Can we talk about the Ice Bucket Challenge? Over the summer, my generation was somehow led to believe that dumping a bucket of ice water on their our INSTEAD of contributing money to the ALS foundation was an act of philanthropy.
Like am I the only one who sees how fucking stupid this is? Dumping that bucket of water on your head accomplished nothing. I will concede that if the point of the Ice Bucket Challenge was to simply create awareness of ALS, it succeeded on a superficial level. People now know there's a disease and that it's called ALS. Does anybody even really know what ALS is? All I know is that Lou Gehrig had it, and I don't even really know who he is besides being a baseball player from before my time. The IBC was simply a dumb excuse to make a stupid video for Facebook just to garner some "likes", because let's face it we're all internet attention whores.
Social media has given our generation this idea that getting a hashtag trending on Twitter is "activism". I'm sorry but that's not activism. Activism is the March on Washington. It's the Stonewall Riots. It's the iconic photo of a man facing the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Like if doing the IBC made you feel special then good for you. But don't lead yourself to believe that you've actually done shit for people with ALS.
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