ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: Stop the judgement

By Chew Yan-Y

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social media has been abuzz with videos of famous faces, your friends, your friends’ brothers and sisters, dumping buckets of ice water over their heads as an awareness effort for the neurodegenerative disorder, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. And just as like all things popular, the haters have come out to play.

 

For a while, they controlled my perception because there was truth to what they were saying but then I realised that I get final say in what I think is right or wrong. And what I think is that everyone needs to take a chill pill or two. 

 

The premise of the sensation is simple: Someone challenges another person to either dump a bucket of ice water over their head or donate to the ALS Association. After the screaming is done, the soaked person can then challenge other people. 

 

Bring in the haters. 

 

Firstly, I do not hate on the haters. I actually agree that the challenge 

has its flaws - wastage of water being number one, especially since we Malaysians have just gone through major water shortages recently - but the fact remains that it was and still is one of the best charity campaigns to date. It did what a lot of campaigns fail to do; it raised awareness of ALS and raised millions of dollars for the association. 

 

Initially, I had my feet on both sides of the fence. I wrestled with the good and the bad of the campaign but it wasn’t until a friend challenged me, that I was forced to zero-in on my opinion. 

 

So I did my research. I looked into who started the challenge - Pete Frates, just so you know - and why it was started. I searched to find out where the donations would go since reports said only 7% would fund the research efforts. I rifled through comment threads and news reports to find out all I could about this social media phenomenon.

 

My little investigation took two days and after looking at both sides of the argument, I was still undecided. So I asked myself one simple question: “Forget what you’ve read and forget what you’ve been told. What do you think is right?” 

 

I accepted my challenge and made a donation, and while I was late and missed the 24-hour time frame, I did it nonetheless. 

 

“The money won’t go to research.” Okay, then it might help the association with their other efforts. “What about other diseases and sicknesses?” Well, what about this one? Just because it’s rare does not make it any less deadly than the next illness.

 

“It’s so lazy. It’s slacktivism!” Let me ask you this - how much work does a person have to do in order for their efforts to be considered “good enough”? 

 

I took the challenge because that was what felt right to me. You could argue that it is just another trend that will disappear once a new one comes along but even if it is, so what? It would then be at the very least, a trend that made a difference. 

 

As long as your heart is in the right place and you are happy with your decision, who cares if you are considered a follower of trends? After all, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.

 

Also, for those of you who have been nominated but have yet to accept the challenge because you are worried about wasting water, you can always take your cue from Matt Damon; he used toilet water.