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Make-A-Wish Foundation Turns San Francisco Into Gotham for 5-Year-Old Batkid
- 8ig8 13y agoShared the photos and story with my wife. We both had tears running down our face. We both pictured our son as batkid. People are good.
- geedy 13y agoPeople are good, and sometimes we don't give enough credit. :)
- 7Figures2Commas 13y agoAmen.
- enry_straker 13y agoFTFY People are good sometimes, and we don't give enough credit when that happens.
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- pshin45 13y agoMake-A-Wish Foundation, doing things that don't scale :P
- sdoering 13y agoWhy does everything has to scale? Why can a good deed not go unpunished (like in some comments here)? Your comment reminded me of one famous quote from the ring, the yews gave Oskar Schindler[1]: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire." Some people (ok, a lot of people) just made the miserable life of one little child a lot better. And they made their own lifes better, by showing what can be accomplished together. What is so bad in that, that it warrants these snarky remarks here on HN? That I really do not understand. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler#After_the_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler#After_the_war
- jaredsohn 13y agoWhy do people make assumptions on the motive behind other peoples' posts :) I don't think the GP is making a value judgement on the fact that Make A Wish often does things that do not scale. Rather I took it as a way to partially describe the Make A Wish organization in the language used to describe startups.
- sdoering 13y agoIf I have misunderstood the OP, I apologize. I know of the 15 to 1 ration of the possibility to misunderstand in every communication. So I should have given him the benefit of the doubt.
- quaunaut 13y agoHe wasn't insulting it, he was referencing a pg post that changed the way a lot of people approach startup marketing/relations: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
- spiritplumber 13y agoEmperor Norton would likely approve.
- tertius 13y agohttp://vine.co/v/htbdjZAPrAX http://vine.co/v/htbdjZAPrAX
- kenrose 13y agoBuzzfeed has a lot of pics of today's event. https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-make-a-wish-foundation https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/everything-you-need-t...
- gulfie 13y agoSo how can we get the same people motivated to work for a cure?
- Aloisius 13y agoOut of curiosity, exactly how would these people work for a cure? It can't be money, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is shockingly well funded to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars in 2012 and that's just one of the dozens of nonprofits not to mention all the leukemia research organizations. Surely you can't mean for them to drop what they are doing and get a Ph.D. and go into research?
- StevenRayOrr 13y agoNobody ever means that, but some days I wonder what the hell I'm doing. I'm not a genius, by any standard, and I likely wouldn't be the one to come up with the cure for cancer, but why the hell am I not dedicating my life to that project and helping those people there might find a way to eradicate cancer? Or HIV/AIDS? Or child poverty? Some days I think that would not be a bad idea, to drop everything and dedicate my life to something greater than myself. Nothing to see here. Just your usual existential crisis brought on by a comment about a kid dressed up as Batman.
- dnautics 13y agoDon't bother with the pH.d. I only made 40k with that degree trying to cure cancer. On the one hand, where is that money going? On the other hand, I wouldn't pay most PhDs half that.
- iamkoby 13y agomade my day :)
- codezero 13y agoHow much did this cost the city? It's adorable but blocking streets off and crowd control costs money.
- chris_wot 13y agoBruce Wayne had it covered.
- codezero 13y agoIf that's true then: awesome.
- jaredsohn 13y agoStating the obvious: it is not true, since fictional characters cannot pay for things in the real world. From some Googling, a WSJ story says about the police: "It just cost us our time. We told the guys prior that they were not going to make overtime, the ones who chose to hang around it was more of having your heart in the right place. Obviously it was necessary to put police resources into it, that happens all over major cities all the time, but this was not publicly funded." http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/11/15/police-chief-greg-suhr-on-how-batkid-saved-san-francisco/ http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/11/15/police-chief-greg-...
- mark_integerdsv 13y agoI really felt some strong emotions while reading through this. It's amazing. The news spot just has to the the cherry on top. So happy for this kid that he had an awesome day. It does restore some faith in humanity to see things like this. ...however... I hate myself for being the contrarian in this case but as a South African and having worked with one or two NGOs that work with sick people in general, including kids with AIDS I can't help but wonder how far the budget and effort put into this could have been stretched. Granted, there are plenty aid organizations and shit tons of money (much of it dollars) that are pushed into Africa but if you've seen what's happening here first hand it's very hard not to think about what could be done with every single cent and every ounce of human energy. I remember coming home one day after seeing some particularly gut wrenching stuff and not even being able to look at myself. The food in my plate. The clothes on my back. My kids. A room full of useless fucking toys... It's the wrong lens through which to view these things. I know that in my head but my heart is breaking all over again as I types this on several fucking thousand rands worth of smartphone.
- derefr 13y agoHere's a lens that might be helpful to view this through: seeing these kinds of personal, touching results encourages philanthropy--we're "spending money to make money," so to speak. We just need to channel that generated emotion and desire-to-help through the cold, calculating hands of organizations like GiveWell. :)
- hershel 13y agoAnother interpretation could be: "we did out part, we helped batkid. No need to donate/volunteer/etc" There's a similar thing called in internet activism , where people who upvote/like and comment don't go and be really politically active, in a politically meaningful way.
- derefr 13y agoI wonder whether seeing a story where something good happened that you didn't have a (rationalizable) part in, still triggers the effect. If it did, you'd think aid organizations would A/B-test call-ins to their telethons and realize that they should stop showing the happy kids that've already been helped.
- frank_boyd 13y agoIt's nice to help suffering people. The recurring pattern I see, however, is: We single out 0.001% of all cases, do something extraordinary, and make a big fuss about it in the media. All this to make us feel good about ourselves. What we don't want to fix though, are the real causes of the problems, because that's way less pleasant to do.
- cududa 13y agoWhat are you talking about? "What we don't want to fix though, are the real causes of the problems" I'm pretty sure a crap ton of people are working on solving "the problem" aka cancer. The world is filled with shitty things, can't people create the occasional extraordinary experience/ scenario just to make people feel good?
- hershel 13y agoIf you look at statistics for access for cancer care for people with low income, you'll probably find enough places to put this money and effort into with better impact. But that's boring.
- cududa 13y agoPeople are also working on bringing cheaper care to people who can't currently afford it. Plus, this event was organized almost entirely for free.
- einehexe 13y agoSome people can only complain. Can't be much fun to that person.
- bananacurve 13y agoSome people can only complain, all you can do is avoid them.
- aaron695 13y agoSigh. Since when did HN become Upworthy and the glurge that went with it. A child life is probably worth less than $1000, rather than that new TV I can assure you the money to an average charity will save a childs life. Yet throw in Batman and a whole lot of Redditors and we've saved the world. Hey it's better than a normal street parade / pissing it up at a pub. But lets get a grip on reality.
- rschmitty 13y agoIf this angers you so much perhaps you should organize with other like-minded readers and do something about it?
- negamax 13y agoThis is the only article I am going to share on social media in a long time.
- ck2 13y agoI can't help but think this is mostly for the adults watching, just like setting up "santa". I suspect the kid would have been just as happy running around a yard or his block with "batman" for a whole afternoon. It seems like he didn't even have enough time to take in each event. Still, I hope it gives him great memories instead of being ill and in the hospital.
- bsandbox 13y agoMaking endeavors like this scale is an interesting problem. On the surface, this is inherently unscalable, but it does prove that a novel idea can spark latent compassion to create something truly awesome. The obvious thought is applying something like Batkid to third world cases, but it would end up helping out a few cases in the millions that exist. A cynical view is to look at this as an example of first world individualism triumphing over the greater need of larger populations, but I think it's worth thinking about it the other way round - how might it be possible to use compelling stories like this to solve a larger population of problems.
- sinan 13y agoBut what would other kids think? Wouldn't they get jealous?
- groupthinker 13y agoThis submission is off-topic and is not "Hacker News". Moderators, please delete.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoI think one issue with this sort of thing is people feel like they either have to feel warm, positive emotions about this, or prove that it is somehow harmful or at least not beneficial. I assume there is some small benefit to this kind of action, but I don't have any emotional connection or interest in it.
- twoodfin 13y agoIt's a good thing this was posted to hn, otherwise I never would have heard about it.
- cia_plant 13y agoI clicked the comment link for this story just to see how HN readers would make this simple feel-good story into some cynical circle-jerk. Was not disappointed.
- doorhammer 13y agoSeconded I did see some cheery responses that were nice, though. So there's at least a little hope.
- bnegreve 13y agoI just read the comments, some people like it, some other discuss whether it really makes sens. What's wrong with that?
- mark_integerdsv 13y agoMy comment would almost certainly be one that you are referring to. I think you need to justify how it is a cynical comment please? To me, the truly cynical thing here is that you can't seem to understand that Batkid's entire life is a lot more comfortable and pleasant than that of a great number of sick children around the world. The fact that so much that could have gone so far was spent on making an already (relatively) privileged existence fun for a day because of the air time it generates - is hideously cynical. I really do not wish to be overdoing the guilt trip here, I'm just a little baffled by your definition of cynicism.
- codex 13y agoCompassion begets compassion. For this reason alone this event was beyond price.