The latest viral trend is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, in which people pour a bucket of ice water over their heads or donate to find a cure for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

Some people participate because they genuinely want to bring awareness and donate to find a cure, while others just participate to receive likes, followers and an ego boost. While the latter might not have been done with the best intentions, these people are helping raise awareness for a previously little-known disease.

As with every viral trend, though, there may be some idiocy involved.

Some critics might rant, “Oh, that is so stupid. People are getting seriously injured by doing this!” Sure, they are commenting on the small number of people who did not take the right precautions in doing the challenge, but out of all of the people who have done it, only a few have hurt themselves. The people who get injured and upload their “Ice Bucket Fail” videos become viral, and often the “fails” have more views than the successful challenges.

Either way, a failed or successful ice bucket challenge will generate awareness for ALS, which is the point of the trend. More people know about ALS now than they did a few months ago, which I think makes it a huge success.

There are celebrities who participate in the challenge in elaborate ways. While the challenges boost their popularity, some do not even mention ALS or whether they are also donating. It seems more like them participating for publicity than actually trying to help a cause.

However, it is nice to see challenges like actor Zachary Levi’s, in which he opened his video by talking about what ALS is, what it does and that he was donating money to find a cure, all before dumping multiple buckets of ice water on himself.

It is refreshing to see an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video in which you can tell people have done their research and understand the meaning of the challenge, and not just doing it to boost their ego.

Some people still might call this just another dumb trend, but I think it is one of the best, because I can see all of the good pouring out of the buckets of ice water.