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The Ice Bucket Challenge

You might remember it as ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

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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
Era
The social era
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

  1. Made

    A cold-water challenge circulates in Salem, Indiana, one of several that had gone round for years with no fixed cause.1

  2. Found

    Chris Kennedy becomes the first person documented doing the challenge for ALS.1

  3. Took off

    The start of the period, ending 21 August, in which the ALS Association receives 41.8 million US dollars.1

  4. 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

  5. Later

    Pete Frates dies, aged 34.1

  6. 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

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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.

View this upload on YouTube

When
Originally published 2014.
Where
Known on YouTube.

More from the social eraMore of the archive

ConnectedFollow it further

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — Ice Bucket Challenge
  2. Wikipedia — Pete Frates
  3. CBS News — One year later, what the ice bucket challenge has done for ALS research

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

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