Activism or Slacktavism or Social Marketing

This last week I was challenged to do the ALS ice bucket challenge. I donated what I could and then took a cold shower.

There has been some criticism of the challenge. Some people disagree with the practice of using embryonic stem cell research, which is common with some forms of ALS research. But many others are criticizing the challenge as promoting slactavism. Maybe the best way to explain this is with a video (from somebody else).

There are many things that people do on social media in the name of charity, but what good does it do just to share, like, +1, or comment on something? Many people see the challenge as donate money or dump ice water on your head. With everybody dumping water on their head is any money being donated? Is this just a way for people to show how awesome they are by dousing themselves with celebrities, politicians, and business leaders. What good is it doing?

The short answer to this question is that the Ice Bucket Challenge has raised over 94 million (94.3 as of Aug 27th) with help from their donors (which include 2.1 million new donors). Their previous year's donation during the same period was 2.7 million. I don't think these numbers could be considered a coincidence. A 3492% increase is nothing to sneeze at. And they didn't have to advertise any of it. It just happened as people shared their videos.

One of my colleagues and I have been discussing this. She is tired of seeing videos of people dumping water on themselves and I can't blame her. But is it doing any real damage? Probably not - other than the multiple instances of people getting the cooler dropped on their head or other such mishaps. I can only assume that many of the people posting humorous videos of them getting wet (or not getting wet) are still donating. I can't imagine that Bill Gates would douse himself rather than donate to an acknowledged needed cause. Granted, he was probably an established donor before the challenge.

So, even though many people may be slacktavists, the campaign has still been a huge success. Even if the increase of funds was more modest it could be argued that the challenge did a lot help the battle with ALS. One of the biggest things that organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, face is getting their message and their product out into the public mind. Even if nobody explains what ALS is in their performance of the challenge the fact that thousands are dumping ice water on themselves in the name of ALS would cause people to investigate and consequently learn more about the condition. This is a kind of social marketing that many organizations would proverbially kill for. Just as it is possible for social media to launch the careers of many musicians and other careers having the ALS ice bucket challenge go viral the way it has will, hopefully, not just help this year but in years to come.

Suspension of Disbelief

This last weekend my family sat down to watch Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. It was not a spectacular movie, but it was entertaining. We were worried about my son Tigger. I often call him an omniphob (afraid of everything) and I knew that there would be large animals and bugs that he might find scary. He actually did really well. I think this was with because the creatures that normally terrify him when they are less than an inch across were huge. As in unrealistically huge. Of course they weren't real!

What's interesting is that at one point my wife and I both when, "Yeah, right!" at an action performed by the characters. I think it was when they jump-started 140 year old batteries with a large electric eel. Right after I said it I thought, "We're watching a movie that says that Jules Vern wrote non-fiction, giant animals are real, and popping your pecks is the best way to attract a girl and were complaining about this?" Like Nick from Schlock Mercenary says, "You can't make up rules about X because I already know those rules."

This is a prime example of an inability to suspend disbelief. It's amazing what we allow ourselves to accept but what we throw out. I'm not going to talk about how to do this well - I'll leave that to Writing Excuses. What I find myself musing over the ease I accept and reject things in my entertainment. Journey 2 is just one example. Howard Tayler in his review of the movie The A-team wrote, "I'm not entirely sure what the Pants of Realisty are for, but if you don't have good Suspenders of Disbelief then The A-team will leave those pants around your ankles..." The physics in that movie are just plain broken, not just bent. Granted, as the director pointed out, if you have a problem with exploding cars and helicopters avoiding missiles by turning off their engines then you shouldn't be watching an A-team movie. I find other things entertaining that have big gaping problems with physics, history, logic, and a few other things. 10,000 BC is another one. Every time I watch it I rant and rave about the inconsistency in geography, yet I find it really entertaining.

I think the key word is entertaining. If you have a fun story with fun visual effects and good characters who I care about I am a lot more likely to allow you to break physics wide open. You can't go too far, of course, or it will pull me out of the story, but if you want cars to explode because someone shot the engine, I'm cool with it. You'll notice though that I gave several criteria for me to enjoy something. You'll notice that "fun visual effects" is one, but the others are fun story and good characters which I care about. Don't expect fun visual effects to be able to sway me all on its own. Sadly I think many movies try to get by on visuals alone.

Smiles and the Unknown

This week I learned that one of my cousins was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. He was born at 25 weeks gestation, two weeks earlier than my son, Tigger. They were the same weight although my cousin, Smiles, was a little bit longer. He spent over 100 days in the same NICU as Tigger and was released about a year ago. He is an adorable little boy who is full of smiles (hence my name for him). And despite the unknowns ahead of him, I think he'll be just fine.

I don't mean this in any way to distract from the challenges that he is facing. After learning of the diagnoses I had to look up what cerebral palsy is. I had heard of it, but didn't know how it worked. Interesting enough, The 2nd website listed under cerebral palsy was from KidsHealth.org. After reading up on it (from a couple of different websites) I can understand why. CP typically manifests because of brain damage caused from before birth up to five years of life. For those that have had children born prematurely you probably had a health professional sit down and talk brain damage with you. Tigger had a level 3 brain bleed that we know caused some damage. What's strange is that there is very few ways to tell the level of debility that the bleed will cause. The levels, 1 through 4, are just ways of assessing the damage to the tissue, but since the brain can be a puzzling thing, just because the tissue is damage doesn't mean that it will have an affect on the abilities of the individual. With Tigger, we know that bleed caused his gross motor skill development to be delayed. The usual pathways the brain uses to learn things like walking, talking, and potty training, were destroyed so the brain has to find a new, longer, path. So far Tigger has hit his developmental milestones - it just takes him longer.

Knowing about CP is similar. They don't know exactly what causes it and there are three different types of ways it can manifest but there is no set result of having it. Some may be severally disabled while others may have limited impairments. The thing that is so terrifying is that there is no cure and there is no way of knowing ahead of time what is going to be the extent of the difficulties. All that is know is that the child will be limited in some way. As someone who has faced the unknown I can say that it is terrifying.

If you know what to expect you can prepare. If you know what is going to happen you can act. But when you don't know what is going to happen or even what you could expect there is very little you can actually do. Doing something, action, is a way of relieving stress. Whenever there is a tragedy you'll always see people rushing to DO something about it. Natural disasters are easy things to act on. Gun violence, bombs, or acts of terror are a little more complex, but again you see people tightening security and trying to pass new measures designed to keep it from happening again. With an illness like diabetes or cancer their are established treatments and options, even if you don't know which one you'll need, you can start researching them. The sudden flurry of action is not always useful, but it makes people feel like they are doing something about the situation and trying to fix it.

It is hard to do anything when you don't know what needs to be done. If you sit still you appear to be apathetic to your situation. But if you rush about tying to DO something you may very well wear yourself down doing nothing productive. The mental and emotional toll are heavy as well as you try to wrap your brain around the unknowns. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that you body is ready for action - your fight-or-flight response is active, but there is nothing to fight or to flee from. Robison Wells has an anxiety disorder which manifests itself by turning his fight-or-flight response on and not shutting it off has described it feeling like he was being chased by wolves. That kind of emotional stress takes a toll.

But as I said, I feel confident that Smiles will do just fine. His parents are just great people, but people who have seen loss and yet know how to smile, laugh, and celebrate the joys they have. Smile's mother started a blog when he came out of the NICU called "A Laugh or Death Situation." Mama Crazy and her husband, Senior Guapo, decided to choose laughter over tears. When you hold Smiles you can't help but notice his smile. Regardless of what challenges he may face, he has already faced so many and yet still has such a wonderful smile. Yes, the unknown is truly terrifying, but I think that the film "Rise of the Guardians" (2012) got it right. When the nightmares are around you it's surprising how a little bit of fun can help dispel them.

I look forward to helping Smiles as he starts this new journey of his as well as experiencing the smiles he freely gives.