The biggest reason for these videos to go viral is the same- celebs flooding totake up the challenge due to which over a single weekend the association got a donation of $96,000, while in the first week of August last year, the donation was only a few thousand dollars.
It all started after a US baseball player who is also an ALS patient,Pete Frates, initiated the idea. This 29-year-old former captain of Boston College’s baseball team, Frates uploaded a video on a social networking site, wherein his friends, neighbours, and classmates joined him. They posted their ice-dumping videos in honour of him on YouTube and Facebook and tagged their friends. This tag feature introduced by social media is one main phenomenon that makes things like this go viral like crazy. Especially when people do something unusual and when they want others to see it, they tend to tag as many people as they can. It is human tendency to support an individual tied to a cause rather than supporting a cause that affects many individuals.
After being a viral among people in US the challenge has now hit Indiawith pop singer Daler Mehndi taking up the challenge. He has further nominated superstars Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra to take up the challenge and further spread the awareness for ALS victims. Meanwhile, Riteish Deshmukh has accepted Sania Mirza’s challenge and has further nominated Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Siddharth Malhotra, Pulkit Samrat and Ashish Chowdhry.
The ice bucket challenge that is happening in the US in summers gives outa feel-good feeling with a feel-cold summer phenomenon. After all, the participants get to do something silly and also get to feel good about the act. Along with collecting a donation for a good cause this challenge provides a strong emotional rush to the participants thus making this challenge a money-raising mojo.