By Robin Tarnowetzki
Journal Staff Reporter
If you are alive, you've probably heard of the ice bucket challenge: dump a bucket of water over your head or donate to an ALS charity. It's similar to the viral "#nomakeupselfie" from earlier this year, where women took a picture of themselves without makeup and then nominated others to do the same, and this (somehow) was supposed to raise awareness for breast cancer research.
ALS - also referred to as motor neuron disease - is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by muscle atrophy and difficulty in speaking, swallowing, and breathing.
I'm just going to throw this out there up front: I think most viral campaigns and memes are stupid and it's annoying seeing them in my newsfeed day after day after day.
Maybe it's the cynic in me coming out, but my assumption is that people complete the challenge and make the videos in order to receive attention and be part of a cultural movent before they think about helping others. It's part of the gamification of society: the need to be rewarded for doing something. The challenge should be "donate to ALS charities and shut up about it," but unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. In addition, the majority of videos don't mention how to donate or where to donate or why to donate.
However, the ice bucket challenge leaves me with some cognitive dissonance, because it has been successful in raising money for ALS research and obviously I'm not against that. So why did the ice bucket challenge succeed where #nomakeupselfie failed?
People actually know what the ice bucket challenge is for
I already mentioned that not many people say in their videos where to donate. However, every article about it does mention it's for ALS, and that's something, at least. I saw many, many no makeup selfies before I even heard an offhand mention about raising awareness for cancer. Everyone I talked to said something along the lines of, "That's supposed to be about cancer?" That campaign was (sort of) about awareness, not about donating money. It barely even raised awareness for another issue it touched on, which is that women should feel comfortable as they are. There are many issues with that assertion - including a) some women just like makeup, and b) not all women want to post makeup-less selfies on social media, which is okay - but I'm not going to delve into that right now. The ice bucket challenge didn't start out for charity (from what I can tell, it just began as a stupid stunt that got co-opted for charity) but it evolved into the charitable tool it is today.
People actually donate money
Slacktivist campaigns like #nomakeselfie get people talking about breast cancer, but never take the next step to get people to take action. Women take the makeupless selfie and feel like they've done their good deed for the day. Yes, it has to be said that the campaign did raise some money (more so in Britan where the idea of linking it to cancer awareness began), but I don't know anybody who did it and donated, and I don't know anybody who knew it was about cancer before I told them. While I'm not sure I love the implied "I would rather put myself through being doused in ice water than donate to charity" of the ice bucket challenge, most current versions have participants donating $10 if they do the challenge and $100 if they don't. ALS charities report receiving many times the normal amount of money they usually do in the same time frame. As annoying as the videos are, the results don't lie.
ALS actually needs awareness
Everyone knows cancer exists. A much smaller number know or care about ALS. In this case, raising awareness is actually useful and hopefully when the trend inevitably dies down, the urge to help does not.
But I can't fully hate it, because charities that would not have received that money otherwise now have more options for research. And I'm sure the thousands of ALS sufferers all over the world are grateful that people are talking about the disease. I'll just quietly fume about my newsfeed being taken over and rejoice when it goes back to normal - at least until the next trend comes along.
