University of Ottawa medical student Josh Stern decided to take a twist on the NekNomination craze and start his own challenge Feb. 3.
Rather than following the online drinking game’s usual rules, he recorded himself doing a charitable act instead, and calling the initiative Feed the Deed.
Stern first became aware of NekNominations via YouTube and through his own group of friends who were participating in the trend.
NekNominations, which started in Australia, have gone viral over the Internet in the past few weeks.
They challenge participants to consume alcohol while engaging in extreme activities. After uploading it online, the participant must then nominate a number of other people to complete the challenge.
“You’re so drawn to it, even though it’s so negative . . . and has no benefits whatsoever,” Stern said of the NekNominations. “Because the thing is, you’re doing it and calling on someone to do the same. You’re being peer pressured into it.”
But then Stern came across another type of video, one with the same type of influence, but with a positive spin on it, he said.
This one was of a South African man who videotaped himself giving a sandwich to a homeless man for free and then nominating his friends to do something of the same charitable sort.
“I thought ‘wow, this guy is unbelievable to change NekNoms like that and make it positive,’” Stern said. “It was sitting with me for a while.”
Stern decided to make his own video. In it, he chose to deliver sandwiches to homeless people and nominate others to think of their own charitable act to perform.
“I uploaded it on Facebook and people were just outpouring likes,” he said.
But that was just the beginning.
“My friend Russell Citron saw the video and called me right away. He had the exact same idea,” Stern said.
Citron is the founder and president of Kindness Counts, a not-for-profit organization that promotes creative, non-conventional ways of kindness. Citron said he was keen to bring the two ideas together and host it under the same umbrella partnership.
Under the partnership, every video uploaded to Facebook with the tag #FeedTheDeed is posted to the Kindness Counts page as well.
Citron said Feed the Deed aligns perfectly with Kindness Counts’ principles.
“A personal belief is that naturally society thinks that kindness is a passive concept, just not being mean,” Citron said. “But I think kindness is an active concept, acting out.”
While Feed the Deed videos have varied in terms of their levels of creativity, Stern said all of them have had the same impact.
“No matter how big or small, you’re still brightening somebody’s day,” he said.
Managing the stream of videos uploaded online has become difficult due to the growing volume of submissions, Stern said.
“We’re very overwhelmed. It’s exponential . . . there’s 100 videos one day, and they’re all nominating four or five others,” he said.
Stern said he still believes the campaign’s impact can grow.
“We have a great creative team, thinking of more ideas, trying to get more people on board and see if we can grow this thing to take it to another level,” he said.
The next leap forward would involve something with even more influence, Stern said. The organization is attempting to rally community support to elicit a response from TV personality Ellen DeGeneres.
While the project has expanded its numbers quite significantly and is still looking to grow, Citron said one single act of kindness would still have been a great accomplishment.
“If this entire project just inspired one video, just one person’s day . . . if this would make one conversation around a dinner table about being kind, that would be worth it,” he said.
