Ice Bucket Challenge and the power of gaming

My first reaction to ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE (IBC) was “well here is another silly stuff to feed the social media”.  It comes out as a gimmick.  Then when I was confronted with a simple question “tell me how they feel about the ice bucket challenge irrespective of whether you did it or not. this is not about judging anyone….” it got me thinking. 

What is the challenge?

It’s an effort to raise awareness of ALS where participants must dump a bucket of ice cold water and then dare someone to do the same. If they can’t, the alternative is to donate $100 to the ALS association.

So the challenge is simple.  You either bear the stinging chill of Ice water on your body or you write a cheque for $100 to the ALS Association. Most of the challenges we would want to handle provide us either with a reward or a penalty. Thats what a challenge is all about  you either win or lose. The IBC is different its either a lose lose or a win win option depends entirely on how you take it. 

You have the stinging cold water dumped on your head trickling down to your body thereby you put yourself into a bit of distress or your part with $100.  It sure is a lose lose situation particularly in the real world.  But then in the  social media firmament it becomes a win win thing.  When you take a video of yourself taking on the IBC and when you share it on Facebook you automatically get into the league of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Lady Gaga but should you chicken out you end up donating $100 to ALS foundation which by now has become a sexy charity (dislodging AIDS) and thereby end up adding some CSR brownies to your personal brand. So its WIN WIN in the Social media world. 

Who ever conceived of this has either done it after a lot of thought and has understood human behaviour in the brick & mortar world and the social media world.  Facebook is a huge game bin. Its got rewards embedded in the form of like button. Every time a like button is hit for a post the author of the post gets a trickle of the feel good chemical (dopamine) release. Over a period of time the the participant gets used to this reward chemicals and would want more of it, thereby ends up with more posts or shares on the wall.  To Facebook it is content. This reward loop is vital for content generation in social media. In the real world there is either reward or reproach scenario while in social media there is either rewards or no rewards. (No reward is your posts not getting the likes). 

So in this game bin called Facebook the IBC is one activity that can give a person the Dopamine shower not just a trickle. Simple it may seem but it requires balls  to take up the challenge. Trust me its not easy. It certainly not for those who are cynical or for the analytical minds. 

Waste of water seems to be one huge criticism for this activity.  A valid one at that.  But remember social media is different its a place where you can make eczema flakes look like  snake tattoos. 

Creating a study environment at home

Mr & Mrs Sundar stepped into the counselling centre in 2012. Their problem was their daughter, who as 7 yrs old, was doing poorly in academics and the school had advised the parents to put her in a special school for intervention.  Mr Sundar was an IAS officer and he was not able to accept it and his wife was distraught.   I interacted with the child and found that she was normal.

Here is a background about me, I help children with learning difficulties, I administer a scientifically endorsed intervention and support it with parent counselling with a fairly  good success rate. I work with children with ADHD, Dyslexia and other learning challenges. On the other end I avoid direct interaction with normal children and I prefer working with their parents to help the children learn.

Anyway I took up this case though I knew I would not be able to contribute directly. As a first step I told Mr & Mrs Sundar that I would like to meet them at their home.  So after a week I called up to tell them I would like to come to their place in the next 30 mts. It was 8:30 in the evening and I reached their place in 15 minutes. What I saw was shocking.

The place was strewn with newspapers, there was huge TV blaring out some tamil songs. The curtains were unkempt some kitchen utensils were lying around. To top it all the place was brightly lit with tube lights. The little girl was in a corner doing nothing. 

I spoke to Mr. Sundar the next day and I took it upon myself to recreate the home and provide a study environment.  These are  the few things I did :

1.  Got a storage cabinet to store the newspapers.

2.  Got other storage furniture to organize the things that were lying outside

3.  Got new light colored curtains with laces to give it a soft homely environment

4.  Dedicated one room for storage cabinets and kept most of the items there

5.  Provided lot of open space in the main hall

6.  Sold the big screen TV and got a small portable one instead. Kept the TV in master bedroom and it was propped up high above eye level.

7.  The girls room was repainted with soft pleasant colours.

8.  Substituted the harsh tubelights with tubelights. Only the main hall had one tube light. All the other rooms had only soft lights.

9.  Got a good study table for the girl with appropriate table lighting

10. Finally I did the most important thing,  I got a lovely bookshelf in the front room.  Managed to get a good deal of books and stacked it in the bookshelf. I was an open bookshelf and accessible even to a child. I believe a book shelf must not be closed and it must be accessible to children.

Parents must strive  to create a study environment at home. A clean uncluttered home helps the mind to be uncluttered too.  TV NO NO NO. BOOKSHELF IS A MUST. 

The girl started faring better in school the cost of the entire redesigning including my fee came to Rs.1.25 lakhs