The Ice Bucket Challenge
Every season is popular with something. Summer is usually famous not only for perfect weather and vacation flings, but also for dance party songs, movies and open air festivals. This summer is not an exception, but The Ice Bucket Challenge can be, probably, the best trick for remembering it. These days when you open your profile on social networks and look through your friends’ news, the only video you see is when one celebrity douses herself/ himself with a bucket of ice water, challenging others to do the same. Why do they do it? Some people say it’s for a great cause to raise money for a charity fund, created by ALS Association. But others consider the phenomenon to be absurd. Let’s consider some arguments for and against this contagious Internet activity in order to decide whether it is good or not.
Since The ALS Association started the ball rolling by inspiring people to action, they have received $70.2 million in donations to the organization. It is an unbelievable number compared to the same time period last year. Do celebrities deserve some credit for it? Everyone should decide for himself/ herself. The vast majority of people didn’t know about ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) at all. But celebrities could attract a great number of new sponsors and raise the public’s awareness about the decease. In these videos you see ordinary people who have the same emotions and feelings as we do. And their behaviour attracts attention.
Even Gaza took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge to draw attention to the crises in Palestine. But they renamed it to the Rubble Bucket Challenge to illustrate the situation at the present moment. So, even such a phenomenon can help organizations send the message to people about some world problems and their potential solutions.
However, as a result of its success, a group of companies stuck like a leech and tried to earn money in the hope to freeload. In particular South Korea’s Samsung Group. They decided to poach this media virus to make money and push aside their competitors by challenging them. (Samsung Group showed their dominance over their competitors’ goods.) Perhaps it was a brilliant business move, but was it morally right?
But some people express their opinion about the organization of this Internet activity and it’s not quite positive because, as they say, it creates the mood of fun and amusement. Many people (it doesn’t matter whether they are famous or not) make no reference to the main issue, ALS, in their videos. Some of them don’t even mention the information of donation. Besides, a lot of people prefer to douse themselves without giving money to the charity fund. All they want to do is to have fun. So, many people don’t understand the main idea of this viral media.
As for me, it never crossed my mind that such a thing could be helpful. Firstly, I was suspicious of these actions. Even after reading several articles it seemed to me that it was just a pathetic attempt by celebrities to attract us to their personalities. But I was not exactly right. On the company’s website you can find the results of ALS research, sum donations and the description of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. When I saw it, I changed my mind, incompletely, of course, but now I’m ready to consider some possible steps toward solving serious things using the unique abilities of celebrities to raise money.
Кравченко Христина
Константиновна
ПФ ПГУПС, 2015
