What's old is new again: Whether it's ice, rice, or tacos, these fads are just recent manifestation of something "really quite old and common".
"Still, we seem to have entered an era rife with what Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times characterizes as 'treating philanthropy as a sort of game, with the goal of making it go down painlessly.' And gamified philanthropy may cause problems for charities. 'The mixing of charity with various social events is really quite old and common,' Russell N. James III, a professor of personal financial planning at Texas Tech University who has studied charitable giving, told Op-Talk in an email. 'What is new is the rapid meme-ing that can occur with social media.'" -- Anna North, the New York Times
