Quit complaining about the ice bucket challenge!

So you're probably all aware of the ALS ice bucket challenge which has gone viral. It follows the #nomakeupselfie which happened earlier this year. Essentially these things set a challenge to people in order to raise awareness of particular charities and issues and encourage people to donate where they can. But why are people complaining about it?

Some people are just fed up of the ice bucket challenge videos filling up their news feed. Others feel like there is some peer pressure involved with getting others to do challenges by linking it to charity. People sometimes just think it's stupid and achieves very little.

But these people are wrong. What we must realise is that although these viral charity challenges might seem ridiculous, they are working. They raise huge amounts for charity and huge amounts of awareness. Once nominated, rules state that you do not have to do the challenge but if not, you must donate money. I personally did not know much about ALS before this challenge went viral. Yet now I do and so do millions of others.

How can this be a bad thing? Around $50 million dollars has now been raised through the emergence of the ice bucket challenge and awareness has been raised for a serious and damaging illness. So really if you're one of those people thinking it's stupid and people are just joining in because it's a trend, well so what? Even if people are just following a trend, by doing that, they are contributing to something important and surely that can never be a bad thing. As long as people remember it is for charity, challenges like this which successfully raise huge amounts of money will hopefully continue to happen.