So you’ve probably heard about the Ice Bucket Challenge, or have seen it on Facebook or even done it yourself! Well, for those of you who didn’t heard about it at all; The challenge dares you to throw a bucket of ice water over yourself, film it and nominating three new people for this challenge within 24 hours. The Ice Bucket challenge is a gesture for charity for the muscle disease ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), to donate money. The participant who throws the bucket of ice water over their head is expected to donate $10, and $100 if they have not.
But, where and how did it started? It all started in Boston in the United States, where the baseball player Pete Frates got diagnosed with ALS. To create ‘awareness’ for this bad disease, he decided to throw a bucket of ice water over him and challenged his old baseball teammates from ‘Boston College baseball team’ to do the same. So Pete Frates posted the challenge on Twitter and the ‘ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’ was born.
So, one thing led to another; the Ice Bucket challenge spread all over the internet and millions of people have done the challenge already, even celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga and many others. Also, one in six Britons participated in the challenge, but one in ten participants in Britain have actually donated. The Ice Bucket challenge is known worldwide now and through social media it has become a huge hype.
What do you think of the Ice Bucket Challenge? Do you think it’s a good way to support the charity for the disease ALS ? And last: did you do the ALS Ice Bucket challenge? 🙂
Sources:
http://www.als.nl/wat-kunt-u-doen/doneren/icebucketchallenge/
I think the ice bucket challenge is a successful promotion case by using social media. However, any coin has its two sides. On one hand, it indeed attract people’s attention to ALS disease successfully, and lots of donation were made. But, on another hand, considerable clean water and energy were wasted. Some of celebrities just saw it as a show, to win more positive attitude and trust from their followers, instead of caring about ALS patient. But in general, it is a good way to support the charities for the disease ALS. Making government and citizens to know this kind of rare disease, and begin to establish welfare policies to protect the benefits of ALS patient. And ice did make participants feel the painful in short seconds, which ALS patient actually has. Lastly, I hope the donation and the caring is not just a temporary behavior, patient need to be cared in long term.
I think the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has its good and bad sides.
Firstly, this event was popularly spread around the world. Videos being posted on several social networking sites means that this challenge can reach a large amount of people and as “players” are required to tag their friends to complete the challenge as well, the circulation rate for this event is very high. The purpose of this event is very good as well as it aims to create awareness in the public towards the ALS disease, as well as earning donations to help those who are suffering from this disease. In this light, I believe that this challenge was a good way to support charity because other than giving money, the participant can also physically do something and have “fun” pouring cold water over themselves. It will become a lasting memory that you can share with your friends.
Connecting it with the United Breaks Guitar case, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge also represented the power of social media and the virtual world. This challenge started an extraordinary Internet sensation. As mentioned, this event was spread quickly through the virtual world, just by people sharing, tagging their friends and mentioning about the event on their social networking sites. According to Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/08/29/the-als-ice-bucket-challenge-has-raised-100m-but-its-finally-cooling-off/), this challenge had successfully raised over $100 million dollars for those in-need and there are no large costs behind running this campaign.
However, many people have treated this challenge as a game and might have forgotten the real meaning behind the challenge. This destroys the initial purpose of this campaign. Moreover, there are people who are getting hurt from participating in this challenge and these injuries are unnecessary. The videos on this website (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/08/28/ice-bucket-challenge-participants-keep-getting-hurt-there-may-be-one-related-death-too/) shows how unsafe participating in this ALS Ice Bucket Challenge could be.
I’ve came across one fascinating article about this challenge. (http://dailycurrant.com/2014/08/15/california-fining-ice-bucket-challenge-participants-for-wasting-water/) In California, the local authorities are fining people for participating in this campaign as it is wasting water.
Do you think that this is necessary? Do you think that this challenge should be removed because it has the risk of causing injuries and water wastage?
As the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was such a success in raising funds, do you think that other organisations should try to replicate this type of campaign (“do this thing for that reason and post a video”) in the future? Taking in the good and bad sides, do you have any suggestions for better management of this campaign in the future – avoiding injuries?
I think that other organisations should try to do something else. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a hype, and hypes tend to disappear after a certain period of time. For example, two weeks ago, my Facebook timeline was full of Ice Bucket video’s. Now, I haven’t seen these kind of video’s in the past few days.
About the injuries: the campaign is not responsible for the injuries. Some people need to use their brain before they do these kind of things.