Ice Bucket Challenge

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When I first heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge, I thought it was
just another stupid internet craze, but the more I look at it, the
more I like it.

The freezing water makes your muscles seize up and simulates the
nerve pain that ALS causes. So not only does is raise money for the
cause, but it allows people to empathise with those who have ALS.

(Apologies if this was already common knowledge here)

So, I wonder if anyone here has any ideas for a similar viral stunt
to help raise money for Autism charities and spread empathy for
those on the Autistic Spectrum.

Also I wonder which Autism charities deserve donations, and which
ones are Autism-Speaks style scams that deserve to whither away and
die. Perhaps people are more clued up could do a list of Autism
charities that are positive, neutral or negative towards those on
the spectrum.

Charities to Avoid: Autism Speaks, National Autism Association, Talk About Curing Autism, Generation Rescue, SafeMinds, Canary Party, VOR, Age of Autism (not really an org but a blog run by "warrior-parents" with an excessive sense of self-importance and self-righteousness), AutismOne (home of the bleach enemas)

Some good orgs: Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, Autism Society of America, Dan Marino Foundation.

I am concerned that the sudden shock of ice water is going to cause somebody to have a heart attack

I think if your heart is that diseased that an ice bucket dunked on you would cause a heart attack, then that heart attack would have happened anyway sooner or later.

Any charity who wishes to get recognition and attention should try and find a truly original campaign with the possibility to go viral. The ALS campaign was perfect because it allows you to nominate people, which means the whole thing eventually reached celebrities and this way a larger audience became aware of the disease and donations went through the roof.

I'm sorry to admit I am not that aware of autism-related charities and organizations but if one of them was able to pull off a stunt like this, it would probably do wonders for our PR which could never hurt. Plenty of creative folks on the spectrum who might come up with something truly imaginative and brilliant, I'm sure!

I'm currently taking a PR course in college (although just a couple weeks in) and getting all your friends to do something because you did it is something society tends to do (even us aspies, although to a much lesser extent). A big part of how the ice bucket challenge worked is because the feeling of cold water 'felt like ALS', and autism isn't something that can be felt, as its brain wiring, not a physical disorder, and doing something that looks autistic is either a stereotype (ie math or science stuff) or something socially inappropriate. I'm not saying it won't work, but it has to be something much more outside the box

One idea I was working on is an idea of an extreme quiz, challenge, where someone has to answer four or five complicated questions or multiply big numbers while undergoing some form of sensory overload. Examples of overload could include loud music, shining bright lights into the persons face, making them wear heavily tinted sunglasses, or even throwing ice water on to them! If they ask for clarification or the question to be repeated, then they get the question wrong!

This would help simulate how impossibly complex social interaction is for us, and how overloading the social world is for us.

I must admit I have no experience in PR, so I have no idea if that would work or not!

Very true but later is better.

the eye roll
that's what i did every time i saw an ice bucket challenge video.

i think everyone that did it... failed.
the challenge was to dump the ice water OR donate.
and everyone did both. so how is that a "challenge"?

and how many of those that poured or got the water poured on them...actually thought about... "Oh...my nerves froze up, just like an ALS person."
nope. i think they just went, "wow that's cold. where's a towel." Then they got warmed up and went back to their lives.
then there were news bits of people starting to get hurt from this challenge...

meanwhile there was an apparent drought in california. detroit was shutting water off on people...
so there was an apparent waste of water....

It did raise a lot of money for the ALS foundation though.