Titanium Media Note: Reading history, we have to look ahead. Titanium Media will successively launch a series of articles telling the "small history" of the Internet.
Four years, 1/25 century, 208 weeks, more than 1,400 days and nights, can happen a lot, and can change a lot of reality.
Now, when we look back on the past four years ago, we may be sad, we may be sad, we may be excited, looking at those vicissitudes or the same, experiencing those who have become accustomed to or still resist. You may have also asked the question: What have we changed in the world? What has the world changed us? Whether the world and we are moving in a better or more dangerous direction is moving.
The mixed present and future are so far away from us that it is impossible to give an accurate description. But at least we can look at some of the events of the past four years to find clues about ourselves, our world, and our future.
<h2>1</h2>
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has a more well-known name, alzheimer's disease.
After suffering from this disease, the upper and lower motor neurons gradually degenerate and die, so that the brain stops sending information to the muscles, because of the loss of function, the muscles slowly weaken, the brain loses the ability to control the random muscles, so the patient can not speak, swallow and even breathe, and eventually lead to its death. Within 3 to 5 years of the initial onset of symptoms, most people with FROST will die of dyspnea, and only about 10% of patients will survive for more than a decade.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were between 14,000 and 15,000 people with FROST in the United States in 2016.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) notes that the condition of people with frostbite worsens over time, and, so far, researchers have found no cause or effective treatment for the disease.
At present, the most common research mainly focuses on several directions, through cell detection to clarify the mechanism that leads to motor nerve degeneration and then suspend the termination of cell death, in addition, embryonic stem cells, biomarkers and other research has become the mainstream trend.
So far, studies and clinical practices have not found any risk and family history factors that increase the probability of disease, and only about 5% to 10% of patients with frostbite are genetically related to the disease.
In the face of frostbite patients, doctors are often powerless, can only provide drug treatment, physiotherapy and speech therapy, supplemented by nutritional means to reduce muscle atrophy caused by weight loss, physical resistance decline and other issues, and through related equipment to help patients breathe normally.
In other words, suffering from frostbite usually means that the patient can only sit back and watch himself gradually lose control of the body, and eventually become a prisoner walking dead with the help of the outside world.
<h2>2</h2>
Stills from the movie "The Theory of Everything"
It was not until 1939, when the famous baseball player Lou Gehrig retired from the army due to illness – because of which alzheimer's disease was habitually known in the United States – that it was first taken seriously and concerned, and just two years later, Jarrig died of illness. More than two decades later, Stephen Hawking once again brought algaeze to the public's attention.
However, in the nearly two hundred years since 1824, when the disease was first described, due to the small number of patients, research and clinical practice have not been breakthroughs, etc., the beginning of frostbite and its patient groups have always been ignored by the public, which has led to very serious problems.
First, due to the lack of attention, relevant research does not receive enough attention and investment support, which forms a serious vicious circle, and then, the rights and interests of patient groups are often ignored, and related policy preferences and welfare measures are often out of touch.
People with alzheimer's disease have become a neglected minority.
It was not until 2014 that the situation underwent a radical adaptation.
This year, Facebook was founded for a full decade, every month through the mobile device to log in to Facebook users in the first quarter of this year exceeded 1 billion, the social network showed great power, at the same time, mobile devices also entered the era of rapid progress, is the first quarter of the year, Apple iPhone sold more than 51 million units, creating a new record, by June of this year, the history of the total sales of iPhone reached 500 million units.
People are beginning to realize that it is easy to publish organizational activities using social networks and mobile phones.
As early as mid-2013, the "Cold Water Challenge" began to appear, and participants posted a video naming those who accepted the challenge, and the challengeees either chose to donate money to research institutions or chose to jump into the cool water. Within half a year, the event slowly became popular on the Internet. By early 2014, the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation had greatly boosted the campaign's reach.
The event then spread among golfers, and as a result, famed golfer Greg Norman challenged host Matt Lauer on NBC's ace morning news show Today, and the event quickly went viral across the Country.
On the same day, a golfer named his niece after completing the challenge, and the latter's husband, Anthony Senerchia, suffered from alzheimer's disease for 11 years, which was the first time that the whole event began to be associated with alzheimer's disease, but at that time, the two were not directly tied together, and the challengeees could still choose who to donate.
Flats accepts the Ice Bucket Challenge
On July 31, Pete Frates, a former boston university baseball team captain, also joined in a Facebook post calling on people to raise money for the Alzheimer's research group through the event. As a result, the Ice Bucket Challenge began to be directly associated with Frostbite.
For the first time, frostbite really entered the mainstream of society, and the ice bucket challenge also began its explosive growth.
Justin Bieber, LeBron James, etc. also participated and challenged President Obama, although not involved, Obama donated $100, former President George W. Bush named Bill Clinton to complete it after completing it, and then British Prime Minister David Cameron also declined the challenge. With the participation of people such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and many more dignitaries, the ice bucket challenge has become a popular sport in the world.
Coincidentally, in 2014, Hollywood released two frostbite-related movies in a year, "You're Not You" and "The Theory of Everything."
<h2>3</h2>
The ice bucket challenge became the most popular phenomenon on the Internet at that time
In just half a month, there were more than 15 million articles about the ice bucket challenge on Facebook, of which 9 million were sent out in a week.
On July 15, there were only a hundred tweets about frostbite, but in the month since, that number has soared more than three hundredfold, according to the data.
In less than two weeks, the local Alzheimer's group in Boston received more than $400,000, 10 times the amount donated in the same period the previous year, and before that, they had only raised $133,000 in total that year.
In more than half a month, the ALS Association (ALSA) received more than $15.6 million in donations, compared to $1.8 million in the same period last year, and nearly 310,000 new donors were added in addition to existing donors.
Through this unprecedented viral campaign, the Frostbite Society raised an unprecedented $115 million in donations, and its regional affiliates received an additional $13 million, compared with just $23.5 million in 2013.
Surveys show that from July to August 2014, the discussion of frostbite increased by 6 times, and in August, 1/3 of the discussions on the Internet were related to frostbite, and about 42% of people were completely unaware of frostbite before the ice bucket challenge.
There is no doubt that the Ice Bucket Challenge was a huge success that summer that exceeded everyone's initial expectations. But what exactly did the Ice Bucket Challenge leave us after that month's wave?
Shernelga and his wife
Many people may not know that Shenarga, who is considered one of the initiators of the Ice Bucket Challenge, died at the end of November 2017.
In fact, in 2015, some of the Frostbite teams launched a new Ice Bucket Challenge, hoping to organize such an event every August until they find a cure for Frostbite.
The event was supported by Major League Baseball (MLB), with every club involved. Oba President Ma once again received a challenge from a New Orleans Saints player with frostbite, while Republican presidential candidate Trump was named mayor of Boston, but he not only rejected the challenge but also called the mayor "a clown" after completing the ice bucket challenge in 2014.
By the end of the event, however, the 2015 Ice Bucket Challenge had brought in only $1 million in donations to the Frostbite Society.
It seems that after the boom, people have left alesophilia behind, but the truth is not so simple.
Research organizations in the United States receive funding for Frostbite
From August 2014 to July 2015, they have invested $71.5 million in research on related projects, and from July 2016 to July 2017, they have invested another $17.9 million into the TREAT ALS™ project, and of the $115 million raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Alzheimer's Association has now used more than $89 million.
They found a variant of the NEK1 gene, which is associated with 3% of cases of alzheimer's disease, and now experiments have begun to be carried out in mice to explore the role of the variant gene in the process of frostbite lesions;
About $23 million is used to support patients and their communities, in some areas, speech therapy and iPads are used to help people who have lost the ability to speak, and in others, the funds are used to buy wheelchair-assisted patients with limited mobility, and survivors can also use this to get psychological counseling;
Some relatively simple but essential studies have been conducted, with TDP-43, a protein commonly found in cases of alzheimer's disease, which researchers have received funding to track, and some researchers have upgraded the retrieval of blood and cerebrospinal fluid to search for biomarker containers;
With the support of a large amount of funding, some neuroinflammation research and projects to deliver DNA molecules are no longer helpless;
In fact, never in history has anything ever been done with a person that has received so much attention and achieved such remarkable results with such simple actions.
Allen's selfie at the Oscars became another internet craze in 2014
At the 2014 Oscars, a selfie of host Allen and the stars received more than 2.5 million retweets in the hours following its release on Twitter. In fact, to this day, it's hard to rationally come up with a factual answer to what is considered the most famous selfie in history and the popularity of the ice bucket challenge that followed.
The only thing we are sure of is that year, normal people and patients, stars and ordinary people, achieved true equality through the Internet for the first time.
On a super-order of magnitude scale, any subtlety on the Internet will be expanded thousands of times, entertainment or charity, hustle and bustle or silence, true or false, action will eliminate all discourse presets, action itself is reshaping the right to speak, under the impact of the historical trend, in fact, it has been erased in the public enthusiasm and movement, and ultimately affect us.
If this is where history and the internet's goodwill lie, then it is also a place where it is vicious and terrible at some point. (This article was first published by Titanium Media, author/Hu Yong)
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