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| ncbnews.com |
Internet phenomena have three things in
common: they pop up suddenly and involve a huge amount of people in short time,
come into existence for any purpose – mostly to profile yourself - and will be
buried into oblivion soon after their maximum of attention. But this one is
different. This one has gone viral and raised millions to fight against a
neurodegenerative disease: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Though, is it different? Is it an aid project
or just a medium for self-display like the endless other profiling challenges
on the Internet?
Well, the principle is simple: You film
yourself while dumping a bucket of ice water over your head, post the video on
your social media, and challenge your friends to do the same within 24 hours or
they will have to donate $100 to ALS. But most of the participants do both and
raise the awareness of the – as yet unexplored – disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, short
ALS. So there have been 2,4 million ice-bucket-challenge-related
videos uploaded on Facebook, 3,7 million videos on image sharing platform Instagram with the hashtag
#IceBucketChallenge or #ALSIceBucketChallenge and it has been mentioned more
than 2,2 times on Twitter (Steel, Townsend). To remain with the numbers:
According to the ALS Association, they have received over $100 million from the
participants of the Ice Bucket Challenge to fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(alsa.org).
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that leads
ultimately to total paralysis. The disease, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s
disease, affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord of the patients
and causes the lost of the ability to initiate and control muscle movement. ALS
affects about 30,000 Americans; most of them are between the ages of 40 and 70.
From the time of diagnosis, normal patients have a life expectancy from two to
five years (ALS Association)
So it is not surprising that the ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge has become a major fundraising campaign and good cause for donation.
Nevertheless, the Ice Bucket Challenge was a fundraising project invented by a
group of professional golfers to support pet charities until it hit former
baseball player Pete Frates’ attention, who was diagnosed with ALS two years
ago. Frates started to turn the challenge into a fundraising project for ALS
after his friend Pat Quinn, who also has the disease, challenged him. When
several celebrities from Bill Gates to Justin Timberlake joined the ALS Ice
Bucket Challenge, it got viral. (Reddy, Steel, Herbert)
Although people have raised money and
awareness for ALS, every uploaded video raises the question whether it’s a real
act of charity or just another act of profiling yourself on the Internet. Without
doubt, there are many people who join the challenge to donate and to support
the fight against ALS and take the online presentation as a necessary evil. But
there are just as much people who take the Ice Bucket Challenge as an
acceptable chance to display their self on the Internet. Basically, the idea of
donating has become less important. How many people really mention the disease
or how they will donate? Isn’t it more about the ‘fun’ and being ‘cool’?
Instead of actually donating money, they take the time to think about how they
will dump water over their heads, filming it several times – because the first
time it didn’t went out well – and then post it on Facebook to show they care.
But showing that you care does not help fighting against ALS. It just helps you
to be seen as an altruistic person. So there isn’t any challenging act left. It
is kind of easy to have fun while dumping ice cold water over your head - just
take a look at all the smiling faces in the videos.
The real challenge is to act altruistically
without having an Internet phenomenon as an occasion, without being nominated
by anyone, without displaying yourself as a helping person. The real challenge
is to help. Would you accept it?
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