What I learned from the ALS ice bucket challenge.

A few weeks ago, it started to show up on my Facebook newsfeed. And then it flooded my Facebook news feed. And then the thing happened that always happens when things get popular:

The backlash.

I thought I would make it through without having to be a part of this.

Wrong. Here's a sampling of what I saw on social media this week:

"Am I the only one who is totally tired of the ice bucket challenge ? Save the time and water and write a check people." (as of this post, 53 people "liked" this)

if you do the #IceBucketChallenge but don't actually explain ALS, I don't know if it counts as raising awareness..." via my twitter news feed

And this one, which is truly one of the most tasteless jokes I've seen in a long, long time:

"Robin Williams died doing what he loved, the ice bucket challenge." Posted by a friend of mine that I won't embarrass now by identifying.

And me...my internal monologue while seeing this: "UGH. No one better make me do this. I don't even get how this will raise money. This is dumb. People don't even know what ALS is." And on and on and on.

Ok, so here's the thing: does it matter? Does it matter why people are trying to do good? Does it matter how accurate and how educated and how perfectly responsible a good deed is? Why can't we just see people trying to do good things and support it, instead of making jokes, judging, critiquing, or grading them from the other side of an anonymous computer monitor?

Sometimes I am shocked at how judgmental I can be. And this time it moved me enough to confess it publicly, and to call it out. Side note: this stupid little social media experiment worked. Really, really well.

Whenever you try to change the world, you will have haters. In fact, I would say that if you don't have haters, you're not doing it right.

Play on, players.

Retweet this to your followers? Yes. Yes I think I will.