The Ice Bucket Challenge
You might remember it as ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Latest viral21 of 24
2014·The social era
A challenge in which a person films a bucket of iced water being tipped over their own head, then names at least three others, who have twenty-four hours to do the same.
Uploaded as ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- The Ice Bucket Challenge
- First known
- 2014
- Format
- Video
- Where it started
- Facebook, where more than 2.4 million tagged videos circulated
- Made by
- Linked to ALS by Chris Kennedy, and spread by Pat Quinn and Pete Frates
- Who or what it shows
- Pete Frates, a former Boston College baseball player diagnosed with ALS in 2012, who did not invent the challenge and whose campaigning helped it spread
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Playable from the source
Why it matteredWhat changed
Two months of people tipping cold water over themselves raised more than a hundred million dollars for research into ALS, and part of the money paid for the discovery of a gene linked to the disease.
TimelineIn order
- Made
A cold-water challenge circulates in Salem, Indiana, one of several that had gone round for years with no fixed cause.1
- Found
Chris Kennedy becomes the first person documented doing the challenge for ALS.1
- Took off
The start of the period, ending 21 August, in which the ALS Association receives 41.8 million US dollars.1
- Later
Researchers announce the discovery of NEK1, a gene linked to ALS, in work partly funded by the donations.1 What else happened on 25 July
- Later
Pete Frates dies, aged 34.1
- Later
Pat Quinn dies, aged 37.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asIt was invented to raise money for ALS.
ActuallyCold-water challenges had circulated since the 1990s with no fixed cause, and the first ALS video named no charity.1
Commonly remembered asEverybody who did it donated.
ActuallyMost did not. In the United Kingdom about one participant in ten gave money.1
LegacyWhat it left behind
- The philosopher William MacAskill argued that the challenge diverted giving from other causes: for every dollar raised, half would have been donated anyway.1
- At its height the challenge produced more than seventy thousand tweets a day.1
- More than seventeen million people took part in the summer of 2014, and about two and a half million of them donated.2
More from hereIn this collection
Part of a wider phenomenonNot one video
A canonical example of Ice Bucket Challenge. See the phenomenon
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · everybody made their own version · still being watched and quoted years later
This is the copy ViralWorld can show you. Whether it is the first is not established.
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. The example shown is one surviving copy and is not claimed as the first.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- When
- Originally published 2014.
- Where
- Known on YouTube.
More from the social eraMore of the archive
ConnectedFollow it further
- Referred to by Hashtag activismPhenomenon · 2011
The Ice Bucket Challenge is given as one of its examples, with the fundraising surge it produced.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things