@viciousbearmauling said:
@branthog said:
While this is all amusing to watch in the tech industry, it is awfully dumb. I don't entirely grasp the motivation behind it, though it seems very much "hey, look at me!". I mean, the idea is to do it or pay $100. And if you do it, then you call out other people who do it. Since everyone is doing it, they're not raising any money. Except, of course, they're all "donating the $100+ anyway". In which case, the ice-dunking is pointless.
This is only a small step above changing your twitter icon to fight the NSA or save Ukrain. Good on the people who have donated and chosen not to participate in the attention-whoring.
The "attention-whoring" is getting eyes on the cause. It is dumb, but it's a light hearted way to bring attention to the fund raising. Without these videos, no one would care, or possibly even know, about Lou Gehrig's Disease. If people have to do silly things to get a decent cause noticed, then that is what has to happen. A lot of money has been raised, and that wouldn't have been accomplished without this gimmick. You have a terribly cynical outlook on this.
Think of it like a dunk tank at a carnival to raise funds for a local school. More people would donate money with the chance of putting someone in water than just putting cash in a donation box.
What you call cynicism, I call experience. This very "viral meme" is itself a demonstration of new social-medial-self-promotion-cynicism as is the "guffaw guffaw aw shucks, they're just people like me and this is awfully fun to watch the dunking -- oh and charity!" response across the internet. How much has actually been raised for ALS? How much awareness has been spread? I mean, seriously, who doesn't know about ALS? And who cares about it after this that didn't before? What they care is that "durp durp Zuckerberg got dunked and called out Gates and Paige hurf hurf".
I guess it's amusing to see a few CEOs and pundits doused with ice (really? ice?), but this is really trivially dumb in much the same way twitter icon activism is.
I'm all for charity and I'm all for good causes, but the trappings around this are just dumb (and I bet most people who have watched one or more "dunkings" still couldn't tell you what the charity was for).
And...the logic is still flawed. Donate OR get dunked. Everyone wants to see these people get dunked; not donate.
Sorry, I just hate gross social media bullshit and self-serving bullshit (which is what this campaign thrives on - the desire of the person doing it to be seen). I don't care that it's "for a good cause". A lot of things are for good causes and still fucking dumb and still being done by participants for dumb reasons.
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