August 2014 will go down in Internet history with the phenomenal Ice Bucket Challenge viral campaign. Hundreds of thousands of people pour buckets of ice water on their heads, millions look at it on social networks, discuss, repeat, because before dousing each flash mob participant names three people whom he challenges to do the same for 24 hours or part with 100 dollars. Instagram alone (an extremist organization banned in Russia) now has more than 300 videos with the #icebucketchallenge hashtag.
Ridiculous? Perhaps, but only at first glance. In fact, this is a brilliant stupidity. The initiator of the «ice bucket» is the American non-profit organization ALS Association. She has been battling a rare disease of the central nervous system, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) for nearly 30 years. In the United States, the disease is better known as Gehrig’s disease, after the legendary baseball player Lou Gehrig, nicknamed «Iron Horse». The most intelligent person on the planet, physicist Stephen Hawking, also suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As a result of damage to motor neurons, a person is literally locked in his body due to paralysis: he loses the ability to move, swallow and, most importantly, breathe.
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In Russia, due to a lack of donations, people suffering from suffocation are waiting in line to receive breathing apparatus. The only charitable organization that provides assistance to people diagnosed with ALS in our country is . “We are glad that we have found a simple and not scary way to tell people about ALS,” neurologist Lev Brylev, one of the founders of the project to help people with ALS at Mercy, commented on the charity flash mob. “Patients with this diagnosis are in great need of support, and we hope that thanks to the flash mob people will pay attention to ALS, and we will be able to help more patients suffering from suffocation.”
The ALS Association works on all fronts: it is engaged in educational activities, trains physicians, provides support to patients and their families, but most importantly, organizes research aimed at finding a cure for ALS. To date, there is no cure for this disease.
To date, the Ice Bucket Challenge has raised more than $15 million, 10 times more than last year’s fundraising campaign.
The catalyst for the snowball, or rather the iceball, was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — he guessed to challenge the CEO of Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia) Mark Zuckerberg, he accepted the challenge and «nominated» Bill Gates. This gave the ice bucket cosmic acceleration. Bill Gates, demonstrating an improved pouring method, passed the baton to the idol of technical youth, the head of Tesla Motors Elon Musk. Elon Musk does it in a similar way, but only in a very funny way, with the help of his many children.
And now Oprah Winfrey, with a piercing cry, challenges Steven Spielberg, who supports and takes on «weak» George Lucas. Charlie Sheen, as always, goes his own way and knocks over a pot of ten thousand dollars, which he promises to donate to research, on his head, urging Ashton Kutcher to follow his example. It seems that everyone joined: Lady Gaga, Stephen King, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dr. Dre (the challenge was thrown by Apple CEO Tim Cook himself), Jennifer Lopez, Russell Crowe, Justin Timberlake, the film crew of the new «Peter Pan» led by Hugh Jackman and Rooney Maroy, Beyoncé. With particular sadism, Gwen Stefani’s colleague, singer Blake Shelton, solved the issue with dousing — he slowly poured ice into her collar. And what about the political stars of the first magnitude? Barack Obama was «called» by Justin Timberlake, Vin Diesel — Vladimir Putin. The 24-hour deadline has already passed, and the press services have either reported that today the agenda of the head of state does not provide for water procedures (Putin), or the president believes that it would be better if he simply transfers the money to the account of the organization (Obama).
Given the geopolitical situation, one can easily imagine that both of them really have very little time.
In Russia, the hosts of the Dozhd TV channel Pavel Lobkov and Anna Mongait joined the flash mob. At the same time, Pavel Lobkov said that for the sake of an American charitable organization, he was not ready to pour ice water on himself, but for the sake of a Russian one, please. It is easy to see that the main idea of the project slipped away from the TV presenter — the Americans collected money to study a disease that does not have citizenship, it’s just a terrible disease, people all over the world suffer from it, and if scientists manage to find a cure for it, then this medicine also no citizenship.
We also add that in the discussions of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the thought “it would be better if they gave money” was often heard, and it also shows some myopia and misunderstanding of the modern world order on the Internet. Most likely, all these celebrities “gave money”, and not just Charlie Sheen, who decided to designate this in an original way. But, most importantly, they uttered an abbreviation that, perhaps, most simply have never heard of: ALS. And this majority immediately started to “google” it.