Your Facebook and Instagram feeds have undoubtedly been strewn with lots of people dumping water on their heads. Thousands on social media have taken the ALS ice bucket challenge, a viral social media campaign in which people pour buckets of ice water on their heads to challenge their friends to donate money toward amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Roughly $80 million has been donated to the ALS Association, and the virality of the challenge doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, but some are criticizing it as an inefficient and ineffective use of philanthropy: “Giving money to a disease-specific charity is a very odd, and peculiarly ineffective, way of spending your philanthropic dollar — especially when your donation is a one-off thing,” Felix Salmon of Slate writes.
After thousands have posted nearly identical videos of themselves accepting the challenge, some are criticizing the challenge, and others are getting creative. Here are some of the unique approaches to the challenge.
The Rubble Bucket Challenge brings awareness to Gaza
A challenge started by a journalist in Gaza calls for solidarity for Palestinians by dumping not ice water, but dirt and rubble, over their heads.
The Washington Post reports: “In a video posted on YouTube Saturday, journalist Ayman al-Aloul tells his audience that he had been looking ‘for a bucket of water,’ but had concluded that water was too valuable in Gaza to pour it onto himself. Instead, ‘we looked around us,’ he says in the video while pointing toward rubble in the background, ‘and decided to use it instead of iced water.’ ”
The hashtag #RubbleBucketChallenge is now trending on Twitter and other social media, and the Rubble Bucket Challenge Facebook page has more than 6,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.
“Unlike the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, this campaign doesn't ask users for monetary donations. Instead, it relies on social media to simply raise awareness about a humanitarian crisis that its Facebook page describes as ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ” The Verge’s Amar Toor writes.
Matt Damon uses toilet water instead of clean water
Nominated to the ALS ice bucket challenge by celebrity buddies Ben Affleck and Jimmy Kimmel, Damon wanted to donate, Time reports, but didn’t want to waste clean water, since he is a co-founder of Water.org, a nonprofit group that helps provide clean water in developing areas.
Damon scoops water from his toilet into a bucket and says, “This is truly toilet water. I’ve been collecting it from various toilets around the house,” Time reports. “For those of you like my wife who think this is really disgusting, keep in mind that the water in our toilets in the West is actually cleaner than the water that most people in the developing world have access to.”
Olivia Wilde’s bucket of breast milk
New mother Olivia Wilde took the ALS ice bucket challenge on Saturday, but did it not with icy water, but icy breast milk.
“I hope it’s OK, I couldn’t find any water so I’m going to use breast milk,” Wilde says in a YouTube video. “It took me all night to make this.”
Wilde was photographed in September’s Glamour magazine breastfeeding her infant son, Otis. She told the magazine she wanted to be portrayed as a mother and that “breastfeeding is the most natural thing,” Us magazine reports.
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