There's a rant I want to get off my chest, a bit long but please bear with me. It's related to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, but it's not entirely about the challenge. Rather, the challenge will be the main example I'll stick to throughout most of this post.
For most of my life, I considered myself a cynical person (and still do to a degree). Especially in my teens. I constantly had thoughts of how much I hated the world and how humanity constantly pissed me off. Then I grew up, spent more time in various parts of the real world and the web, and realized I'm not as cynical as I thought I was.
I think society as a whole is WAY too cynical these days. I get that constructive criticism is important (trust me that I live by that belief), and arguably there was a time where people were too optimistic/naive and believed everything they heard. But instead we've shifted from one extreme side to the other.
I absolutely love all the buzz surrounding the ice bucket challenge. When I watch and read about all these videos and donations people are making, I see something that our society deserves huge props for. It's one of the most beautiful things social media has done in a long while IMO. Raising money and awareness everywhere, creating huge buzz everywhere, over $50 million and growing for a horrid disease that goes largely unnoticed. $2.1 million was raised last year and donations this year have increased by over 1000%, to put that in perspective. Practically everyone is doing it. I see people who barely use social media still uploading videos of them pouring water on themselves. I see people I consider jerks in real life still donating and reminding others to donate. I see people with somewhat-cynical views as me, who usually complain about how stupidly trendy certain things are, still doing the challenge.
You have politicians from various different spectrums and parties doing the challenge and donating money. Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, they're all doing it. Freakin' Charlie Sheen came out and reminded people of the whole point of the challenge, and challenged other rich actors to donate $10G like he did. It's nice to see masses participate in something like this as opposed to donating to some big YouTube personality for a cool game or movie they wanna make, which happens quite a lot.
That's what I see, but that's not what some see. Despite its success, some still only see people wasting water. Or people following a stupid trend. Or people needing something fun to get them to donate. Or argue this shows how selfish and biased humans are because they don't do this to every issue out there.
Now the water argument is silly and absurd on its own. First, we each waste more water than necessary on an average day than we do on this silly challenge. Second, not using water over here has no correlation to the amount of quality water in Africa. Third, this challenge is working to raise awareness and money. The pros far outweigh the cons and the results show that. Plus I don't see most of these people sending 24 pack Poland Spring to Africa so it's somewhat of a hypocritical stance IMO.
And that brings me to my point. Everything we do these days is bad in some shape or form. Directly or indirectly. Everything is a conspiracy, everything has some malicious intention behind it, everything has a tradeoff ("you wouldn't do this for x or y") or is a direct example of how stupid/evil we are. We are taught they're deprived or they're oppressing the underprivileged from a very early age. We are taught to see the negative in everything and to hate ourselves. We are conditioned to think like that now. That no matter what we do, we are unjust, and create more injustice.
There was a boy with cancer. He had a fundraiser drive going for him. One that people donated to and he had set up. Had a video game idea they were going to bring to life. And how did a lot of people respond? "Check your privilege!" People attacked it literally because this kid, like ten years old, was "a straight white cisgendered male". "Why aren't you doing this for the dying little girls, or the POC children with cancer? I have a feeling you wouldn't care so much then." "This shows everything that's wrong with society!" Culminating with people telling this kid more or less to his face "I hope you die."
Why can't we see the good in anything anymore? We have we become so misanthropic about everything? What must be done to make some people happy and say that humans have done something good for once? Because I have a hard time believing there is *anything* society will ever do that will make them happy.
I can't change any of your minds, but please consider my advice...it's not good to always be cynical about everything. Yeah the world's not perfect, but constantly criticizing every single aspect of life isn't making things better either. It's miserably unhealthy, and in some ways just as damaging to the species as the human stupidity that has plagued our world. Constructive criticism is an excellent tool but if we can never see the positive in anyone's actions, we'll have everything to lose.
For most of my life, I considered myself a cynical person (and still do to a degree). Especially in my teens. I constantly had thoughts of how much I hated the world and how humanity constantly pissed me off. Then I grew up, spent more time in various parts of the real world and the web, and realized I'm not as cynical as I thought I was.
I think society as a whole is WAY too cynical these days. I get that constructive criticism is important (trust me that I live by that belief), and arguably there was a time where people were too optimistic/naive and believed everything they heard. But instead we've shifted from one extreme side to the other.
I absolutely love all the buzz surrounding the ice bucket challenge. When I watch and read about all these videos and donations people are making, I see something that our society deserves huge props for. It's one of the most beautiful things social media has done in a long while IMO. Raising money and awareness everywhere, creating huge buzz everywhere, over $50 million and growing for a horrid disease that goes largely unnoticed. $2.1 million was raised last year and donations this year have increased by over 1000%, to put that in perspective. Practically everyone is doing it. I see people who barely use social media still uploading videos of them pouring water on themselves. I see people I consider jerks in real life still donating and reminding others to donate. I see people with somewhat-cynical views as me, who usually complain about how stupidly trendy certain things are, still doing the challenge.
You have politicians from various different spectrums and parties doing the challenge and donating money. Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, they're all doing it. Freakin' Charlie Sheen came out and reminded people of the whole point of the challenge, and challenged other rich actors to donate $10G like he did. It's nice to see masses participate in something like this as opposed to donating to some big YouTube personality for a cool game or movie they wanna make, which happens quite a lot.
That's what I see, but that's not what some see. Despite its success, some still only see people wasting water. Or people following a stupid trend. Or people needing something fun to get them to donate. Or argue this shows how selfish and biased humans are because they don't do this to every issue out there.
Now the water argument is silly and absurd on its own. First, we each waste more water than necessary on an average day than we do on this silly challenge. Second, not using water over here has no correlation to the amount of quality water in Africa. Third, this challenge is working to raise awareness and money. The pros far outweigh the cons and the results show that. Plus I don't see most of these people sending 24 pack Poland Spring to Africa so it's somewhat of a hypocritical stance IMO.
And that brings me to my point. Everything we do these days is bad in some shape or form. Directly or indirectly. Everything is a conspiracy, everything has some malicious intention behind it, everything has a tradeoff ("you wouldn't do this for x or y") or is a direct example of how stupid/evil we are. We are taught they're deprived or they're oppressing the underprivileged from a very early age. We are taught to see the negative in everything and to hate ourselves. We are conditioned to think like that now. That no matter what we do, we are unjust, and create more injustice.
There was a boy with cancer. He had a fundraiser drive going for him. One that people donated to and he had set up. Had a video game idea they were going to bring to life. And how did a lot of people respond? "Check your privilege!" People attacked it literally because this kid, like ten years old, was "a straight white cisgendered male". "Why aren't you doing this for the dying little girls, or the POC children with cancer? I have a feeling you wouldn't care so much then." "This shows everything that's wrong with society!" Culminating with people telling this kid more or less to his face "I hope you die."
Why can't we see the good in anything anymore? We have we become so misanthropic about everything? What must be done to make some people happy and say that humans have done something good for once? Because I have a hard time believing there is *anything* society will ever do that will make them happy.
I can't change any of your minds, but please consider my advice...it's not good to always be cynical about everything. Yeah the world's not perfect, but constantly criticizing every single aspect of life isn't making things better either. It's miserably unhealthy, and in some ways just as damaging to the species as the human stupidity that has plagued our world. Constructive criticism is an excellent tool but if we can never see the positive in anyone's actions, we'll have everything to lose.
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