The Ice Bucket List

Remember the ice bucket challenge? You probably don’t, given how, while everyone says that life is transient and fleeting and all that, it’s the social media fads that are truly transient and fleeting, and thank goodness for that. Still, back before the days of Pokemon Go and Prisma and Dubsmash videos, the ice bucket challenge was the first of the big social media fads that really made you wonder how crazy (or cray-cray, as the more with-it lot would say) people could really be. I suppose one should be thankful that the capacity for human lunacy is being channeled into absurd social media fads as opposed to, say, starting a world war, but the ice bucket challenge was still a strange phenomenon, whichever way you looked at it. One minute all seemed well with the world, the next, people were all over the Internet having a bucket of iced water poured over their heads. Something that should’ve died a quick death with the first case of pneumonia instead went on for months with celebrities, ‘fifteen-seconds-of-fame’ type internet sensations and even normal, sensible people dunking a bucket of iced over their heads and, for good measure, filming the whole damn thing. If you tried that now, randomly pouring a bucket of iced water over someone, they would probably beat you to pulp and swear never to talk to you again, but back in the day, for one glorious summer, someone was grateful if you did that to them.

While I was perfectly happy with the world dunking itself in iced water as long as it left me out of it, I was worried about what the ice bucket challenge was doing to the Internet. Think about it – at that point, if for some reason an alien species had decided to vaporize our entire planet and destroy all physical proof of planet earth, the only thing they’d be left with is the Internet. Consequently, the only thing the aliens would know about us humans is that we loved pouring iced water over our heads. Is that really a good legacy to be remembered by? It would not have extracted even the slightest pang of guilt amongst the aliens over destroying the human race. If an alien army inquiry into the destruction of planet earth did ever take place, this is how it would’ve played out:

Alien Commander: “What? You vaporized Earth? Have you no conscience? You just killed all life on an entire planet – there must’ve been millions of life forms on that planet, and you just vaporized it all! How could you?”

Alien Soldier: Well, they anyway spent all their time pouring ice cold water over themselves – that’s all they ever did.

Alien Commander: What nonsense! No race could be that daft – you’re just making it up to save your skin.

Alien Soldier: I swear it’s true. See – I have proof! Look at their Internet – all you see is humans having iced water dunked over their heads.

Alien Commander: Oh, all right. Then it’s fine. I probably would’ve done the same thing.

Perhaps someone should take on the responsibility to curate information about humanity for posterity, just in case the planet is vaporized by aliens or melted into oblivion by a nuclear holocaust. Sure, the ice bucket challenge is now history, but if you just let the Internet be as it is, the future generations will only see us as these massive perverts, because about 90% of the Internet is porn. Or they’d see us as this eccentric race that spent all its time looking for monsters on their mobile phones. At best, they’d think that we worshipped cats, because most of the videos on YouTube and photos on Instagram are of cats. It’s just like the way we think the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians didn’t really worship cats – maybe they hated cats and that’s why they seized the opportunity to bury a cat or two whenever someone died. But we misinterpreted it to think that they loved cats so much that they buried their dead along with a cat.

The whole matter of legacies is why I was glad that somebody finally made a movie set during the Indus Valley Civilization. Here was an ancient civilization that must’ve been pretty cool in a lot of different ways, yet all I could remember about the Indus Valley Civilization from history books were two things:

1.    They loved making terracotta figurines. Every photograph in the history books about objects from that time was a terracotta figurine/object/artifact. I’m sure there would’ve been much more to the Indus Valley people than making terracotta figurines – for all you know they would’ve made music, played sports or even devised an elaborate cuisine that was way ahead of its time, but thanks to none of that being found, everyone thinks that making terracotta figurines was all they ever did.

2.   Life started with the Indus Valley Civilization. Ok, and the Egyptian, Chinese and Mesopotamian civilizations. Of course, we were later taught that we all evolved from monkeys, and that humanity first began in Africa millions of years ago. But for a few years before that, history always started with these four civilizations – it was as if there was nothing at all until they all just sprung up around the same time. But while the Egyptians had the pyramids, the Chinese had the Great Wall and the Mesopotamians invented the wheel; the Indus Valley’s claim to fame was terracotta. I like terracotta, but it’s not exactly the wheel in terms of civilizational contribution, is it?

The initial joy of a movie set in the Indus Valley Civilization quickly turned to deep despair when it turned out that Hrithik Roshan and Ashutosh Gowariker, the team behind Jodha Akbar, were responsible for the movie. Still, I thought I’d at least go ahead and take a look at the trailer, just to expand my knowledge of the Indus Valley Civilization. Thanks to the trailer, I now know that there was so much more to the Indus Valley Civilization – unarmed combat with crocodiles, elaborately choreographed dance sequences, Mediterranean dresses, Viking hats, Roman-style gladiatorial battles, greed, corruption and evil dictators. It’s the sort of stuff that’s too interesting to go into a history book, so maybe that’s why they only told us about the terracotta figurines!