. The original idea, in essence, was that if you accepted the challenge, you were a world class a-hole. But it seems people are implicitly doing both – embracing the charity aspect, while retaining all the fun of watching a bunch of famous people challenge themselves and freeze their butts off in viral videos. The more the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge spreads, however, the more it upstages its adopted cause.
When Jimmy Fallon did the gimmick on his late night show this week, he took more time talking about the challenge itself than explaining what ALS is. He’s actually one of the best cases: majority of the viral videos don’t even make mention of the disease. But hey, people have been doing stupid things on social media for years now, so we might as well try and cure a mysterious neurodegenerative disease that has afflicted 12,000 Americans while we’re at it.
The viral challenge has predictably reached our shores, which makes you wonder why Pinoys suddenly care about 12,000 ailing Americans. To be fair, it doesn’t seem like they do. I’m not sure if the Pinoy athletes and celebrities that have joined the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge have given money to the ALS Association. What’s very clear, however, is that they really enjoy being part of this cool Ice Bucket thing on the Internet. Maybe we should agree to adopt a cause that resonates locally. (MRT improvements? Tacloban rebuild? Red Cross donations?) Or maybe we should just do what we’re supposed to do all along: make our donations quietly and make our viral videos as stupid and as fun as possible.
