And so, as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge speedily recedes from relevance, what legacy does it leave behind? When a 74-year-old Joey Essex resurrects its memory in a far-future edition of I Love 2014, what will he say about it? (After he’s said ‘I fot they growed ice on them special trees on Christmas Island,’ of course) Was the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ the clever and timely application of viral-marketing techniques to a worthy but overlooked charitable cause, or was it merely a case of our collective narcissism running amok on social media?

The roots of the challenge lie in the #Nomakeupselfie and Necknomination crazes that swept the internet earlier this year. #Nomakeupselfie convinced millions of women to post pictures of themselves on Facebook and Twitter along with the caption, ‘OMG, I look awfool without ma make-up’, quickly followed by a million comments saying, ‘don b silly huni, yoo luke gorgious’, even though they didn’t. Whatever you thought of the campaign, £8 million was raised for Cancer Research UK in six days.

Necknomination involved necking/downing/inhaling large pints, yards and buckets of booze, and posting a video of it on Facebook. You then nominated another would-be guzzler, and the process repeated itself ad infinitum. Or at least ad untileveryonegotsickofit-itum. The Necknomination craze wasn’t for anything: it was just a laugh (for ‘a laugh’ read ‘execrable’). It proved that people were willing to do anything as long as they were told to do it by a video on Facebook. (Ahmadinejad take note: the time is right for the ‘Inform on Your Neighbours Challenge’.)

The Ice Bucket Challenge stood on the shoulders of these two viral phenomena, learning how to make money from one, and how to excite the masses from the other. Yes, the challenge played to our vanity – and perhaps not everyone who participated gave a second thought to ALS – but it resulted in ALS receiving around 36 times its normal rate of donations. (Not to mention the boon to Macmillan and a whole host of other charities, including Water Aid. And let’s not forget that not a single pound or penny had to be spent on advertising.)

I can see why a viral campaign that entreats people to chuck litres of life-giving water over themselves might seem like a slap in the face to our African brethren, which is why it’s almost inexcusable that for my Ice Bucket challenge I nominated an entire village of Saharan Bedouins. In my defence, I’m Scottish and the concept of ‘not enough water’ is alien to me.

We certainly shouldn’t be encouraged to believe that throwing buckets of water over ourselves makes us heroes. In an ideal world we and our governments would work together to eradicate all social, political and somatic ills, and usher in a new utopia. But let’s get real: by and large we’re a horrible species: self-important parakeets preening in a mirror; indifferent to suffering – other people’s at any rate. If, occasionally, we can be tricked through a mass event into doing something nice, then I guess that’s okay.