Saturday, August 23, 2014

Way to make me hate charity, world.

If you ever wanted proof of this civilization's utter lack of intellectual depth, look no further than the need for something as mind-(and body too, as an added bonus!)numbingly dumb as the ice bucket challenge to raise some money for charity. Somehow it's what's needed to raise awareness for a disease no one ever talks about on so much as an occasional basis. The worst thing about it is that for the most part, this is more of an attention-whoring exercise rather than a genuine attempt at helping out charity. But hey, the Facebook generation is just one giant clusterfuck of a popularity contest, so why am I surprised? And for that matter, out of all the A-list celebrities that did it, just how many actually gave enough of a shit about ALS to tell people how and where to donate for it? Yep, this is all one big fad that's going to peter out in the near future, and everyone will go back to not giving a fuck about ALS until they start pushing up daisies.

Oh, and don't even get me started on "forcing" other people to do the challenge and/or donate. The most important thing about charity donations is that they come from the heart, because the person genuinely wants to donate. Pressuring people into donating money to charity is just about the lowest possible thing that involves the word "charity". It's like this whole thing was carefully crafted down to the smallest detail to make me hate it despite essentially being a charity fundraiser.

13 comments:

  1. Good thing + going viral = bad thing. That's a formula that has proved itself time and time again. It's always bothered me that the 'challenge' is to dump ice water on your head, and the PUNISHMENT for not doing it is the donation to charity. I get that your 'choice' is you either cause the campaign to go more viral or actually donate to the cause, so you help either way, but considering people are having more fun dumping water on themselves than donating, I feel like it's not raising as much as it could be (although, you have to admit, from a pure numbers standpoint, the campaign has been successful in raising a lot more money than ALS normally gets).

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    1. It must be so hard to dump a bucket of ice water on yourself in the middle of August.

      I have to admit though, The Seeker of All Formulas has a really good point.

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  2. In Australia, we have a variant where you can choose to donate to whichever charity you like instead of just donating to ALS.

    Mind you the idea is still very stupid since people have died doing it and why you wouldn't just donate to any charity without having to experience mild hypothermia is beyond me.

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  3. It has gone out of hand, but do you have any idea how people actually having the ALS are happy right now ? Nobody ever gave them any attention. They are suffering from a freaking terrifying disease nobody could ever understand, nor care about.
    The rules aren't set in stone, but the general consensus is that you do the challenge to spread awareness and still donate at least like 10$ anyway. Sure, there are cunts who abuse the fad to be attention whores, but the ALS research organization never even dreamed about having this much visibility before. I say it's a necessary evil. They got like what ? Over 10 millions by now ?
    The ALS is f*cking terrifying, I can't even imagine how it must feel to have your body slowly and steadily grow more numb over the passing years until you can't even breathe and have to accept your death. Yes, the people abusing the fad are insensitive pricks, but people like you who blatantly ignore the good it has done are being just as bad. Instead of whining, try to call them out for doing it wrong. At least you'll contribute to bring a little bit of balance in all of this mess.

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    1. Then call them out for it whenever you see them. Even if an attention whore does the challenge without saying its reasons, there'll always be that one person who's intrigued enough to want to know where all that started from and get informed, so even if it's on a lesser scale than those who do it right, they are still helping without realizing it. On Youtube I see 3 kinds of comments on those video, positive comments, those who whine and start useless flame wars and those who are genuinely curious and ask questions about the ALS. And there'll always be another commenter to answer his questions, even if the uploader didn't care about the reasons he was doing it for. It's not as effective as it could be, but it's working. And even after donating ourselves, we can still all help by answering those questions ourselves and putting up links to the official website whenever someone forget to mention it. It's no use to focus on the negatives if we don't do anything about it.

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    2. I understand your frustration, but in this situation, it's surprisingly easy to work around the negatives if we put a little bit of effort. Most problems don't even give us that luxury. And about donations, if you haven't reached majority, you aren't forced to worry about that yet. But nothing prevents you from starting a folder or writing a document with the associations you'll want to support in the future or something along those lines. I just came up with this idea and why I haven't thought of this sooner absolutely baffles me. I feel deeply ashamed considering I could have done that myself... Sure, whether or not you actually end up donating will be up to you, but at least you'll always have a reminder that it's an option. It's so simple, why haven't I thought of that yet ? It functions exactly like putting up a note to remind you that you have to take an appointment with the dentist. Geez, I feel so slow at times.

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    3. Assuming that I have an issue with money being raised for ALS. I don't. I'm just mortified that THIS of all things is what it takes to raise awareness when it's something we should worry about all year round, and more importantly, that it turning into an attention-seeking contest means ALS itself is taking the back seat. Sure, a ton of money was raised, but can you imagine how much more potential this whole thing would realize if the people who did the challenge, especially people with a lot of reach like celebrities, had their hearts in the right place when doing it?

      For Christ's sake, I'm suffering from a condition that is only now starting to gain legitimate recognition, so you'd think I'd be the last person to criticize charities and people who live with ALS. Of course I'm not doing that, I can't stand the smell of hypocrisy.

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    4. Well, it proves that whoever started the fad was a smart person who had a good idea of how the average person brain works. If you want to know every facet of a problem and work out a solution, you have to accept its negative sides and use them to your advantage. Hopefully that person will also be smart enough to keep people talking about the ALS. Even if you are having a negative outlook on this whole thing, you are still talking about the ALS right now and it's all that matters for that person.

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  4. It's sad that this thing being a fad means that a month later the ALS charities will get no more support

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    1. That's no necessarily true. The reason they never got any support is because the masses never knew ALS even existed. Sure, the vast majority will forget to keep donating, but now people are much more informed than they were. So if they want to create another movement to support the research, people will already know what it's about. You can already call that progress. I'm dumbfounded that you all let yourselves get so depressed with your unrealistic expectations of the human race. And I once got banned from a forum for the stupid reason that I supposedly had issues just because I was showing empathy for the victims of a tragedy. That messed-up in the head admin would probably kill himself if he ever saw this blog. xD

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    2. Eh I can see your point, people now know what ALS is, I can definitely see some light for those affected, it just kind of bugs me when a good cause gets affected by these kind of things and then people leave it (see Kony 2012)

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    3. The whole Kony thing was run by, ahem, shady individuals to say the least though. There's no comparison to be made, really.

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    4. Yeah and the guy who started the Kony "movement" was also caught running around the neighborhood naked.

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