By now, I’m sure you’ve seen videos of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge all over your Facebook and Twitter feeds.  Thousands have participated and celebrities like Taylor Swift, David Beckham, Bill Gates, and Justin Bieber have all jumped on the frigid bandwagon.
 
At first, I was skeptical of the trend.  Let me get this straight, all these videos mean that people have elected not to donate money?  That’s some useless Facebook-hashtag-activism bullshit!
 
But I’ve since changed my tune, and I now believe it is viral marketing genius that has a lot of replicable potential for other non-profits and campaigns.
 
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid this social media phenomenon, here’s the gist:  A person elected by a previous challenge-taker chooses to either donate $100 to the ALS Association within 24 hours or get a bucket of ice dumped on them (and have that experience recorded and posted to social media sites).  In the hypothermic aftershock, the person nominates three others to take the challenge or donate.
 
For cynics like me, the problem is immediately clear.  The challenge essentially incentivizes people to not donate to the cause which they supposedly support.
 
I brought this up to some friends– and have been voraciously reading comments from Facebook trolls– who respond that the challenge is not intended to just raise money but also raise awareness for a disease that is underrepresented in health discourse.
 
But here’s the surprising thing: it’s actually doing both.  The ALS Association has raised $13.3 million since July 29 (up from $1.7 million over the same time frame last year) and millions are talking about often-fatal nerve disease.  That deserves applause, and I hope other charities and nonprofits can glean some key lessons from the campaign:

 1.) Make fundraising social 

Much of the success with the challenge is that it is tailored to social media (#ALS ‪#‎IceBucketChallenge).  It is quick, simple, VISUAL, entertaining, share-able content that lends itself well to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

2.) Pay it forward

Simple, but effective– by calling out 3 of your friends to also participate, you exponentially increase the amount of folks involved.  And who can resist peer pressure?

3.) “Soft asks” are powerful

I find this the most intellectually interesting of these lessons.  The ALS Association could have done a traditional fundraiser.  They could have asked people to donate, spread the word to their friends, etc.  But those fundraisers tend to not be very successful for the simple fact that people hate to be asked for money.  They feel comfortable rejecting the ‘hard ask.’

But the power of suggestion is potent and the public nature of the challenge makes it almost impossible for people to refuse donating once they have participated.  Who’s going to be that guy who made a cool video for his friends but didn’t donate to an important cause?  That guy’s a dick. But the guy who took an ice bath and donated and put it on Facebook to share his good will with the masses?  That guy is your pal.

 
So the takeaway?  Make it cool (literally, in this case), make it social, utilize peer pressure, and invent a neat hashtag.  It’s money in the bank.

This is worth the read overall (re: relationships between mothers and daughters), but an interesting nugget I pulled out was:  

A distinctive characteristic of the millennial generation is that we’re closer with our parents. Last year the president of MTV announced the network is overhauling its content because young people today are “not rebelling against their parents at all. They’re moving in with them. They don’t want to leave.”

 
I’m very curious why this is the case.  This has to be reflective of a broader cultural change.  Did the economic crisis make us more dependent?  Is this the natural conclusion to helicopter parenting?  Was the generation before just too fucking cool to not be best friends with?  Food for thought…

Image courtesy of Climate and Ecosystems Change Adaptation Research University Network/ FLICKR

House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) penned an op-ed to the Houston Chronicle Feb. 12 decrying the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new regulations on power plants, claiming the mandate for carbon capture technology will lead to job loss, decreased revenue, and economic fire and brimstone for Texans.  The letter comes on the heels of a contentious committee hearing on federal intervention in environmental and energy concerns.
 
Given Smith expressed the average conservative stance– less regulation, smaller government, drill baby drill, etc.— it is hardly surprising, except for one thing: Smith is the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.  
 
Yup, the committee charged with ““maintaining our scientific and technical leadership in the world” is led by a politician who poo-poos away environmental reform and receives the majority of his campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.  Not to mention, a committee that recently hired a former Chevron lobbyist as one of its senior staffers.
 
The previous week, Smith announced his co-sponsorship of the Secret Science Reform Act, a bill aimed at “[prohibiting] the EPA from proposing regulations based upon science that is not transparent or not reproducible.”   While good on paper, Smith’s actions pose a thinly-veiled attack against the EPA and any federal action to protect the environment.  At the committee hearing Feb. 5, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the senior democrat on the committee, said GOP efforts were a “misguided and disingenuous war on the dedicated scientists and public servants of the EPA.”
 
And Smith has enthusiastically led the charge in each battle.  Earlier this year in a Washington Post op-ed, he lambasted President Obama for delaying the implementation of the Keystone XL Pipeline and criticized the EPA’s 2012 carbon emission standards for coal plants– despite significant concern that the pipeline and current inefficient plants will greatly increase greenhouse gas emissions.  In December, the committee hosted another hearing giving voice to climate change deniers.  And, more recently, Smith denounced Obama’s proposal for a “Climate Resilience Fund” to research climate change and prepare for weather-related devastation.
 
I support the Congressman’s ostensible reasoning that we should carefully consider our investments.  But this rhetoric is a ruse to continue our blind descent into inefficient, unclean fuel technologies in order to put money in the hands of big corporations.  We must demand that those charged with preserving scientific integrity are concerned with evidence-based,  scientific interventions– and not obsessed with selling their stamp of approval to the highest bidder.
 

Hey all,
 
I know it’s been awhile since I’ve been regularly blogging, but wanted to let you know I’m still alive and kicking and blogging.
 
So what’s new with me?
 
I graduated from Medill in December.
 
Working in the communications department of a pretty dope nonprofit.
 
Enjoying a healthy and vigorous social life, as I try to rebuild my Chicago world.
 
So things are good
 

 
Other than that, things are about the same. I hope to begin again regularly blogging. Something I have struggled with since the latest incarnation of this blog is deciding my scope and what content I’d like to focus on. The old Carlson Salon had a pretty specific focus: I wrote on social issues, but only if I had a unique analysis to bring to the table— exploding an unexplored piece of rhetoric, examining the connections between macro and micro issues, etc. I would still love to do that but those posts took a long time to write.
 
I’m hoping to be a little quicker and snazzier, but haven’t quite figured out what I want the blog to be. So this will be an experiment, I think. If things seem inconsistent for awhile, bear with me while I figure out my A-game.
 
Thanks, readers!!

Note: this is a picture of my friend and I re-enacting the Revolutionary War at Halloween. There’s a lot of love there, don’t worry.

Most women have witnessed the day-to-night atmospheric change when a man enters a room previously occupied by only women. This man could have 3-foot long nose hair, a lisp and a pear-sized bald spot, but no matter. Suddenly, every head is turned, every back straightened, every smile widened to coat-hanger proportions. Conversation turns to that dull brand of innocuous chatter sprinkled by strategically-bell-like laughter that drowns out the previous impassioned discussions and heart-felt guffaws.
 
And whoever does it the best– whoever radiates, whoever dazzles, whoever hair-tosses with extra flourish– is usually on the receiving end of a thousand “dead-to-me” glares from her compatriots.
 
It is a prime example of the female competitive universe that was studied by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, as covered by the New York Times this week. Researchers have found fascinating evidence of intrasexual competition (competition among females), but their explanations dangerously rely on evolutionary and biological mechanisms for the phenomenon– ignoring the host of social and cultural forces that foster mean-girl behavior.
 
The researchers in question studied female intrasexual competition by putting female test subjects in a room and then sending in an “attractive” confederate subject who was either dressed conservatively or not-conservatively. They then observed the reaction when the confederate left the room– women were not aggressive to the subject’s face– finding that:
 

almost all women were rated as reacting negatively (“bitchy”) to an attractive female confederate when she was dressed in a sexually provocative manner. In contrast, when she was dressed conservatively, the same confederate was barely noticed by the participants.

 
(Side note: can you use “bitchy” in an academic article?)
 
The study concluded that intrasexual competition, then– not pressure from males— may be the “most important factor explaining the pressures that young women feel to meet standards of sexual conduct and physical appearance,” according to the New York Times.
 
It’s a basically intuitive concept for many women (I’ve heard many women say that they primp and dress up more for other girls than for potential suitors). But the explanation offered for this competition was evolutionary: Sex is a limited resource and women have to compete for that resource.
 
Even if we assume this is valid reasoning (and I’m not entirely convinced), I take issue with ignoring the cultural component of this problem. Women aren’t haters because they are genetically predisposed to compete for men– at least, that explanation does not speak for the whole problem. If it did, we could simply ask, “Why is this competitiveness seen among men?” Given that the gender breakdown of the population is slightly equal, why aren’t men throwing shade at their slightly-better-coifed counterparts? Why aren’t men crowding the bathroom mirrors?
 
The unspoken element of this conundrum is that women are taught that their prime motivation in life is to find a man. To get married. To raise children. You can graduate magna cum laude from Yale, go to Harvard Law, and get hired at an established firm by the age of 25, but you’re still going to answer Aunt Sally’s pressing “So, are you seeing anyone special?” over the turkey dinner.
 
Society devalues women for their accomplishments and overpraises them for their culturally-conditioned adherence to the standards of beauty. It’s not shocking that women feel an intense pressure to accommodate, even if it means casting aside their fellow women.
 
I’m not denying there is some biological basis for competition. At the end of the day, women have a limit on their reproductive years that men simply do not. But this alone can’t account for the pure vitriol with which some women cast judgment on other women. This anger– this frantic urge to be better, to hate on other women– stems from something else.
 
While it glosses over the cultural components of female competition, the study does highlight the indirect, often unnoticed, aggression that occurs in female groups, thereby putting to rest the idea that women are complacent, delicate, opinion-less flowers. It’s something that is definitely worth talking about: the pressures of womanhood, the intense feelings of competition, the passive-aggressive put-downs that have become all too common, etc.
 
But that conversation is not worth having if we are going to cast aside these behaviors as examples of immutable biological determinism– a scientifically-backed “girls just being girls” mantra that leaves no room for in-depth understanding or avenues for change.