Try Sticking Your Face Down in a Toilet Bowl to Cure Cancer

Apparently you can cure motor neurone disease by pouring a bucket of ice water over yourself.  If you have no ice water to hand the inhabitants of Gaza have discovered that a bucket of sand works just as well.  This is actually true; a bucket of sand is at least as good at curing motor neurone disease as a bucket of ice water.

At this point I should include a disclaimer.  Pouring a bucket of ice water over yourself will not cure motor neurone disease (and research on the bucket of sand has so far proved inconclusive) but if you pour a bucket of ice water over yourself you can donate to the charity that is trying to cure it.  Of course you could make that donation without pouring anything over yourself but if you did it like that you wouldn't get yourself onto social media which seems to be the principal objective behind any sort of charitable or social awareness campaign nowadays.

It can be claimed that such social media activities build awareness and this is true.  I've been hearing about the ice bucket challenge for weeks now.  Unfortunately the awareness built is largely about the challenge itself.  I had no idea what it was actually for until I broke down in my lunch break this afternoon and googled it.  Mission accomplished for social media I guess but if your fire brigade had a three week reaction time you would be entitled to be a little annoyed.

In my research on the challenge (note how typing "ice bucket challenge" into google is now dignified with the term "research") I discovered two interesting facts.  Firstly, the challenge and the charity it is supposedly supporting are opposed by both Pamela Anderson (they experiment on animals) and the Catholic church (they also experiment on infant stem cells).  Thus the research is opposed by both the sublime and the ridiculous, I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.  The second fact was that Steve O had criticised the challenge and the celebrity participants for not telling anyone why they were doing it or where people could send money if they were so inclined.  To Steve O I say "a very good point sir" to everyone else on the planet I say "What the hell is wrong with you that Steve O has to be the voice of reason?"

But I'm being too harsh.  These social media challenges, awareness campaigns and suchlike fulfill a very important role.  Sure a few extra dollars might trickle towards the cause of choice and that's great but the principal achievement is to make the participants feel good.  To feel that they are part of the solution rather than the problem.  It would be an act of absolute churlishness to point out that the solution doesn't work.

Some months ago a bunch of Islamist nutjobs in Nigeria who call themselves Boko Haram kidnapped over two hundred and fifty girls apparently intending to sell them into slavery or something.  The social media response #BringBackOurGirls resonated around the world.  People got on board from Michelle Obama all the way down to Chris Brown who took his hands off Rihanna's throat long enough to tweet his support.  It was an amazing outpouring, the only people who refuse to be impressed are Boko Haram themselves who are steadfastly holding onto the girls.  The only ones who have been "brought back" are ones who escaped and brought themselves back.  Possibly a social media campaign to raise funds so the Nigerian government could hire an Israeli commando team might have been more helpful.

Still social media does do one thing.  It gives a voice to the voiceless always assuming that the voiceless have access to social media.  Its always possible that various governments will be pressured into doing something if only to get the voiceless to shut up.  And if they don't at least we can say we've done all we can.  Sadly this is probably true.  The only other thing we could do is go in with fire and sword and start building pyramids of human skulls.  This might work but it looks absolutely terrible on social media.