#icebucketchallenge: The New Craziest Social Media Trend In US Right Now

The idea is simple: While wearing normal clothes (no swimsuits allowed!), record yourself dumping a bucket of ice water over your head, then call on at least three other friends to complete the challenge.

Finally, post the video to your social media account, while of course taking note of the reason behind the video.

Silly? A little bit. Popular? Extremely.

One of the biggest stunts online and in social media right now had very low-key beginnings on the professional golf circuit.

The so-called ice-bucket challenge—dump ice water on yourself, post and tag yourself on social media and challenge others to do the same—got its start among golfers as a way to support pet charities. In just a few weeks, it has become a major fundraising coup for patients and organizations with ALS, a neurodegenerative disorder. It is commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the baseball player who had it.

The campaign has caught people ranging from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and performer Justin Timberlake.

In the past 30 days, there have been more than 118,000 tweets mentioning the #icebucketchallenge, according to Topsy, a social analytics company. It began slowly with just over 100 tweets on July 15 and then exploded this past week, with daily tweets of more than 32,000.

As of Thursday, the ALS Association, a US national advocacy, care and research association with 38 chapters, had raised $7.6 million in donations in two weeks. That compares with $1.4 million raised during the same two-week period last year. The donations came from existing donors and 145,918 new donors, said a spokeswoman for the group.

The rapid pace of donations has stunned ALS groups who are used to relying on a very close-knit group of donors, most often the friends and family of the 20,000 to 30,000 people in the U.S. with the disease.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a motor neuron disease that causes nerve cells to break down and die. There is no treatment or cure.