The Ice bucket challenge that wasn't.

I am sure that unless you have been living under a rock that you have heard of the Ice bucket challenge. As it happens I am feeling particularly sound so I'll give it a really quick run down in case you haven't. Essentially some marketing genius (or team of geniuses) came up with the idea for a viral campaign to raise money for ALS and that idea was is that a person gets nominated to have a bucket of icy water poured over their head and then nominates two to three friends to do the same. According to the rules you must video the whole thing and share it on Facebook, you must start the video by announcing what you are doing then thanking the people who nominated you, nominating some friends to do it next and then urging people to donate. Presumably you are then supposed to donate some money yourself or its just a video of you attempting to get pneumonia for kicks.

 I think all in all its been a fairly successful phenomenon if you discount the people who forgot to mention ALS at all in their videos and I'm sure there was more than a few and of course the many who took part but didn't actually give any money. I think they raised upwards of 60 million for the charity which is great. I have however read some alarming statistics about how much of the money actually goes to finding a cure. Then again this seems to be the case with most of the big charities, the money often seems to line the big executives pockets and pay a sizeable chunk to the advertising budget before anything goes to finding a cure or helping those in real need. 

 So yea its still done a lot of good but like all viral campaigns its become incredibly irritating very fast. I remember when the whole world went mad on the breast cancers no make up selfie and I got so sick of every other photo on my Facebook news feed being one of those. Well the ice bucket challenge is like that only worse. I'll admit I could see other stuff on my news feed today but for the last week over 90% of what's on my Facebook news feed has been videos of people I know doing the challenge or celebrities doing the challenge. It seems the world bar my Nanny and her dog have been doing the ice bucket challenge and have uploaded the videos to Facebook for my viewing pleasure. And quite annoyingly Facebook don't seem to have  a feature where you can hide all of those videos so I've just been staying away and waiting for the craze to die down.

 There is one other tiny factoid worth mentioning seeing as we are already chatting about this ice bucket challenge. I haven't done one and also I wont be doing one any time soon. Mind you I didn't do the no make up selfie either but that was for different reasons. I don't have any real objections to being dowsed in icy water although from what I hear its not a pleasant experience. I mean I wouldn't do it for kicks but I can see why you would for a good cause. The bit that I can't handle is where I'd have to do it with an audience, make a video of it and upload it for the world to see. For some reason that makes me break out in a bit of a sweat. I don't think I've even been nominated to do it (well someone told me they  put my name forward but I haven't actually seen this video so really its just conjecture) but after a group of people of work did it together, a few of them said I was to be next and I will admit I actually felt a tiny bit sick. Now I don't know where this nameless social anxiety has come from and perhaps my reluctance to take part wont make sense to other people but that doesn't really matter. This whole thing is a craze that will soon blow over and in a few months everyone will doing something else that the internet has dictated hopefully for a good cause ( unlike the pointless and dangerous neck nominations) but you will have probably guessed that I wont be doing it and that's okay. 

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