The Art of the Instant Backlash for Clickbait Journalists

Why the Ice Bucket Challenge Doesn’t Deserve Your Criticism

I’ve been watching the Ice Bucket Challenge — or #icebucketchallenge, if you’re one of those people — pretty closely. It’s a full on social media phenomenon and it’s gotten a lot of people to actually do something that’s significantly more tangible than clicking a button or virtually signing a petition. That’s pretty important for a campaign that is designed to raise awareness. As someone who has worked hundreds of hours on digital marketing and social media for campaigns like United Against Malaria and others, I’m supremely impressed by this accomplishment alone.

I’ve also been watching because my dad was killed by ALS and I don’t think everyone understands the importance of raising awareness for diseases of this nature. Awareness in the context of a disease that slowly kills you by systematically destroying your ability to move or function any part of your body piece-by-piece is often less about finding a cure and more about preparing people for the possibility of having to face this extremely harsh reality.

A few weeks after my father was diagnosed I went to the first support group of my life. Doctors were helpful but not available to answer all my questions and I had a lot of them because I had no idea how to deal with this disease on any level. I knew it was bad and I had heard about Lou Gehrig but I didn’t know what to expect. There hadn’t been dozens of movies about it. People on TV shows never seem to get the disease. I didn’t recall ever having a friend deal with it in their family. It was a giant black hole and the firehose of the Internet wasn’t the savior I needed.

You see, these campaigns aren’t always just about raising millions of dollars to be poured into research to find a cure. As I learned at the ALSA support group, there are even children dealing with this disease who just need someone to deliver a wheelchair to their house so that they can get their parent out of bed for a few hours a day. Some people need to know who they need to call when the disease proceeds to the point where a ventilator is required and 90% of assisted care facilities will turn you away. There’s a lot to deal with and it’s harder to deal with when the entire disease is completely new to you.

Enter Vice, the publication that you may know from their storied history of taking pictures of hipsters in scarves. They’re now dabbling in journalism with some surprisingly mixed results. For instance, their video series on HBO is remarkably solid and void of all the pitfalls that have kept people from taking them seriously over the past couple decades.

Arielle Pardes article, “DUMPING A BUCKET OF ICE ON YOUR HEAD DOES NOT MAKE YOU A PHILANTHROPIST,” treads over somewhat common ground on the topic of slacktivism or “hashtag activism,” as she calls it. The main point is that vaguely symbolic gestures don’t solve problems and dumping a bucket of water on your head is more about vanity than anything else.

The use of the Ice Bucket Challenge in the story is just a way to modernize a story that is old by Internet standards and get a few more clicks. Highlighting an early backlash is a quick way to tap into a population that is just annoyed at seeing people who they don’t feel accurately represent the cause they’re supporting. It’s the same mindset of people that make fun of Sean Penn for helping Katrina victims or use Sally Struthers as a punchline. It’s just so damn easy.

Instead of finding a unique angle on how our culture deals with ALS, we’re trying to find that right mix of keywords that sounds enough like a unique point of view while tapping into something that people are (finally) talking about. It’s a formula that has served the darker corners of publications like the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, most of the Gawker network and has resulted in gag-inducing publishing manifestos like The AOL Way. It may make money but it makes for terrible journalistic storytelling.

Sure, slacktivism is dangerous. Getting people who may have otherwise acted on an issue to sign a meaningless online petition is a missed opportunity. Maybe those people would have donated money or volunteered but the Internet gave them an easy way out. It’s a bad trend in non-profit marketing that you’re probably already aware of.

Using clickbait journalism to squelch a campaign that has the potential to do a lot more good than harm is more dangerous though. ALS is an underexposed disease in our culture and, as silly as it may be, people who have been exposed to the Ice Bucket Challenge are better off than people who haven’t. I know from personal experience that any bit of awareness you have of a degenerative disease is immensely value as you confront it. If you Google ALS just once before this disease hits your life, you and the person suffering from it will be better off. Luckily, that’s happening.

There’s also the money thing. Some people say that the $4–6 million raised through the campaign is just a drop in the bucket and does nothing to find a cure. It can, however, buy about 40,000 wheelchairs and other items that people living with this disease need and that the various chapters of the ALSA supply. My father, who luckily had a business to sell, was paying $20,000 per month to pay for a managed care facility that supported ventilators and insurance covered exactly 0% of it (until you go broke). There is a lot of ways to support this community and the people that need help can use any level of help. In short, your $100 donation means a lot.

Criticism can make us better. Cultural criticism can make us all better. But manufactured backlashes against social movements that have real benefits are neither journalism nor ethical uses of the publications that support them.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a bucket.