No more nominations; stop the trend

Posted on February 25, 2014 by 40 Mile Commentator

Although the buzz has died down over the past week, a new craze is traveling the globe, putting people in all sorts of danger. Neknominations began popping up on social media sites a few weeks ago, starting out with one person drinking a whole bottle of hard liquor in one sitting, and then passing the challenge onto others.

Soon it became about one-upping the person who nominated you. If they chugged a beer, you were suppose to chug a beer and do one other thing that was just slightly more crazy than the first.

But as many things like this do, the neknominations became deadly, as teens and adults became too involved, drinking until they passed out, or getting hammered and performing some illegal or unsafe stunt.

All across the world reports of death were coming in as people got more and more involved in this dangerous game.

In Medicine Hat and area alone, local kids began popping up on Facebook, each being nominated by another, each nominating two others. Some of these nominees chugged a beer and passed on the message, others took a couple shots, one even rolled around in the snow with no clothes on.

But as harmless as these feats were, they still caused a lot of grief, especially for one girl who didn’t think as she filmed her nomination.

Filming herself drinking a beer while driving a car, this Medicine Hat girl was tracked down the by police and charged with drinking and driving. Whether she had actually turned the car on, or just was pretending, the foolishness was still there.

As she challenged others to do the same, it came down to one thing; people were making a joke about drinking, and even worse, about drinking while driving.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, were those who decided to make something good out of their nominations.

One local fellow chose to donate $5 to a charity of his choice, nominating others to do the same. Other globetrotters have bought coffee for strangers, paid for groceries, or a different manner of charitable things, but it still comes down to those neknominations that harm, endanger, or kill.

It doesn’t matter how many good deeds are done through this social media game, the fact is people are still getting hurt. There is the odd good deed reported, but the majority in the news is negative.

This is a stupid trend, and fizzling out or not, it will always be there unless people actively try to stop it. Don’t keep nominating if you are nominated. Stop the trend, because maybe the next death won’t be across the world, but in your own back yard.