Ice Buckets

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard of or seen the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos. My Facebook feed is slammed with videos right now of people of all ages doing this. The TV news has been showing videos as well, ones that celebrities and presidents do. And maybe like you, I complained about it.

Last night I was telling my husband "You know, I'm really tired of seeing these things." And tonight, I'm not even exaggerating, every. single. post. in my Facebook feed that was from a person and not a news source was an Ice Bucket Challenge.  I've seen them pop up from time to time for months, but suddenly this thing is literally EVERYWHERE! And I might be wrong, but I don't think in the very beginning that they were tied to a specific charity, because I definitely saw someone take an ice "bath" for CF.

I had a small bone to pick with the whole thing in part because it completely plays off of the vanity of Facebook. Like, do we really have to dump buckets of ice water on our heads to donate to charity? Why can't we just donate to charity? In private? Without telling people?

On another note, while we're talking charities and causes, there are millions of people in the world who are without clean water, and here we all are dumping it on our heads wasting it. Depending how you feel about that, you could easily be upset over that aspect.

Then last night, our local Orange Leaf store issued the challenge to my workplace. This morning we had a quick meeting about when and where we should do this, how we could try and get other employees to join in. And then I found myself researching what ALS is and watching a very emotional video of a 26-year-old man who was diagnosed with ALS. And he was talking about it and how much it scares him because it runs in his family, and then you see him taking care of his mother who is in, what I would guess to be, the late stages of the disease. It was heartbreaking.

I get it now. If I (via my workplace) had not been issued this challenge, I would never have done my research to find out what ALS is. And I never would have donated either. Yeah, I've heard of "Lou Gehrig's Disease" but I didn't actually know what it was. These videos are talking points, they're "fun", and the exact thing that I did is the entire point: to get people talking and educating themselves about it, and in turn hopefully donating towards it.

The skeptic in me still wonders if everyone who does this is really making a donation, or if they are just making the silly video and moving on. Or maybe they intend to, but the next day they forget about it and never do? But clearly it's effective, as donations keep climbing to numbers the ALSA has never seen before.

And you know, if the CF Foundation ever comes out with a campaign that goes viral and raises a ton of money, I will rejoice at that. CF affects nearly 30,000 people in the USA, and it is estimated there are 30,000 people in the USA with ALS. So we're kind of on the same level as far as how common the diseases are and, I would imagine, how much funding and attention they receive. But for now, I'm happy for the ALS community that their cause is getting the attention they hoped for. I donate to yours, you donate to mine, eh? :)