The new cool thing
Colin Roopnarain details the ice bucket craze
YOU’VE probably seen thumbnails of celebrities dunking themselves with buckets of ice water on your PC in the past few days, but for once, it’s not just a crazy internet trend.
It’s actually a clever awareness campaign, disguised as one of those crazy internet memes, like the neknomination craze that started off when random internet users around the world challenged each other to down large quantities of beer in front of a camera.
The ice bucket thing sees celebs dunking themselves with a bucket of ice or ice water all in the name of ALS. And, no, that’s not some new boy band birthed by Simon Cowell, but rather amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a progressive, terminal, incurable neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain.
It’s classified as an orphan disease because fewer than 200 000 people are diagnosed with it annually, and because orphans didn’t already need the love. The orphan classification means the disease isn’t widely known, so attracting donors to the cause was always going to be uphill.
Enter the Ice Bucket hash tag. The idea is as easy as it gets: dunk a bucket of cold ice water on your head, and post a video of the action to Facebook, Twitter, etc – but make sure you tag three (or 5 000) others to do likewise, or make a donation to the ALS charity of their choice.
While there are a few naysayers who question how doing anything online actually equates to activism, this particular challenge seems to have raised both awareness and funding faster and more effectively than any of the conventional, offline methods.
Between July 29 and August 12, (less than two weeks) the ALS Association has seen donations quadruple from year-ago levels, hitting R42 million.They have also received gifts from 70 000 new donors in the same period.
Of course the craze is helped by the participation of celebrities. Some looking for some PR-damage control, some just looking to add to their philanthropic resumé and others genuinely keen to spread the word. (You choose.)
Taking the trend of FIRST! to multiple meanings, Ethel Kennedy did it and tagged Barack Obama. Before you could say “POTUS”, Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Lena Dunham and Chris Pratt were doing it, which meant Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were soon in on it too.