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. 

True, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge only requires you to pour water over your head and the call out your friends to do the same, USUALLY – although not always – donating money in the process. It has had a negative backlash from several media sites and individuals whom call those that participate ignorant, selfish and lazy. Willard Foxton from the UK version of The Daily Telegraph called it “a middle-class wet T-Shirt contest for armchair clicktivists”. However, this is not necessarily the case.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenged has raised so far over $100 million – this is no mean feat. It has raised awareness in the process, with more people becoming informed that ALS [or motor neuron disease here in Australia] is a real disease that requires necessary funds for research. However, it is important to note that not everyone KNOWS what ALS is, prominent individuals whom have it or where their donations go.

Rarely do we see people in their videos of support, telling their audiences what ALS is – how it causes an individual’s muscles to get weaker and weaker over time, eventually causing them to end up with little to no muscle movement or most likely, passing away. The average length that patients usually survive for is approximately 3 years and 3 months. They rarely talk about how one of the most-well known people in the world, Stephen Hawking, lives with this disease. A quick search through the ALS Associations page [the organisation receiving the donations, the possible allocations of the donated funds can be seen.  These donations will go to research for “cause of and treatments”, patient and community services for “compassionate care and support for people living with ALS and their families” and public and professional education that “educates healthcare professionals, scientific communities and the general public”.

It’s easy to call out those who engage in these activities as slacktivists, demeaning them and belittling them. I stand my ground however; Slacktivism isn’t always a bad thing. I put the case that it is as much as people can do right now. I mean, how is anyone who has done the challenge supposed to help the cause in any other way? Do they know complicated research practices or sophisticated science? Can they develop technologies to aid those with ALS? No. Obviously.

The challenge itself is based upon the idea that after you pour your bucket of ice water over yourself, you feel the sensation that is attributed to those whom have ALS experiencing the disease, as close as possible, first hand.

Only recently I was required to do a ‘DISC’ leadership analysis test, which found that I was a leader who leads by “influence”. Aren’t slacktivism campaigns just campaigns of awareness and influence? Aren’t these people just leaders protesting – in what was once called grassroots campaigning?

Slacktivism works around the ways we go about our daily lives, taking advantage of the ability of our voice to be heard loudly, quickly and easily through social media. Some people like to put the case that slacktivism is all bad, that it’s about people trying to just make themselves feel good, with no added benefit to society. I say differently. I put the case that it’s about a community getting behind a social issue, fighting for a cause and doing as much as they can right now – it’s only a by-product that it’s easy to do and makes you feel good. So as you scroll to the bottom of the page and click ‘see more’, just think about how much money they’ve raised so far, how many people have felt what it’s like to have ALS and how raising awareness is just as important as raising the funds itself.

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