Ice bucket challenge everywhere!

What’s more trendy now than the superbly popular Ice Bucket Challenge? If you didn’t know about this thing, then I guess you must be someone fully disconnected to the outside world. Also known as ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, it is an activity involving dumping a bucket of ice water on someone’s head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to research. The challenge dares nominated participants to be filmed having a bucket of ice water poured on their heads and challenging others to do the same. A common stipulation is that nominated people have 24 hours to comply or forfeit by way of a charitable financial donation.

The challenge went viral through social media and had since became a pop culture phenomenon from mid-2014. Many celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs and even politicians across the world participated into the event. They include Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba, Jack Black, Tom Cruise, Leonardo di Caprio, Vin Diesel, Robert Downey Jr., James Franco, Tom Hiddleston, Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, etc.  A lot more. Asian celebrities whom also took part were Andy Lau, Jay Chou, Nicholas Tse, Joey Yung, Nick Cheung, etc.

Recently, I see countless of Facebook posts sharing how the celebrities or even some of my Facebook friends performing the challenge themselves after being nominated. The objective to create awareness for the ALS disease is good. It is for good cause. However, I find that the way of doing it isn’t quite right. For me, it is a waste of water. Furthermore, if you are genuinely helpful to donate to a charity, you don’t need to tell everyone that you are doing so. And I believe some of the participants only took up the challenge just for fun, and also to show to everyone that they are ‘updated’ to the trend, without donating anything to the ALS Foundation. That’s just not right. And I guess many didn’t even know what ALS is.

Due to its unbelievable popularity across the world now, the Ice Bucket Challenge also received a lot of criticisms with some celebrities informing that they will not perform the act eventhough they had been nominated by others. The reasons; similar to what I have said just now. Besides that, there is a source claiming that most of the donations given to ALS Foundation didn’t go directly for research or other much needed categories that require more attention and funding. Instead, most of the money goes to somewhere else or even for somebody’s pockets. There is still no truth to this claim but yea…you can actually donate to many other charitable foundations too…to the one you trust the most, and not necessarily the one that got the most attention now. Like me…I would not do this Ice Bucket Challenge, but I would still donate to charity.

(Images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)