Are you a Slacktivist? – The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
As you scroll through your YouTube subscriptions, through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr - or whatever social media sharing site you use - you will see an accumulation of people pouring buckets of ice and water over their heads, with a few substituting the water with things such as money. Everyone is doing it, from your friends to billionaires to actors; they all seem to be jumping on board this train. The last time there was this many people doing something on this scale was when the Harlem Shake, Gangnam Style or Nek Nominate haunted our screens. To put it simply, the Ice Bucket Challenge is a form of Slacktivism. It is, as Wikipedia calls it, “usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it take satisfaction from the feeling that they have contributed. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. Tr...