Have you done the ALS ice bucket challenge?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 102481
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
SegaShack said:
I don't get what this has to do with donating towards ALS. Honestly, the ice bucket thing seems redundant. If someone wants to donate they can, no ice required.
Click to expand...
I feel the same way. So many others diseases that also need awareness. This is just a fad thats gonna wear out and people will just forget what the cause was about.
 
I personally have not, but I think it's a good cause.

I also don't care if people are doing it for their own benefit. Charity is like that, regardless. Everybody is in it for themselves, that's the way the world works. Some people do it for the fuzzy feeling inside, others do it for more substantial back patting. Good on people for actually getting off their asses and giving half a shit.
 
metalslimer said:
Man the negativity in here towards people raising money and having stupid fun. I imagine some of you whining about people walking for breast cancer.

The whole point was getting everyone involved.
Click to expand...
I don't ACTIVELY dislike it, maybe poor wording from me. I just think it's lame lol. I enjoy the well known people doing it, it's entertaining. I don't really care about friends and family doing it, like at all. I mean if they're having fun that's great. I'd never say it to their face or out loud and be a party pooper no fun allowed guy. As long as everyone is donating it's all good.

I saw a few videos of random people doing it and not once in their video did they even mention ALS or donating. It was like...I got told to do the ice bucket challenge! Now I'll do it! I'll nominate these people! Go for it!
 
FullMetaltech said:
I feel the same way. So many others diseases that also need awareness. This is just a fad thats gonna wear out and people will just forget what the cause was about.
Click to expand...

Whether it's one disease or another, any awareness is better than less or none. The will to argue against that is mind-boggling.

So, to be a little more productive, pick the other disease you think also needs awareness and do it. The guy that started it was probably emotionally invested in in ALS.
 
I think it's dorky and I'm sick of seeing the videos on my Facebook feed.

IMO if you want to donate to charity, just quietly do it and move on with your life. No need for attention-whoring.
 
The Lamonster said:
I think it's dorky and I'm sick of seeing the videos on my Facebook feed.

IMO if you want to donate to charity, just quietly do it and move on with your life. No need for attention-whoring.
Click to expand...

Again the idea is to raise awareness. Sorry to hear raising $15 million for charity has so terribly annoyed you.
 
KHarvey16 said:
Again the idea is to raise awareness. Sorry to hear raising $15 million for charity has so terribly annoyed you.
Click to expand...

The videos themselves don't raise awareness.

They're funny videos of people having ice cold water dumped onto them going viral. It's peer pressure into donating for what should be a good cause, but how many people actually donate to begin with? How many people gave a shit before?

There are posters here who did it without knowledge that you either donate or take the ice bucket, so even the rules are murky right now.

I'm all for charity coming up with creative ways to raise money, but the bigger question should be how much of that donation goes to active research supports and not to cover overhead and admin costs.

FYI, ALS is when your nerves shrink and muscles atrophy, resulting is either paralysis or death.

http://www.alsa.org/about-als/what-is-als.html

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

A-myo-trophic comes from the Greek language. "A" means no or negative. "Myo" refers to muscle, and "Trophic" means nourishment–"No muscle nourishment." When a muscle has no nourishment, it "atrophies" or wastes away. "Lateral" identifies the areas in a person's spinal cord where portions of the nerve cells that signal and control the muscles are located. As this area degenerates it leads to scarring or hardening ("sclerosis") in the region.

As motor neurons degenerate, they can no longer send impulses to the muscle fibers that normally result in muscle movement. Early symptoms of ALS often include increasing muscle weakness, especially involving the arms and legs, speech, swallowing or breathing. When muscles no longer receive the messages from the motor neurons that they require to function, the muscles begin to atrophy (become smaller). Limbs begin to look "thinner" as muscle tissue atrophies.
Click to expand...

I haven't made any donations this year for my tax burden, so I'm all for making a donation to them this year.

Really sucks Lou Gehrig was 39 when he was diagnosed with the disease. I wonder what progress has been made from his awareness then to today.
 
Squalor said:
Yes, we can only pay attention to one disease at a time...
Click to expand...
No arguement here from me. I do a walk every year for Juvenile Diabetes since i had a family member pass away frim that. Also i donate to a leukemia foundation since my motherinlaw passed a few years ago. I have no problems with the cause but i see it as more like follow the leader than being aware of the cause.
 
KHarvey16 said:
Again the idea is to raise awareness. Sorry to hear raising $15 million for charity has so terribly annoyed you.
Click to expand...

Right. If the donation amount wasn't so high and continuing to increase, I'd understand some of the cynical arguments. Anything that increases donations is good in my book.
 
No, if I was nominated I probably wouldn't do it either. I'm not a fan of viral challenges like this, and most people who do this don't even know what the purpose of the challenge is for.
 
I did it, and then jumped in a lake right afterwards. The water in there was way warmer than what was in my bucket. My dad has ALS and even HE did it, so pretty much everyone we knew from there on out was like "well if MattyG's dad did it, I guess I can."

Also, holy shit at the cynicism in here. Close to $3M dollars has been raised since this started. Last year, in the same period, only $25K was raised, so I'd say it's at least getting one thing done.
 
GreatestHits said:
Somebody needs to point out the silliness
Click to expand...

Silliness meaning the fact that the foundation received only around $1.7 million in donations last year, and so far this year has earned over $13 million because of the ice bucket challenge?

As of Sunday, the association said it had received $13.3 million in donations since July 29, compared with $1.7 million during the same period last year.
Click to expand...

Yeah, super silly. It's marketing, it works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/b...-has-raised-millions-for-als-association.html
 
I got nominated and I didn't do a thing....I don't have 100 dollars to donate (video stated 100 dollars) and I have no desire to shift the "burden" onto anyone else
I'm a horrible person for it
 
Can someone clear this up for me please?

If you're nominated, after you supposed to dump a bucket of ice water over your head AND donate to the cause or do you just dump a bucket of ice water over your head and challenge someone else, not donating?
 
Delicious Waffles said:
Can someone clear this up for me please?

If you're nominated, after you supposed to dump a bucket of ice water over your head AND donate to the cause or do you just dump a bucket of ice water over your head and challenge someone else, not donating?
Click to expand...

There's no right or wrong way to do it.

A) Dump a bucket of ice and post online for the world to see, challenging others to follow suit, thereby spreading awareness.
B) Donate money to ALS.
C) Do both.

Celebs and athletes are mostly doing C.
 
CREMSteve said:
There's no right or wrong way to do it.

A) Dump a bucket of ice and post online for the world to see, challenging others to follow suit, thereby spreading awareness.
B) Donate money to ALS.
C) Do both.

Celebs and athletes are mostly doing C.
Click to expand...

Ah, okay. I was thinking all these celebs and athletes were just doing A. Glad it's C.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.
 
KHarvey16 said:
If slacktivism can raise $15+ million I'm sure every charity will very much hope for more slacktivists.
Click to expand...

When I explained why I didn't do it when challenged, I feel I might not have clarified my point very well, so I want to try to do it here, in response to this particular post:

"Raising Awareness" is important. I'm not saying it isn't. But at this point in this campaign, there is no awareness I'm going to raise that hasn't already been raised. Unless there is a pocket of celebrity that is relatively untouched, that I also manage to fit into, I'm not going to be inspiring anyone to donate money that isn't already inspired.

Oprah just did this thing, yunno? I just saw a video where Oprah Winfrey did this challenge, and donated money to the cause. OPRAH.

My joining in - especially when I don't have the finances to contribute on a level I'd like to contribute - feels especially meaningless in the face of the fact EVERYONE knows about this campaign already. Awareness is raised, and has been raised. If I put up that 36-view-count phone-cam video of my impotently dumping a bucket of ice water over my head, the only person my own 36-view-count YouTube phone-cam video is going to reach that hasn't already been reached is someone who likely DOESN'T EVEN HAVE THE INTERNET.

For me, there's a point at which my joining in stops being helpful, and edges closer to being self-serving (lookit me) and while I'm an attention whore in many ways, the idea that I'm at best just contributing to ineffective noise echoing out after awareness has already been raised makes me feel like I should just give it a pass, and donate when the money becomes available.

If all I can contribute is awareness, then I need to actually make people aware. And if I can't do that in a meaningful way, it feels disningenous to do it anyway. At this point, the challenge is fun to watch not because you're seeing "jus folks" in a shower-stall headbutting a waterfall of ice-water. It's fun because you're seeing celebrities acting like "jus folks" while challenging other celebrities to come out and play. And I'm not a celebrity.

That's what I was trying to get at.
 
http://qz.com/249649/the-cold-hard-truth-about-the-ice-bucket-challenge/

A similar phenomenon has been studied in the lab by psychologists. It’s called moral licensing: the idea that doing one good action leads one to compensate by doing fewer good actions in the future. In a recent experiment, participants either selected a product from a selection of mostly “green” items (like an energy-efficient light bulb) or from a selection of mostly conventional items (like a regular light bulb). They were then told to perform a supposedly unrelated task. However, in this second task, the results were self-reported, so the participants had a financial incentive to lie; and they were invited to pay themselves out of an envelope, so they had an opportunity to steal as well.

What happened? People who had previously purchased a green product were significantly more likely to both lie and steal than those who had purchased the conventional product. Their demonstration of ethical behavior subconsciously gave them license to act unethically when the chance arose.

Amazingly, even just saying that you’d do something good can cause the moral self-licensing effect. In another study, half the participants were asked to imagine helping a foreign student who had asked for assistance in understanding a lecture. They subsequently gave significantly less to charity when given the chance to do so than the other half of the participants, who had not been asked to imagine helping another student.

The explanation behind moral licensing is that people are often more concerned about looking good or feeling good rather than doing good. If you “do your bit” by buying an energy-efficient lightbulb, then your status as a good human being is less likely to be called into question if you subsequently steal.

In terms of the conditions for the moral licensing effect to occur, the ice bucket challenge is perfect. The challenge gives you a way to very publicly demonstrate your altruism via a painful task, despite actually accomplishing very little (on average, not including those who don’t donate at all, a $40 gift, or 0.07% of the average American household’s income): it’s geared up to make you feel as good about your actions as possible, rather than to ensure that your actions do as much good as possible.
Click to expand...
 
Spine_Ripper said:
I still don't even know what the hell ALS is.
Click to expand...

I didn't know before this all started, either. It's nasty stuff though.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.
Click to expand...

http://www.alsa.org/about-als/what-is-als.html
 
potam said:
http://qz.com/249649/the-cold-hard-truth-about-the-ice-bucket-challenge/
Click to expand...

The explanation behind moral licensing is that people are often more concerned about looking good or feeling good rather than doing good. If you “do your bit” by buying an energy-efficient lightbulb, then your status as a good human being is less likely to be called into question if you subsequently steal.

In terms of the conditions for the moral licensing effect to occur, the ice bucket challenge is perfect. The challenge gives you a way to very publicly demonstrate your altruism via a painful task, despite actually accomplishing very little (on average, not including those who don’t donate at all, a $40 gift, or 0.07% of the average American household’s income): it’s geared up to make you feel as good about your actions as possible, rather than to ensure that your actions do as much good as possible.
Click to expand...

Ah so it's like people who are "fronting". I found the statistic that the people who steal to be able to look altruistic interesting.
 
potam said:
http://qz.com/249649/the-cold-hard-truth-about-the-ice-bucket-challenge/
Click to expand...
well he also says this
Cannibalism of funding among charities is a major problem. However, there is a solution. The moral licensing phenomenon doesn’t always happen: there is a countervailing psychological force, called commitment effects. If in donating to charity you don’t conceive of it as “doing your bit” but instead as taking one small step towards making altruism a part of your identity, then one good deed really will beget another.
Click to expand...
 
FullMetaltech said:
I feel the same way. So many others diseases that also need awareness. This is just a fad thats gonna wear out and people will just forget what the cause was about.
Click to expand...

Okay, so it's a fad that fades away and everyone completely forgets about ALS. Does that 13 million+ disappear too?

Even in the worst case scenario, the ALS Association has millions of more dollars than it had before that it can put toward research and other awareness campaigns. And that's assuming that anyone who participates, donates or just reads about this whole thing is incapable of retaining the tiniest bit of information about ALS.

There is literally no bad that can come out of this challenge.
 
I saw a ton of people doing the ice bucket challenge and had absolutely no idea it was about a charity until I saw this thread.

Not enough people mentioning what it's about in their videos; they're just dumping the ice on themselves. I thought it was some cinnamon challenge bullshit until now.
 
I don't get how this could possibly be a bad thing. People love attention whoring. They did it before with shit like the cinnamon challenge and the frozen tape crap. This one is still safe for people to do, plus its raising a lot of money for a charity. Its like the cynics that complain about companies doing donations only for good PR. Well duh. Everyone does things for their own enjoyment or benefit in some way. The amount of people that enjoy attention whoring is clearly much larger than the group of people that enjoy the feeling of happiness you get when you donate to charity. And thus this is a genius way of raising money for charity. I think we'll see a lot of other charities jump onto the bandwagon of having challenges and there'll end up being a series of them just like there was for the other stupid internet challenges.

I've never been challenged, nor do I think I ever will be. Seeing loads of it in my feed though.
 
potam said:
http://qz.com/249649/the-cold-hard-truth-about-the-ice-bucket-challenge/
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on this? What I'm getting out of it is "It's bad to give modest amounts to charity because it may make you less likely to give larger amounts later." If that really is your point, you're reaching pretty hard. You'd need to argue that these hypothetical lost donations sum up to more than the massive amount that's been collected as a direct result of the challenge. I strongly doubt that's the case.

To be honest, it seems like you're just trying to rationalize your distaste for this whole thing. Why not just say "I hate fads (even when they have a positive effect on the world)" and leave it at that?
 
Heisenberg said:
It's supposed to be fun/funny.

What does more good - me donating $100 or tagging a bunch of people and getting them to donate and/or tag a bunch more people to do the same thing?
Click to expand...

Nowhere is an ice bucket necessary in that description, their is honestly no justification.
 
Just did it with my housemates. We used a bag of ice and a huge bucket for each of us and it was fucking cold. We also donated about $50 each. I am pretty impressed with how big this thing got.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Locked
It's November 5th, have you done your duty today?
2
76
6K
MayauMiao replied
Radio signals coming from Antarctica's ice
2
67
499
Ozzy Onya A2Z replied
The dumbest and most absurd questions you have asked AI.
9
179
SJRB replied
  • Poll
Have you ever reported a post?
37
390
Fbh replied
do you get ice cream trucks on your street?
2
69
3K
Puscifer replied
Top Bottom