I opened Facebook this morning to check if anyone had commented on the garage sale post from Saturday and instead scrolled through eleven, I counted, eleven separate videos of people I know screaming after dumping ice water on themselves. My cousin Rina did hers on her back porch in her work clothes, which seems like a mistake she'll regret at the office tomorrow. A guy I sat next to in a database class in 2009 did his in what looked like a hotel bathtub. Its been like this for about a week and a half now and I dont see it slowing down.
For anyone who's somehow avoided this, the rules are simple: dump a bucket of ice water on your head, film it, post it, and nominate a couple more people who then have 24 hours to do the same thing or donate to ALS research (or, lets be honest, most people just do both because why not). Bill Gates built an actual Rube Goldberg contraption in his backyard to dump the bucket on himself, pulley system and everything, which is such a Bill Gates way to do it that I laughed out loud at my desk. Zuckerberg did his a few days back too, out on some deck, and tagged Sheryl Sandberg and Reed Hastings on the way out. Watching tech billionaires get cold water dumped on them by their own Rube Goldberg machines is, I'll admit, a pretty good few minutes of entertainment.
Here's the thing that actually gets me though. I saw a number floating around, something like the ALS Association pulled in over 15 million dollars in donations in the past few weeks, compared to under 2 million over the same stretch last year. Thats not nothing. Thats a real charity getting real money because a video format spread the way it did. I dont think I've seen a fundraising push move that fast since, I dont know, ever, honestly.
But I also cant shake the feeling that a decent chunk of the people posting these videos have no idea what ALS even is beyond "the ice bucket disease" now. I asked my neighbor, the one with the trampoline, what ALS stood for and she just said "I dont know, its for charity though right?" which, sure, fine, but it bugs me a little. It feels like the ritual (get wet, get nominated, tag friends, repeat) became the point, and the actual disease is just the excuse card everyone's carrying around to make dumping water on your head socially acceptable. Theres a whole debate going on right now about whether this counts as real activism or just a very well produced excuse to post a video of yourself, and honestly I go back and forth on it depending on the day.
What I do know is my own feed has become unusable for its normal purpose, which is looking at pictures of other people's food and arguing about local politics in the comments. Every single post right now is either someone shrieking in a driveway or someone tagging three more people who now have to do it too. My brother nominated me on Thursday and I still havent done mine, mostly because I dont want to explain to my downstairs neighbors why theres suddenly a puddle on my patio. He still owes me one from the mustache thing back in November 2011 anyway (yes, this blog has been around long enough that I can reference stuff from three years ago and its still relevant, thats a weird feeling to type out).
My dog, for what its worth, absolutely lost it the one time I tested a smaller version of this in the kitchen sink just to see what all the fuss was about. Knocked over a mug. Not recommended if you have pets or, really, a functioning kitchen you'd like to keep dry.
Anyway. The bucket's sitting in my garage right now, half full, slowly going warm, waiting for me to either commit to this or just Venmo the ALS Association twenty bucks and call it even. Knowing me it'll probably be both, three days from now, filmed badly, at the worst possible angle.