Bear with me for what's ahead, this was
written fairly spur-of-the-moment. It was one of those “If I don't
write this shit down, it won't get out of my head and I'll never get
any sleep”. My days of doing my best work at 1AM are largely over
with 40 staring me in my face. So please indulge me a little if this
isn't exactly well-written.
I run a couple of different
blogs/pages/things. This doesn't really fit any of them completely
so I decided I'd post it to all of them. Since the common
denominator of all that stuff is me and this is really simply me,
sort of trying to explain myself to myself and letting others in on
the conversation. Which may very well be some sort of classification
for mental instability. But I digress.
For those of you that somehow managed
to not see the millions of videos of people dousing themselves with
ice water, the #ALSIceBucketChallenge is basically being filmed while
dumping a bucket of ice water on your head, posting the said video
and challenging a couple of your friends to do the same. It's
expected that everyone who accepts the challenge will both get soaked
and donate at least a small sum to the ALSA. I myself donated $50
after my shivering experience. It's all in good fun and a pretty
good way to help raise some money for a good cause.
There were more than a couple of
reasons I decided to accept the challenge when it came my way. Not
small among them was that it just seemed like a funny thing to
do...being filmed while getting soaked by ice water. Why the hell
not? I've done much dumber things in the name of fun. And let me
tell you something, it was fun. 3 knuckleheads in a backyard,
filming each other getting soaked sounds pretty dumb...and it totally
is. But it was fun. I'd absolutely do it again tomorrow and
nominate 3 other people in a heartbeat. I would gladly take the
dousing from anyone willing to make a donation. If you're willing to
donate even $25 to ALSA, I will happily let you pour a bucket of ice
water over my head and film it. You can even pick the 3 people that
get nominated to do it next.
But the first reason I decided to do
it, was in fact excited to be nominated to do it, was I simply wanted
to be a part of something positive. If you spend any time looking
around you lately, there have been a great many things happening
around us that are simply “not good”. We may send troops back
into Iraq. The Israelis and the Palestinians are killing each other
again. An American journalist was just decapitated in Iraq by a band
of militant psychopaths. An unarmed black man was killed by the
police in Staten Island (You can dispute anything you want about that
situation, but the facts that aren't disputable are that he was
unarmed, is now dead and was killed by the actions of those police
officers.) Another unarmed black kid was killed by police in Missouri
and we're watching the madness that created unfold in real time.
(These are just the things off the top of my head at 1AM). And quite
honestly, Robin Williams killing himself absolutely rocked me. I'd
be lying if I didn't say I had tears running down my face when I
found out and there's been a small part of me that's been sad since
that day. Am I overreacting some...more than likely. Does that
matter at all...nope. It's just how I feel about it. None of those
things may matter to you. They all matter to me in varying degrees.
And not a single one of those things is remotely positive. So, if by
pouring a bucket of ice water over my head, making a donation and
hopefully spurring a couple of others to do the same could allow me
to be a part of something so clearly positive in the midst of all of
that negativity, damn right I was going to do it.
That wasn't the only reason though.
Anyone that tells you that your $25, $50, $100 or even $1000 donation
to whatever cause makes a difference is completely full of shit. It
doesn't. Your donation and my donation and his donation and her
donation and their donation...THAT means something. THAT makes a
difference. That's how you raise somewhere around $8M in about 3
weeks. My $50 doesn't matter. But my $50, plus $50 from the 3 folks
I told, and another $50 from the 3 people each of them told...I'm not
going to keep going because I'm going to give myself a headache if I
try to do the math. Viral marketing works. And that's what this is.
Brilliant, if accidental, viral marketing.
You can poo-poo it if you like. Call
it silly. Whatever. I'm glad I did it. I'd gladly do it again.
And it kinda sucks that you folks are missing out.
-Mike
