Contemptible Ice-Bucket Challenge
What is wrong with this infantile country? "Social media" — meaning, here, sociopathological media — are promoting an insane and disgusting practice of people's pouring a bucket of icewater over their heads, supposedly to 'raise awareness of ALS', also known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease". As the term "Lou Gehrig's Disease" shows plainly, there has NEVER, since the famed Yankee baseball player Lou Gehrig developed and then died from it, been a need to "raise awareness" of that disorder. If people had just left it with its famed name, "Lou Gehrig's Disease", there could never have been any doubt that society is fully aware of that malady. Instead, some a*hole decided to f* around with the famous name and change it to something no one had ever heard of! Why?
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How do people get so stupid? Why does everything have to be given a new name every few years? Just leave traditional names as-is and it will not be necessary to "raise awareness" of any of the pointlessly, absurdly renamed phenomena, when it is only the name change that renders them suddenly unfamiliar.
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Of what conceivable importance is raising awareness of ALS? It's not as tho people who do not now have it can avoid it if they know what to look for, because it is NOT transmissible. That is, it isn't a disease at all. It is apparently not caused by a microbe. So how on Earth does it make any difference whatsoever whether people come to know about it or not? It's like other rare conditions like accelerated aging that causes children to die by age 12 of 'old age'. Either you have it, or you don't. Knowing about it won't keep you from getting it. Not knowing won't cause you to develop it. So what exactly is the point of this extremely annoying campaign?
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As regards this particular noxious campaign involving icewater, I hope dozens of the people who participate in such infantile behavior develop pneumonia and DIE from it. There are times when stupidity must not be its own, or only, punishment. By now, millions of hours of people's time and attention have been wasted, thrown away on this contemptible campaign, and it keeps spreading, wasting even more and more and more time. Is this infuriating look-at-me infantilism really doing any good? Does anyone who did not know what ALS was before they saw such childish behavior know any better now what it is? Can there be any realistic expectation that 'consciousness-raising' or even the raising of minor financial donations will make the slitest difference in society's success in fiting this malady? NO.
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Stop wasting our time and attention on nonsense. There are things for which massive time and attention might actually make a difference, such as considering solutions for social problems within societies, like crime and unjust distribution or wealth, and internationally, issues that produce intercommunal or religious violence or even war. If people were to give over millions of hours thinking about THOSE things, we might actually make some progress on them.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:17 PM